Chooch Columbia Depot John Olson and more

I find when you try to look up John Olson's work, that some people in the model railroading community love him. His Jerome & Southwestern is a model of a great beginners railroad to many. Others find him terrible; unrealistic and "cartoony." I find that this latter group of people often offer that opinion unsolicited and uninvited (and unwanted.) Which goes even further towards demonstrating my point about a certain kind of spergy, joyless jerk who's turned the hobby into a parody of itself, because they reject the John Allen style of model railroading, and some of his most notable proteges, like John Olson, Malcolm Furlow and others. Furlow in particular seems to get the ire, for not being a slave to realism at all costs. Don't get me wrong; if you want to do something else with your "model railroading" that's fine, but there's no reason flagellate anyone who does it differently than you. John Allen wasn't the be-all and end-all of model railroading. But he was popular, and people who enjoy his style of model railroading aren't wrong because they don't enjoy your style. You self-righteous jerk.

(As an aside, I just browsed through a Tony Koester book, and found it hilarious that even he refers to the "fun"—his use of quotation marks, not mine—of operating his railroad being in the satisfaction of doing something realistic in your yard. Not in, having... y'know, actual fun that doesn't have to be annotated with scare quotes. And I also found it funny browsing a Model Railroader magazine article about a guy who tore up his "dream" complete HO scale layout, which was optimized for operations, to start all over again with a more laid-back On3 railroad where he didn't have to stress out about operating it, because he'd lost his sense of joy in the hobby. And yet, nobody seems to comment on the obvious. You can't make this stuff up.)

Curiously, I hear very few people complain about George Sellios for doing the same thing. 

Anyway, a couple of little notes; little details that I've found trawling with a more detailed look at some books that I've had for some time. Decades in the case of the J&S book, but over a year now in the case of Furlow's SJC book. Both feature a Prairie Fire Inn. Both are based on completely different kits. Both are out of print, although that's just a coincidence, I think. I guess I hadn't recognized, or had forgotten, that they were using different kits. I wonder now if it was some kind of in-joke between them—I know that they were friends, and Furlow contributed a fair bit of time and effort to the J&S, building Furlow's Folly no. 1, the mine, and is credited in the Acknowledgements for having spent a lot of time adding vegetation to the mountain area. The SJC project railroad was also a project railroad done shortly after the J&S, and both were at the peak of their model railroading popularity at about the same time in the early 80s, when both of those project railroads were done. Both of them did work for Walt Disney Studios at the same time too, although probably not at the same place exactly; Furlow did set building, and Olson did scenery on the rides (and his wife did model building for Disney, I've also now found. Curious.) My early assumption was that the Prairie Fire Inn was an in-joke between them of some kind, so they both included one, although it's possible that it's a reference to some third party. If so, I can't find out what. It doesn't appear to be a real place, and I can't find any evidence that it existed on anyone else's famous railroad, like John Allen's, or anything like that. 

Anyway, even if I have no idea what the idea was behind the Prairie Fire Inn, and why both the San Juan Central HOn3 Railroad and the Jerome & Southwestern had one, I think I'm going to blindly follow along and do it too. That's how memes are born, I suppose, although one guy making an ignorant reference to two other guys is a far cry from a meme. Because the structure kits that both Furlow and Olson used are out of print, I'll go with an even more modestly sized option than either, and use the Banta Modelworks B&O Hotel as a base. 

Underneath the stairs, I will probably add some junk. Rusty Rails provides some great examples; I actually think the stacked firewood would even look like it belongs.

http://rustyrail.com/Products/HOScaleProducts/RRJP-H-39.html#_

Because the building is a little small, I might add just a bit more to it. I'm not 100% sure that this is the right move, but Rusty Rail's lean-to shack on the other side as the staircase might be interesting.

http://rustyrail.com/Products/HOScaleProducts/RRS-H-01.html

Some roof details, and maybe a scratchbuilt water tank on the roof would complete the scene. See this video (I've already forwarded it to the correct start point) to see how, although it's a bit on the large side for a structure this small. We'll see. There are smaller spools available, and if not, plenty of other cylindrical pieces of junk I can use as a baseline.

Although it also occurs to me that this saloon kit would, with a Prairie Fire Inn sign to replace the one that it comes with, be a really good alternative too, and maybe it'd be nice to have it be a slightly larger building. Although still small. Keep in mind that the red building shown next to it is a separate kit.

Anyway, I also found that the Chooch Columbia Depot kit #9004 that Olson used twice on the J&S was actually a kit that he designed! it's a nice little kit, although obviously out of print now, but it's also curious that he truncated it both times. It's a small depot, but the original does have a little covered loading dock, which he doesn't use. In at least one case, the copy of the kit in Clarkdale, it's obviously not intended to be a depot at all, as it's not particularly close to the track. It's just a little building, store, or shack of some kind.

Mirabeau spur/bridge

I'm not (yet) going to plan what to do on my BA&W analog specifically, at least in terms of what buildings do I want to have and stuff like that, but I do want to talk about it at a high level. The "launch" module will actually be in two parts. It occurs to me that although Olson's book suggests that that BA&W was an addition that he thought of and added after the main 4x8 J&S was complete, that this is instead merely an artifact of the writing in post. WIP stuff in the early chapters seem to indicate that the track heading off of the 4x8 to the 2x6 BA&W "expansion" were already there from the very beginning. In this day and age when amateur content providers are replacing professional ones on mediums like blogs and YouTube vlogs and elsewhere, we're finding much more about projects than we did when they were articles in monthly magazines. People can post daily hour-long videos of themselves painting a single structure or engine, or whatever. We have an overabundance of information on projects that we follow, although what we follow is a cottage industry rather than everyone in the hobby reading the same 3-4 page printed articles. But a perhaps unanticipated consequence of all this context we have is that the way it was done in the early 80s when the J&S articles were written is that we can see how it was all arranged in an almost narrative-like structure, where it appears as if things were done one after another, because that's how they talk about it (and in some cases they strongly imply or even state that it was so), but in reality that's not how it was done at all. The reality was much more organic, with all of this stuff being worked on in parallel, not in sequence. This narrative structure comes across as a kind of quaint affectation related to the medium, at best, although in today's environment of cynical, mistrusting consumers of what is obviously fake news vs the total transparency of bloggers and vloggers, it comes across as borderline dishonest. I don't think that was it's intent at all, so I go for the more charitable interpretation. Either way, I'm going to plan on building the BA&W analog along with my J&S analog, in parallel, "at launch." I haven't yet completely figured out how it will attach to future planned modules, and most likely some after-the-fact modification may be made to the scenery at the very edge to make it fit (at the least), it's still my intention to finish what are two conceptual modules, the initial 4x8 and the narrower spur/bridge, at the same time. Probably later today, I'll talk about my admittedly vague plans for the subsequent modules, but for now, let's talk a bit about how I'm going to change the BA&W concept to be my Mirabeau spur/bridge.

And I also don't want to talk too much about my modular strategy, but in order to do this, I think I need to address both it and a few other minor questions as well. In a nutshell, and I'll talk about this in more detail later, my modular strategy is to have major and minor modules, a major module being like the original 4x8 J&S, and a minor module being like the BA&W 2x6 spur. In the case of the first two modules, I'm going to build them both together (like Olson himself seems to have done, honestly) and I want to have them complete before I really start working on additional modules, so I can use them while the others are in progress. Few model railroaders, in fact none that I know of, see adding additional 4x8 loop modules as a viable way to expand an existing 4x8 layout, narrower spurs/bridges to connect them or not, but that's what I'm going to do. This is not only to ease construction, but also so I can have complete stuff to run while the additional modules in are being worked on, and also to be able to treat them separately if needed. I imagine that in order to facilitate the illusion of travel that I'll do loops across a single module, sometimes, to simulate miles traveled in that territory, rather than having to loop across the entire layout. Each module will be geologically quite distinct, with the second 4x8 module being focused on forested hills and mountains that resemble Appalachia in many ways and will heavily feature the coal industry, and the third module being a western Rocky Mountains analog that features more mining and logging as the signature industries. Because of the nature of Ruritanian America as I envision it, there's not really any place for major urban or waterfront scenery (I suppose I could have a major river port at some point, but I have no plans to do so.) 

