HOn3 Rio Grande Southern First District 1938-1945

[Chris333]

Looks like that last WW&F loco. It derailed off to the side like that and the railroad just closed down. Loco sat there for years.

[Dave V]

Oh, I really want to come to your open house! Can I? Regrettably no...

I really hope that someday you could get a chance to see it.  Your inputs in the design phase were indispensable...especially given how unfamiliar the prototype is to you and my unwillingness to compromise a vision I struggled to articulate.  Additionally, your scenery work and ability to perfectly capture time, place, and season inspired me to attempt the same.  What I ended up with is not a model of every other model of the RGS, but something drawn directly from the real thing...something I know is a guiding principle in your work.

Some day, man...and the beverages of your choice are on me.

[Dave V]

I finished that outfit car kit from Narrow Gauge Colorado:





The RGS moved a lot of lumber.  There was a huge sawmill at McPhee, connected to the RGS at Dolores via the Montezuma Lumber Company's narrow gauge railroad.  It also appears the RGS received lumber from the D&RGW via the Ouray Branch, probably originating at Cimarron and Sapinero on the 4th Division.

So...How to model lumber?  With plastic, of course!  Owl Mountain Models makes plastic lumber loads that are really fun and easy to work with, and with a bit of artistry can be made to look like raw wood.  In fact, the base color is extremely realistic, so a little thin washing and drybrushing along with some brush-on Dullcote was all that was required to finish it:

http://www.owlmtmodels.com/lumber/3004_3005_Narrow.html

I built a Precision Scale kit for a D&RGW 6500-series 40-ton capacity 40' flat car.  The prototype for this series were built from standard gauge flats.  The D&RGW simply narrowed them and put them on AC&F cast narrow gauge trucks.



So I wanted to model a specific prototype:  D&RGW6502

With luck, the narrow Owl Mountain load, designed to fit inside standard gauge gondolas, happened to fit the width of the 6500-series exactly.  The result:





I made that load permanent on that car.

I still had a lot of leftover bits.  The Blackstone 6000-series D&RGW flats are a bit narrower even than the 6500-series.  While they were nominally 20-ton capacity, they were worn out and attrited to single numbers by the 40s, so they were loaded to less than their 20 ton capacity.  The good news is that if I narrowed the Owl Mountain load by one board, it would fit perfectly.

I made this load removable:



So now I'm hauling cut lumber just like the real RGS:



The difference in capacity between the nineteenth century car and the modern steel car can be illustrated nicely.

[Chris333]

 

[wm3798]

No October video update?  What am I supposed to do?  Work on my own layout?  Sheesh.

Lee

[Dave V]

No October video update?  What am I supposed to do?  Work on my own layout?  Sheesh.

Lee

LOL, don't worry...  I'm going to do a another ride-on video one of these days.

[Dave V]

I replaced the older-style electric box headlight for a Pyle national headlight on 347.  This is the headlight she wore from 1935 to 1938.



This locomotive came to me undecorated with a green boiler.  I lettered her for RGS 17 with a planished iron boiler.  Later I changed her to D&RGW 347, since that's the engine the undec was based on.  However, there's at least one more change awaiting the 347.

I was able to get my hands on a limited run of San Juan Central decals!

So...  The story goes that in 1938, as the 347 was whitelined and ready for scrapping at Salida, the San Juan Central purchased her for one dollar above scrap value.  At the time, the RGS Ridgway Shops had been reorganized under receiver Victor A. Miller, so the RGS was actually able to underbid the D&RGW for the overhaul on 347.  347 was hauled dead in tow from Salida all the way to Ridgway.  After a year in the shops, the 347 emerged in new San Juan Central paint (but, in keeping with SJC practice, kept her former D&RGW road number).  Since the Ridgway crew were working on their now-famous RGS "Sunrise Herald," they made a similar herald for the San Juan Central.  The SJC, eager to be associated with the slightly more successful RGS (which is really saying something!), promptly acquired the SJC stencil and lettered their other two 2-8-0s (360 and 361) and caboose 0400 to match.

[Dave V]

The Micro Trains HOn3 steel under frame flatcar is based on a C&S prototype. You can get it lettered in a number of schemes.  Most come with arch bar trucks, but the one lettered as a D&RGW 6000-series truss rod flat (which had arch bar trucks IRL) comes with cast steel trucks.  It clearly looks nothing like the 1890s-era truss rod flat car it's lettered as, but with the C&S cast steel trucks it is a very good approximation to one of the RGS flats converted from steel underframe C&S stock cars.  I added the grab irons, steps, and coupler lift bars and gave it a new paint job.  RGS stock car 7451 was cut down to a flat car in 1942 and used mostly by maintenance of way crews.

[Dave V]

OK, it's total fanboy time.  I just finished her this evening:

[kurmujjin]

Nice job, Ke-mo-sabe!  Looks right at home.

Wayne

[davefoxx]

OK, it's total fanboy time.  I just finished her this evening:

I get it.  I drooled over those same issues of Model Railroader in the 1980s.  This brings back fond memories from my youth.

DFF

[Dave V]

I get it.  I drooled over those same issues of Model Railroader in the 1980s.  This brings back fond memories from my youth.

DFF

And that's just the start...  Yesterday I lettered up a beat-up old Labelle D&RGW combine that I'd built in high school--a bit crude to use with my Blackstone passenger cars but just the ticket for the SJC--as the SJC's "Tincup," 'cause why not?  I already have boxcars 45 and 46 in SJC.  I have another MRGS caboose kit en route (the very same Malcolm used for his SJC caboose 0400) and I'm considering re-lettering an otherwise disused C&S gondola for the SJC.

The beauty is that save for the caboose kit and the sunrise-logo decals, all of this is being done with stuff I already have on hand, some of which was never going to leave a box otherwise.

More and more I like to fantasize about extending my prototypically faithful RGS to an interchange with a much more impressionistic SJC.  Then again, the idea of modeling the San Juan Central as a functioning, proto-inspired realistic narrow gauge railroad is also very attractive.

There's so much I could do if I were freelancing that would still have one foot in the reality of the southwestern Colorado narrow gauge network.

[davefoxx]

That's awesome, Dave!  I recently added a Milwaukee, Racine & Troy boxcar to my fleet.  I was fortunate enough to railfan this layout when I toured Kalmbach's offices in August 2016.  And, I swear I will someday paint and decorate a Seaboard Central locomotive.  This, as you may recall, was an MR project layout in the 1980s.  I have the decal artwork for Seaboard Central locomotives, because I wrote in to MRVP a few years ago.  I just need to find someone with a functioning ALPS printer that can print the decals in white and blue.

So, as stated above: I get it.  I also love it.  Keep the SJC alive.

DFF

[Dave V]

That's awesome, Dave!  I recently added a Milwaukee, Racine & Troy boxcar to my fleet.  I was fortunate enough to railfan this layout when I toured Kalmbach's offices in August 2016.  And, I swear I will someday paint and decorate a Seaboard Central locomotive.  This, as you may recall, was an MR project layout in the 1980s.  I have the decal artwork for Seaboard Central locomotives, because I wrote in to MRVP a few years ago.  I just need to find someone with a functioning ALPS printer that can print the decals in white and blue.

So, as stated above: I get it.  I also love it.  Keep the SJC alive.

DFF

Trust me, I read the HELL out of the Seaboard Central and Kitty Hawk Central series.

With the notable exception of the Terry Thompson years, MR has done some pretty fantastic project railroads.  I think the Clinchfield really started that ball rolling.

It would have been really neat, back when both Blackstone and Micro Trains were cranking out the RTR HOn3 stuff, for MR to revisit HOn3.  Although something proto-based would have been refreshing, of equal awesomeness would have be an "San Juan Central Revisited" with modern layout design theory and new scenery products.

[wcfn100]

Not too late to go back to standard gauge. 



(just came across ebay)

Jason