Hashing out a Freelance Road

[Bob Bufkin]

During the period you want to model, the Mopac and Katy has runthrough passenger trains with B&O, NYC and PRR cars in their trains.  Sounds like a good excuse to model some foreign cars on any passenger trains you could run.

Solid trains of cattle or sheep going to the eastern slaughterhouses would be another thing you could model.

[Matthew Roberts]

Thanks Bob. I knew of the Penn Texas, which had a lot of cars that traveled on the Mopac's Texas Eagle.

I think that those cattle trains might be something to do, Bob; sheep/goats around Central Texas were there more for the wool/mohair. San Angelo is the Mohair Capital of Texas.

[up1950s]

Thanks Bob. I knew of the Penn Texas, which had a lot of cars that traveled on the Mopac's Texas Eagle.

I think that those cattle trains might be something to do, Bob; sheep/goats around Central Texas were there more for the wool/mohair. San Angelo is the Mohair Capital of Texas.

Funny they named it Moo Hair instead of Baa Hair

[Matthew Roberts]

Mohair is off of goats, btw, richie.

[Bob Bufkin]

Learn something new everyday.  Didn't know about the Mohair.  If there was a lot of agriculture in the area you model, solid trains of reefers would also be great.  Always did like those AT&SF reefers from the wooden ones to the modern steel.

[Matthew Roberts]

Texas' big ag. region was the Rio Grande Valley, with the main road there being the MoP, which was why the Mopac had all of those ART reefers.

But, yeah, western Central Texas was/is a big mohair area, my dad grew up in a small town (from the 60s to the 70s) along the GC&SF that was at one time a major mohair shipping point, when that business decline (due to market prices, etc.), after the 50s, decreased in size from about 3000 to around 640. One of the few millionaires in town made his fortune on mohair. San Angelo was big on mohair. As was much of the area surrounding it.

[wm3798]

I really like Mohair...


Reminds me of Ringohair

Lee ;D ;D

[Denver Road Doug]

I'm guessing your talking about the plan I drew up Doug? In that version, San Angelo would most definitely be the hub of operations for the entire railroad, being right on the intersection of the Orient line and the Port Lavaca line, as well as near the branch to OK. All three of these lines would probably be high traffic, especially southbound, with export traffic (like grain from the plains, coal from Colorado, cattle, petrochemicals, etc.) Austin would most likely be the site of the road's grandest station, what being on the main Port Lavaca line, as well as the beginning of the branch to Houston.

Yes, the map you drew, not a layout drawing per se.  You mentioned modeling the line between Austin and San Angelo so that's what I was going from.  I'm not sure the Orient line would be the busiest, but definitely grain, coal, rock, cattle, and petro would all pass through the Austin-San Angelo corridor in large quantities. (hopefully!)  I was thinking that the station in Austin would be your passenger hub while San Angelo would be your large classification yard and shops.  My understanding of passenger operations probably precludes me from coming up with an intelligent system past that, but following is my best guess.  I'm thinking San Angelo would still have a decent passenger station as well and you could have "hops" out of San Angelo with either small trains or RDC's.  (from a quick Google search, the range of RDC's is about 450 miles, or a 225 mile round-trip.)  Mid-range passenger service would be primarily Austin-<any city bigger than 50,000 not named Denver or OK City> and Midland-Houston, among others.  Austin to Denver and Austin to OKC would be long range. (both with extensions to Houston)  Then, it would be the shorter hops for RDC's or shorty passenger consists for the less busy passenger lanes.  I would surmise that the Orient line would be lacking in passengers, but also might be outside the practical range of RDC's.  But Midland to San Angelo and San Angelo to Austin would be good "shuttles" for catching other trains.  Also, a single RDC-3 could provide (limited) passenger service and more importantly express mail service to the smaller towns across the system.  (remember, no Fedex or UPS back then!)

I do wonder though, how busy the line south of Austin to Port Lavaca would be, compared to the Houston Branch? I guess if by that time Lavaca had developed due to its own railroad, it might be equal or greater? ???

I'd say, here you write your own history!  It seems there would be a competitive advantage to having a couple of ports available to your customers but I don't know the economics of it all, or how Port Lavaca or CC are setup. (i.e. capacity to handle ships, etc.)  I would say embellishing Port Lavaca's role is almost a given.  It's your railroad, after all!

