A view of the Lewistown depot from the mainline west of the station.
This photo and some upcoming photo are from the John W. Barriger III National Railroad Library posted on Flickr. This collection contains thousands of photos from over 70 railroads from across the United States. It is an amazing collection! Visit the Barriger Collection @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/barrigerlibrary/sets/
Operational Organization
I recently was privileged to attend an operating session at Gary Peterson’s Salt Lake Southern layout. It got me to thinking about further developing the operational aspect of the Northern Montana Line. The NML will never achieve the operating characteristics of the Salt Lake Southern. Each new layout that I operate on adds to what I need to do to the NML. The majority of the rolling stock for the NML resides off the layout. I found that what few “Operating Sessions” I had done on the NML were being hampered by the constant searching for the right cars to use on the staging trains. The solution for this problem was to sit down and spend some time organizing the rolling stock into a somewhat logical manner. I say “somewhat” logical because it is not finish, but at least it’s a step in the right direction.
The photo below show the storage cabinets that I use for the storing of off-layout rolling stock. Each cabinet has nine drawers and each drawer can hold approximately 12 40’ cars or 8 50’ & 60’ cars. That gives me plenty of storage for right now. Each drawer was lined with the rubberized grip shelf liner. This will keep the cars from rolling around when the drawer is opened. The only draw back to using this material is that it will latch onto the car if it laid on it’s side. If left that way for long enough it might damage the paint.
Each cabinet (unit) has been given a number along with each drawer. These read as U1D1, U1D2, U1D3 and so on all the way to U4D9 at the end. In each drawer only cars of certain types are grouped together such as 40’ box cars or 50’ & 60’ boxcars or covered hoppers and so on. Now came the really boring part. I went through all of the car cards and found the drawer that the car was located in. On the car card was written the appropriate unit and drawer numbers. You can see an example of what I’m doing in the photo below on the right. This will save a great deal of time when adding or removing rolling stock from the layout. The only thing left do is group similar drawers together for more efficiency. What a way to spend an afternoon of model railroading!
Milwaukee Road VO660 at the Harlowton depot with a passenger train bound for the Lewistown and Great Falls. #1635 was the only Baldwin VO660 owned by the Milwaukee Road.
This photo and some upcoming photo are from the John W. Barriger III National Railroad Library posted on Flickr. This collection contains thousands of photos from over 70 railroads from across the United States. It is an amazing collection! Visit the Barriger Collection @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/barrigerlibrary/sets/
A view of the Lewistown Station taken when a passenger train still ran from Harlowton to Great Falls.
This photo and some upcoming photo are from the John W. Barriger III National Railroad Library posted on Flickr. This collection contains thousands of photos from over 70 railroads from across the United States. It is an amazing collection! Visit the Barriger Collection @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/barrigerlibrary/sets/
Milwaukee Road stock car waiting to be loaded at Martinsdale, Montana in the early 70’s.
Where’s the Beef?
Now that the grain elevator in Geraldine is done it’s time to move onto a new industry. Next on the list is a stock yard. The Walthers stock yard kit is designed to make one larger stock yard or two smaller ones. Splitting the kit into two yards is ideal solution for my layout. The first half of the kit was assembled and placed in Denton. For Geraldine, the fence layout needed to be rearranged to fit the location. This meant a complete re-think of the kit instructions. To start, I needed a base that I could assemble the fences on. The base is a sheet of .20” styrene sheet that has been painted with my standard earth color. The fence line was laid out with pencil starting from the track side loading ramp. From there it was just a matter of finding and fitting the pieces together like a puzzle. As a new fence or gate piece was added, I would scrape a small section of the paint to expose the styrene. This allowed a strong bond for the glue. The next step will be to weather the stock yard to look like a well used aging structure and add the dirt plus few weeds. The last step will be adding a street light next the fence by the vehicle loading ramp for late night unloading.
Speeder at Martinsdale, Montana on the Milwaukee Road mainline in the mid 1970’s.
Converted tender used for water transport. Photographed in Harlowton, Mt. Summer 1974
Montana Grain Elevator Completed
Montana Grain Elevator is finally completed. I received a 30’ Rix grain bin for Christmas. The only problem was, I needed it to be a 44’ bin. Good thing the internet is so handy. Within a few weeks the 11’ extension kit arrived. A feed pipe from the elevator head house was cut to the proper angles and attached to the top of the bin. Then a concrete base was cut from high density foam used in the RC hobby. This material is easy to cut and can be sanded to final shape. The bin received a gray primer paint coat and appropriate weathering consistent with the rest of the structure.
Click on any photo for a larger view
On the elevator office, I added a sign for the Sapphire Four and Ceretana Feeds. This the same sign that appears on the side of the elevator. The sign was created in Adobe Illustrator and resized for the side of the office. Then I printed the sign on normal paper on an ink jet printer. After the ink had dried I gave the sign a light coat of Dullcoat to seal the ink on the front. The paper then flipped over and the back sanded with a fine grit sand paper until the ink started to show through. The sign was then cut out and adhered to the side of the building with Mod Podge. The office received a final round of weathering with acrylic paint and powders. A good video for attaching signs to building can be found here on YouTube. “How to post up posters”
New Cattails for Creek
While attending the Ophir, Tintic and Western Train Show at Thanksgiving Point, I found these cattails from JTT Scenery Products. The new cattails are in the photo on the left. The old cattails in the photo on the right are from SceneMaster Botanicals. They are laser cut paper that you fold up into the final shape. While they are nice, they are not as realistic looking as the JTT cattails. Installation is as simple as drilling a hole and inserting them into the scenery. The JTT cattails are a few dollars more in cost, but are well worth it.
A New Locomotive for the Northern Montana
Another new edition from Christmas was this Atlas U23B from eBay. The Northern Montana Line is dominated by EMD locomotives. The list includes F7A, GP7, SD7, GP30, SW1, GP38 and an MP15AC. Waiting in the wings for a decoder is an Fairbanks Morse H10-44. So it was time that GE was represented on the layout. “U-Boats” were never assigned to the Northern Montana. They did make it as far west as Harlowton. They were usually brought in from the east on the trans-continental trains heading to the west coast. At Harlowton they were cut-off at the start of the electrified district. The “trans-con” trains were then handled by “Little Joes” and EMD diesels until the end of the electrified district at Avery, Idaho. Since it is possible that do to motive power shortages, a “U-Boat” could end up on the Northern Montana. I figure it’s my railroad, I can do what I want! The U23B in the photo below has had the decoder added and is ready to begin service. In the future, I will add details such as a strobe light, fire cracker antenna, all-weather cab windows and electronic bell. At this point I don’t have all the parts needed to complete the task. Once all the details have been added the engine will get some touch-up paint and a nice weathering job.