Let me first establish some context. The initial module, as I've said before, will be heavily based on the J&S, including mimicking almost exactly the track plan and layout of towns, structures and industries, albeit with some customization. A copper mine on the long spur will be the signature industry, up in the Lamar Mountains which will be relatively low-elevation, desert-scrub mountains not unlike the Chisos, Chinati or Guadalupe Mountains of West Texas, or most especially the Davis Mountains in and around the small town of Fort Davis in Jeff Davis County, Texas. The major settlement in this module will be the town of Jefferson. In addition to a freight house with a team track slash LCL dock, there will be a passenger station here, and a small stockyard servicing the stock of the various ranches out in the (unmodeled, mostly) hinterlands. In addition to such obvious railroady services like a water tower, this gives three potential reasons to stop, spot cars, pick up cars, etc. in Jefferson: passengers, cattle and LCL loads. Track arrangements in Jefferson include both a passing siding and a short spur which will be in the interior of the loop around the module. Jefferson is also where one of the tracks that heads off to the BA&W analog starts (more on that later.) I'm considering making a small change to the J&S track plan. Where there is a spot that has an old narrow gauge leftover, really just a scenic element coming off of the mainline that looks like a place where track used to be before the rail was pulled up for scrap, I'm considering making that an actual tiny working spur, and considering it one end of an interchange track with the great world outside of my model railroad, so that freight from this end of the railroad can be sent in for use within the railroad, or passed through the railroad to a future interchange on the last module, representing some kind of thru-traffic of sort that just passes through. If I do do this, it will have to be small. There won't be room for more than one or two cars to be left at the interchange track. But I like what it does to operational possibilities. And I'm not even an operational-focused type of guy at all.

In addition to Jefferson, there will be two other significant stops on the original J&S module; Davis, the tank town which will have a freight depot or LCL dock, as well as obvious locomotive services. While the trains are stopped, however, some traffic of goods (and occasionally even people) to load or unload on occasion for customers who are closer to Davis than to Jefferson will happen. While in a literal sense to get from Jefferson to Davis you simply go around the foreground curve of the loop (or the background curve, maybe, if you're heading the other direction) the two scenes will be separated enough by vertical elements to plausibly imply that they are further apart then they actually are. This illusion will probably be maintained by requiring at least two full circuits around the full loop in order to represent distance before a train can claim to have traveled from one to the other. The final stop, on the other hand, will be up the long, steep spur that starts at the nearest edge of the loop, travels over a bridge above Jefferson and ends in the hills on the far distant edge of the layout. This will be the Lamar copper mine, in the Lamar Mountains. From either Jefferson or Davis (or to Jefferson or Davis, for that matter) will also require two loops across the countryside before taking the spur to represent distance traveled. This is a big second reason why I actually like the 4x8 loop as the basis for new modules; it allows me to do looping within the same ecological zone to represent travel. (The first being that I like the ease of construction and the "complete" and potentially autonomous feel that each module will have.) I know operational and prototype replicator type modelers probably don't really understand this approach, but that's OK. Not to be deliberately antagonistic, but I don't really understand their joyless, spergy parody of the hobby either.

Now I say autonomous, but in reality, I will see the BA&W analog as an integral part of this module in many ways, and although you obviously can't loop this analog into the distance runs, it will be an important stop anyway. To get to Mirabeau, the small town represented here, will require twice as many loops (four) from any stop on the Jefferson/Davis module, but there will be significant reasons to do so on probably almost every run of the train. For one thing, locomotive services will be reduced to (in direct modeling, anyway) just water towers at Jefferson and Davis, while at Mirabeau, there will be a small little yard of sorts with an ash pit and a coal depot in addition to the water tower, and an implied service/repair area (although that probably won't be directly modeled in the interest of space.) Therefore, it will be important for trains to make periodic stops at Mirabeau. Although there's a lot that's implied rather than explicitly modeled, I'm not intending to imply that either Jefferson or Davis is sufficient to keep locomotives out there running indefinitely. Regular stops at Mirabeau are important for regular upkeep, refueling, etc.

When I say small yard, that's maybe an overstatement. There is an area with several close spurs that, like a yard, allow for switching of small trains. However, these tracks have to do double-duty, as is often the case on small, short line type pikes, and they will also service some local industries while they're at it.

In addition to the railroad industry itself being an important reason for Mirabeau's existence, I intend to imply another major industry here. If I'm implying Trans-Pecos Texas rather than central Arizona, like Olson did, then I probably should have focused more on ranching and oil rather than ranching and copper mining, given that copper mining is a fleeting thing in Texas. I'm going to do it anyway, because I really like the visual of a copper mine, even if mine doesn't end up looking exactly like Furlow's Folly no. 1 (and it likely won't.) But Mirabeau will be where the oil industry takes over. Like everything else in Ruritanian America, this isn't a major corporatized affair, however—small, localized, "mom and pop" industries are the order of the day, even when you're talking about drilling and refining. Actually the drilling and refining will all happen "off screen" and rather than crude being transported by rail to the refineries, it will be transported by small pipeline to local small refineries. This will then be outbound by additional short pipelines to local distributors. And this is where the railroad comes in. At Mirabeau, I intend to have a few tanks modeled (not unlike how the BA&W's Grandt's Harbor did, incidentally) and a small office for a refined petroleum distributor, and the capability to pick up tank cars for outgoing delivery.

There will also be another small depot and pickup for passengers and LCL freight, as there probably will be at every little town along the pike, but I'm actually intending to see Mirabeau as a bigger, almost boomtown type of place. I'm considering a small (tiny really) sawmill here too, if I can make room and make it feel natural. Keystone has a small sawmill kit called Danby (111) and Woodland Scenics has the even slightly smaller Buzz's Sawmill (5044) or the even tinier Rural Sawmill (243.) If I can fit it, a scrapyard on the other side of the track from the sawmill would be a good addition too, as well as giving yet one more address to potentially spot cars. This sawmill is kind of a preview of coming attractions, as the lumber camp isn't intended to be modeled until module 3, however. But by preparing in advance for it by having an industry serviced by the lumber way back in module 1, I leave open more interesting operational facilities. Note that I don't have (and neither did Olson) a receiving industry for all those ore cars from the copper mine. In real life there was supposedly a smelter in Clarkdale. So there's another industry to add somewhere in a future module, if I can make one small enough to be feasible.

All of this would be concentrated on the left 5-6 feet or so of the 2x8 foot spur, however. The industries and car spotting addresses would give way eventually to a few small buildings that are not related to the railroad, but will be scenically interesting; small shacks on docks and wharves that hang out over a shallow bayou. This gives me the opportunity to put out the too late to be funny by the time I build it in-joke of Biden & Son Swamp Tours on a tiny shack with a few rowboats. In addition to this little swampy village outskirts, I'd like to build a little shanty town with some tents and other temporary structures. Just a few; three or four would establish the concept nicely. Now, I said earlier that Ruritanian America doesn't have a central bank or fiat currency, and that bank panics, over speculation, and all that were more a thing of the northeast, which caused the Great Depression. That said, itinerant workers jumping trains and living in shantytowns is a pretty iconic visual to establish the vaguely 1930s-like time frame of the railroad. And it gives me an interesting detail to model on some of the empties that I'll have floating around on the railroad all of the time. And even if there isn't a Great Depression in my alternate history timeline, there's still probably hobos hopping around looking for work in what is essentially a primitive "frontier" region. And since Mirabeau is supposed to be a relatively booming town, it makes perfect sense that shantytowns might have sprung up when the worker population increased beyond the ability of accommodations to keep up with.

All of this Mirabeau detail is quite small, and will occupy an area of only about 2x6-7 or so max; the rest of the extension will be scenery, and track extension and elevation to enter the next module. Not to say that there won't be any countryside structures out there on the track extensions; in fact, I strongly suspect that there will be some kind of little diorama like scene there. I just don't know what it will be yet. Maybe I'll need a bit more of that space for what I want Mirabeau to be after all. But either way, I want to have a little space to model the bayou with lily pads, alligators, cypress trees and live oaks draped in Spanish moss. This also accommodates the transition into the forested pseudo Appalachia module which will be next. 