But what branches would be low-traffic enough for a RDC? San Angelo-Presidio, along with maybe Victoria-Port Lavaca or Victoria-Corpus Christi? What about Lubbock-OK City or San Angelo-Ft. Worth?

I think maybe all those might be candidates.  Again, I'm not sure though.  There's probably some scientific way of figuring out passenger traffic based on city size, related industries, attractions, etc.  Like I said, I'm mostly just speculating about all this...I'm sure some of these other guys can jump in with something based on reality.  There's probably a reason the RDC's weren't hugely popular, but if nothing but for small town express mail and light passenger service they might fill a void.

I'm having fun with this, too.  Given my interest in the Fort Worth & Denver, what you're doing is basically swinging it west a couple hundred miles or so and adding some ports and the Orient line so....good stuff.

[squirrelhunter]

This is going to be a long post, but I will try to provide what I know and my opinions to some extent to answer your questions.

Looking at your map, I would say that the "Last, Best way" part would be the line from San Angelo to Denver and the branches to Oklahoma City and Houston.

The reason I say this is because the Port Lavaca area hit it's peak in the pre 1890 era around Indianola. I could see an early road planned from Port Lavaca/Indianola through Austin to Colorado that is financially overextended until later fianciers resurrect it and finish it to Denver. The Prot Lavaca line would be a low density branch until the construction of the Coleto Creek power plant in the late 70's. There just is not much industry in the area north of Victoria.

The line would compete with the Santa Fe and the Burlington in the Denver-Texas market, but both roads would probablyu hand off traffic bound for Mexico via Presidio. Both roads would probably had off Mexico bound traffic at Lubbock or Ft. Worth.

Bridge traffic from Colorado would probably come from the D&RGW and would probably include coal and manufactured goods from the West Coast. Some of this might get handed off in Ft. Worth, Austin or Houston for roads serving other cities like San Antonio, or Beaumont. So I would suspect that MKT, KCS and SP would be big interchange partners in Texas. MP would already connect with D&RGW and would be unwilling to short haul itself.

As far as traffic orginating on line, grain, livestock and minerals would be major commodities on the lines north of San Angelo. Petroleum products would be big on the Midland Branch and decent on the Oklahoma Branch. The Ft. Worth branch would mainly generate agricultural products too, like peanuts. Gravel would be big from the area near Austin to Houston and maybe Ft. Worth.

I know you have kind of cemented the track plan, but I have one question and would like to make 1 suggestion. The question I have is where/how does your railroad plan to get into Corpus- it seems you plan is pretty similar to the existing way the UP gets from Victoria to Corpus. I guess why I am wondering is if you envision your railroad using trackage rights to get into Corpus proper over the rails of the MP or SP or having its own crossing of Nueces Bay/River. Not a knock or anything, just plain curiosity. I do not think many people who freelance really explore the idea of old trackagerights for entering major cities.

The suggestion I have is to extend the Oklahoma City line to Tulsa or Muskogee, to tap the petroleum traffic in the area and to make a connection with the Midland Valley roads.

As far as passenger traffic, I would guess the main train would run Houston-Auston Denver, with major secondary trains in the steam era to Ft. Worth and Oklahoma City. Other runs would probably be locals or mixed traisn that would dwindle away by the 1960's. By then I would guess the name train and a mainline mail/express/local would cover the Houston-Denver and San Angelo-D/FW routes. The OKC line might still ave a true local or have gone to an RDC. Same for the Midland Branch. I would guess there would not be enough traffic on the remianing lines to even justify an RDC, although I could see the Railroad Commission and the ICC mandating San Angelo-Presidio service with an RDC as a public necessity.

Sorry for the long post. I think you idea for a Great Plains-Gulf Railroad is cool, and the era you are talking about would give you a wide variety of rolling stock you could operate. Are you planning on having some "last gasp" steam?

[Matthew Roberts]

wow, squirrelhunter, that was long...

I think I might model the "last, best way" part on the Austin-San Angelo stretch, too. As well, in this reality, Port Lavaca/Indianola would not be just a sleepy gulfside town of a couple thousand, but instead a healthy port of around 75,000 people, that competes with Houston and Corpus Christi.

