Modeling narrow gauge: Myths, clichés, and stereotypes

[Dave V]

Got to thinking again...LOL.  So when it comes to narrow gauge railroading, there are a lot of misconceptions out there that are often reproduced and reinforced in miniature.  Few names are as divisive when discussed in hobby circles as that of Malcolm Furlow.  On one hand he made modeling the Colorado narrow gauge very popular with his San Juan Central project railroad...but on the other his whimsical style has been misinterpreted by many as representative of real Colorado narrow gauge railroading and emulated ad nauseam.  And that's another point worth making...while Colorado and narrow gauge seem synonymous, nearly every US state had at least one narrow gauge railroad operating in it...from Hawaii to Ohio to Maine to California.  So let's examine some of the modeling pitfalls that arise from the myths, clichés, and stereotypes.

1)  Narrow gauge means barren, rocky, and exclusively vertical scenery.  False.  Whether it's the Tweetsie's Doe River Gorge or Dead Horse Gulch on the White Pass & Yukon, even the most vertical scenery on the narrow gauge is replete with vegetation.  Trees, grasses, shrubs...greenery of all kinds when not snow covered.  In fact Colorado is infinitely greener than it is usually depicted on narrow gauge layouts.  And then there's the verticality...  Eastern narrow gauge--Tweetsie perhaps notwithstanding--had much less vertical than western narrow gauge, but even in Colorado, for every mile Ophir Loop, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, or Clear Creek Canyon, there were many, many more miles of open country running through desert, grassy plains, or high alpine parks.

2)  Equipment was cute or decrepit.  False.  The East Broad Top was essentially a Class I in terms of modern all-steel freight cars.  Some of the first steel underframe freight cars in the country were built for the Colorado & Southern narrow gauge.  And even the D&RGW--a mostly all-wood truss-rod railroad to the end--maintained their equipment in proper operating order.  The whole swaybacked-until-the-quenposts-are-dragging-on-the-railhead is a Furlow fantasy that no real railroad--regardless of gauge--would ever allow.  The narrow gauge was still subject to the same federal safety standards the standard gauge railroads were.  And those little teakettle porters with antlers on the headlights...I can't speak for how many of those actually existed, but when I think narrow gauge it's an EBT mike or one of the larger D&RGW K-class engines that were essentially standard gauge locos on 3' gauge frames.  Then there's the WP&Y with 3' Alco diesels that looked as modern as any contemporary. 

3)  Colorado narrow gauge means soaring steel trestles.  FALSE!  Because Furlow had one on the SJC, it seems every Colorado modeler seems to want a few.  Yet, let's examine how many there were.  2 on the D&RGW San Juan Extension (still extant today on the Cumbres & Toltec), 1 on the C&S (Georgetown Loop...the most famous one), and a few on the short-lived and somewhat obscure Florence & Cripple Creek.  The RGS didn't have any and most of the D&RGW/C&S didn't either.  Plenty of steel through trusses and plate girder bridges, but not steel trestles.

And now for just a random assortment of things that irk me about some of the Colorado narrow gauge modeling I've seen:

1)  Saguaro cactus doesn't grow in Colorado.

2)  D&RGW K-28/36/37 class engines didn't run on the RGS and they were way too heavy for RGS trestles.

3)  I can think of two places were the main track crossed over itself on the Colorado narrow gauge...  Mears Junction on the D&RGW and the Georgetown Loop on the C&S.  You had some overlap of industrial trackage at Leadville and Cripple Creek, but the main crossing main stuff that seems to be a staple of narrow gauge railroading...just isn't common at all.

4)  Tunnels...  The D&RGW had two between Antonito and Chama.  The DSP&P had one at Alpine.  The Florence & Cripple Creek had a few in Phantom Canyon.  But that's it of the hundreds of miles of narrow gauge track in Colorado.  So if you're going to use a tunnel...it should be one of those or well disguised.