The Mirabeau spur will be operationally fairly complex, with a fair bit of switching, several "addresses" for the train to visit and plenty for it to do, in a very small space. It will also offer a lot of tantalizing modeling and setting-building opportunities, which I find an attractive prospect. I am a little concerned that I'm trying to do too much in too little space, and when I try to actually fit it in, I'll struggle and maybe something will have to be cut. But let's be optimistic and I'll also have to be careful, judicious, and economical in my use of space. But there should be plenty of room, I think, if I do indeed do so. Let me post once again Olson's plan, reminding you that I'll have a little bit more space on the right end of it, but that in terms of track, I'll need to use most of it just to get the attachments to the next module, which should mirror the first foot or two of on the left hand side in most respects. By using the real estate along the back wall, along both sides of the "mainline" double track, and along the various sidings, and shifting most of the water scenery that he has further to the right, I should have plenty of room, I think, as long as I keep my structures, industries and scenery small and suggestive rather than "prototype" scaled.

Although very rough, here's an idea of what I expect my new revised track plan to look like. Ignore the structures, the water and the very rough mouse-drawn track clean-up, and just focus on the track plan itself, and I think you've got a pretty good idea of what I'm going to do.

The bayou itself will probably start somewhere just to the right of where the pier ends here, and go almost to the very edge of the table. The lower of the two tracks will be on a low trestle to be elevated up out of the water. The last three feet of both lines of the track will probably start to elevate, so that when they cross into the new module, I can build it a good three inches higher than this one; the different being hidden by scenery so that it's a smooth transition.

The "Appalachia" module will also continue to climb, and when it connects to whatever the bridge module after that will be, that will climb too, eventually crossing over a deep gorge that goes well below the baseline benchmark level. The final, Rocky Mountain module will hopefully have a baseline benchmark level that's a good 9-12" or more higher than the lowest 0" elevation on the Jefferson-Davis-Mirabeau modules, and will peak at track levels that are a scale 100' higher. Spread over three modules, this will probably be more subtle than not, but I also think it will make it obvious even to people who aren't really paying attention that you're leaving the lowlands and going up into the mountains as you move from module 1 to module 2 to module 3. Sadly, a drawback to my modular approach is there's no way to put the lowest and highest track levels anywhere near each other, so you could see a bridge flying 100' above trains below it, but I'm ok with the trade-off of what I do get instead.

Adopting Clarkdale to Jefferson

Ah, Clarkdale. The "main" town of the J&S, and the foreground, if you will, of the whole thing if it can be seen as a single diorama (it's best seen as linked dioramas in my opinion, but that's a discussion for another post.) With the exception of Furlow's Folly Mine no. 1 (and the bridges), all of the structures that aren't in Dos Hermanos belong to the Clarkdale sphere. This includes the biggest structures on the railroad, by a factor of at least 2 in the case of two of them. It also includes at least two-thirds of the structures. Probably not counting bridges, but then again, there are three bridge kits used in Clarkdale itself because the big siding that goes to the mine crosses over the town.

This is, perhaps, my one reservation about Clarkdale and the track plan in general. However, I believe Olson made it so that the long bridge was removable. The text to one of the images suggests that the bridge wasn't build yet, so you could see the town without the bridge blocking half of the views, but given that literally everything else in the image was finished, I find that a little hard to believe. Was the bridge literally the last thing he built? Or did he make it removable, in part so he could tinker with it maybe after everything else was complete? In any case, it is probably my intention to make the bridge be removable too; in fact, fig. 2 in Chapter 6 shows the bridge, build, assembled, and ready to go... yet just being held in his hand separate from the layout. Anyway, there are a few things that are hard to see because the bridge is in the way, at least from all of the angles that existing photos were taken from. Some of that could be improved by better organizing the buildings that are kind of under the bridge.

Anyway, let's get cracking and do the same thing we did for the Dos Hermanos to Davis transition; first by making a list of what structures he used, bolding the ones that aren't available anymore, and then talking about what I'd do differently and what my current plan is.

• Tyco trackside shanty 01348 (also used in Dos Hermanos under the windmill)
• Atlas trackside shanty 702 (also used in Dos Hermanos as the northernmost little structure.
• Chooch Columbia depot 9004 (also used in Dos Hermanos as one of the larger structures there)
• Scratchbuilt Strathmore outhouse (also used in Dos Hermanos)
• Con-Cor (Revell) chicken coop from farmhouse kit 9003
• Woodland Scenics Doctor's Office and shoe repair (half) 224
• Woodland Scenics pharmacy 221
• Train Miniature stone jail 7052
• Woodland Scenics Doctor's Office and shoe repair (other half) 224
• Garage from Con-Cor farmhouse kit 9003
• Train Miniature saloon 7054 (renamed the Prairie Fire Inn. Curiously, Malcom Furlow repeated this same structure on the San Juan Central, probably as an in-joke between the two of them.) I also notice that while the text of his book calls it a saloon, the kit itself is called a general store and bank.
• AHM Railway Express Station 5831 (has the notable superlative of being the largest structure on the entire pike)
• Alexander Brownhoist crane 7519 (includes loading dock)
• Chooch loading dock 9005
• Scratchbuild freight station
• Tyco trackside shanty (scale house) 01348 (I don't know what he means by scale house, but this is now the third time that this same kit has been listed. There's two of them in this little town alone.)
• Atlas signal tower 704 (featured in the structures chapter (6) as the how-to assemble and weather a cheap kit so it looks good example)
• Atlas passenger station 706
• AHM Pike Ridge maintenance group 5741 (includes a pretty basic water tower, maintenance shed and a handcar)
• Century Metal Foundry oil spout 120
• Scratchbuild oil bunker
• a handful of unmentioned but clearly visible signs, fences and whatnot

Although when talking about converting Dos Hermanos to Davis I didn't attempt to make a building for building replacement of the town, I did in fact come pretty close. Here, I'm going to do a little bit less so. But let's start with the buildings that I can get. I'm actually thinking that I'll go ahead and have them all. I didn't initially have the Woodland Scenics kits on my radar when I made by big structures list, but three buildings in two kits at a decent price, and they're in cast white metal, which I'm very used to working with... I guess why not. They seem to look good on his railroad. They're mostly just false front tiny little old west like stores. There's lots of options for this kind of building, but I'll stick with these, I suppose.

I'm also interested in using the Atlas passenger station and signal tower pretty much exactly as he does. And I have an alternative to the "Prairie Fire Inn" in mind. Do I want a bigger freight station of some kind like he uses, along with a crane? I'm not sure. For this one I'll have to noodle ideas a little more; it's not quite as obvious what I want to replace them with, or how I want to arrange my Jefferson structure layout.

But let's go ahead and make a list of kits that I'd likely consider, at least.

• Atlas passenger station (probably with the dock removed, like he did. It's just too big, and not really the right touch for a frontier town) 706. I admit, I'm tempted to go with a smaller building, like Bar-Mills Springfield Station 262, though.
• Atlas Signal Tower 704
• Alexander Brownhoist crane 7519, plus dock
• Woodland Scenics doctors office and shoe repair (might rename the businesses with custom signs) 224
• Woodland Scenics pharmacy 221
• RS Laser Outhouses 3 pack (I used one of these at Davis, I'll use one here, probably. They're all three slightly different.)
• Bar-Mills 992 Shack Pack (3) All three of these are good. Two are even good replacements for the garage and chicken coop respectively, while another is a good replacement for one of the trackside shanties.
• Bachmann 45153 Water tank snap kit
• Campbell Sherriff's Office 364 would be great here, but it looks like it's out of stock everywhere, including on their own web page. I don't know if that means "out of production" or really just "out of stock" but either way, it might be hard to get a hold of.
• Banta 2131 B&O Hotel
• Bar Mills 962 Wicked Wanda's (maybe. It's probably bigger than I want to use.)
• Downtown Deco 1053 First Timer Bar
• Life-Like 1378 Stock Pen Snap Loc Kit
• Tichy 7011 Handcar shed with handcar

I might want to have a few options. I'll probably have the Life-Like 1348 three trackside shanties kit on hand in case I need a few more tiny buildings. I don't have a larger freight house; the express station analog. Do I want a crane without one?

Although my initial thought was that the Atlas signal tower and passenger station were both must-haves, I kind of am starting to think that have something like the Woodland Scenics Coal River kit might be better. It has a slightly more modestly sized passenger depot and a separate freight depot, also smaller than the old AHM kit, but both of them might well fit my idea of smaller structures generally.

