Raison d'etre - reason for being

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

In my MR history of about 7 different layouts, I have never run or modeled a real railroad like C&O, N&W, etc. All have been so called “fantasy roads” which allowed a lot of freedom from nit-pick details and running assorted motive power.

It was only with the last two layouts and now my own current, new HOn3 layout project that I felt obliged to see 1. A need for the road in the areas I claim to work in. 2. Try and explain how the motive power came to be there. 3. Produce a history that tells the story of the road up to the point in time being modeled. In short, it is sort of like this road could have really existed if fate or history had branched another way.

I think some model rails do this and I seem to remember yarns being spun in old MR magazines around fantasy roads which relieved the modeler of at least some derision from mild nit-pickers. Of course, some few folks will not like any idea related to what they dub a “fantasy road”. I feel, however, that most modelers are somewhat forgiving about a fellow modeler’s railroad.

Some call these fantasy roads, but fantasy, to me, means you don’t even have to have real towns or follow any sort of local geography and can invent industry and business not found in whatever area is modeled , run mixed motive power far out of time step with any period modeled. Even this is fine, of course, but isn’t for me, personally.

I prefer to call the more possible and probable roads with researched backgrounds, holding to real towns and geography, etc., “Believable roads”

I think it really helps to show the modeler’s knowledge and forethought by evolving a good story built up around the road, based on a decent amount of study and research, on the modeler’s part, related to the area, geography, businesses, industry and other roads that actually ran or run in the region.

I recently cobbled up a one and a half page blurb on

2

My previous layout was such, and I have an old and lingering web site that tells about it. I even had printed timetables with advertizing on them that developed the theme even further.

3

I had a whole corporate history written up for a proto-lance line that I had planned to model. Loco rosters over time, significant events int he corporate history all of it.

Somewhere along the line I decided I would rather model the Reading, but buried on my computer somewhere are those old files. No need to write ahistory of the Reading, as it’s been done far better than I ever could by James Holton.

–Randy

4

The middle earth road is a nifty and true fantasy road. A lot of great imagination went into that. I read it all and you did a good bit of work there. Thanks for the URL to look it up.

Richard

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Just in passing. That’s how I notionalize my own freelanced layouts. They have to look believable, at least to me, and I’m working on that. But I want it all. I have only two locomotives in my stable that are of the same time. Every other one is different, and my largest for the Pennsy comprises one each of a Duplex T1, J1, K4s, and an FA2/FB2 set. I have three N&W engines, 2 C&O, two NYC, and two CPR. And so on. I like certain locomotives and they are what make my fantasy come true. Since they don’t all belong on the same tracks, I have to fudge it. Frankly, it’s too much work doing anything else.

Crandell

6

My layout is trying to look and feel like the CPR would at many given spots, as it makes its way through the Rockies to Alberta. I always think railways have their own personality or atmosphere about them that can be modeled by having the correct infrastructure modeled.

As for any U.S. steam that is running around on the layout, it was lent to Canada at the outbreak of WW2 in 1939. We just forgot to give it back after the war.[:-^] That’s my story and I’m stickin to it.

Brent[C):-)]

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Yes, my free lanced Toledo Erie Central (TEC) has a “history”, if you will. To make a long story short, it is a short segment of a class I RR (probably the N&W) that was going to be abandoned during the early days of railroad deregulation (early Conrail years). The industrys along this line purchased the roughly 15 mile segment in order to continue rail service to their businesses and so too formed the TEC… Time and setting: late 60’s-early 70’s in northern Ohio between Toledo and Sandusky.

8

This is the stuff I was talking about. Engines simply not returned after the war, short trackage once part of the N&W, but kept alive as a short line by businesses it served. Good stuff!

Well here is the story of the PUP beginning to end. Lengthy, but all probables are there and the time line for every statement is pretty much correct.

Paradox Uravan & Placerville Railroad…”Th’ PUP”….Its story

This road was created to extend railroad hauling of mined mineral ore and coal traffic out to the west of the Rio Grande Southern’s western most territory at Placerville. It was formed by a consortium of large mining corporations and mineral investor groups to handle pre-WWII increases in traffic and new mineral discoveries of vanadium, copper and other strategic minerals stretching out to the paradox valley on the Colorado plateau.

Money was saved in the startup by purchasing 3 engines that were used on the D&RGW. These were found at the scrapper yards, just before scrapping. Likewise, rail and other basics were also obtained from the RGS and D&RGW when they were tearing u

9

I’ve come up with a couple of fanciful accounts of the history of Moose Bay, the fictional town which I model. The way I figure it, the railroad will serve the town, which is in turn defined by the people, industries, geography and geology around it.

Moose Bay is on the shores of somewhere, and beyond those shores is another place which I only care about because it’s got a virtual carfloat terminal, to and from which the soon-to-be real carfloat terminal of Mooseport sends cargo. The town has a few industries, mostly dealing with the transition of livestock to whatever livestock are used for. In addition, there’s a brewery.

It goes back to a sleepy town before the Civil War, and the Brad family. They were reasonably prosperous folk in the sheep business, everything from herding to wool production, when the war started. Our hero, John Buford Brad, was drafted into the Union army, but used his connections to be assigned to the Quartermaster Corps.

He found life behind the lines not to be too bad, but he knew an opportunity when he saw it. He drew up a plan for the Union Army to buy a large quantity of Haggis, a Scottish delicacy made of the intestines of sheep. An order was made to his own family’s facilities in Moose Bay, and several boxcar loads of the stuff were delivered to the Army, arriving at the front lines near the end of a bleak but warm December. When the army opened the cars, they made a great humanitarian decision, and in the spirit of Christmas, sent the entire shipment under a flag of truce to their Confederate brethren across the lines.

