Been Gone A While, Can Someone Fill Me In.....

[brokemoto]

W&OD.  You can get the 44 and 70 tonners of the post-electric W&OD from B-mann.  They do have factory installed decoders.  While W&OD dumped its passenger service after the Second World War, you could stretch things a bit and leave one or two doodlebugs for commuter runs to Alexandria or simply have them turn north at Potyards and head to Washington Union Station.  The Bachpersonn doodlebugs look much like some of W&OD's doodlebugs; the last issues of them have factory installed decoders.

You could have a W&OD that did last into the 1970s that acquired a couple of switchers to replace the aging GEs.   Several manufacturers now offer yard goats.

You would need to make, or cause to be made, decals.  If you ever do make N scale W&OD decals, I would be interested in a few sets.

Oh, and welcome back.

[daniel_leavitt2000]

Didn't VARR come up with the prototype scheme for some of VRE's commuter equipment?

[PAL_Houston]

... I was just tweaking anybody who "knew" Illinois. We downstate folks have an inferiority complex because the government and commerce here is Chicago-centric (what we mean by "north of I-80")...

 
Although I grew up in Chicago, I am just not that parochial. 
Other than the politics, and the consequences thereof (such as taxes), and the winters, I still think of it Illinois as a great place to visit!
(What you said, bro' !  )

[OldEastRR]

If you are into granger, small-town, farm product hauling, short but numerous train operation, then Southern Illinois circa 1950-65 is a spider's web of branch lines, connectors, industrial sites (mostly grain elevators) and transiting Class 1 railroads, a mix that includes name passenger trains, coal hauling and oil tankers, stock cars and grain cars, plus boxcars, reefers, gons, flats, etc  --- from railroads all over the country. Include a little southern Indiana and you even get marble quarrying hauled on flatcars. Tracks ran to practically every small town in the area, creating a huge crisscrossing
pattern of rail. Besides "small" railroads like the Wabash, C&EI, Nickel Plate Road, and Illinois Terminal (electric interurbans, for even more variety in the mix) were major ones like Pennsy, Big Four (New York Central), CB&Q, and Illinois Central. Even "southern" railroads, like L&N and the Southern, had lines across southern Illinois.
And for scenery you have nice flat or gently rolling land -- in case you're not a whiz modeling rock cliffs, mountains of trees, rushing rapids and other vertical land features.

[robert3985]

Wellllllll.....I'm a big fan of modeling a favorite prototype.   First, there's no "simply" involved as there's a lot of research (as opposed to "invention") that goes on when you model a prototype railroad.  It seems that a lot of people who "imagineer" their model railroads think it's easier somehow to pick a prototype and "just" model it than inventing your own. But, in my experience, when you invent your own railroad, you're not bound by reality, so you just go ahead and do what you want, or what you think is fun, rather than spending the time and effort to research how things were really done, then attempting to apply those things to your model railroad.

I'm modeling a very specific location, and a ten year span of time as far as trains, corporate paint schemes, vehicular traffic and signalling are concerned, but limiting the structures, track furniture and scenery to late Spring/early Summer 1951, simply because SP tore down their Ogden roundhouse in 1952 and I want to model it, along with the rest of the Ogden SP and UP engine facilities along with the surrounding environs as accurately as my research will allow.

Operations involve passenger trains and freight traffic from January 1, 1947 through December 31, 1956, which allows me to incorporate several corporate paint scheme changes (oxide red vs yellow cabooses, gray/silver engine trucks, Streamliner colors vs two-tone gray and Pullman green, black switchers vs yellow switchers, etc.) and run them side by side and sometimes in the same train as the prototype did it when transitioning from one paint scheme to another, and I have several photos taken of freights with both yellow and oxide red cabooses coupled up to each other...which places the year as 1949 or 1950.  I also have photos of engines working alongside each other, one with silver trucks, the other with gray trucks.  I like being prototypical, but allowing myself a ten year span of time to model some trains and engines that might have been running at the same time, but probably not.

I chose Ogden as my main yard as it was a hub of activity for several railroads, including UP, SP, D&RGW, WP and the local electrified shortline - The Bamberger.  Railroad traffic came and went every day from each point of the compass, with as many as 48 passenger trains arriving and departing daily out of the Ogden Union Station in 1952.  Freights in the 4,000 ton range needed helpers on the rear for the climb to Wahsatch, where they'd cut off, turn on the wye and head back downhill for 67 miles to be turned in Ogden and put on the rear of another train.  Big Boys were the only engines capable of pulling a 4,000+ ton train unassisted up the Wasatch Grade, but often they'd be loaded up to 4700 tons, and a 3700 Class oil-fired Challenger put on the rear to shove, again cutting off at Wahsatch, and proceeding 67 miles downhill to Ogden.