In fact, browsing Woodland Scenics catalog, I see a lot of easy and accessible kits that would be great. Schultz's garage is one that could be an alternate, as is Popa Wheelie's saloon (really two complete buildings that can be separated and put wherever) and both come with a lot of extra detail. They also have an outhouse three-pack, except there's also comes with a man taking a leak, or something. The ticket office is another great false front western style tiny building, and Rocky's tavern would be a good alternative to First Timer Bar, if I end up preferring a white metal casting to a hydrocal casting. (I don't know that I have any preference, other than that I've never worked with hydrocal before.) Either way, whichever one I end up preferring here, I'll no doubt use the other somewhere else in one of the other modules (I should really do a post where I explain my modular strategy too, shouldn't I?)

Of course, the same is true when I browse the catalogs of plenty of other manufacturers too, like Banta, BTS, Campbell, Bar-Mills, Rusty Rail, etc. In fact, I'm getting so excited looking at these structure offerings that it's making me want to jump ahead and plan the other modules. Insane, I know.

J&S and BA&W track plans

Because I still have the old book that I bought in 1985 or so (I just had to add a binding buffer of duct tape to it this week to keep it in good shape) I have good, higher resolution copies of the trackplan images already. But here's the complete trackplan for the J&S, which I've posted before. The BA&W is, however, one that I hadn't posted before, because I hadn't found it online before.

Just for archives sake.

Although I don't intend on messing with the actual track plan of the BA&W, I do intend to pretty significantly mess with the structures and scenery layout, plus I'll extend it 2 feet to the right, bending into a wye junction with the loop of the next module that will be even further to the right. The theming will be quite different too; rather than an urban waterfront, I'll have a rural loco servicing area on the far left, and a small swampie village in a bayou in the center and right, extending on into the next two feet as well.

Motive power; more detail

I made a pretty general, handwavy affair at what motive power I'd want; about half a dozen steam engines, including geared steam. Because I just did a much more detailed, kit number and everything summary of my little tank down of Davis (which would represent what the original J&S trackplan had as Dos Hermanos), I figured I could actually determine the specific engines I want too.

First, an aside. I think I've decided that every single "block", which includes all three of the eventually planned 4x8 modules as well as the narrow necks that will connect them, will need to feature at the very least a locomotive water tower, to help represent the implied distance. The 4x8s might well feature two; at least the J&S trackplan does. There will be a total of 2 engine servicing facilities that will be a bit more extensive when all the modules are in place, including coaling bins (not towers; I imagine a more shortline rough and tumble affair where guys with shovels and wheelbarrows load the tenders out of a bin), water, and sand at one and an ashpit at the other. And then pretty much every little town will feature a water tower. Looking (again) at the J&S for inspiration on how to do things, I notice that he has a tank town at Dos Hermanos, some railroady structures including a signal tower, passenger station, freight station and water tower at Clarkdale, and diesel services at the BA&W.

My thought is that I'll have a water tower at Davis, Jefferson will have a water tower too, and the real service facilities will be in Mirabeau, which will be my BA&W lookalike. There, I'll have a coaling station, another water tower, a sanding tower, and an ashpit. I'll worry about the next modules when it comes time to plan those modules. Most little towns will have at least some kind of freight depot and LCL dock, if not a more extensive reason for the railroad to visit other than the water tower.

Anyway, back to the point; water towers are a requirement for steam engines, especially smaller steam engines with smaller tenders that have limited water carrying capabilities. Let's go through my proposed roster of locomotive power for the railroad. This may seem extensive, although I like the variety for photo opportunities, if nothing else, and once all of the modules are complete, it probably won't seem as extensive as it does now. I just like having lots of locomotive options. I expect most model railroaders do. Note that there is one more loco that I'd really like to get, but which isn't in production anymore. I'd probably have to order a brass engine off of brasstrains.com or enay, and since those are auction sites, I can't nail down a specific one that I'll plan on getting yet. This is the two-truck geared Shay.

Many of the kits I'm listing are identical except for color and roadmarkings to other kits with similar numbers. Since I'll almost certainly repaint and redetail all of these engines, that's not really a show-stopper for me if the specific one I want is not in stock. I am trying to get color schemes that are closest to what I'm expecting, however. That way there's a possibility that other than relabeling the engines, I might be able to just weather it with only minimal repainting. If I'm lucky.

4-4-0: The 4-4-0 set that I specifically picked is a Bachmann, set number 51005. It's DCC ready. I prefer the coal-burning tender to the wood-burning, so instead of a bonnet smokestack, I have a simple stovepipe. There are a lot of bonnet types available too, but that was mostly a requirement for spark arresting on wood-burning actions, so I'm going to mostly avoid bonnet style stacks entirely. This PRR model is already the right color; mostly black with some brass accents, so it's the preferred one to get.

 0-6-0: I like small switchers for use on these types of railroads. Curiously, the J&S book shows a picture of an actual prototype, (i.e., real train, not a model) of an 0-6-0 backing down from the mine to the smelter at Clarksdale with a load of ore cars. I'd like to have two 0-6-0s, even though there's not a lot of variety available; almost the only thing you can change is the color-scheme and the tender. Every 0-6-0 I've seen has been the USRA standard design. But with some coloring and some detail customization, and with two tender types, I'm sure that I can distinguish the two of them. Kit numbers 50405 and 50705 are the two that I targeted, with a short haul tender and a Vanderbilt tender; I'm going to try and avoid the slope-backed tenders. I had images in an earlier post on this topic, so I won't recreate them here.

Heisler: There is a Rivarossi Heisler model coming out in the next few months for HO scale in multiple road colors. The Curtiss lumber is the closest to the color scheme I want (along with the Pickering, although that's a bonnet style smokestack, so I think I'll probably pass on that one.) It's kit number HR2882. 2882s for the DCC version, which is probably what I really want.

Climax: Curiously, although it's listed as out of stock, it's available at Wal-Mart, for crying out loud. I do see it available at Hobbylinc, at least. This is a 2-truck geared steam logging locomotive, but it'd fit really well anywhere on the RSA. This is Bachmann kit 80602.

That's five locomotives. Honestly, if that's all I end up being able to deal with, that's probably OK. Shays are available on the aftermarket without two much trouble. I prefer the two-truck there, like I did with my Heisler and Climax, but I do think maybe having at least one heavy duty three-truck geared locomotive might be kind of fun.

More on what is a Ruritanian American

Time to dump exposition about background context. I mentioned in my last post that there aren't any Mexicans or other Hispanics in Ruritanian America, mostly just as an aside that there wouldn't be any Spanish names of cities or towns on the Ruritanian Railroad. There's a lot of context behind that. I'm not 100% sure how much I'm interested in getting into all of it, but I'll provide a few links for further reading in case anyone is so inclined. First, though, one has to recognize that while Ruritanian America is a deliberate alternate history... so is the mainstream narrative that most people think is real history. Much of what we "know" about the past is either grossly distorted, or even flat-out wrong. (The same is true for science, by the way. It's not just the news that's fake.)

First, let's start with something that should be obvious (but in fact isn't.) What is an American? A combination of reading the Preamble to the Constitution as well as the first census in America should make that clear. Americans are the Posterity of the Founding Fathers, who founded the American government specifically for their Posterity. The Founding Fathers, or rather the citizenry of the American Nation at it's official founding, was 85% British, 9% Low German, and about 3-4% Dutch (all closely related North Sea Hajnal Line cultures, of course) with a smattering of Scandinavians, Irish, Hugenots and others here and there. By definition, anyone who isn't the Posterity of  this founding population isn't an American.

Granted, plenty of not Americans have moved to America, abandoned as best they could their prior identities, intermarried with the Americans, and their descendants were Americans. Like Ruth speaking to Naomi, they've said to the American people: "Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me." Those peoples, or rather their descendants, are certainly Americans. Then again, those people's descendants are genetically mostly American, and the foreign intermixing involved becomes little more than an interesting conversation piece. My own great-grandfather, while born in America, was an ethnic Portuguese guy. He was actually very aware of his Fake American status, and told people, when he moved from the location he grew up in, that his ancestry was French, because it sounded less foreign that way. But that's besides the point. He's only 1/8 of my genetics, and contributes very little to my behavior, my phenotype, or anything else. My own kids can't even be bothered to figure out what being Portuguese even means.

