Multiple Decade, Era, and Geographic Disorder

I may have contracted an illness.  In 1984, during a multiple day visit with my Dad to Colorado's Joint Line, I became enamored with Burlington Northern coal trains.  SD40-2s, U30Cs and C30-7s with utility coal gondolas, followed by SD45/F45 helper sets and a caboose.  At that point, I knew what I wanted to build models of.  Prior to that, my influences were CNJ, LV, and Reading since these were my Dad's childhood loves.  I saw lots of anemic Conrail trains but was not interested in modeling the big blue, mostly because at that point Conrail factory-painted rolling stock was tough to find.  But really big trains as seen out west piqued my interest.  I bought lots of BN stuff during those years, assembling a bizarre set of equipment that spanned from early Atlas/Kato Alcos to Athearn SD40-2s.  My interests in BN moderated over the years; I moved from an interest in coal trains to contemporary grain trains (with SD40-2s and b-boats of course) when I worked at the Izaak Walton Inn on Marias Pass for two summers during college.

Around that point I became interested in F units, and Marias Pass with ABBA sets of F9 (and one F7) helpers into the late 1970s was super cool.  Of course, ample photo evidence of these helpers in books and magazines helped.  It was about this time that I became good friends with Dan Holbrook, Matt Sugerman, and others within the Range Research group, who all introduced me to a new realm of prototype modeling, operations-approach to layout design, and superdetailed equipment.  Dan helped shepherd many guys within that group while working on his awesome Duluth-Superior 1970 BN focus layout.  Some of the guys within the group became inspired to build their own layouts, including John Bauer, Jim Zach, Frank Grimm, and Chris Vanko (with a few others in the works as well).  Similarly, a friendship with Brian Rutherford developed that also focused on BN and SP interests primarily, and being no stranger to the diesel modeling community certainly helped my BN plans.

Because Matt and I had similar interests, we explored many different aspects of PNW railroading, including the Camas Prairie, Bozeman Pass and the Gallatin Valley, Mullan Pass, Missoula-Paradise, and the Palouse.  While Matt explored several non-BN interests that included UP, MILW, and CP, I always stayed with BN or pre-BN concepts.  One of my favorite pre-BN concepts was Bozeman pass and the Gallatin Valley. 

Matt Herson photographed this train ascending the East side of Bozeman Pass in 1967.  Big power, GP9s, semaphores, passenger trains, and cool local and through freight car variety made this a very appealing thing to model.  Photographer Matt Herson plans to model a scene on Bozeman Pass to take advantage of his strong equipment interests.

A few years ago Matt Sugerman settled on modeling the Camas Prairie's operations in Lewiston ID and hopes to break ground soon.  You can view his blog here. 

I have been settled on Pullman WA and Moscow ID in the Palouse for the past seven or so years, with a plan to model it in 1965 to take advantage of the timetable and train order operation, as well as the differing pre-merger operations of GN and NP.  I spent alot of time understanding the operations and the layouts of the towns, and met some new friends in the process.

One of those friends, Harry Bilger, a modeler of Moscow who actually lived there during the time of this photo, photographed NP RDC car B-30 at the depot in 1965 on its run toward Lewiston.  This scheduled passenger train was a key ingredient to making a train-order based operations-based layout.  You can see Harry Bilger's former layout in a recent issue of Model Railroad Planning, and he is embarking on building a new GN-focused version of Moscow now.

I even had a great trackplan for our last family basement for this concept, which to me seemed more attainable as a model railroad subject than the previous Bozeman Pass/Gallatin Valley concept (with complex signaling, CTC, and many train demands).  But the plan for the branchlines in the Palouse was developed before Tangent Scale Models, and now I want to model something that allows me to utilize most of the models in the TSM product line - both ones I have now and what I have planned for the future.  I also now realize that I love grain hoppers but they are not "legal" in a 1965 setting.  So, what to do?

As I said earlier, I may have contracted an illness.  My interest in BN is waning but the antidote may be something pretty cool - and with a similar paint scheme.  More on what I am thinking in followup posts...

With our multiple railroad and decade and geography disorders, Matt Sugerman and I always said that we would start a layout by age 40.  It is my time.