What's the Viability of your Mythical RR?

[douginut]

Since it is my little world, I shold quote Pickwick. but I won't.
evey lne either street or prow is designed to show a profit, engineered for efficient running, and maintained to the highest standards.

Freight at night and passengers in the day and hourly at night between the freight.

well paid employees who are very safety minded and long term contract with the ATWU make things pleasant for all

Doug, in Utah

[GDRMCo]

My railroad the Great Dividing Range Mining & Manufacturing Company has just recently bought the Mt Isa Manufacturing Company and is taking a order of 80 standard gauge NR Class locomotives and 50 Queensland Rail 4000 class narrow gauge locomotives. It is a large Class 1 railroad which produces its own locomotives, rolling stock and everything else people need.

[EL PARRo]

I'm going to make up a railraod for my next layout that is a combination of several real logging RR's in northern California, particularly in and around Humboldt county. They logged primarily Redwoods, which are the largest trees in the world. Sadly, all of these logging railroads are gone now, and there isn't even very much logging at all in the area, so my made up RR would have been out of business a long time ago.

[Anonymous]

The Oklahoma, Mexico & Gulf is a prosperus line from Oklahoma City to San Antonio, TX. the line is set in the 50's. the part I model is a line running from OKC to Denver that is jointly owned by the OM&G , the Katy, The Rock Island, Frisco & Muskogee roads.

Rock Island, Rout of the Rockets.

[Anonymous]

If I ever get enough skill to model it, the Midwestern RR will be a thriving RR that operates all over the midwest, operating historical and modern equiptment.

[Anonymous]

My mytholgical railroad has help from is owned by dougal AS&N my CNW and tranheartedguy's P&SF RR. It does not even exsist. purley on th internet

[Anonymous]

My mythical railroad is the Leelanau County Railway, a prosperous 19.4 miles long shortline running from Lake Leelanau, Michigan to a connection at Hatches Crossing, Michigan with Northwestern Michigan Railroad. The Leelanau County is based on a real shortline, the Manistee & Northeastern Railway's Lake Leelanau branch

[Anonymous]

I model a fictional road AFTER it has already been merged into the Norfolk & Western. You didn't have a category for "Already merged", so I voted for "rails to trails" abandonment. My fictional road had a mainline that originally stretched from Portsmouth, VA, northwest to Richmond, then north through Culpeper to Winchester, and then turned west to head across the mountains towards Grafton, WV. Following the merger (which was kind of a gradual assumption of control, really, since NW and B&O each maintained large semi-controlling interests in the line throughout its life, and it was a minor feat for NW to excercise its equity and enact a "hostile" takeover). Immediately after absorption, the mainline between Richmond and Winchester was abandoned, while the line from Richmond to Portsmouth was sold to RF&P, and a portion of the line south from WInchester to Culpeper was acquired by Culpeper county to maintain service to a few industries (this segment is operated by Southern, which interchanges at Culpeper). So, the only portion remaining is the Winchester Branch, i.e. the sgement west from the NW Shenandoah main line at Front Royal, across the state line and down the South Branch Valley then up the Tygart valley into Grafton.

This happens to be the portion I model, of course. And its reason for preservation is that it serves as a useful bridge route for traffic passing onto B&O rails; westbound traffic doesn't need to go to Hagerstown, remaining on home rails longer. Plus, a collection of coal mines have yet to play out, even though they are as old as my WP&P is; the road was originally laid when a surveyor for B&O discovered the coal seam, got entrepenuerial, and found enough investors to create his own short line. The original Paston Valley Lines suckled at the teat of mother Baltimore until bankruptcy and reorganization, when some shrewd politicking got N&W interested in the new management's plans to extend east to Winchester and just beyond, to meet the N&W's shenandoah main line. B&O held a lot of shares picked up on the cheap after the bankruptcy, and N&W invested just as heavily to buy up the remainder, coming nearly onto par with B&O, while flooding the new WP&P with the capital it needed. Nobody cared too much about the third "P" in the name though, which stood for Portsmouth and was intended to make the line into a Chesapeake port coal hauler of equal stature to either of its peers.

So, throughout its history, my railroad was able to play B&O and N&W off of each other, like a child of divorced parents milking them for spoilage. Each Class 1 saw their near-control of WP&P as a way to intrude on the other's geographical monopoly over coal haulage. Neither wanted to own it outright, though, so it remained quasi-independent, until ultimately it failed. The steep grades required to get across the Appalachians in a southeasterly direction called for too much locomotive overhead, on a line which didn't have online traffic generation sufficient to support it. Plus, there was too much competition from larger roads which had many more significant connections. So, NW scooped it up in the end (B&O had little interest since the profitable portion, Winchester to Grafton, was basically parallel to their Cumberland mainline), and now I'm modeling it 4 years after the merger.

All this backstory lets me indulge in as much or as little prototype NW or freelance WP&P as I desire, and it is fun to try to represent the shift in operations. My WP&P was an almost all-Alco road, and since the shops know their RS-11's and RSD-15's, these units tend to stay assigned to the Winch Division. Not only that, but N&W sees fit to gather their Alco units here, too, though the growing dominance of EMD six-axles is certainly showing in the road freights that arrive coming up from Roanoke.

