My friend Steve is building an outdoor line called the Sandy River Lumber Co. Using a Bachmann Connie, LGB Uintah Mallet w/sound and a LGB DRGW #50 for a mill switcher. Obviously he ships out various lumber products, furnature, boxes and pulpwood. They are shipped out via my Lakeview branch of the SP. Era is late steam/early diesel. So his steamers are heavily weathered, or atleast the Bman Connie and #50 are so far and my Black Widow units are fresh from EMD. I ship him both emptys to load, fuel oil/coal for the locomotives, shop supples, food and essentials for the loggers, reefers of beer ect. We will handle car movements with the same car card forwarding system we use for the HO scale club that I used to belong to. I gave up the small stuff, he still has a large layout in his garage. The cars actualy do travel to my layout, which is indoors only at the present time but with a garden line in the planning stages. Several cars are just bridge traffic for me, I recieve them, they make a few laps of my layout then go on an offline staging shelf or possibly to another members garden line once its built. With his line just beginning construction, being done by a professional landscaper, things are in the planning stages and subject to change. He plans to have a mill to process raw logs, a pallet factory, furnature company, plus the normal company stores and industry common to a late 40’s western logging line. While some of his engines are narrow gauge prototype, we are turning a blind eye to that for operations sake. Not enough room for him to have both narrow gauge and standard gauge seperate lines in his garden area. We will both be using LGB MTS to control the trains, with his layout being MTS right from the start and mine later on. Not a big issue since my engines will rarely actualy go to his layout, or his to mine. Most of his cars actualy stay on his layout as they are logging flats ect. I have most of the cars at the moment for interchange but that will probably change. We both come from clubs that are heavy into operation. That is one of the most enjoyable part of the hobby for us both, we are just moving up to the larger scales now. Mike
Hi Mike,
That will be interesting. How far do the interchange cars need to go?
Back in the 80’s a few of us RhB nuts considered that, but since the cars would have to travel several thousand miles and the Internet was not yet a viable option, we would have run up some hefty phone bills reporting the consists during operating sessions.
It would be a lot easier now even at very long distances.
We only live about 15min drive from each other so it isnt to far. He isnt allowed to drive long distance anymore, so we normaly see each other atleast once a week for our weekly trip to Indianapolis to stop at a few hobby shops, usualy Watts Train Station, Train Central and sometimes we go out to Plainfield to Big Four Hobbies. I started making up my car cards this morning for the rolling stock I have right now. Mike
Anyone else doing this kind of thing?
John,
Andy C, some other guys and myself operate on an HO layout on Friday evenings. A couple of us have HO equipment and bring it on and off the railroad as interchange. When we have large scale ops sessions, like what is coming up at the Bluestone Southern, it is not unusual to have visisting motive power and passenger equipment, that is many times blended into the ops.
Back in the olden days, I operated in N scale and my brother in law ran in HO. We each had a box car that was identical (except for size). On paper, or over the phone we’d “ship” goods from one layout to the other, then put the appropriate car on the interchange or park it at the destination.
Simple, but it was a simpler time.