5)  Weathering.  It's not a matter of slapping sh!t all over a car to make it look "old" as I once thought.  Narrow gauge cars weathered the same way standard gauge cars of similar construction did.  Paint peeled, rust developed, mud splattered, cinders showered...and weathering should reflect the process by which the weathering occurred.  Any time one applies a new weathering effect it should be with a context (for example "this white represents lime used to clean out the stock car between shipments").  I first "learned" to "weather" watching Furlow's weathering VHS tape from Kalmbach and years later I had to unlearn it so I could stop destroying my stuff.

What narrow gauge myths, clichés, and stereotypes have you encountered?

[Chris333]

It is very hard to come up with a trackplan and not have tunnels.

[Dave V]

It is very hard to come up with a trackplan and not have tunnels.

True.  The East Broad Top had two, so there's that...

[hminky]

There was lots of narrow gauge all over the country before the mass extinction.



Harold

[Santa Fe Guy]

Well said on all points Dave.
Rod.

[nkalanaga]

"D&RGW K-class engines that were essentially standard gauge locos on 3' gauge frames. "

The D&RGW K-37s were literally "standard gauge engines on 3' gauge frames", as they were rebuilt from standard gauge 2-8-0s.  By the 1930s the San Juan Extension was basically rebuilt to standard gauge clearances, except for the tunnel ceilings.

And Alco built standard gauge DL535s, no "E" for Mexico.  Other than high short hoods, and no winterization hatch, they look very much the same.  Both look like a shortened RS-3, and an RS-3 could have been narrow-gauged by simply swapping the trucks.

[johnb]

The Southern Pacific Narrow Gauge had a section of tangent track that was about 45 miles long.......

[C855B]

The Southern Pacific Narrow Gauge had a section of tangent track that was about 45 miles long.......

That was the Inyo line, right?

@Dave V is right about the misperceptions, and, frankly, I blame Model Railroader for that. Under Linn Westcott they had a habit of latching onto contributors who 1) modeled extremely well and 2) knew how to photograph for publication. Can't blame them, it was a rare combination. Folks like John Allen, f'rinstance, also doing the same sort of period "cute", albeit in standard. Anyway, you'd see the same interpretations over and over (and over) in the premier MRR magazine, reinforcing an authoritative tone for the genre.

About soaring trestles... these expensive structures were actually counter to the objective of narrow gauge ROW construction - cheap. Or at least, cheaper than standard gauge. I'll slightly disagree about narrow gauge isn't automatically mountainous & barren, because of the construction advantage of narrow - less earth to move, fewer rocks to carve-away. Made a big difference in difficult terrain when earth moving depended on strong men and stronger livestock.

I've personally never given it much thought because classic narrow gauge modeling seems to be circa 1900, and that particular look and feel is independent of gauge. Narrow gauge to me is industrial, although I find modern Australian narrow gauge to be fascinating... and puzzled why it hasn't been "standard"-ized.

[High Hood]

While they not be "real" railroads, Appalachia had plenty of narrow gauge when it came to coal mine trackage. 

https://imagebase.lib.vt.edu/image_viewer.php?q=NS0717031017

https://imagebase.lib.vt.edu/image_viewer.php?q=nw1309

[Chris333]

There was a 36" gauge railroad at the end of my road. It later became the B&O standard gauge. I read they had to open up one rock cut to convert it.

[DKS]

Maine two-footers were, apparently, thriving well past the turn of the century, and profitably at that.

In another life, I'd be modeling one.

[eric220]

One of the only narrow gauge lines that I'm really deeply familiar with is the Colorado Central.  It's famous for its line up Clear Creek Canyon (very vertical) up to Georgetown, and of course, the Georgetown, Breckenridge, and Leadville extension that included the Georgetown Loop.  What a lot of people don't know it that much like the railroad that it was absorbed into, the Colorado and Southern, the Central actually had more standard gauge track than narrow gauge.  It built north out of Golden toward the Union Pacific line near Cheyenne, WY in a bid to be the link from the heart of Colorado and the Kansas Pacific to the transcontinental railroad.  The goal was to circumvent Denver and make Golden the economic and political hub of the region.  This was a railroad that was built with a purpose.  It was intended to be a serious link in the national rail network.  The narrow gauge line was to be its link to the rich mining communities in the mountains.  This was not a two-bit operation.