So, yeah... nobody from the Spaniard or Criollo nation, or the hybridized Spaniardized indio peoples who made up the lower classes of New Spain is an American, nor can they be. Nobody of African descent is an American, nor can they be (ironically, they've said this repeatedly to Americans, and Americans still don't really believe them.) Nobody of Jewish descent is an American. Nobody of Indian descent is either; the Indians were their own nations; the Patuxet, the Naragansett, the Iroquois, the Comanche, etc., etc.

For that matter, it's a bit much to suggest that Americans are all one people. The original formulation of America was that it didn't have to be either; each state was its own nation, united in loose federation with the others. David Hackett Fischer spelled this out quite clearly in Albion's Seed, although he called the various English nations "folkways" instead of nations. But clearly there was a very deep and impassable gulf between the Roundhouds/Puritans/Yankees, for instance, and the other peoples of America. Notably, the Cavaliers/Plantation people/Gone With the Wind type southerners, or the Border Reivers/Backwoodsers/Dukes of Hazzard type southerners. There's a fourth group, too—the Quakers and the Low Germans, but they seem to have been innocuous enough to have gotten along tolerably well with the other three as needed. The enmity between the Cavaliers and the Roundheads goes back to before the English Civil War, however, and when it erupted in the American Civil War, it was not what you thought it was about; it was purely racial and cultural enmity and covetousness. The Roundheads wanted to conquer the Cavaliers and loot their land. Most of what you think you know about the Civil War is false. For a start, read the chapters on Lincoln here, but look through the endnotes to the chapter for more information. Appendix A is a copy of one of the greatest speeches ever written, and it's only the propaganda of Lincoln hagiographers who have promoted the Gettysburg Address instead. After all, the Roundheads are desperate to validate their choice to conquer the rest of America, destroy the Constitutional government, and somehow still believe themselves to be justified in doing so. The Yankees are the problem with America and have brought us to the brink of annihilation, as Clyde Wilson has so clearly argued. So they came up with an after the fact justification that they fought the civil war to free the slaves. Nobody bought it in the decades after the war, but by the time our generation has come along, no other narrative had been presented in over a hundred years, really, so most people accepted that narrative uncritically.

Anyway, that's the true history of America, or at least a very brief explanation of where true history differs from the narrative alternative history that most Americans believe today. My Ruritanian America differs from the narrative, of course, but it is also alternative history, and differs from true history as well. (The difference being that I'm doing it on purpose, am up-front about it, and know the difference. Unlike with the alternative history that makes up the mainstream narrative.) Ruritanian Americans are Americans that founded a true independent state separate from the other three American systems: the Union of the Yankees, the Confederacy of the Cavaliers, and the Republic of Texas, which in my alternative history managed to never have to join the Union and remained an independent Republic, albeit one that is culturally American. One that is very specifically Borderer American, since that was the founding population of Texas; backwoodsy Americans from Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, etc. The Ruritanians are also made up of a similar population, and see the Texans (and to a lesser extent the Confederates) as their brothers. They are wary and distrustful of the Yankees, they have no problems with the Quakers and in fact many live among them, mostly integrated. They found slavery distasteful, and were glad when, in the 1870s and 1880s, the Confederates made manumission the official policy, the slaves were freed, and many of them returned to Africa to found Liberia, or to Caribbean and Central American nations that were made up of majority Africans, like Haiti or Jamaica. Those that remained never had any reason to participate in the Great Migration, because in the alternate history, that never would have happened, so they remain a rural, Southern people almost exclusively. Some former citizens of New Spain and later Mexico lived in isolated tiny hamlets, since New Spain claimed some of this territory, but they never really settled it. Their demographic influence, like that of the Africans, is nonexistent in Ruritanian America.

Because Diversity + Proximity = Violence, Ruritanian America, and the rest of the culturally American countries, have relative peace after the attempted war of Lincoln's aggression failed. Ruritanians remained neutral, but were sympathetic to the Confederate cause over that of the Unionists, not being fooled by Union propaganda. Therefore, the nations of North America remain pretty homogenous; Borderers in Texas and Ruritanian America, Cavaliers in the Confederacy, and Yankees in the Union. Africans still make up a significant minority in the Confederacy, although not so much as they did in the real timeline, since many of them took charitable passage to Liberia, Haiti or elsewhere to be chart their own destiny in their own homelands. And the Indians remain in pockets too, although most have integrated more or less peacefully into American society after having it made quite clear that their habit of raiding and looting white settlements would not be tolerated, and only in the lands of the Yankees have they been forced into reservations (just as in the real world; the current reservation policy was one of Ulysses Grant's from 1868 on.)

Another side effect of this is that most of America would never become overly corporatized by robber barons, since only in Yankee America did conditions exist where this was permissible. Ruritania remains a primarily rural nation of homesteaders and single-family farmers, artisans and craftsman, living a much more egalitarian life than that in corporatized America, or plantation America either one. This will be readily apparent in the more "primitive" life represented on the RSA RR. Technological, social, and political change is slow to come to Ruritanian America, and it takes its time digesting innovations thoroughly before embracing them warts and all. In this regard, the time frame of the Ruritanian America Railroad will be difficult to pin down. While some elements will seem like lingering impacts from the Old West era, in other areas, technology here and there can resemble a much later period, although it will be rare to nonexistent that anything postdating 1940 or so in the real world would have any place whatsoever in Ruritanian America. While it may seem odd to think of a frontier-like environment in many ways up until the 40s, keep in mind that a lot of the political and social pressure that made America the dystopia that it has become for the posterity of the Founding Fathers today never happened in this alternative timeline. There was no wave of Ellis Island immigration, complete with anti-American Bolshevik sympathizers, agitators and spies. There was no World War, or at least not any American involvement in it. Without the leveraged robber baron stock market, there was no rapid explosion of financial growth, although in return, there was no Great Depression either. Economically and socially, this timeline is much more laid-back and less fraught with drama. (Except among the Yankees, of course. They routinely experience bank panics and recessions. The Ruritanians were smart enough to not even consider abandoning the gold standard or establishing a federal bank.)

While it would make sense for Indian names to be common in Ruritanian America (as they are in the real world) I'm not going to use any, for the simple reason that I don't wish to do the research to find good alternative Indian place-names. There are also no Spanish placenames, or French placenames, or anything really that isn't English or occasionally German, Dutch or Scandinavian. Place names are often taken from historical figures, heroes of the American revolution, the Civil War (Confederate heroes, of course) and the Texian Republic. 

The closest allies of the Ruritanians are these selfsame Texians, actually. In this alternative timeline, Mexico is a relatively weak entity; not only did the Texian rebellion succeed, but so did the Republics of Rio Grande, Tabasco, Zacatecas and the Yucatan. The Riograndians tend to be friendly with the Ruritanians as well.

Although they don't border them, so their interaction is somewhat limited, the Ruritanians get along reasonably well with the Cavalier Confederacy. Their relationship with the Union Yankees is more strained, as the Ruritanians have a strongly held belief that Yankees can't be trusted and have tried to swindle and get the best of them repeatedly. This did erupt in the 1920s into a short war between the two states, which ended in a stalemate, and a peace treaty was signed without any territory or anything else changing hands, ultimately. Although relationships with European powers is more aloof, the Ruritanians are relatively friendly with both the Prussians and the Austrians, as well as Sweden and England. To be fair, the Ruritanians tend to like the Celtic nations of Britain better than the English themselves, though. In spite of their recognized mostly English ancestry, they still remember the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, and feel like what was best about England was distilled in the diaspora populations in America, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand. The idea that the Scottish, Cornish, Welsh, etc. have suffered under the English makes them sympathetic, like brothers in arms, sorta. This does somewhat limit the ability of the English and Ruritanian governments to work together.

