Another Layout Design

John Olson passed away three or four weeks ago. Other than John Allen, John Olson, along with Malcolm Furlow, had a huge impact on my railroad modeling and how to convey my vision. The first Olson article I read was in the January 1974 issue of Railroad Modeler (now defunct) and it featured his switching layout in HOn3, the bait was set. In 1975 we moved to Colorado and the narrow gauge hook was set; hook, line and sinker.

When I learned of his passing I pulled that old issue out (yes, I still have it and a replacement copy as well) and decided that I was going to finally build this layout and do it in On30. What I found out in later years is that this layout is based on a switching puzzle on a model railroad called the Sagatukett River RR at the end of the line in a small town called Equinox (I found it in a Kalmbach book; "Track Planning Ideas from Model Railroader: 58 Track Plans from Past Issues). John built it fairly close but lengthened the tail tracks on the wye to hold an engine and a caboose as well as an extra siding.

I traced the original plan (because I also have a very dog eared copy of that book) and then enlarged it to my favorite scale of 1/8th of an inch equal to 1". I roughed it in and made some notes. Then I pulled out some On30 freight cars, my small Porters (0-4-0 and 0-4-2) and the Mogul (2-6-0). Made some measurements and determined that I could probably build it in about the same amount of space. I'm going to try and stay true to the original so the tail tracks will only hold an engine which will require 12" to handle the Mogul. If I stick to cars that are at least 20' long then that isn't quite long enough to hold a Porter and a freight car at the same time, keeping true to the original design. I'm not sure about the extra spur yet.

That brings the total number of, potential, layouts to 3; Warehouse Row on the D&RGW set in the 60s, the C&N featuring the town of Salina at the turn of the century, and the Equinox layout (likely to be renamed and it will let me give it a nice puny name).

Here it is in all its hand drawn glory. I'll do something a bit more to scale when I replenish my supply of graph paper.

The Roger Malinowski Tribute Part 4 - The Bakery Will it Ever be Finished?

Work slowly continues on the bakery. I think its approaching completion but time keeps slipping by and days can go by without any real progress.

Here's where things stand at the moment (and actually there has been some progress since I took these):

I really messed up the "glass" in the windows so I pried it out. I have some good plastic to replace it with but I still need to cut it to size and reinstall it.

For the blue trim I thinned down some Reaper Void Blue so it would go on like a stain.

This is prior to some of the framing but I did apply a wood greying wash to try an tie things together better. It did help ease some of those color transitions so it looks better than before.

At this point I'm still trying to figure out how to deal with this back edge, since the rear wall is removable for the lighting it makes for an interesting problem to solve. Not to mention that the damn wall started to warp on me so I have to figure out a solution for that as well.

Cartoon Wednesday

 

Cartoon Wednesday

 

The "Cliff Hanger Mine" Down the Historical Rabbit Hole

 Back in 2025 there was a photo and an article in the Narrow Gauge and Shortline Gazette for a structure the author referred to as the Cliff Hanger Mine. He couldn't find out anything about it and just opted to build the structure, which is great all model railroaders do that. However, I found it so intriguing that I started digging into it, and the hole is deep.

Here is the photo, it is literally built into the cliff side, this photo has cut off the drop off directly under it. 

And some other views I found online, these came from a Facebook Group:

Its missing a couple of key features; there is no apparent adit where the ore would come from and there doesn't seem to be a way to get the ore from the bins to a wagon or truck below it. In the background of the last photo you can make out a structure on the left. That's a set of massive ore bins for the Commodore #5 mine in Creede CO.

In the end I discovered that this is an Ore Sorting building. So it has ore bins, obviously, and then the chutes would be open slightly and ore would be poured out on to a sorting table. The good ore went into a plank chute coming out the open side and down to a waiting truck (this building was built in the early 30's). But where did the ore come from? Looking at the last photo again you can see a pile of waste rock (tailings) running from the complex, with the big ore bins, to this sorting building. There is a rail tram running along the top of that pile and it would dump ore into another chute that feed the ore bins from above. So ore was provided by rail. Apparently the building was not part of the Commodore complex per say but was used by a company that leased a portion of the Commodore mine. The Amethyst vein runs through that mountain and there are literally miles of tunnels in there.

I learned a lot more about the complex but its this little structure that might find a home on my layout.