04-24-2011, 04:44 PM
I suppose it's time to finally introduce my freelanced model railroad, the Ironton Northern, to Big Blue.
The "prototype" runs north from the Ohio River at Ironton to Lake Erie at Cleveland visiting Galipolis, Athens, Zanesville, Coshocton, Wooster, Cuyahoga Falls, and Aurora along the way. Through line acquisitions in the later part of the twentieth century the Ironton Northern also now owns the former Erie from Aurora to Cleveland, the former B&O from Midland City to Parkersburg and then Zanesville, and the former DT&I from Ironton to Springfield.
The layout shown here represents the fictional town of Frick, Ohio where the Ironton Northern still operates an isolated switching district in the city's waning industrial zone. Frick is loosely based on the southern Ohio towns of Circleville and Chillicothe and elements of both towns can be seen on the layout:
![[Image: 5650739525_6093e29078_o.jpg]](http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5230/5650739525_6093e29078_o.jpg)
Ironton Northern at Frick, Ohio c. 1978 by railohio, on Flickr
Although I haven't plotted Frick on an Ohio map just yet it is somewhere in the neighborhood of Athens, presumably where an old Ironton Northern branch crossed the Chessie's former B&O line across southern Ohio. At some point the balance of the branch was abandoned but a small portion of the line was kept active in the city to serve the remaining customers shortline-style via an interchange with the Chessie.
I've tried to subvert the conventions of model railroading and model railroad design by creating Frick. Half of the trackage on the layout is abandoned or non-operational and many of the typical "must-have" elements for a model railroad are absent. Additionally, the layout's setting, a declining Rust Belt city in the late 1970s, is largely ignored by the "Golden Era" model railroad crowd.
I've had the benchwork for Frick finished for some time and have cobbled together some of the structures for it over the past year. This week, finally, I'm going to get to laying out the track and hopefully soon have another operational model railroad. I'll post photos as the process unfolds.
The "prototype" runs north from the Ohio River at Ironton to Lake Erie at Cleveland visiting Galipolis, Athens, Zanesville, Coshocton, Wooster, Cuyahoga Falls, and Aurora along the way. Through line acquisitions in the later part of the twentieth century the Ironton Northern also now owns the former Erie from Aurora to Cleveland, the former B&O from Midland City to Parkersburg and then Zanesville, and the former DT&I from Ironton to Springfield.
The layout shown here represents the fictional town of Frick, Ohio where the Ironton Northern still operates an isolated switching district in the city's waning industrial zone. Frick is loosely based on the southern Ohio towns of Circleville and Chillicothe and elements of both towns can be seen on the layout:
Ironton Northern at Frick, Ohio c. 1978 by railohio, on Flickr
Although I haven't plotted Frick on an Ohio map just yet it is somewhere in the neighborhood of Athens, presumably where an old Ironton Northern branch crossed the Chessie's former B&O line across southern Ohio. At some point the balance of the branch was abandoned but a small portion of the line was kept active in the city to serve the remaining customers shortline-style via an interchange with the Chessie.
I've tried to subvert the conventions of model railroading and model railroad design by creating Frick. Half of the trackage on the layout is abandoned or non-operational and many of the typical "must-have" elements for a model railroad are absent. Additionally, the layout's setting, a declining Rust Belt city in the late 1970s, is largely ignored by the "Golden Era" model railroad crowd.
I've had the benchwork for Frick finished for some time and have cobbled together some of the structures for it over the past year. This week, finally, I'm going to get to laying out the track and hopefully soon have another operational model railroad. I'll post photos as the process unfolds.