Naturally, all of these attitudes reflect my own attitudes quite a bit, since Ruritanian America is my idealized version of what America should and could have been had mistakes not been made, as the saying goes. It's not only idealized, but it exists in a fantasy geography. It doesn't overlap with any real features or places, somehow Ruritanian America exists in North America independently of the geography that's actually here. That said, it resembles many regions in America very closely. Notably:

• The first module will be a West Texas desert-like biome, although the extension block will have east Texas and Louisiana style bayous, and will resemble somewhat portions of the Deep South. This isn't to suggest that all of the desert territory looks like West Texas and the neighboring parts of New Mexico, merely that I don't want to bother modeling various different desert territories and making a meaningful distinction between them.
• The second module will be an Appalachian or Ozark-like forested hill country, where coal mining will be the primary economic activity. The bridge between this and the next module will be merely transitional rather than attempting to create a new biome.
• The third module will be Rocky Mountain style territory, with more mining and logging as important industries.
• Although I have no intention of making a module for this, because in general I find the terrain would be difficult to model to my satisfaction where I liked it, vast tracts of prairie belong to Ruritanian America too. Maybe I'll find a way to make a prairie expansion with grain and livestock as the major industries yet, but right now I have no such plans. If I ever do, I'd like to have them resemble the Wildcat Hills area more than the flatter prairie. Or maybe the badlands of the Dakotas, a little bit. Come to think of it, putting a Mitchell Pass and Chimney Rock like feature out there with bales of hay in the foreground might be kind of fun. Maybe there'll be room to incorporate a bit of that in the area between the pseudo-Appalachians and the pseudo-Rockies? I'll have to think on that...
• There is only a tiny portion of the Deep South, and mostly just because I want to model a bayou than because I think it really fits my vision of Ruritanian America. That territory more properly belongs to the Confederacy. There isn't any New England or Left Coast territory at all.

Adapting Dos Hermanos into Davis

I said last time that I'd obviously make some changes to the details and theming of the J&SW as I made it into the RSA Railroad (or whatever exactly I end up calling it). One of those is I'm renaming and adapting the towns into a different environment. While I'll still have a desert environment, instead of a middle Arizona type environment, such as at Jerome, it'll be a Trans-Pecos west Texas type environment, such as Fort Davis or Alpine Texas would have been in the 30s. Now, as it turns out, Jerome and its surrounding countryside are significantly more white than west Texas, and that was probably true in the 30s as well. That said, for various reasons, the RSA RR will not feature any Hispanic names or elements at all. There won't even be Mexican food in the RSA. I may get around to explaining that someday, but for now, it just is. The RSA is a biracial society; white and Injun, and that's all that live there. Where we have Mexican restaurants in the real USA, in the RSA they may have Apache restaurants or Navajo restaurants, or Chickasaw restaurants, etc. That means that among other things, I won't be using names like Dos Hermanos. The name of this small tank town which is along the left edge of the 4x8 table (if stood upright, as shown in the track plan diagram in the book) will be Davis. As you can see, it's represented by less than a dozen tiny buildings, made from relatively inexpensive plastic kits that were available at the time. Some of these are still available, but not all of them. It's presumed that the residences are not shown trackside and are somewhere "off camera" within a mile or two (or less) of the parts that are shown.

Olson, when designing these towns, seems to have already had buildings built and ready to go, so he could "fit" them on the layout as the benchwork and scenery started to develop. There are WIP photos that clearly show the ground, pre-scenicked, with building outlines already drawn on them, with matching numbers on the insides of the buildings themselves, and almost all of the scenery chapter WIP images show buildings already in place (even though the scenery chapter comes before the structure chapter.) Honestly, although they don't say so, it's seems like the only obvious way to do it. Kinda funny that nobody in any of the books I've read ever says so, though.

Anyway, as the picture caption in my book says, "A few weatherbeaten structures are all it takes to establish a tank town like Dos Hermanos as an important stop on the J&S." Let's go through the list of the actual structures that Olson used to establish Dos Hermanos, and then we'll see what of them are still available, or if not (or if I prefer a different model) I could think about to substitute for them. I'll bold any sets that are not available anymore, as near as I can tell.

• Atlas trackside shanty 702
• MDC tank car 3370
• Life-Like water tank 1338 (part of the Western Homestead kit)
• Scratchbuilt Strathmore outhouse (for obvious reasons, not available to buy)
• Campbell windmill 1604 on top of Tyco trackside shanty 01348 (I don't see any listings for Tyco at all anymore, but I think this model might be available under a different brand. Either way, trackside shanties are easy to come by in many brands.)
• Campbell sand house 358 (he only seems to use the actual sanding tower, not the whole kit here)
• Chooch Columbia depot 9004
• MDC telegraph facility 1506

I notice that he also includes the Chooch Columbia depot 9004 in Clarksdale, but it's an easy enough idea to replicate, if I'm inclined to try and replicate something very close to it. The MDC telegraph facility was also two parts of an old 3-1 by Roundhouse/MDC that included a brick telegraph office (ironically, the one piece that I don't see here), a decommissioned boxcar serving as a shed, and a decommissioned flatcar serving as a loading dock, complete with some barrels and other junk on it. The MDC tank car is also just a tank suspended on a wooden structure.

So, how would I want to turn Dos Hermanos from the early 80s into Davis from the early 2020s? It's a little odd that we effectively have two depots (although one, from the image, looks more like a passenger depot than a freight depot, if that's not a vulgar use of the term) as well as a sanding tower and water tower, but not coal, and a tank of... what, exactly? Diesel fuel? Davis doesn't have to service diesels, because only steam will ever run on the RSA RR. And some selective compression is a good idea; I can certainly suggest a tank town without having to build every structure that a tank town would likely have. Besides, I intend to have more serious engine servicing facilities at the near end of my BA&W analog. That'll actually be really close in terms of actual distance to Davis, so let's stick with the basics of a water tower only to establish the actual tank town credentials of the place. A weather-beaten depot and LCL dock with shed, plus a few other details, and I'm good to go. From north to south (more or less) I'm considering the following kits:

• Atlas trackside shanty 702
• Rusty Rail Last Chance Garage RRS-H-26
• Campbell Windmill 1604 on top of Banta Dynamite Shed 2077
• One of the outhouses from the RS Laser Outhouses 3 pack (probably the peaked roof one.)
• Woodland Scenics Branch Line Water Tower 241
• American Model Builders Branch Line Depot 790
• Rusty Rail Workshed RRS-H-07
• Campbell LCL Freight station 353
• Bar Mills Tarp Covered materials 2013
• Model Power Mickey's Fruit Stand 682 (just the stand itself, not the other part)

Add a few more details like some junk castings, drums, boxes, crates, etc. and of course, some people. and I'll be good to go with that plan. 

Keep in mind that this is a plan that I'm making without having done anything other than trawl through online catalogs for sets that I'd like. The Last Chance Garage image that you can see on Rusty Rails' website is enhanced with some additional detail; I might not use the gas pumps at all, and just use the building with a different name on it of some other kind of endeavor. The tarp covered materials will be loads waiting on the LCL dock. And Mickey's Fruit stand will be rethemed as Geronimo's Authentic Apache Cuisine; an old fashioned food truck kind of affair, but when stands rather than trucks were how it was done. The Branch Line depot I picked is a tiny little thing, and with some significant weathering will look like it really fits, I think. Although I might replace it with BTS's Greely's Place, kit number 27227. It looks considerably less like a railroad structure and more just a little wood shack, but ironically, that makes it pretty similar to the Chooch building anyway. It comes with tar paper or corrugated metal options for the roof; the corrugated metal will make it even more closely resemble the Chooch building from Olson's layout. (Either way, given the options of customizing this with batten siding or not and two different roof styles, I might as well put two of them out there somewhere eventually...) The Dynamite shed is notable not for actually sporting dynamite, but because it's a stone building. I think the windmill will look good on it.

Although the water tower Olson uses is still available, I had this branch-line water tower by Woodland Scenics in mind for a little tank town just like Davis already, pretty much as soon as I saw the kit. You'll notice that I have a very similar layout to Dos Hermanos in terms of where I'll place buildings, even while only using two of the same kits, and that merely a tiny Atlas trackside shanty and a Campbell windmill. When we get to Jefferson, my analog to Clarksdale, I'll use a few more of the original kits, but then again, it has quite a few more buildings anyway.

It's entirely possible that when I go to actually assemble the town, it'll take up too much real estate and I'll have to make adjustments, either looking for a smaller alternative to something like the LCL freight station, maybe, or eliminating the Last Chance Garage and using it somewhere else. But I don't think so. In fact, it's entirely possible that I'll want to add an additional building to make it look more like a place where folks stop and tank up not just their engines, but also themselves—BTS kit number 27460, the Red Eye Saloon would be my first option here. But the space might be too tight for that, and I'll have to use it on another module somewhere. If, on the other hand, I find that I need more room, BTS has a smaller LCL ramp I can use. I can also put the ramp somewhere else to give myself more real estate, or eliminate it entirely if needed.

