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.