The dream that was the WP&P, though, is essentially abandoned; there is no mainline to Portsmouth any more. All that remains is the original contested B&O - NW bridge.

[Anonymous]

Hello Fergie;
Well, the status of my Great Western would be a category not in your menu of choices, but one very familiar to all of us these days.

( BTW, My "GWRR" was a mythical subsidiary of the B & O back in the late 1800's, that got spun off just before the '29 crash, went into oblivion until 1945, and came back limping through the 50's....)

Now it seeks what many corporations seek.......yes....TAXPAYER MONEY, through government grants and subsidies.[:I][:I]

Should this crass attempt at viability fail, it will then convey majority ownership to a First Nations group, so that there will be nothing to stop the conversion of it's old passenger cars to Mobile Casinos !.....We're in the money !!![8D][:D]We're in the Money!!![:o)][;)]
Whee...[:D]...
sorry....time for my meds.
regards;
Mike[}:)]

[BRAKIE]

My Colubus & Hocking Valley is one of the 7 short lines owned by CDB Industries..The C&HV is one of the money making short lines that CDBI owns.

Commodities haul: Grain,Lumber,coal,coke,steel,fly-ash,food stuffs,sand,glass,corn sweetener,corn starch,vegetable oils,scrap,pipe,chemicals,paints,news print,pulpwood,wood chips and other general freight..
Total cars handle 32,584 a year

Thanks to a aggressive marketing team freight traffic has climb a staggering 33% since the CDBI started the C&HV by buying the old C&O Athens sub division and 2 other Southern Ohio short lines that was quickly mered into the C&HV.

[Anonymous]

The U&O is doing just fine. Except when it's in the box during cleaning!!!!

RMax

[vsmith]

In realtity...

My 1940's-50's era Southwest industrial/mining line would have been converted to truck back in the 60's, in reality, like so many lines were. The right of way today would be a local hiking trail, all of the locomotives and stock were sold to Walter Knott for his "Berry Farm" amusement part. The steam engines final resting place on the "Mine Ride" with one a static display on the roadside of the town it once served.

Although today there is talk of restoring the line as a tourist attraction.....

[Anonymous]

MY mythical railway was once a real railway. It was theChicago Northwestern from Casper WY to Lander WY. It was abandoned in various sections between 1972 and 1985. I model the line as if it were instead sold to a short line., And the economy was more prosperous than what it really was/is.

[Anonymous]

Dalreada National Railways is a thriving entity. This is the major people mover in Dalreada and will be for the future.

[Anonymous]

[:)]Thriving! In a world of my creation, I want the railroads to reflect prosperity. There's enough mergers, failures and hypothetical mega-mergers in the real world; who wants a miniature empire to reflect that?

[Roadtrp]

Hmmmm… let me think.

I have an excursion passenger train with four full-dome cars being pulled by an F40PH locomotive. Once I leave the local track leading to my passenger station and siding, I take my passengers on a glorious .39 mile loop (I go around about 20 times) on the mainline looking at nothing in particular. Nope… don’t think I’ll sell enough tickets to pay for the thing.

Maybe if I charged a lot for the martinis… [(-D]

[Anonymous]

The AS&N is loooking to purche the D&H from CP (if CP dosn't sell it soon I'll say the AS&N leased it). I just worked out a deal with a friend to run stack trains to Chicago via his RR.

[Anonymous]

The West Radnor RR Museum would probably be doing fairly well. It just took delivery of a Santa Fe PA1 in Warbonnet livery, and has expanded the passenger fleet in readiness for the summer.

In reality, museum lines seem to be booming over here - is this the case in the US as well? "New" lines (usually reopened sections of abandoned lines) are being started often - many relying on old diesel railcars to provide passenger services, or on a little 0-6-0 steamer and a couple of coaches. The West Radnor RR Museum probably has too many locos to be viable - the "Museum" fleet is now 14-strong. Many of these are probably a little modern to be in a museum just yet - there's a GP60 in EMD Demo paint and a GP50 (dummy) in Santa Fe blue and yellow paint.

[Anonymous]

Mythically speaking, very viable! Realistically speaking the N.P. was merged into the B.N. and is now a part of the BNSF. The N.P.'s Butte Shortline still has rail's on it, it's my understanding, however, it is not in use.

[Anonymous]

With the "Discontinuance of Stars" being flogged to death, and yes I am partly to blame I just felt I needed something that was a bit more thought provoking.

As you may or may not know my mythical Railway, the Musquodoboit, Eastern Shore & Sydney takes place in the late 50's and fails in 1961. It is based loosely on the Sydney and Louisburg as well as a branch line of the CN which worked the Eastern Shore between Dartmouth and Upper Musquodoboit, which remained in service until the early 80's.

Why did the MESS fail, same reason why many others failed

-Did not reinvest or modernize
-Unable to get parts for Steam Engines
-Competition from other other RR's
-Improvements to highway infrastructure
-Down turn in the coal and other related industries
-Limited markets

Where is the Musquodoboit CN branchline today?

Part of Trans Canada Trail used by hikers and bikers (mountain).