...to see MANY FRIENDS MADE IT HERE! :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

I am so grateful Mikey and the rest of the motley crew made this move...I was worried we were going to lose the family. It is so true that it's the people that make these forums and you all are living proof. I LOVE IT!!!! Show me how to get those smileys on this post and I'll be ridin' high!

Hello all, man the smell in here is familier, I'm from the old days of Big Blue for those who don't know me. I sure hope it great success and nice to see faces I remember from long ago. I will try to post as much as possible and make Big Blue kick.

Prototype

This is one of my two home layouts and the one that is furthest along. It has its roots in, of all things, 1980s Canadian Pacific grain branches visited by Chuck Bohi in the August 1992 issue of Railfan & Railroad magazine. What caught my eye were the wide open spaces and relatively small trains of 40' boxcars hauled by Alco switchers. Unfortunately, finding suitable engines in N scale proved to be a bridge too far so I modified my prototype to be Burlington Northern in eastern Washington as seen in Rob Leachman's Northwest Passage (Hundman, 1998). Construction progressed with track laying and the assembly of some Walthers grain elevator kits, but I still hadn't purchased any BN equipment yet. That idea got shelved when a friend sent me a new Atlas Trainman 40' boxcar painted for the Milwaukee Road. Overnight my layout changed yet again from a 1970s Burlington Northern operation to a 1960s Milwaukee Road line. Certainly the entire Milwaukee Road system was known for light-density branchline railroading, especially the Iowa, Minnesota & Dakota and Aberdeen Divisions in the upper Midwest, but there was still something alluring about the operations on the Coast Division. Fred Hyde's Milwaukee Road (Hyrail, 1990) presents the perfect inspiration for a light density grain line, eastern Washington's Marcellus Branch. From these inspirations the Mathewsville Subdivision presented here was born.

The layout is loosely set in east central Washington state in the grain-growing region east of the Columbia River. It measures roughly 16" by 34" in keeping with the small-scale nature of grain branch railroading. It's operated like two separate lines that join at Reid Junction. The Mathewsville Subdivison, a secondary mainline, runs from off the layout to Mathewsville. At Reid Junction the Wehbyrn Branch breaks off to its namesake town. With no runaround tracks there are a lot of shoving moves, much like on the real grain branches. Right now it operates with a borrowed Life-Like SW1200 painted for my freelanced railroad, but plans include acquisition of a pair of Kato NW2s (whenever they get around to released them in Milwaukee Road). Rolling stock is mostly from Atlas with 40' Trainman boxcars and new two-bay open hoppers for stone service. In the future I might invest in some Walthers log cars to test them on the curves. Maybe someday down the road I might have to squeeze a log loadout on there somewhere!

Model

I drug my layout outside a few days ago for an impromptu photo session. The Geeps pictures, great as they look, don't really operate around the curves. I really can't wait to get a hold of those Kato switchers! Both of the grain elevators are Walthers kits; the grey elevator in the process of being stripped for repainting. I plan to add some Rix grain bins to at least one of the elevators to further act as a view block. The base is just a 2" piece of foam that I've painted and built a layout on. Someday soon I'll get around to adding a fascia, probably Masonite since it's thin and stiff, and finishing the scenery. It's wired as one block with two sets of feeders; someday I'll hook my DCC system up to it but for now I just use an MRC Tech II.









Bibliography

Bohi, Charles. "Changes on CP Rail's Radville Sub." Railfan & Railroad. August 1992, 50-55.

Hyde, Frederick W. Milwaukee Road. Denver: Hyrail Publications, 1990.

Leachman, Rob. Northwest Passage. Mukilteko, Washington: Hundman Publishing, 1998.

Hi to every one! Is this a stand alone operation or part of another enterprise like Zealot or what ever? Either way I wish you the best of luck!

seems cozy around here. I am honored to have been invited. Thanks to all for this gift. This is truly a great Christmas present.

Joe

The Tileguy runs In SCREAMING......... :hey: ......ITS ABOUT TIME!!!

I thought you would Never get this done!........I waited and I waited and I waited.. ....FINALLY.

Nice to BE HOME!!!

:hey: Just would like to say hi to everyone and hope to see all the GREAT people i have met on the previous forum. I have completly left Zealot and no longer wish to be a part of that forum. I hope that everyone who was currently a member of zealot will come and join us here on the Gauge. It feels good to finally see the Gauge logos back and to see all the good mods and Admins back in action

See you all around the forums

As an impromptu act of support I will post an article I was going to avoid at my own site. Not because of a lack of quality, a lack of time.

Anyways here it goes. I purchased this half built turnatable earlier this year. I sent the girder section to a friend from the WMRC

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In Ft Wingate Army Depot , while working last week.







Mike