So, I model that little 67 mile helper district on the UP known as the Wasatch Grade and was what every "super engine" the UP developed was designed to conquer, Big Boys in 1941 being the first ones to actually "conquer" the grade.

On a typical day in 1955, if you were sitting at Peterson alongside the Lincoln Highway you would see Big Boys, Challengers, Heavy Mikados (called MacArthurs), Light USRA Mikes, Consolidations, 9000 class 4-12-2's, and TTT 2-10-2's pulling or pushing freight trains.  You'd also see FEF-1's, 2's and 3's pulling passenger trains, with the occasional FEF in fright service at this time, usually after a shopping, to make sure the bugs were worked out. Diesels would include F units, Alco FA/FB/FA lashups, GP-7's running long hood forward, and GP-9 A's and B's, RS's and various E's and steam generator equipped F's pulling passenger trains, along with the occasional Fairbanks Morse Erie-Builts leading a no-name passenger consist. Lastly, you'd see lots of Baby and Veranda Turbines, both with and without fuel tenders pulling freights with a 3700 Class Challenger or TTT 2-10-2 on the rear.

That's pretty interesting for me and I haven't even gotten into what SP and D&RGW trains & motive power would be seen at the Ogden Yard.

Truthfully, I don't think I could have "imagineered" a much better vision for a layout than what came about through thorough research, photos, videos and what's available in N-scale and adhering to a strict regimen that I would allow only prototype-specific details (if possible) found in a ten year period on my layout. Living within a few miles of what I'm building also contributes to accuracy as far as scenery and trackwork are concerned.

I have nothing against "imagineering", and it's patently impossible to fully and completely do everything a prototype railroad did in the course of a single day on any N-scale layout.  I've finally given up attempting to duplicate the running, switching movement of a helper and the train's caboose when the helper cut off the train at Wahsatch, known on the UP as "Kicking the caboose".  The physics just won't allow me to perform that movement.  But, it is extremely interesting for me to know what that movement was and have my eyes opened as to the reasons the UP placed the switchstand, turnouts and sidings the way they did...to allow a running switching move that re-attached the caboose to the back of the train, and eliminated several switching moves that I am forced to perform just because my N-scale caboose won't drift down to the rear of the waiting train under its own inertia after being uncoupled from the accelerating helper about a hundred yards from the siding turnout's closure points.

I've done work on and operated on several freelanced model railroads and one in particular is run in an extremely prototypical manner as a number of the operating crew were/are engineers on the SP (pre-merger) and the present UP.  They are great sources of prototype information, which, with much effort and hardware has been adopted into a freelanced bridge line, and really gives operators the flavor of the real deal.

Each to his own.  Prototype AND freelancing have their pluses and minuses.  It's what turns yer crank, and modeling a prototype is what gets me...but, it IS a lot of effort and by no means an easier route. 

 

[Leggy]

Wellllllll.....I'm a big fan of modeling a favorite prototype.   First, there's no "simply" involved as there's a lot of research (as opposed to "invention") that goes on when you model a prototype railroad.  It seems that a lot of people who "imagineer" their model railroads think it's easier somehow to pick a prototype a model it than inventing your own. But, in my experience, when you invent your own railroad, you're not bound by reality, so you just go ahead and do what you want, or what you think is fun, rather than spending the time and effort to research how things were really done, then attempting to apply those things to your model railroad.

Other than quite seriously feeling like I've read another bio of your modular layout Bob I'd just like to say you're way off base here.....

As far as I've found in my own experience working on a singular freelanced RR concept for the last 15-16 years I'd much rather go and do the prototype route if the GDRMCo wasn't so entrenched in my modelling desires. Prototype modelling is easy, all the hard work is in the finding the information that's out there. Want to create a realistic and plausible freelanced RR vs a 'for fun' freelanced creation? Well....you'll spend a damn sight longer creating something completely believable than you will just doing what you want when you want.

'Wanties' as myself and my circle have called them are the bane of realistic and plausible freelancing. Personally, I've gone the Utah Belt approach and will be keeping my GDRMCo always in the present (seeing as I'm 22 I've only ever grown up with modern railroading) and there's very few 'wanties' in my operation. I've even removed a number of things that I've come to think of as distractions to the path to the end result!

