Chapter 7 Now well move a little more into Churchill. Across from the passenger station is Ed's Market. This was built about 20 years ago. I love to put interiors into buildings. The next 2 are of the scratchbuilt freight station. In small communities, freight stations were extremely important in the 50's. There were no big box stores and almost everything came throught these facilities. There was no UPS, but they did have the Railway Express Agency. They would receive freight and deliver it to business and individuals in their area. Anything from clothing, hardware, appliances, some food items, and just about whatever someone could think of. Small trucking companies were sometimes contracted to make pick ups and deliveries also. Next to the freight station is Tschache Oil. This was done as a gag for a friend, Junior Tschache (pronounced shockey). His family wasin the oil business years back so I had to poke a stick at him. The next picture is old #99 switching some cars from the local industries. The next 2 shots are of the Vincent company. They have a lot of things going on in town with a hardware store, lumber supply business and farm supply business. The lumber supply is an Atlas building I believe. I cut scale lumber to lenghth and put it in the bunks. Just past that is the local grain elevator. As I have mentioned before, I like to try to tie as many local indistries as I can together. There are grain elevators (which are in so many towns in Montana) in Gallatin Gateway, Anceny and Churchill. These will be delivered to a mill in the town of Logan when it gets built. More in the next installment.
CHAPTER 8 Now we'll take an overall look at Churchill and move out of town. The first shows one end of town and the second shows the grain elevator and cattle pens. Across from the farm supply is a teenager courtin' his girlfriend with his hot rod pickup. The ned two are # 184 topping the grade out of Logan. The last is the Van Dyke farm. The farm sits at the top of a two and a half percent grade. The steep grade was done on purpost to either limit train size for a single locomotive, or to require helpers for longer trains. From the farm, there is about a 16 foot run to the lowest visible main line trackage. At the bottom of the grade a train can either take a tunnel to the hidden trackage, or into the town of Logan which is now under construction. Both Anceny and Churchill have passing sidings limited to 14 to 15 cars. The man line run isn't long, but as I have mentioned, I am a lot more interested in switching. So many of the industries ar tied together and generate a lot of local traffic, puls additional going to places beyond (hidden staging). I'll take a couple of pictures of the last part of the run.
Chapter 9 This is almost the end of the line where scenery is in. From Churchill, it is down grade to the expansion project. Guess I should put a thread in to tie the two together. After passing the farm, it drops down the two and a half percent grade to either go into the tunnel which leads to the hidden tracks or into Logan, the last town which is now under construction. The open area will probably have another small farm put in and there is also a switchback which will go into a gravel pit which is half covered in the last picture. Below is a link to the layout expansion to tie the two posts together. http://www.trainboard.com/grapevine/showthread.php?149651-Layout-Expansion
I guess I could add a few pictures of how the other end of the layout will look with the expansion still in progress.
That must be a very nice layout to operate, I used to like running way freights on my old club layout, but that is not possible on my new small home layout
It is great to operate. The main line isn't very long, but if a local freight has to do all of its switching duties, and can take a couple of hours to get from one end to the other. Each town was designed to be a switching problem.
VIDEO - My son who knows nothing at all about model railroading gave me this little Bachmann 2-6-0 for a gift. He does know that I prefer smaller steamers. It is DCC equipped with sound and I only run DC. He doesn't know the difference, but the gift is appreciated. Unfortunately, this little guy is a wimp when it hits my 2 percent grades and at the may can maybe handle 5 cars. Tried him on a passenger train and he may now have a job on the layout. All of the sounds have apparently been pre programmed and I have no control at all of the sounds. They are a bit loud, but I guess I can live with them. Here's a video of a passenger train run. [video=youtube;Y7zO8kdjGGA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7zO8kdjGGA[/video]
Great layout! As far as the loud speaker... I have put a piece of black electrical tape over speakers to "mute" them a little. Just a thought. Again... great job! JMS
Those sounds aren't bad at all. Real steam can be noisy and bark. It all depends upon how the cylinders exhaust into the smoke box, smoke box size, the petticoat, stack....
I guess I can live with the volume of the sound. Don't run this train ofter unless my little grandson comes over. I used to use a PFM sound system years back and really prefer the sound I got out of it.
I watched to video also, you've done a great job on the RR and it was a pleasurable ride-along! Thanks for sharing it! Dale
Here's another VIDEO that I consider being close to a flop. The Logan Valley layout was built as a switching layout and I thought I would take a short video of a locomotive picking up a few freight cars. Guess the first problem with this is that I was thinking. I could hurt myself doing this. I didn't "think" it would be very difficult operating a video camera and keeping it steadily pointed at a train while operating a throttle and throwing switches all at the same time. WRONG ! I also neglected to bother cleaning the tracks as this part of the layout hadn't been operated on in months because of major home renovations going on. The locomotive is a Bachmann S-4 with DCC and sound. Although I operate DC only, I am a sucker for anything decorated for the Milwaukee Road. Here's the VIDEO -
I know first hand how difficult it is to do that! Definitely need a second pair of hands. Enjoyed watching to switching though, my kind of layout!