High level plan

As I said earlier, I make no bones about the fact that I'm going to be heavily influenced in many ways by John Olson's Jerome & Southwestern railroad. I bought the Building an HO Model Railroad With Personality book way back in the mid-80s (I have the second printing, which was dated 1985. I probably bought it that year, or 1986 at the latest.) This is the book that collects the Model Railroader articles in which it ran as a project railroad from back in 1981-82 or so. Obviously some of the techniques in terms of benchwork, scenery and especially wiring are out of date now, and better (or at least easier) techniques now exist, but the truth is that you can't argue with the results. Even though the J&SW (and it's BA&W little switching 2x8 expansion) was a small railroad, the stereotypical 4x8 ft. plywood beginners pike, in fact, the reality is that it looks better than most railroads many times its size. 

A couple of small observations, and then my own high level plan:

• Although it's only a 4x8 (with a 2x6 expansion) railroad, with a somewhat complex track plan for being a stereotypical loop, vertical scenic elements help divide it into diorama-like sections that make it feel much larger. In general, I'd say that the sections are the foreground/Clarkdale section, the Apache Gorge, the Dos Hermanos tank town, and the back Jerome/Cleopatra Hill/Furlow's Folly mine. The Back Alley & Wharf expansion tends to be its own section.
• In order to pull that off, the pike uses extremely small structures. The Atlas passenger station kit (706) with the covered dock removed and the AHM Railroad express station (5831), not large buildings in an absolute sense, are by far the largest structures on the main railroad. In fact, they're at least twice as big as every other structure on the pike, with the possible exception of the Prairie Fire Inn (Train miniature saloon (7054). That means that the majority of the other buildings are little more than sheds, shacks, shanties and other tiny buildings. The BA&W expansion also has two or three buildings about the size of the largest buildings, but as that's an urban section, it makes more sense. This may seem strange, but anything larger would dwarf what's going on with the scenery and trains, so it's actually quite necessary to keep it minimal and tiny, yet with character. Many of these smaller structures were either parts of another kit, or group, but used individually in a different context.
• At the same time, trains and stock need to be small. I rarely see a train with more than about 5-6 cars, and often only 3-4. The motive power is limited to small switchers and geared locomotives, mostly; stuff like a tiny 0-4-0, a 2-truck Heisler, an SW1500 diesel, etc. Rolling stock is all 40' or even less, given that 26' ore cars seem to be one of its main standbys. All of these helps ensure that no thing dwarfs the context that it's in.
• Although it's done as a classic loop on a 4x8 diagram, there's some operational complexity by building:
• passing sidings on both long edges
• a short spur within the loop at Clarkdale
• a long spur that crosses the entire layout diagonally at elevation, shaped like a bent Y.
• a reverse looping spur that allows you to change directions.
• the more yard-like structure to the BA&W expansion that is a more "switching layout" design.
• Most of the questions that people ask in the little side-bars of Model Railroading are superfluous if not absurd with regards to this railroad. What's the prototype? Well, kinda sorta there is one, but its more in general flavor and a highly distilled experience than in any specific detail. What's the minimum curve radius? I dunno. It's never reported. Probably 18", but I wouldn't swear to that. What's the maximum percentage grade? I dunno. It goes from 0 to 5½" on the diagonal spur. Whatever that percentage is. It's gotta be pretty steep to be able to cross over the tracks only a foot or so from starting its rise, though. Anyway, it goes on. What exactly do people think that kind of detail is so important for, anyway? One notable thing: I have no idea when this model railroad is supposed to take place. It has an old Roundhouse Climax and a 4-4-0 on the motive power list, but it also has a SW1500. They made the 4-4-0s back in the 1860s and the SW1500 in the 1960s. Otherwise, it has a kind of 30s-40s feel to the place in general. But again, there's  nothing definitive, and there's no reason for there to be, either. In real life, the mine in Jerome that is the main industry that this railroad serves, shut down in 1951. None of that makes any difference whatsoever to the J&SW appeal.
• On the other hand, for a 4x8 railroad, this doesn't dumb things down. It assumes you want to make a good-looking railroad with some advanced techniques. Compared to other books that I had in the 80s that were similar in scope, like Linn Westcott's HO Railroad That Grows, this is a much better looking, more "professional" looking railroad that doesn't assume that you're just a dumb beginner who can't figure out how to do tricky things like use flextrack or under the benchwork gorges, etc. It also has a much more coherent and strong theme, unlike the "uh... maybe adding a little hill right here would be cool, yeah, that's the next part of the project," ad hoc feel of Westcott's book.

Anyway, I've got more than I can (and no doubt will in the future) say about Olson's book and his railroad, but I'll be up front; my plan is to start with a pseudo-copy cat railroad, using the same track plan and similar theming, including the BA&W as an original piece of it rather than as an add-on, but then I'll add other modules in the form of two (or possibly even three) more 4x8 loops, connected by 2xn bridges. The BA&W copy will in fact, be 2x8 rather than 2x6, and that extra two feet will mostly be for adding scenery and allowing for the two straight lines to gradually bend so that they can connect to the next 4x8 loop on that side the way that they do on the other side. But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves; the main point will be to start with the J&SW and the BA&W and then add the other parts, which will be unique, since John Olson didn't ever build anything like that, later after the original is done.

Now, first off, a lot of the kits that Olson used aren't in print anymore (although another large chunk of them still are.) And as much as I admire the Arizona railroading approach, the Ruritanian approach doesn't have an Arizona, and as an ethnic Texan myself, I find the idea of a Trans-Pecos desert more appealing. How will this change my approach?

• I'll obviously be renaming the towns. Instead of Clarksdale as the main town and Dos Hermanos as a tiny, rundown tank town, I'll have Jefferson and Davis, respectively. 
• The Walthers backdrops won't work, because they have saguaro cacti all over them. The Trans-Pecos has prickly pear and other cactus, but not saguaros. I'd actually prefer to take my own photos of the Grapevine Hills and the Chisos Mountains in Big Bend National Park as well as Sawtooth Mountain in the Davis Mountains to serve as my backdrops. That gives me an excuse to drive around for a few days out in West Texas, which is always fun in it's own right anyway.
• Although copper mining isn't an important industry in the Trans-Pecos part of Texas, it can be in the Ruritanian southwest, so I'll maintain the copper mine at the end of the long, elevated spur. I really like the visual of the spindly little mine up in the hills anyway. But other than that, I'm going to put a tiny little stockyard in Jefferson, and make sure that my pike has plenty of ore cars and stock cars to serve these two most important industries on the railroad.
• I'll need to make sure that I can cover a few iconic plants of the area to give the correct vibe; some prickly pear cactuses, some dagger yuccas, and the ubiquitous mesquite tree. Other than that, I'll probably also need considerably more tufted dry grasses than Olson uses, as it's pretty iconic to the region, especially up near Fort Davis. Woodland Scenics clump foliage, fine-leaf foliage and bushes can provide credible creosote bushes too.
• The "far side" of the railroad including a big tunnel with switches in it is tricky. I think I'm actually going to make it have an opening showing a mine interior, so I can go back around the backdrop to check on trains back there if I need to.
• I'm going to use thin styrene rather than homasote for the backdrops. And homabed roadbed exists, so you don't have to DIY your homasote into a roadbed. (On second thought, it looks like the homabed supplier went out of business in 2020. I guess I can use cork, or something. Heck, with foam insulation board, I probably don't need any roadbed at all except for the height. And you can get ¼" thick foam insulation to cut if you want to.)
• The BA&W stuff will have the most severe retheming. There'll be a small town of frontier-like buildings on the left hand side, and the tracks with the switches and spurs will serve like a small yard for train building as well as coaling, ash-dumping, etc. and other things that steam railroads need. There won't be any coaling towers; that's way too big of a building; more like small coal depots and guys with shovels and wheelbarrows, or at most a crane. Some sample images below, from Faller. Vollmer also makes similar sets.
• The right side of the BA&W won't be a harbor, but rather a bayou, with a little village, partly on a low wharf or dock. It'll give me a chance to really try out some interesting new scenery, like twisted live oaks draped in Spanish moss and bald cypresses with their "knees" poking out of the water. Maybe I'll even have a little mini diorama of some inspectors busting up a cult meeting around an idol as an in-joke about Call of Cthulhu. This will segue, eventually, into the pseudo-Appalachian coal-mining region, which will be the next 4x8 to get developed. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Anyway, beyond that, the Appalachian 4x8 will be connected via a 2xsomething bridge to the Rocky Mountain 4x8, and that bridge will contain a massive gorge with a bridge or two crossing it high above a below the benchwork canyon. But I have only vague plans for those sections of the railroad as it expands...

