My Logansport & Eel River RR backstory


malletman

Alcohaulic
Having a reason, the hows and why's, for a railroad to exhist are really important to me when doing a fictional or proto-freelanced model railroad. It has to make some sense or it tends to snowball itself. My line is set in Logansport, Indiana on the PRR Eel River branch and ties into the real world excursion train that ran when I was a young boy. While that railroad never developed beyond the once a year festival train, I am taking it further to reactivating the branch up to the large grain elevator at Columbia City. For the puropose of my line, we will pretend that the PC didnt pull the line north of Logansport, but let it lay in the weeds all these decades. The effort to reactivate the line is being spearheaded by a couple local businesses, the grain elevator and consortium of local farmers. The line was cleared of brush and brought up to 10mph conditions over the period of several months before the fall grain rush begins. With only the 2-8-0 steamer on hand, a search for a cheap diesel or two began. One of the head guys had a working relationship with the UP and headed out west to see what he could "squeeze" out of the UP dead lines. After many hours walking the dead lines and looking at various 4 axle EMD power and discussing prices, nothing was cheap enough as most was fairly modern GP units. The UP rep said to meet him at a location in Iowa in a couple weeks, he had something in the lines price range, but it was gonna need some work!

A couple weeks later, he was sitting in a small town diner near Oelwein, Iowa.The rep from the UP arrived and they headed over to what amounted to mostly an overgrown field with a bunch of trees toward the rear. The two started walking and only once he started tripping over rails hidden in the tall grass did he realize they were walking thru an old rail yard. But yet he saw nothing engine wise here, so he was puzzled. As they came around the end of the grove of trees, they came to the rear end of a old CGW covered wagon with a NE style caboose coupled to its nose. Hidden from the road by the tree and forgotten with time. She was mostly intact, stacks were capped and widows boarded up. The rep said she wasnt even on the record books anymore and it took him a couple weeks to find the ownership papers one needs to get parts from EMD. The price was a screaming deal but she had to be moved asap as the UP was planning to lift the rails and the land was being sold to a developer. He even got UP to throw in the caboose. A mechanical team came up from Logansport and got the brakes working, and prepared them to be moved. 2 weeks later, CGW F3 road number 112A was pushed into the engine house with the JD dozer. The engine crew looked with some disgust at the covered wagon.."how we supposed to run backwards?" to which they were told to suck it up till we can afford a 2nd locomotive. While the train crew was less than thrilled with the unit, the shop forces were hyped up about returning the old covered wagon to operation. The new argument was what to paint her, right now she was nearly pink in color being originally in the red CGW simplified "lucky strike" colors.

This is where my railway stands right now. The F3 is in the shop to be woke up from its long slumber, the NE caboose is shoved next to the shop and is home to a nice wasp nest up inside the cupola that needs dealt with. Steamer No1 is sitting outdoors for now since the 112A is in the shop. The shop crew got the local vo-tech school involved both in mechanical repair and body work on the 112A. The "hope" to have her on the road in time for fall grain season but its gonna be close! The body shop kids plan to respray the unit in CGW red and have petitioned the UP to allow the CGW logos to be reapplied to the unit when completed, so far no answer from the big UP on that note. If that gets shot down, she will carry the L&ER keystone on the nose and road name on the sides. .........to be continued Mike the Aspie
 
With bills mounting as bad power assemblies and air brake updates to the old unit, crews were relieved to find both Leslie A200 horns burried under mounts of trash and junk that was piled in the nose. They couldnt even get the nose door open, they had to clean the junk out the hard way, thru the inside door till they could climb down into the nose area and hand up all the trash to someone in the cab till the nose door could be opened. Atleast with the windows boarded up, all the glass was good and once the plating was removed, both headlight lenses were good. Most of the Mars light is there, hopefully it can be restored to operation as well.
 
Now how small do you have to shrink that F3 and the caboose? 1:87? 1:44? I sometimes see actual rails-on-ties along the BNSF along the Front Range of Colorado, so the use of SnapTrack or flex track in either HO or N would be prototypical! ;) How big a space do you have for your layout? My own HO scale Grashhook, Galesburg & Western Division of the C.B.&Q. is in a dedicated 14' x 14' room, which makes for a LOT of selective compression between Galesburg, Illinois and Denver, Colorado! :D In addition to Zephyr passenger trains, I run unit coal trains, mostly hauled by Burlington Class M2 (2-10-2) and M-4 (2-10-4's), with A-B FT, A-B-A F3 and F7's, as we are in the post-WWII - 1960 time period.
Best of luck on your shortline! Happy Thanksgiving!
 
My layout is just a HO scale 4x8 with a narrowed middle section to access shelving on the rear wall. I am blessed with a very small layout room, but I atleast I have a layout room. Very tight curves are the word of the day, Right now the layout is set in logging mode with a 2 truck Shay as motive power. but my small 2-8-0 just manages the curves on the line, the F unit will be fine once I repair broken gears in the trucks. All motive power is brass, as is the caboose and a few freight cars. All older vintage pieces that I have fine tuned and fixed up. New trains are more that I plan to spend in HO scale. I reserve that money for my G scale garden line with its live steam motive power.

Here is my 2 truck Shay that is handling duties right now along side the 2-8-0. She is a PFM/United model
PFM-shay.jpg


Here is my 2-8-0, she is an Overland Models/Rok Am import Pic taken on my old portable layout.
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Here is the caboose, Overland Models/Ajin import, NH prototype
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And finally, here is the layout before I put track down. There is a short extension along the wall toward the camara.
logging-layout-progress.jpg
 
It was fun to dream up, but it may not come to pass in model layout form. Got real frustrated trying to see and enjoy trains running last night(getting old sucks!!), so I dug out my two O scale 2 rail locomotive kits I bought a few years ago. It was refreshing not needing to keep taking my glasses on and off to work on them and admire them.
 



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