1943 model train layout

[Fushigi Ojisan]

I don't know which is greater, your fabrication or photography skills. Amazing stuff.

Your Whitcomb reminded me of the locomotive that used to reside at the Navy Base near my childhood home, according to the site I pulled the photo from, it was manufactured in 1951. Locomotives were auctioned off in 2006 right about the time the railroad spur was converted to a "rail trail"

[Lee Bishop]

I don't know which is greater, your fabrication or photography skills. Amazing stuff.

Thank you very much!
I've been surprised how well it's been received, especially by the hobby press. Every magazine I've pitched an article to has offered to run something (except for Model Railroader, a magazine that doesn't like to run stuff in the gauge I model). O Gauge Railroading magazine accepted a new article of mine recently and the editor told me he wants to run it in the January 2019 issue, which is the biggest issue of each year. This will be the most 'mainstream' magazine I've gotten into (there's a photo of mine in the current issue right now, issue # 300 which can be bought at many book stores and even some Wal-Marts).

Your Whitcomb reminded me of the locomotive that used to reside at the Navy Base near my childhood home, according to the site I pulled the photo from, it was manufactured in 1951. Locomotives were auctioned off in 2006 right about the time the railroad spur was converted to a "rail trail"

Nice locomotive, and I'm glad to hear it's still out there somewhere.

[Fushigi Ojisan]

Forgot to mention I used to build dioramas as a hobby min Middle/high school, go fairly decent at it, now I wish I still had them (like just about every other person in America, I think my mom threw them out at some point). I can appreciate some of the detail you put into your work, especially the weathering techniques.

To roll it back a bit. I grew up near the U.S. Naval Ordnance Station in Indian Head MD (I think its the Naval Surface Warfare Center Indian Head these days); my Dad worked there from 1951 to 1988.

The base itself had quite a few spurs going everywhere, but they all joined a central line that went from the base itself through Charles County MD to White Plains MD, where it joined with a branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad and finally CSX. As a kid in the 1970s I recall that locomotive (and one in battleship gray) traversing the tracks from time to time, but never bringing in cars (by this time, it was easier to truck things down via Route 210). The base also used the locomotives for various open-house events where they used them to conduct tours.

At one point, some entrepreneur tried to use the line for a dining car service, but given its only 13 miles of track, they had to go fairly slow. They used an old EMD E-units and converted LIRR passenger cars for dining. The venture failed, the EMD locos ended up at a power plant at the end of the branch (think they are still there to this day) and dozens of LIRR passenger cars were stored on old quarry tracks in Waldorf before they were scrapped in place (CSX refused to haul them because they were poorly-maintained and derailed every time they tried)

At some point the DoD transferred the line to Charles County MD, which converted it to a rail-trail. The soon-to-be-stranded locmotives on base were auctioned off (the one in the photo plus an EMD SW8 that had been transferred from the Army's Aberdeen Proving Grounds). Both ended up being trucked out.

As a bit of a side-note of history, once the rail trail was up and operational, the Charles County Government acquired a vintage sign from the slot machine era (1946-1968) that was restored and became the entrance sign to the rail trail

This is how the sign looked back in the day, presumably the arrows went on-off in sequence


And how it looks today

[Lee Bishop]

In what I essentially consider a staging area, there's a window right behind everything for part of it. If the lighting is right, I can open the blinds and just at the right angle, get something like this:

[Lee Bishop]

I took a few more photos with my cell last night…

GI waiting to go on leave at the Buladeen depot:


The old men are hanging around at the Grindstaff store at Sadie again, pondering the war “across the water” and some are remembering when they went in 1917:


The Unaka factory at Winner sure could use a new coat of paint as it hasn’t been painted since the Depression. But they still know their role in the war, as the war bond posters are out and the sign on the door keep applicants away who are either going to be drafted soon or are listed as conscientious objectors (which was not a popular thing in that time and place):

[Lee Bishop]

August, 1943:
The old men are hanging around at the Grindstaff store at Sadie, TN, talking about the raging war "across the water," some comparing it to their time in France in 1917. A farmer digs out his ration card for his aging pickup truck, thankful that the tires are still in good shape.

Not far away, a Jersey cow grazes and ponders nothing about such things...

[Lee Bishop]

I was playing around with the cell yesterday afternoon (my trains weren't running for much of the weekend due to a bad breaker in the panel that ran just the plugs in this and two other bedrooms, but it got fixed) and got this once I was able to power everything up again.

[Lee Bishop]

Over the weekend, I stripped off what never looked like a realistic walkway to the back of the Buladeen, TN depot.
I scraped out a realistic path, then laid in some real soil from the area I model, added static grass and I think it looks much better than before...

[Lee Bishop]

This was the most amazing thing I have run into yet. First off my hat is off to you in this incredible and I mean incredible display of your talent!!

I mean it is truly amazing to see what people do in there life, and I wish I had time to doing something like that but it is good that you are taken time out of your life to enjoying the mysteries of what God does. I mean I would be curious to seeing how many hours you have in this, or maybe I should say years!

Thank you very much.
It went from pile of lumber to "green and lumpy" in just over 2 years. I did something every single day I was home, no matter how small.
Yes, for this hobby that's unusual, and most people who have built a layout are surprised to hear that. Once said I'd made more progress in 2 years than many make in 20

[Lee Bishop]

In an attempt to keep my mind off the hurricane that is rolling into my parent's area right now (also where I grew up and have several friends in the area, NONE of whom are going to get out of the storm's way), I decided to make a new layout booklet.

It looks like a timetable on the cover, but it's really a general guide to the layout for visitors. It has the fictional history of the line I model, a list of the magazine articles in which the layout has been featured, and some other information.
I had changed some typos, changed out some WW2-era ads, and put a new cover (with a drawing of a ET&WNC train, in place of the post-war ET&WNC logo that never looked right to me on the cover).
Every first-time operator to the layout gets one.

[Lee Bishop]

So, I was hanging around the Grindstaff store at Sadie, TN, just waiting for something to happen.
It was a little boring at first:


Then, here comes the 12:30 to Buladeen. Naturally, my camera jammed right after taking this shot, losing the best photo I'd hoped to get. Oh well, that's the chance you run when you're shooting with a Speed graphic...

[Lee Bishop]

I haven't really spent much time on the layout over the past week, due to a new addition to the house-
Meet Sweet Pea!


She's a dachshund/poodle crossbreed, 8 weeks old and only weighs just over a single pound. She's tiny but also SO cute!
We haven't had a puppy in many years so we're having to re-learn how to deal with one. So needless to say, she's taking up our time at the moment (which for the most part, I'm just fine with).

[chibobber]

"Sweet Pea", Your southern is showing.

[Lee Bishop]

"Sweet Pea", Your southern is showing.

Nope, my wife (who is from Oregon) decided on the name. It never even occurred to her that is sounded Southern and I sure wasn't going to tell her that before she decided on that name.
Sweet Pea really suits her, as she's such a nice little pup (though she's teething right now and chewing on everything).
I snapped a couple of cell sots of her walking on the layout (the cutest Godzilla wanna-be there ever was) just for the heck of it.

She was only paced on the layout, I leaned back and got the two shots, then got her back off the layout. There was no danger of her doing a triple-half-gainer off the layout, in case anyone is wondering. Poor thing, she was trying to figure out what this new surface was at that moment.

[Lee Bishop]

I haven't done much with the layout recently other than currently drilling holes to a few of the structures for the lighting
(I have the Woodland Scenics "Plug/Play" lighting system ready to go) as the new puppy takes up most of our time.
I did get these shots last night for the heck of it and liked how they turned out: