I had a chance to attend a operating session of the Sherwood, Shelton and Sarazen Rwy. The SS&S is On30 layout created by Charles "Chuck" Ricketts of Lacey, WA. It's a turn of the century narrow gauge railroad designed for operations. The railroad is run by a dispatcher with both timetable trains and extras. There are two major yards, Shelton and Oyster Bay that are run by a yard crew in addition to online towns handed by through trains and locals. It's not unusual for a several trains to converge on a station. Crews contact the dispatcher using cordless phones kept at each station, and the dispatcher has control over trainorder boards at each station.
Another feature of the layout is live loads. Log cars are unloaded into the log pond and limestone is unloaded into Lime Kilns. There are also water tanks at most stations that lower and raise, and trains are required to take on water at each station they pass. I'll show the layout in order. I didn't photograph the 4 track staging yard of Sarazen that is next to the dispatcher's panel in the crew lounge.
The three photos below are of Shelton. Shelton is not only important for having the railways headquarters, main shops and classifying yard, it's also a transfer point between the narrow gauge railway and a standard gauge railroad. The yard job here also work the industries in South Shelton. Shelton is a very busy place with the yard crew dodging through freights and locals. It got so bad on point that there were three trains holding in town for the through passenger train, that required quite a bit of saw by action to get by.
I teamed up with Robin, a man who at one time worked for British Railways and was learning model railroad operations. Our first couple trips were as the Extra #37 "Sherwood Shuttle" using a 2-6-0 #6. This train originates at Sarazen and works Shelton and Sherwood before returning to Shelton. Of course we cracked a few jokes about Robin heading to Sherwood.
The first photo shows the train coming out of the large cut between Shelton and South Shelton. I had to be quick because the Shelton Local was not far behind.
The next photo shows the train crossing a creek coming into Sherwood. The bell was B/O this day on mogul #6. The line at right is a logging spur.
And finally in the siding at Sherwood while another extra train passes by on the mainline. Sherwood is the location of a large sawmill and the log dump. Sherwood also has a large Limestone quarry that produces blocks of limestone, while carts are filled with smaller rocks for the kilns. In the background you can see the empty log train waiting for a chance on the mainline to return to the southern log spur.
After a couple of round trips as the Sherwood Shuttle, we departed Sarazen light engine with caboose as a clean up train. Little did we know the real work had just begun. We picked up 5 cars in Shelton and ran to Sherwood for a meet with a extra northbound train. Next stop was Elder which features Lime Kilns, Coal and Petroleum dealer, Stock Yards, Team Track and a couple other industries. Our work was to setout one car, and pickup 5 cars from industry, as well as two others left on the siding by another train. But since our train had a 7 car limit, we ended up leaving 4 on the passing siding. In the middle of this switching we had to meet the through passenger train that required a saw-by move.
Beyond Elder is Clear Creek, a simple spur of industries seen in the first image below. We would have to work this spur on the return trip from Oyster Bay to Sarazen, when we picked up three cars and spotted one. The spur and mainline at Clear creek are on steep grades which makes it a challenge to switch. The crew had to tie down a lot of handbrakes to keep the train from rolling away. The engineer had to take it easy backing down the spur when picking up. But when it came to the one car setout, it was a simple gravity drop.
The other photo shows our max tonnage southbound train entering Oyster Bay. It's a steep drop from Elder through Clear Creek into Oyster Bay. So we stopped by the wye to cool wheels and release the brakes.
Oyster Bay is a coastal port city that also features a barge connection to Seattle. The thriving community features several businesses and has a large dock. Trains terminate and originate here throughout the day, and the yard crew has more than enough work on their hands. The steep connection to the barge requires the use of a small shay to preform that work. The two cars with various pieces of wood are the idler flats the shay uses to reach onto the barge.
In the first photo below our inbound train has dropped it's cars on the house track, ran around the wye and watered the tender, and picked up to cars off the back track and the caboose, and is now ready to leave town. The first car is for Clear Creek and the coal car is for the lime kilns at Elder. Operating on Chuck's Railroad is great Fun!
Amazing layout. Looks fantastic. I really like the water effects on the bay...I really pay attention to layouts of pacific northwest themes, with the stone walls, on bays. I love the effect. especially in that era.
I did an op session there last week (almost exactly a year after the first post), went with someone who knew the layout already. I'd never been there or knew what to expect. I was blown away by this layout. He did a great job! As a new guy, I threw most o the switches in the Oyster Bay yard, didn't get to hold a throttle but still had a great time. I got a lot of ideas from this layout for the On30 layout I'm currently planning (it won't remotely be as big as this, though).
