Back in September I chased the BNSF's Bayard Subdivision east out of Council Bluffs, Iowa. This is the former Milwaukee Road mainline to Chicago, now a branch operated by BNSF six days a week. It was featured in Model Railroader years ago as a "Railroad You Can Model" back in Burlington Northern days. The day I chased it the train had three locomotives, thirty-six cars, and a caboose. It operates six days a week as a turn going east and west on subsequent days with Saturday being the day off.

Recently I started a new layout, based on T-Trak standards. It is rather simple, yet meets my new criteria.
1) Can I enjoy seeing trains run. ( I won't be able to run long trains or operate, but I can enjoy seeing
them run after a long day of stairing at computer screens )
2) Will It fit in the space I have avalible. ( It is designed to fit on a closet shelf, out of reach of my young often too eager helpers)
3) Is it portable and will it allow for sharing of the hobby with others. ( yup sets up on a table in about 5 minutes and is easy to move.)
4) will it provide a challenge ( yup building beleivable scenes in a small space will be a fun new challenge.)

Anyway yesterday I finished the " Bench Work"



Over the next month or so I plan to enjoy building 8 "mini" scenes and sharing the proccess of building them with all of my friends here.

Most people on this board don't know me. I met ngauger through Geocaching. I assisted the Delaware Geocachers with getting their forum moved when someone could no longer take care of things. So I gave ngauger and ezdays a hand by getting a webserver set up to run a forum. I work in the IT field by day, so it wasn't a big deal for me to take on.

I think one of the moderators made a comment about why is path helping out so much when he isn't involved in model trains. Well, that isn't 100% true. I did have a train as a kid, but it is only seen at Christmas time now. It'll do a few laps around the tree. I never was as big into train modeling as some folks, but I use to take this thing outside and set it up different ways. It's a little hard when you only have enough track to make a circle or a slightly larger oval.

Anyhow, the train is up now and below are a few pics...

I just got all set up with pictures uploaded and a signature and a nice little avatar over at the other place. Don't fret, there will be a Waynesburg Southern thread started here soon. I built a helix this weekend. The tests on it went okay, not as well as I had hoped, but it will work. And I had to move it from its proposed location to one end of the layout. I will post pics when I get some taken. Thanks.

Craig

Just got the invite, thank you. I had not been on the other site for a few days and would have had no idea where everyone would have gone Thanks


Jim

I am certainly glad to be here amongst friends! I was known as Nazgul on............."The forum that must not be named".......LOL!

I will just be Steve from now on. I look forward to getting back to the FUN that seemed to be missing.

Take Care ALL!

..................... :hey: Where's that guy Deano????!

...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.