Beach BillAre there other locations on the old Milwaukee line that contained an interchange with another railroad to provide an instant source of additional traffic? Are there other locations that would offer more scenic possibilities than eastern Montana?
Good points Bill, that area, although not entirely flat, could be challenging to potray that feeling of the east side.
The MILW used to interchange with the NP at Lombard MT, this is at the base of Sixteen MIle canyon (or Montana Canyon) and the MILW crossing of the MIssouri River, then down to Three Forks, with the NP on one side of the river and MILW on the other. Sixteen mile canyon between Lombard and the town of Sixteen was the site of Eagle's Nest Tunnel, the canyon is is pretty rough and would be interesting to model.
The MILW could also interchange again with the NP in Butte MT, they shared a terminal in the early years of passenger trains. The NP and MILW pretty much ran side by side from Butte west all the way to the Idaho border, with another small interchange at Lincoln.
Now that the old NP rails are now the Montana Rail Link and BNSF, you could also operate those flags on your CNW layout to represent a washout or a tunnel problem (Mullen Pass recently). Beside container trains MRL and BNSF could intrerchange grain and log trains. MRL, until the recent mill closing in Bonner MT, used to supply many log cars to that mill outside of Missoula.
Just a suggestion, it's your layout, enjoy the ride! I have considered changing scales and modeling the MILW from Harlow to Three Forks and the Northern Montana Branch, but it would require more than I presently have, maybe someday?
"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination."-Albert Einstein
http://gearedsteam.blogspot.com/
duckdogger At first glance it appears you may be over thinking this just a bit. It's your model railroad, do what pleases you and makes it fun. I you want a sugar beet train pulled by MILW MP15s, do it. I promise not to question your HO scale busines plan or income sheet.
At first glance it appears you may be over thinking this just a bit. It's your model railroad, do what pleases you and makes it fun. I you want a sugar beet train pulled by MILW MP15s, do it. I promise not to question your HO scale busines plan or income sheet.
I sort of agree. Is there something specific about this Bluffport that is attractive? Have you ever been there? This is EASTERN Montana, so that location selection would not allow you to (plausably - if you use that name) have mountains or tunnels. The town was only served by the Milwaukee. Are there other locations on the old Milwaukee line that contained an interchange with another railroad to provide an instant source of additional traffic? Are there other locations that would offer more scenic possibilities than eastern Montana?
I've not been there, but I've been to South Dakota and Nebraska and lived in Kansas for awhile. Long vistas of trains crossing the great plains are delightful to watch, but hard to model without quite a bit of space. Even in a small scale, an entire train would have to be in view for a ways to communicate the vastness of that part of the country.
Again, you can design and build as you wish and that is just fine. I have had to stretch to come up with a story of my little short line leasing a Russian decapod for test purposes just because sometimes I like to watch 10-coupled drivers. But if you go to all the effort of picking a SPECIFIC site, recognize that you can thereby back yourself into a design corner.
Bill
Since you've done your homework about how things are in the Neil Armstrong Universe, figuring out how things went in the Cyrano DeBergerac universe gives you a solid framework for planning and building. The only thing I would add is a complete 'end of the branch' engine facility - and ban any run-throughs from one railroad to the other.
As for my own modeling, I discovered that there was coal in the Central Japan Alps in the Alfred E. Newman universe, so that's what I model. In the 'real' universe (aka Neil Armstrong universe) the coal fields are several hundred kilometers away, and were pretty much worked out by 1964.
Universe designators, based on the first human to put footprints on the Moon, courtesy of Robert A. Heinlein.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - in the Alfred E. Newman universe)
I'm still dabbling around with layout ideas, but so far my newest plans are the best to use a switching layout. Toss in some of the MR&T structures, call it the Troy branch, and then go buy up some MILW motive power from the LHS. Time set would be way after MILW was around, but I will bring it back in my world. Heck maybe I could have it MILW bought SOO out instead of vise versa. Or maybe they bought out C&NW . Point is, it's very plausable. I've heard that a few times that if MILW did a few things different at the end, they could have lasted longer and maybe still be around to day. I could see a 3 unit lash up of SD90MACs or AC4400's (yes, Athearn is in my head now) running 100 car grain train to Chicago through the Wisconsin country side. Of course that would also make it harder for WC to have existed, but you never know. Maybe part of why my MILW went longer is they gave up some trackage. Then they started gaining money and bought some old C&NW trackage . Can I keep picking on you or should I stop?
One question though, whats a stack train? Are you just reffering to intermodal service? I could see MILW running a unit train of loaded Gunderson well cars from Chicago to Seattle.
Here's one other idea for you too. I don't know if CNW had one, but the special passenger runs like the SP's Daylight Special's or MILW's Hiawatha, maybe your CNW version could be running special railfan trips using an old CNW passenger special over their own track or over Amtrak trackage across the states. It could be a special yearly thing, like maybe in celebration of your CNW narrowly avoiding take over by my MILW . Ok ok I'll stop. I want to pick up one of the Kato UP/CNW heratige 70's, I think they are tied with the DRGW heratige as the prettiest scheme.
Well, your "world" isn't any more far-fetched than my St.Paul Route railroad, where the old St.Paul and Duluth stayed independent by granting trackage rights to the NP in 1900, rather than being bought by the NP as really happened, and continued running into the present day as a separate RR. I guess the part about the Milwaukee's Pacific Extension becoming profitable might be a bit unrealistic, but I suppose if it were still around today running stack trains it might be worthwhile. Course there's always the question of what you'd do with the electrified sections??
O well, in Science Fiction they say you get one "gimme" per story, one thing that really probably will never exist, but it's OK if it helps the story along. No reason that couldn't work for trains too.
Hello all,
I've had to abandon my previous layout, an HO shelf/switching layout (well, pack up in storage) for space reasons, but now that I got a tatse of having a layout to run I just can't NOT have one!
So, in about a year or so I'll begin assembly of an N scale layout that will run around the walls of our guest bedroom. Which will be nice, since the thought of running longer trains is fairly appealing. I still want to do a modern setting, and I want to run it as if the C&NW is still alive and kicking. So I thought, what would make it competitive/large enough to be too large a target for takeover back in 1995 (and the increased UP influence in the early 90s/80s).
I came up with a story and location, but I want to check it out with you guys if it seems plausible for a "what if" railroad.
Since the C&NW made an attempt to grab the Milwaukee Road, I decided to make it so that in 1980 when Milwaukee Road abandoned their Pacific Line, the C&NW bought it up, giving them track to Seattle to run stack trains from there to Chicago. They'd have to invest heavily to repair the track, but since MILW didn't keep proper books and the line was actually more profitable than they thought, the C&NW could turn money pretty quick.
So, this pacific line becomes a main revenue source for them, and making them a larger more competitive railroad.
http://webhome.idirect.com/~helmutw/milwrd/media/mrmap73.jpg <-- this map shows Milwaukee Road in 1973, and the location I want to model is in Montana.
http://www.bnsf.com/tools/reference/division_maps/div_mt.pdf <-- the BNSF system map for Montana shows up close how it is today. In eastern Montana so BSNF routes merge - one of those, the Kingmont to Bluffport MT route, is old Milwaukee Road from what I can tell ( the towns match up with the old line from MILW, which I found here: http://webhome.idirect.com/~helmutw/milwrd/vars/MRStaNos.txt
So the "town" I want to model is Bluffport, Montana. When I goggle earth'd this junction of routes, it is just a merge right along the interstate/river a few miles out of town. Since in the world of the layout they aren't two BNSF routes, but 1 CNW 1 BNSF instead, there'd be more there to cover the juncture of the two railroads. I plan on having a small yard just west of the interchange, with limited on site business since the town is so small.
So this is a believable set up for an "alternate" version of rail history? The biggest thing I'm looking forward to is pickuping Kato's new CNW Heritage unit, and getting rid of all the UP stuff and treating it as a CNW SD70.