Train Show!!!

A couple weeks ago I made it to The Model Train show - the annual train show put on by the Atlanta-area chapter of the National Model Railroad Association - the Piedmont Division.

Train shows are a heavenly combination all things trains: a railroadiana swap meet with hundreds of vendors, historical society booths, model railroads on display, and tons of railfans of all ages. Here's the Piedmont Division's online trailer for the event:




At this point train shows are also great opportunities for me to run into old friends. I ran into a great friend and ally from my time in the mining industry, years ago already. We'd found our shared love for trains that was revealed when I came to work with him on one of the top floors of a 15 or so story office building in Tucker, Georgia, that directly overlooked the CSX mainline that connects New Orleans and Washington DC. It was such a treat to run into him.









I also hung out with some old pals from the Central of Georgia Railway Historical Society That booth is the ultimate treasure trove of historical information, model railroading items, and railfan gear for friends and fans of the Central of Georgia.













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Here's a great little layout from the booth of a vendor of model railroad scenery supplies and tools. It was great - stuffed with details and little scenes all the way around, everywhere you looked.




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This Central of Georgia RS-3 is making time with a short freight train on the Georgia Garden Railway Society's club display. That Aristocraft locomotive is a unique item, a special run that was made when Aristocraft sponsored a train show in Georgia several years ago.





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Best of all, I picked up a pair of Bachmann "North Star Express" Christmas coaches from the Piedmont Division's white elephant table for $15 each! These will look great running on the Tallulah Falls with a figure of Santa to ride on the back platform and a gondola car filled with wrapped presents.

















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BONUS:
Here's a nice showcase of club layouts from the 2011 NMRA show. Be sure to check out the amazing military troop and equipment train that lumbers past for more than a minute starting at 1:18 in eye-popping Large Scale.

1927 Track Plans Posted

I've just posted to the "TFRR Maps" page the links to a complete set of 1927 Tallulah Falls Railroad track plans lent to me by Mr. Edwards, which I had scanned and converted into PDF files.  These files are of high enough quality that they can be printed full size (approx. 2' x 5') by any commercial copy shop. 

Half Finished!

Progress in North Carolina!

During this long web silence I have made significant progress on the "North Carolina" section of the railroad, which is to run on the narrow strip of land that I am cultivating in between our driveway and the neighbor's fence. The gate at the end of the driveway is the state line back into Georgia.

The plan has been to cut back the natural slope enough to install a low block wall to produce a flat spot on which to lay track. Here's a photo of what it looked like in 2007 before any work was done.



































And here is an example of the general look we are going for, if you imagine that grassy lane to be a driveway:





















Here is a photo from a May 2010 post, which reveals if nothing else, that I have been working on this for quite a while now. This shows the opening volley - cutting back the embankment. That's the first 25 or so of 85 feet.

An unexpected benefit of this excavation was that the rain water draining out the neighbor's lawn came out of the hillside and ran down the edge of the driveway. Previously it was traveling under the driveway and appearing in the crawl space under the house!





















Phase Two was to rough out the length of the footer, get the basic width and depth in place. For this time we had a bowling alley-style trough to fall into if you parked too close to that edge of the driveway. Here it is in February 2011.






















Phase 3 was to square up the hole and get the depths right for a tiered level wall. I started at the gate end, where the plan has been to build a new wooden gate directly in front of the old hillbilly gate. Here is the view of the deeper hole for a 6" x 6" gatepost, as well as the first few feet of the squaring.


































Right before Christmas 2011 my brother-in-law Efrain came and built the forms for the concrete.
























Concrete at last! February 2011 the footer was poured - 3.5 yards from a truck with a 50 foot conveyor. The operator could have threaded a needle with that conveyor and snaked it right back to the end of the driveway.






































By March the forms are off. Let's lay some block!


































But before the block can be laid I needed to install the gate post. Here it is, as well as the frame of the left half of the gate.

Coal Dock Complete!

Here's a southbound view from the top of the new coal dock.

TFRR Postcards

I have been collecting postcards that have any depiction of the Tallulah Falls Railroad. Here they are in the order you would see these scenes along the line.





























































































































































































































































































































A tip of the hat to my Grandma Betty, who first excited my interest in postcards!

Coal Trestle at Cornelia Part 2

The general location of my model of the Cornelia coal trestle was established early on; just north of the oak tree on the way "out of town", generally following the positioning of this feature on the prototype. The effort to design the model began with stacking and rearranging lots of pieces of scrap wood on the worktable to try to get a sense of the geometry of the thing. A key factor was the need to keep the design very open so as to allow easy blowing of the leaves, acorns and other debris that pour like a woody waterfall off the giant oak tree overhead. A secondary goal was to repurpose a rugged looking piece of wood saved from the little laundry room that preceded the nice porch that we have now, which is the horizontal piece with the rusty nail holes on the middle level in the photo below:



















From there I carefully cut and attached everything together into the first version of the trestle, but upon mounting it on the line and attaching the 1/2" conduit to reveal the shape of the track I was dismayed to see how incredibly steep the approach would be!



















This seemed like it was sure be a source of trouble when trying to spot hopper cars atop the trestle, so it was back to the worktable to cut the legs down to a more reasonable height. By also moving the switch farther up the line I ended up with a much more gradual slope. Here's a long shot of the whole siding.























As an added bonus, the longer grade allowed me to build in a flat spot large enough to spot a car about halfway up the slope, shown here centered on the post on the left.






















I'm planning to model this spot as the Spencer ice factory, proceeding with the idea that northbound and southbound reefer cars would have been iced at this plant before proceeding up the TFRR or being spotted on the Southern Ry interchange track before moving on to the wider world. Perhaps additional research will reveal a photo of this operation! Here's a stock photo of a model icing platform in HO scale:






















In the meantime, the next elements to complete were the supports along the grade. This was extremely easy to do with the plastic conduit in place, as I only had to position the boards that would become the piers next to the conduit to see how tall each one needed to be, as well as the angle of slope atop each. These are spaced roughly 12" apart, allowing plenty of room to dispatch any leaves and other debris with the power blower.



















Now all that remains is to lay track, which will happen as soon as my back order of flex ties is finally fulfilled, and then to model the little hut that was positioned at the left end of the middle level, which I can only presume was a place for the wheelbarrow operators to get out of the weather when not working the coal pile.