Locomotives

In my last post, I talked about what is consider for motive power. Here's pictures.

Three examples of the Bachman 0-6-0s.

A west coast logging Climax. 

The Shay. Availability of any specific model subject to a lot of variability. 

One of the Rivarossi Heislers due out this fall. 

Motive power

I make no bones about the fact that the RSA railroad will start off heavily influenced by John Olson's Jerome & Southwestern railroad, up to and including starting with the exact same track plan before eventually planning different additions and modules. Even when I eventually end up with three or four connected 4x8 looped modules, I expect that I'll mostly be doing operations by myself and very occasionally with someone else. I don't need a lot of motive power except for for variety and photo ops.

Which was true for the J&SW too. Based on the book, the content of which was originally Model Railroader articles, I figure that there's at most about half a dozen locomotives for the J&SW. The chapter on trains specifically mentions two: a Roundhouse Climax that is not powered and is only for photo ops, and the little diesel SW1500 switcher.

The rest of the locomotives are mostly mentioned in captions to the photos. I haven't noticed anything in any pictures that aren't at least mentioned once in such a caption. There's one other diesel, a little boxcab, which keeps a pretty low profile and isn't mentioned or pictured much. Then there's a 4-4-0 and a two truck Heisler that are shown more, especially the latter, which seems to be by far the most often shown (the SW1500 being the second). And finally a little 0-4-0 switcher is shown here and there.

That brings us to five powered locos and one unpowered one. I think this is a pretty decent number, even though my pike is intended to be quite a bit bigger eventually. I have no interest in any diesels at all, nor in unpowered decorative locomotives. I also really like geared steam. They fit the small railroad with sometimes steep grades and tight curves, even if logging will only feature on the last of the three modules. I've seen good standard gauge HO geared steam small locos that I'd like to get: a two truck Heisler, Climax and Shay each. Bachmann also offers 0-6-0s in a variety of color schemes. Although the engine itself is identical in all, there are three different tender types. I might get a Vandy and a short haul, and probably avoid the slope back. If I get a 4-4-0 too, which I might, that's six locomotives. Probably more than enough.

There's a book by Kalmbach on detailing and customizing steam locomotives, which I'll probably need. That will be especially important when it comes to distinguishing my two 0-6-0s so they feel plenty different. The others will all be different enough already.

I'm not sure about paint schemes. Mostly black, either with or without a silver front, seems to be pretty standard in America, but in the UK, colorful painted locomotives were common. 

Welcome to the new blog!

Welcome, welcome! I'm having trouble with the layout (of the blog, not the model train layout) but hopefully I'll get that sorted out soon and you'll have a nice banner image instead of something that the code isn't showing properly. Ugh. 

Anyway, what is the Ruritanian States of America Railroad? Right now, it's just a figment of my imagination. It will probably remain so for quite a long time to come, although it will become over time a much more developed, nuanced and detailed figment of my imagination. Then, as we move into my post-working in an office all day home, wherever exactly that ends up being, I hope to be able to devote a room to developing and building the thing. The first step there is still a good... five years off, if not maybe a little more. And the second step will probably take quite a bit of time too. Updates may be sporadic for up to ten years as this thing comes together, if not even longer! And who knows what will happen in ten years, so... we'll see. That said, we don't know what we don't know, so we do our best to plan for things to be what we hope for them to be. What I hope for is that in ten years, as I approach 60 years of age, that I'm happily running actual model trains on a regular basis in Ruritanian America. 

It might be appropriate to ask what Ruritanian America is, exactly. The whole concept of the Ruritanian Romance is one that is kind of forgotten, or at least the label for it is forgotten. I'll defer you to the Infogalactic page on the topic to get up to speed. Even if you do know what Ruritania and its use in fiction is, you may be scratching your head. Ruritanian stories feature two things quite prominently: 1) a pre or para German Unification Central or Eastern European monarchy, and 2) a plot wherein there's a decoy who poses as the King, and establishing the natural order of things is the main purpose of the development and roll-out of the plot. What is a Ruritanian America setting, and what does it have to do with a railroad?

First, let's explore the whole point of the Ruritanian setting. When Anthony Hope wrote The Prisoner of Zenda, he wanted to tell a swashbuckling romance in a familiar setting without having to worry about an actual place, actual people, or things that could be verified. Remember that several years later, when Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote the Tarzan and John Carter stories, he still felt the need to set up this semi-apologetic framing device to the stories about how he didn't expect anyone to believe that it was true. Well, of course not. Everyone knew that they were swashbuckling romance fictional serials. But sometimes writers get locked into feeling like they have to do research about details of the real world and get them right. A Ruritanian setting makes that unnecessary. You can make up whatever details suit you, because Ruritania is a fictional place. Sure, sure... it resembles a real place quite well, and is vaguely described as being stuck between Saxony and Bohemia somehow. But ultimately it doesn't really matter where it's supposed to be, because the novel is pretty self-contained within the borders of Ruritania. It's got a kind of Austrian Monarchy romanticism about it. But what, then is Ruritanian America?

I got the idea from Red Dead Redemption, a famous video game by Rockstar Games. My youngest son picked up the second on for the PS4, and it marked one of the few games that I played  extensively in the last twenty+ years. And... it showcases a Ruritanian America setting. Sure, sure... it makes references here and there to real places in America, like California, and New York, etc. But the entirety of the game takes place in fictional states like New Austin, New Hanover, West Elizabeth, Lemoyne and Ambarino. Fake states with fake geography, yet highly suggestive of real places without having to actually slavishly copy their geographical or historical reality. Brilliant idea! My Ruritanian States of America is a separate nation, though, much like Ruritania itself is. Again, it's culturally American, but politically independent. It can be seen somewhat as if the Republic of Texas remained independent like many of its early leaders wanted, didn't join the US, and just kinda hung out there as a different country all its own, but squeezed into a fictional geography somehow. 

I don't really like or accept some of the labels that model railroaders use to describe their railroads. I guess in the common parlance, this would be somewhere beyond what is usually meant by a freelance railroad. Because I reject that label, I guess I'll create my own, the Ruritanian style railroad that is a combination freelance, Ruritanian romance and alternate history all kind of rolled up into one. To be fair, however... this is the original vision of the hobby. The hobby really didn't exist as we know it until guys like Bill McClanahan and John Allen and Andy Sperandeo and John Armstrong etc.; all kinds of them were into what was quite Ruritanian American in many ways. Especially John Allen.

I like Allen's railroad well enough, but John Olson's Jerome & Southwestern and Malcolm Furlow's San Juan Central are more direct influences on me personally (even though they were openly derivative of the Gorre & Daphetid in their own right.) But mostly, I just don't want anyone feeling entitled to run around telling me that I didn't do it right. To take the wind out of those kind of people's sails before they even start, I'm openly doing a Ruritanian America Railroad.

For my next post, probably not for a few weeks, I'll talk specifically about some of the details of what that means for the Ruritanian States of America Railroad.

Oh, and before I sign off... I actually plan to make use of the traditional Ruritanian Romance plotline in some way too. The rightful owner of the railroad is living as an outlaw in the wilderness with a merry band of other scofflaws and whatnot, but not because they're villains. Quite the opposite; a Yankee imposter from NYC who happens to be a dead ringer physically for the rightful owner is running the railroad and has usurped the role of robber baron and territorial governor into something like a combination of gangster and warlord. A Yankee Boss Hogg, if you will. I hope to have a few "diorama" style scenes on the layout that represent this conflict here and there.

As an aside; why isn't the banner working? I have banners on my other blogs, and they all behave very predictably. This one is misbehaving, and I can't seem to figure out why.

I will say, though. Although the banner looks terrible on my PC, it looks great on my phone. Maybe they did that on purpose... And maybe I'll just leave it.