I could definitely see the line as a bridge route between some of the CO roads and the SP and some of the other southern grangers in Texas. And the traffic assessments are definitely right. What kind of petrochemicals would be shipped by rail in the 1950s-1960s? Since I'll most likely be modeling somewhere in between Austin and San Angelo, I will definitely be running aggregate trains, along with grain trains to port, and cattle extras of some kind south to packing plants in a more industrial Austin.

As to the line to Corpus, I'd never really thought of trackage rights, but that might be a more realistic setup, seeing as the road already has trackage in Houston and Port Lavaca. I more or less copied the route of the ex-MP trackage off of the AAR 1948 Atlas available online. I can also see an extension to Tulsa as reasonable, idea, especially for access to another petrochem hotspot and interchange with the Muskogee roads.

I guess I could have a real rundown doodlebug that made the run to Presidio, from San Angelo, stopping at Merzton, Big Lake, Rankin, McCamey, Fort Stockton, Alpine, and Marfa along the way. An all-stops 316mi-long local route. ;D And what would the name be of the main-line train???

Steam will remain if I model anywhere up to 1956-57, with oil-burning 0-8-0s, 2-8-2s, 2-8-4s, 4-6-2s, and 4-8-2s, along with a couple F7s, GP9s, and RS3s; and E7s on the passenger trains.

[Matthew Roberts]

I've put some more thought into this recently. ;D

Right now I'm in a conundrum as to how to actually model this railroad. I don't have too much room (about half of a 12'x17' bedroom) to make a layout in, and definitely not too much time (go off to college after this next school year!) I'd like to be able to balance out some ops with good scenery and probably reversing loops at each end (maybe hidden), as well as having possible staging on one end.

I think the "average train" I will want to run will be something like a Heavy Mike with a 15-20 car train, and have at least one passing siding, as well as some adequate industries to switch. Layout will probably be modeling the area between Austin and Burnet or the branch to Marble Falls, maybe right in Burnet, as on this freelanced route, it would have maintenance facilities for the branch line, as well as a good 2% grade on the line south to Austin.

I'm also pondering some of the layout aesthetics. Especially modeling a freelance road, I'm trying to make it seem like a probable alternative to reality. In that case, I'd like to know what some of the railroad facilities should look like. I'm thinking the stations ought to look similar to either Santa Fe, MoP, Katy, or Espee standard stations, to fit the locale? And whether or not I should include any kind of signaling, or say it's TT&O and not really worry about it...?

[Denver Road Doug]

So, half would be 8 1/2 x 12, or 6x17?  You should be able to get quite a bit of layout in either of those spaces.  Can you give us a diagram of the room?

Maybe since we're morphing into more of a layout design discussion another topic would be appropriate?

Will college be close to home?  A lot of us found that model railroading took a backseat during college so that might affect how you approach the design.

[squirrelhunter]

All this freelancing just to run a heavy 2-8-2? Man, get some big power like a 2-10-2, 4-8-4, or 4-6-6-4 and make freelancing worth your while!

As far as the singals vs TT&TO operation, almost every line is Texas was TT&TO until the 70's. Only a few routes like the Sunset Route which had heavy traffic had CTC. You could work in some ABS semaphores with you TT&TO however.

I also second Doug's comment that you should probabaly open up a new thread on layout deisgn and keep this one fopr concept issues.

[Matthew Roberts]

Doug:

it's actually more like 9'x13'x5' (three walls, a shelf running along all of them), I'll get that diagram in soon... ;D

I should put that in another thread!

If all goes as "planned", college will be anywhere from 670 to almost 1700 miles away. I'm hoping to get this baby running by the end of the summer.

squirrelhunter:

No, the Heavy Mikes will be more of the regular power on the layout, and the line itself. There's gonna be space for some 4-8-4s and 2-10-2s on it too!

Yeah, I might add some dummy semaphores for ABS.

What about the appearance of the railroad structures? Should they be similar to other Texas railroads? Not pull something out like one of those gingerbread CNJ or LV depots?

[Denver Road Doug]

I don't think I would get THAT crazy with the depots, but if you are looking for an idea, how about emulating D&RGW standards?  Draw on the agreements the two roads have regarding the joint line or something like that.

Outside of that, I have a book of ATSF construction standards that would probably give you a solid source of info if you chose to follow Santa Fe practices.