A note about verticality and curves.  Both the Central and the South Park (the two that I'm most familiar with) very deliberately stayed down in the floor of the valley close to creeks whenever possible.  That gave them an emergency water source.  If one of these lines left the floor of the valley and started building up the side of the mountains, it was a deliberate deviation, for example in order to gain altitude below a point where the valley floor grade was too steep.  The most famous example, of course, being the Georgetown Loop.  Keep in mind, that particular piece of railroad was an exception to the rule.  It was built with Union Pacific/Jay Gould money while the Central was under UP/Gould control.  The Devil's Gate High Bridge, which cost the equivalent of many miles of track, was a drop in the bucket to them.  Also, staying near the creeks in the valley floors provided the railroads with a direct route, which is another issue I have with the way narrow gauge (and for that matter a lot of railroading in general) is portrayed.  These were built to move things from one place to another.  To me, quintessential Colorado railroading looks like something like this:



Just a pair of steel rails winding along a creek.  It's lonely.  It's isolated.  The one or two passenger trains a day and a wagon road are the only way in or out.  The rails only passed or crossed other rails when they had to, and then they moved on.

[eric220]

2)  Equipment was cute or decrepit.  False.

This is one that really irritates me, especially when talking about Colorado.  The Colorado railroad scene has its roots in the transcontinental railroad.  When the UP was deciding where to cross the rockies, Colorado interests wanted the route to come through the state.  A potential route was surveyed up Clear Creek Canyon by Captain Berthoud, to the pass that he discovered north of Georgetown that now bears his name.  Of course, the UP eventually chose to go north through Wyoming at a much lower altitude, but the players who were involved in that effort set the stage for what became the railroad scene of the late 1800's.  They knew that the mountains were full of minerals and precious metals, and they knew that railroads transporting those resources out of the mountains could be highly profitable.  This was the dot-com boom of its era.  Money was pouring in, and everyone was convinced that these railroads would be the next big thing.  (And in one case it was... The Rio Grande started out as a narrow gauge competitor to the Central and the South Park, and wound up as a major class 1.)  These railroads were importing locomotives from Baldwin and Cooke; they were not (mostly) cobbling together some contraption from parts lying around the shop.  Even oddballs, like the South Park's Mason Bogies (one of my all-time favorite locomotives) weren't built because they were cheap; they were built because the builders thought that it was a better design.  Like the dot-com era, not every idea that got off the drawing board proved to be the best once it got into the wild.

[Dave Schneider]

The Quincy & Torch Lake near Houghton and Hancock, Michigan are a favorite of mine. We lived in some rooms in the former mine superintendent's house while I was attending graduate school at Michigan Tech. The Quincy Mine was located across the road and I spent many hours wandering around there. I picked up a Bachmann On3 locomotive a while back and it still holds my interest. Here is a nice page about the Q&TL.

http://smallmr.com/wordpress/small-layout-ideas-quincy-and-torch-lake-railroad/

Best wishes,
Dave

[Chris333]

I like the Q&TL.

A favorite of mine is still the Mann's Creek railroad. Eastern   Hauled coal. Had a logging operation. 6% grades were normal. Many twists and turns going up Mann's Creek valley. Sharp curved trestles. Started out with two 0-6-0's:


Then switched over to Climax's and Shay's


No equipment ever said "Mann's Creek Railroad" It was Babcock coal and coke or Sewell Lumber co.

Oh and the had plans for a tunnel!    never built though.

EDIT: The plan for the tunnel was along with the plan to standard gauge the RR. That never happened. The narrow gauge RR operated till 1955. After that trucks took over. The "coal dump" wall was removed so dump trucks could back up to the bin to drop coal instead of their coal cars.