Because of the limited space for photos (without paying extra) on this blog, I have a short list of e-mail addresses of people who would like the complete set of reference photos I have collected. I will do the same for the construction articles, as I post them. The blog will contain a summary, but I will send complete step-by-step photos to those who request them. You may contact me by using the comment area of this blog.
Ref. # 9. This coal tower and sand house currently exist at Chama, New Mexico, on the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad. In the latter half of the days of steam locomotives, the primary fuel was coal. Oil was also used in some areas. Wood was the original fuel. Coaling towers, of one style or another, existed all over the country. There have been multiple models of this facility released over the years, and they have found their way on to model pikes that aren’t set anywhere near New Mexico. Despite the fact that this is a commonly modeled edifice, I like it, and will probably scratch-build one like it for the yard in Durango on the DD&SRR. Actually, my research shows that the coaling tower at Durango was originally very similar to the existing Chama tower.
Ref. #10. Before leaving on a run, steam locomotives emptied their fireboxes of the ashes of the spent coal or wood they used for fuel, by parking over an ash pit. If it was coal ash (cinders) it was commonly used for ballasting around yard tracks (see right section of photo above).
Ref. # 11. I don’t have room for a roundhouse at my Durango. The original was a huge structure, so I’m going to go with a couple of smaller engine houses, which are just as interesting to model and view. Here is a possibility for a two-stall engine house made of wood construction.
Engine house interiors are fun to model, too, and can be viewed with removable rooves.
Ref. # 16C. Most of the lumber felled on the DD&SRR will be shipped directly to Denver on flat cars, but at the suggestion of a friend and fellow rail-fan, I am incorporating a log transfer facility to ship some logs by water. These were simply a sloped wooden ramp that came to the height of the flat-car bed, and some kind of rig for pushing the logs off the flat-car and down the ramp into the river, or pond next to the sawmill. Granted, the real Animas River south of Durango would probably not be deep enough to do this, but any excuse for another industry on a model railroad is good enough. I like the photos of these where the tracks go out on trestles over the actual river.
Ref. # 19. The Animas River valley that the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad follows between Durango and Silverton is one of the most beautiful railroad rides in the world. It was pictures of this route that first drew my attention to modeling this area. I have numerous DVDs that I will be using for reference pictures, but here is one photo of the Kind of scenery I will be modeling. A large portion of the edge of the layout will terminate in the middle of the river, so I can model at least one bank of it.
Ref. # 22. The caboose track was a short yard track where cabooses were stored to be added to the ends of trains after they were made up by the yard switcher. I’ll probably have two to three cabooses available in the yards at both Durango and Silverton for this purpose. Most D&RGW cabooses that I have seen are the three-window type, shown here, or the shorter “bobber” type with one or two side windows.
Ref. #24. The real passenger station at Durango, like the roundhouse, was way too large for me to fit into my railroad, so I’ll be making some kind of compressed version of it. My freight houses will be separate facilities, so I don’t have to park freight cars on the main line in front of the depot.
Ref. #25. Here is a picture of a model of a typical stock pen like the one found at Durango. Sheep and cattle were the main commodities shipped from these facilities, and you can see how they were kept separated. I like this one because it is complete, yet small….perfect for the space I have available.
Ref. #25B. I tunneled a portion of the track behind Durango so I can model a little of the actual town. I’ll be using building flats at the rear-most locations (buildings with just the front sides rendered), but I want to incorporate at least some streets and three dimensional buildings. Most buildings on O-Scale layouts have to yield to extreme compression like these, but that gives them a unique character, and almost theatrical quality, that you don’t find in other scales. Buildings are a major determiner of time period, and I haven’t set a precise year for my railroad, yet, but I know I want to have some early automobile traffic, and some residual horse drawn vehicles.
Ref. #26. The freight house was the earliest inter-modal facility. Usually located in the vicinity (if not the actual structure) of the passenger station, the freight house was the destination of a lot of LCL (less than car-load) deliveries. One side of the house had a dock for rail cars, and the other was set up to allow trucks or horse-drawn wagons to load. There was usually also an office of some sort for keeping track of the comings and goings of the shipments.
Ref. #27. Sometimes if the rock was self-supporting enough, railroads simply left the tunnel bore and opening with no other structure, like this one on the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic RR, appropriately named “Rock Tunnel”. More often, however, some kind of timber, stone or concrete portal and tunnel infrastructure was required to keep material from the mountain from falling on to the tracks. See photo below of “Mud Tunnel”, also on the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic RR.
Ref. # 28. There will be a turntable in both the Durango and the Silverton yards, probably very similar to the one pictured above. Locomotives needed to be turned to return to their points of origin, or to be serviced, or stored in the engine house overnight. Railroads used several means of doing this, including what was known as a “wye”, which was a roughly triangular section of track with tails. The locomotive would switch on to one leg of the wye, and go to the tailing track, a second switch would be thrown which would allow the locomotive to follow the other leg of the wye, and by the time it switched back on to the main line, it was facing the opposite direction from the way it started out. Model operations on a wye are interesting to watch, but unfortunately they take up a lot of real estate. The turntable is the most compact way of turning model locomotives around.
Ref. #29. Water was an essential ingredient in making steam locomotives run. Water towers come in all shapes and sizes, so if you are modeling a specific railroad, you will usually have some distinctive style from which to make your selection. I’ll have water towers in at least four places, the Durango and Silverton yards, the lumber camp, and the mining district. I may even incorporate one or two along the main line like the one pictured above. Steam locomotives could not go very long without filling up their tenders with water.
Ref. #32. I have heard of some fruits and vegetables being shipped out of this region that would have needed refrigeration, but certainly some incoming food stuffs bound for Silverton would have had to have their refrigeration refreshed at Durango along the way. And another industry where cars can be delivered is always an asset to a working model railroad.
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