An agricultural survivor...

Close your eyes and imagine flat fertile farmland, light weight rails, strings of stored reefers and the distinctive and slightly asthmatic sounding exhaust of a classic GE 70 tonner...

Photo: Paul Leach (http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=3930893)

You’d be forgiven for thinking I’m beginning another blog post about my Kinross project and the wonderful 1970s Canadian National branch-lines across Prince Edward Island. However, move your imagination further south, a lot further south... let me introduce the San Luis Central Railroad...

The prototype is a 13 mile short-line heading due north from Monte Vista ('mountain view') in the San 

Luis valley, Colorado, USA. Incorporated in 1913 to initially serve a sugar beet processing plant, this closed early and the line settled down to a rural and agricultural existence. Passenger service ended in 1937, the railroad has only owned three locomotives... a 2-8-0 steam locomotive lasted in service until 1956 replaced by the lines GE 70t, built 1955 and bought for just shy of $80k. Their SW8 is actually older (built 1952] but bought third hand arriving in 1988 for $32,400. The GE still wears the paint it was delivered in!

These 70 tonners were a classic design, intended by General Electric as a 3/4 scale EMD SW1, at a price to match and light weight too, perfect for industrial and short-line service and offered with attractive financing - factors I’m certain led to the purchase by the railroad. Today, still earning its keep for the job it was bought for, in our modern world there is something comforting about it’s longevity. A real character, massive potential for lead actor, all the qualities I love. It’s a survivor, but more than that, a hard working one...

However, the railway itself is arrow straight, bar some gentle curves as the line crosses the Rio Grande (yes the Rio Grande river) and as with the UK on many countryside branch lines, the facilities are long and stretched out, yet narrow, squeezed between agricultural land on both sides (wonderfully described as a rail fan excursion journey) and this poses some challenges for modelling. 

Center is a long thin site, over a mile long, with grain elevators, mill, fuel depot and produce warehousing.

As I see it, there are two options here; either modelling in N gauge with a room (or single garage) sized 'complete system' from the interchange with the former Rio Grande at Monte Vista, to the end of the line at Center... or as a cameo, a snapshot of character... 

For me, the latter route suits both my preferred scale (H0) and my available space (small cameo or shelf layout only). I've also got a lovely hand made trestle bridge, which holds a strong personal connection to my childhood, built by my father, the road bed is actually a slat from the mattress support of my first bed! When Mum sold the family home, the bridge is one element I saved from the layout, managing to carefully extract it without damage, and I've been pondering how to use or display it ever since...

You'll have to squint a little, but imagine a blue sky back scene, suitably sun bleached roadbed and dry dusty scrub, a few trees and a green 70t and suitable freight car, crossing over the Rio Grande... here my CN model and an Atlas 3 bay are repurposed temporarily to stir the creativity, and help write this rather long winded blog! I envisage a similar footprint to Kinross, but with more vertical, allowing the river bed to form the base of the scene, as if you're stood on an island mid stream, viewing the passing trains. 

There is a small industrial and agricultural processing facility on a short spur just north of Monte-Vista. The spur is south of the river, but the line crosses on a separate bridge to end in a pair of tracks on the edge of the agricultural cultivated area. I ponder if this would lend itself to using the 'Overlap' as a concept?

An alternative, if I had the space, would be to re-claim our 'bottom room' (a converted single garage) and install a 8-12ft long by 9ft wide shelf layout, in the style of Iain Rice, with inspiration from Center and a little porto-freelancing thrown in - big mountains in the distance, blue skies, agricultural buildings surrounding light weight and run down but still serviceable track, slow switching, modern ex-Amtrak reefers, 50ft boxes and grain cars all lettered up for the SLC... that distinctive GE70t would have to be sound fitted, perhaps even stretching to the SW8 as well... even including the engine shops in a re-arrangement of facilities? I've not sketched this, although I may well do...

The purpose of this blog was to book mark my interest in this little rural back-water - to pull together and weave the strands of inspiration into a narrative that I can revisit when the time comes and see what models are produced from that energy - as well as sharing and perhaps encouraging you to look for those inspirational prototypes, anywhere in the world, and move from a passing interest to a more engaged understanding, perhaps even scratching the itch, as I said recently on the Kinross video. In the meantime, I'll be looking at another inspiration in the coming weeks. Until then, more soon...