The Rebels, who hadn’t had a decent meal in months, sent it back.

Word of this debacle reached Washington, and then Major John Buford Brad was summoned. When he arrived at the capital, he was brought before a court martial panel, who were so outraged at his corrupt and despicable behavior that they order him stripped of his rank and his very uniform, right there in the co

10

I’ve been thinking about it for my current planned railroad, a mining/logging road in west central Wisconsin in the 1880s. I’m going to have to do some fudging here and there, but should be able to make it work. I’m reading a book on Wisconsin railroad history until the Civil War, which should give me a good indication of how things began to form and what a plausible route might be. So far, it’s planned to have 2 major towns, one with a large rail terminal. Connected to the town are one or two logging camps, a mine and/or quarry, and a third larger, more distant town.

11

I leave it for the reader to figure out what is fictional and what isn’t.

Near the beginning of the Recent Unpleasantness between the North and South, the Coopers and the Wrights found their farms near Manassas, Virginia being repeatedly trampled by armies from both sides. Giving up, they found their way to Charleston, SC. Alan Wright returned his family’s seagoing roots, and purchased a fast ship to use in evading the Union blockade. He quietly fitted the ship with a steam plant and a screw propeller so that he could come and go in the fog and night calms. Richard Cooper also returned to his family trade, and started making barrels and serving as a shipping service. Both prospered mightily during the stress of the times, and also quietly served the Confederate intelligence.

After hostilities ended, nobody was quite sure which side the families had really been on. And they apparently did not suffer from poverty like many Southerners. So rather than wait for a potential lynching or a kangaroo Union military tribunal, they headed West. San Francisco was their 1st stop. Alan bought a schooner to run lumber from Northern California to San Francisco, with Richard helping him out. Dismayed at the lack of manners, civility, and not being a part of the power structure, they abandoned the lumber trade and sailed North to Oregon.

They pulled into Port Orford. Richard fell in love with the Port Orford cedar, realizing it was superior to redwood in so many ways. He decided to make a new life being a lumber man. Alan despised the lack of shelter from storms at Port Orford, and continued sailing north in search of a better place to settle. He sailed into Coos Bay, and saw it was a great natural harbor - the best since San Francisco. So Alan chose to build a real town from the village at the mouth of Coos Bay, named Charleston, of course. This would become the next great Pacific Coast port.

But what

12

In the 1970’s and early 1980’s CN and CP were busy ‘disinvesting’ themselves of a lot of branchlines in the southern prairie provinces. Three entrepreneurs, Vigil Freeman, Thomas H Cooke and Fred ‘Howdhedodat’ Thompson looked at some opportunities to get involved in the railroad business…and chose the route that became the Emerald, Leemer and Southern to become reality.

My layout is situated mostly in southwestern Saskatchewan and, hence, is a rolling countryside…mostly rural with few odd bits thrown in…like Blue Circle Audio…

13

The Gainesville & NorthWestern built a rail line from Gainesville (GA) to Cleveland (GA) in 1913 and extended it to Robertstown (about two miles west of Helen) in 1915.

The 35-mile line, nicknamed the Nacoochee Valley Route, served the lumber mills of Helen and Robertstown, as well as Cleveland, Clermont, and other communities along its route.

In 1917 it was operating three locomotives, two passenger cars, and seven freight cars.

The lumber business declined during the 1920s, and the other shippers along the line could not keep it in operation. The 1.5 miles between Helen and Robertstown was abandoned in 1928. The remainder was abandoned and (slated to be) dismantled in June of 1934.

A couple hours of research turned up nothing (yet), but there is signs and evidence there was a branch that extended to reach the copper mines between Tesnatee and Dahlonega (site of the first U.S. Gold rush). I’ve not seen any info on who laid or owned the trackage, but photos of the mine clearly show several gons (Southern Railway, it looks like) on at least 2 tracks.

Just about the time the tracks were to be removed, a major vein of ore was discovered in the mines, but since the rolling stock had been sold off (or scrapped), Southern Railway was given trackage rights to haul the ore. By the time WWII struck, demand for copper ore skyrocketed, keeping the mines in business. At the end of the war, the track was in such poor shape, and Southern offered to buy the line.

Now it’s 1957 and although passenger service has been long since discontinued, they still have an odd old caboose/combine that can be used to carry passengers (mostly company service and mine employees). Trains consist of one daily round trip, with the mine traffic interchanging at the small yard (really, more like an interchange track) at Clermont. The light rails laid on the mine branch haven’t been upgraded, and with only one customer on that line, it l

14

Back during a tour in a combat zone (during the Great SE Asia War Game) I wrote a six-page history of my fictional area, starting back in the 16th century. That history has long since vanished into oblivion, but the map that went with it became my master plan. It didn’t take me long to notice the similarity to some real geography, which I then proceeded to adapt. Thus the present master plan draws heavily on real places and the real economic forces at work, but all the names have been changed to protect the guilty. The major products are timber (true to prototype) and coal (imagineered from a coal producing area on another island.) Construction of hydropower projects in inaccessible locations also played a part (justifying my narrow-gauge feeders and their 762mm gauge prototypes.) The big decision was to model the prototype operation of the Japan National Railways route - the entire September, 1964 timetable, 24/30.

So, what started out as pure imagination slowly evolved into renamed reality - except for the Tomikawa Tani Tetsudo. That coal-originating line remains a wild feat of imagineering that might have happened - IF there were workable coal seams among the volcanic mountains of Central Japan…

In the Alfred E. Neumann Universe, there are.

Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - What, me worry?)