General Discussion (Model Railroader)

Dave-the-Train wrote:

You might have something very old, say an Alco S4 kept for MoW work...You might have a couple of flats and a gon or two to go with the S4...a crane on a road-railer would be more likely.

I'd imagine a box car would also be thrown into the mix as well.  Does anybody have any pictures of MOW trains on their layout they'd care to share?

If it was up to me I would keep the SD units and use them as interchange units (to pickup what you have brought down the shortline), you have to ship the finished products someplace other than the yard where you will terminate your trains.  Some shortlines haul just about anything you can think of, but don't forget the ag business as elevators are good source of business as they can have tank cars, covered hoppers, box cars, etc. for already mentioned products and the box cars could be used for a feed mill that could be attached to the elevator complex.

There is much to think about take your time and most of all have fun

willow wrote:

If it was up to me I would keep the SD units and use them as interchange units

Yeah, that's what I was planning on doing.  I suppose I could hook up the outbounds with the SD's and pull them to a hidden staging area.  I'm assuming that's what most folks do.

A shortline railroad can be anything you want it to be.  There are examples of everything being done that could possibly have been done.  Your library should have a book on the subject.  It's a good one, read it.

 For example, just north of you and a little east was the Tonopah and Tidewater, hauling gold and anything else out of Death Valley and that region.  This little railroad did it on the cheap, and only bought used equipment.  They touched the Santa Fe, so I imagine they got some pretty good deals from them.  When the gold was gone, it disappeared.

 Farther north and to the west was the Virginia and Truckee.  They hauled silver from the mines and wood timbers to the mines.  Virginia City was really rich and attracted a lot of passenger service.  This one was built 'at once', so equipment was acquired new from everywhere it was obtainable at that time.  Really rich people owned it and kept it running for another 60 years after any other railroad would have gone insolvent; kinda like a really neat toy train, only big.

Movers and Shakers don't follow paths, they make them for others.  Create your own shortline, and develop why it exists.  It's a lot easier than following someone else's rules.

-rrick

I really don't know what qualifies as a ''Short Line''.

The Oregon Navigation Co. trackage between Kemmerer(?) WY. and Portland OR. was called 'Oregon Short Line' when aquired by the U.P; and became part of the 'MONOPOLY' game.

'Montana Rail Link' might be considered an interesting contemporary 'Short Line'.

I'm guessing it's a STOCKHOLDERS thing - regardless what you call it.

It connected with another Rail Line, that much I gather.

I live in Loveland CO, there's a nice short line called the great western railway. It has interchanges with BNSF on one end and UP on the other. But the interesting thing is that there is a locomotive rebuilder on the line. So you get to see modern three axel diesel locomotives there with fresh paint. You can see locomotives from a variety of roads including many BNSF locomotives with fresh paint(NO need to weather them) so it would be a great place to display your locomotives and even move them around some. The building is a large 5 bay metal structure, (pikestuff kits would be great for the structure). Oh and make sure you have a lot of scraped diesels around to get spare parts from.

Hope I could help