Wordless Wednesday #7

Canadian Pacific train near Dover, ID

Railbanking or Abandonment?

Much of my inspiration comes from the Kettle Falls International Railway and in 2010 the KFR. (just to the west of the imaginary MFR) experienced a bit of an upset as a large portion of it's line connecting Kettle Falls to Canada was declared for sale or abandonment. Discussion immediately begain around turning the line into an international bike trail, but many wanted to invoke "Railbanking" to preserve the line for future use.

It appears the line has been preserved and is still in use thankfully, but this moment of uncertainty reflects the type of railroading I'm looking to recreate on the MFR. Check out these articles for more info:

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2010/oct/14/railways-could-become-international-bike-trail/
https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?15,2380005

Movie Mondays #5

Of all they youtube videos I've watched over the years, this four-part series on operating model railroads by Chris Lyon and Mike Hamer has done the best job of introducing the concepts of operations to those of us who know little about how a model railroad should operate.  I found their videos to be invaluable when designing my own little layout. Here's part one, but be sure to check out the other videos in this series as well.

Critique my Track Plan

There is an interesting discussion going on over in the Model Railroad Hobbyist forums where I've posted a couple of track plan ideas for an expanded version of the MFR. There are a lot of really knowledgeable guys there offering some great advice and I am learning a lot. Head on over to my post to check it out and maybe jump in the conversations!

Wordless Wednesday #6

A Union Pacific train crosses the Pend Oreille River Bridge just west of Dover, Idaho

Happy Accidents

Just for kicks, I went on Google Maps the other day to check out the Pend Oreille Valley area where I'd be placing my proto-freelance line and was delighted to find that Google had updated their aerial views with new higher resolution photography.

This new photography made studying the paper mill in the town of Usk much easier and to my surprise, the trackage around the mill matches up with my current layout fairly well!

I sat there for a while considering the possibilities. Could I actually build a faithful representation of the paper mill? One which would allow me to operate it in a prototypical fashion? It didn't take me long to decide that this happy accident was just too good not to take advantage of.  I MUST model this mill.

With that decision made, a new problem arose.  Where do I put the cement plant, yard tracks and all the other industries that were originally crammed into that tiny little module? Looks like it is finally time to seriously consider expanding the layout!

Wordless Wednesday #5

Working the pulpwood loading tracks on a warm February day.