New Structures at Farmington

Two weeks ago, Kansas City hosted its bi-annual Prairie Rail event. This is an invitational operating weekend where railroaders congregate from all over the country to operate four railroads during the three days. This year, we had over 150 attendees operating on over 30 model railroads. The Stockton & Copperopolis was privileged to host two sessions with ten operators each. Fortunately, the railroad behaved and everybody seemed to be having a good time. Only minor problems  came up and were easily solved. I heard nothing but good comments about the event in general.

   

The Farmington Winery sits at the end of a spur at the edge of Little John Creek. The boiler house is in the rear. I still need to add some wine barrels and a vat or two around the outside. I will do that when I do the final mounting and scenery work.

 In the leadup to the event, everything was cleaned and checked but no new work was done for fear that some new problem would arise. In this period of limbo, I literally dusted off a kit I had been saving for over 20 years and decided to assemble it. The Farmington Winery was born! The basic kit was a Railway Design Associates mill which looked very much like some of the old California wineries. Not much in the way of modifications was done as it looked good the way it was.

   

The California Models cottage. The weather vane was added from an etched kit I had been saving. The house will sit on the other side of the tracks from the depot near the main town district.

 During the same time period, I finished another kit started several months back. It was an early kit with a lot of wood and paper details (no nifty Grandt Line castings here). It is going to be in the background so any lack of detail would not be noticed anyway. It turned out all right but the modern laser kits are more the way to go.