Yes the GDRMCo does roster 150x SD80MACs, many of which are new units built under license by a manufacturing subsidiary (GDRHI) and that at times to me feels like a stretch however I followed the Conrail approach and deemed that using these units (ballasted up in weight to 215t/474000lbs) is the best option due to the topography of the mainline between Townsville and Mt Isa. It's got steep mountain ranges at either end and a whole lot of flat running in the middle and that deemed the higher HP units to be a good choice, 5000hp per unit to get the heavy ore trains hustling across the plains and a heap of weight on each axle to dig for taters up the grades. I'm an EMD person and the GDRMCo has SD70Ms, SD70MACs, SD70ACes and a few older SD40-2s and SD45s and the only real out of place 'wantie' that I've got is a U18B. Being a 215x locomotive railroad designed specifically to haul iron ore from mine to port I've had to largely standardize on one type of locomotive (the SD80MAC) and ignore all others, you can't tell me that is easy as I do quite like the looks of the AC44s and ES44s from GE, especially the Norfolk Southern ES44ACs with those high mount headlights.

Speaking of, that's another standard I've created and kept to. RR specific details help lend a sense of family to a locomotive fleet whether real or fictional and such features as headlight mountings and other such items need to be settled on and adhered to to find the perfect balance of realism and wants. I like the look of high mount headlights and I've stuck to that even to the point of letting great deals on ebay slip by because of it. Other things like high or low mount brake cylinders, I've decided on the high mount version due to ease of maintenance. This required the SD45 bogie sideframes to be swapped for the correct ones (thanks Atlas for making your Flexicoil sideframes interchangeable with Katos!) and I'm making sure any other locomotives I purchase have the same features. If you also look at photos of my locomotives you'll note there's no grab irons on them anywhere, that's another artifact of following reality and local OH&S rules that require personnel working above 2m to be wearing a harness. This rule effectively meant that any servicing of headlights, numberboards, filling the sand hatches, etc, needs to be done from a raised platform or within a structure that can support a man hanging from a safety harness.

Freelancing is easy? No. Hell no.

[S Class]

Leggy I suppose you can always look to the Pilbra if you ever run short of "wanties", of course by doing so this is the part where I start whispering a chant of *C-six-thirty six, C six-thirty six C-six-thirty six, C six-thirty six C-six-thirty six, C six-thirty six C-six-thirty six, C six-thirty six C-six-thirty six, C six-thirty six C-six-thirty six, C six-thirty six C-six-thirty six, C six-thirty six C-six-thirty six, C six-thirty six C-six-thirty six, C six-thirty six C-six-thirty six, C six-thirty six C-six-thirty six, C six-thirty six* 

I agree though as I face a similar issue with my grand design of one day building an entire city somewhere to the immediate South East of Melbourne, the research of Batmania and grounding it in proper, believable history for the reason the location should exist. Along with the pulled from a standards book cookie cutter design/operation that was the Victorian Railways (Pennsy as the standard railroad of the world my left bollock) makes the concept of freelancing, even proto-freelancing just as intense as extreme prototype fidelity.

Incidentally at 22 are you building this in your 'rents back shed or did I somehow miss the seminar on owning your own place at 22?



Anyway back to topic, I like Illinois Southern, but it reminds me of Jim Hedgiers Ohio Southern, not sure if that's a disqualification just and observation based on my immediate reaction. Virginia Atlantic sounds as it is, I think coal hauling in Appalachia - WM, Clinchfield, Virginian N&W etc. and in my weird Australian logic I immediately thought of Washington state for the W&OD, no don't ask me why, I couldn't tell you how I came to that.

For what it is worth I like the Atlantic Western as it reminds me of the New York & Atlantic who have the freight rights over the LIRR in Long Island. It sounds very Eastern urban microline and very 1970's post Conrail divestment of routes, you know we have quite a few DKS urban/eastern plans floating around here, just saying is all 

[sirenwerks]

You say "south", but only the C&EI and IC were true north-south lines, the others predominately east-west lines curving up to meet Chicago. Yes, St. Louis was really big as a rail hub in the late 1800's/early 1900's, but there was an event or series of events that prompted nearly everyone to move to Chicago as the interchange preference. St. Louis got hit hard in the pullback during the 1980s, with numerous mainlines yanked. Chicago some, but not nearly the percentage.

Ahem...Monon...  Not to mention the CGW was pretty N-S, just not in Illinois.

[Virginia Atlantic]

Don't let VARR's modesty hide the fact that he is a pretty good modeler. He not only developed the VARR theme (and a couple of others IIRC), but he did super work brush painting a lot of rolling stock that looked just great ..  He also had the very first Railwire special run of VARR cars ..   

And something else you probably don't know -- VARR designed the paint scheme for the real Virginia Railway Express locos ...   he's a modest fellow .. but I'm glad to see him back.

Thats very, very kind John, thank you.  Too kind I'd say.

I will make one small correction, as I don't like to take credit for things undeserved, but my work on the locomotives (F40PH and MP36) was more modification/addition to the original 1993 scheme.  It just needed a few touches and one specific addition to suit the cowlbody units.  But yes, the last two generations of Gallery Car were both my schemes.

As far as ownership changes --- I gave up running RW because after 6 years, I was just tired of dealing with it .. and Tom Mann agreed to handle the chores ..

I can understand that, running a website (as I've helped others do) is alot of work, and takes alot of patience.  Tom is, by my memory, as "good people' as one could hope for, so I'm sure RW has been in cappable hands then.

I appreciate all the replies, and will try and respond to some later today.  Got meetings this morning.

[C855B]

Ahem...Monon...  Not to mention the CGW was pretty N-S, just not in Illinois.

The Monon was entirely in Indiana.   However, point taken, great example of a north-south Class I regional out of Chicago. They're on par with C&EI.

CGW was more what I would consider a typical granger like CN&W, RI and MILW - a web of feeders and collectors pointed at Chicago. With the exception of the Twin Cities line they had more of an east-west orientation between interchange points. I am curious, though - maybe Jason can pipe-in here - did they have an appreciable amount of business between Minneapolis and KC? They certainly wouldn't have been the RR of choice for CHI-KC traffic, too many more direct roads.


Wikipedia

[Virginia Atlantic]

I think the most likely future would be retaining my core (and local) idea of the VARR + W&OD as a jointly owned pair of shortlines/regionals.

W&OD serving, basicly, a variant of what it actually did in the real world, but projected into the future instead of abandoned.

The VARR (who owns the "modernized" W&OD) serving the greater WVA WVA to Norfolk (and other VA locales) fictional/freelanced lines.

If it gets to the stage of modeling an actual location, probably will include an interchanges with the RF&P (because I love the RF&P) and points north.

Most likely would be that I continue to primarily model freelanced equipment (in both VARR and W&OD schemes), and build a very small industrial-switching + small yard (for display) layout given my available space isn't large.   Equipment would be primarily late 70's roling stock, the VARR an EMD motive power road, the W&OD a purely "quirky" motive power road (Alco/FM Rebuilds?)

The investment in VARR custom decals, W&OD decals, and my fleet of already painted equipment (despite it's post-fire ragged condition) is proving hard to abandon for new ideas or name/logo combinations.  with that said, I really like the "AW" name/logo, screams N&W design style in a way I quite like.  So may have to one day do a few cars in that roadname as well. 

What I will have to do is sit down and rewrite/remap the lines before I start doing any more model work, as I think thats important.  Where does it go, whom does it serve, why does it exist.

Most of my pics are no longer online, but I tossed this one up because it's one of my favorites of my old work.


 

[Virginia Atlantic]

As an aside, not that it's anything special, but if anyone likes the Illinois Southern name and/or the "Entwined IS" logo, you're welcome to take it and use any way you see fit.

In fact, if anyone like the AW I'd be happy to see that go to a good home too tbh.  I'm a big fan of sharing.

[sirenwerks]

Most likely would be that I continue to primarily model freelanced equipment (in both VARR and W&OD schemes), and build a very small industrial-switching + small yard (for display) layout given my available space isn't large.   Equipment would be primarily late 70's roling stock, the VARR an EMD motive power road, the W&OD a purely "quirky" motive power road (Alco/FM Rebuilds?)

I'd go with the W&OD then.  I can see the CR & PC variants of RS rebuilds and VO rebuilds like the Katy, or maybe even the Katy's RS3 rebuilds hauling Bluford and the coming Atlas coal hoppers from Bluemont to NoVA and DC.  It's too bad the industries in Georgetown are gone though, though you could revive them.  Having grown up up the street from the Wilkins-Rogers plant in Ellicott City, I always liked the one in DC too.