California Fast Freight Line

Two of the CFFL cars sit in Oakdale awaiting a shipment of grain. I chose to weather the cars a little heavier than normal since they would be fairly old and due for rebuilding.

As I had mentioned in my last blog post (Bridges and Boxcars), I have been working on ten resin boxcar kits. This morning, I put the finishing weathering on them. With the exception of one car, they are all lettered for the Southern Pacific and the California Fast Freight Line. The CFFL was one of many fast freight lines formed in the days following the Civil War. In those early days of railroading, shipping numerous items by rail became problematic due to transshipments due to gauge differences and other factors. The fast freight line was set up to allow shippers to group their items in cars which received expedited services. Of course, an additional fee was charged for this service.
   Merchants' Despatch was one of the first of the lines followed by the Union Line, Empire Line, Red Line, Blue Line, White Line and other colors of the spectrum. In all of these, several railroads furnished cars to the line and received income based on their participation. The CFFL included the Central and Southern Pacific, the Union Pacific, Rock Island, Milwaukee Road and the Chicago & Northwestern.
   By the late 1880s, improvements in rail service led to the disbanding of most of these lines including the CFFL. By 1891, the SP had started to rebuild their cars to include air brakes and more modern (for the time) safety appliances. This included repainting the CFFL lettering to the large circular SP herald. Of course, all of this took time and, in 1895, there were still numerous CFFL cars on the SP roster.These show up in many photos of the era, enough so that I wanted a representative number of cars on the S&C.
 

Decals for the cars were a combination of Art Griffin's CFFL set and ones using my own artwork. Griffin also has sets for the CFFL cars of the UP, C&NW and CM&StP and they are definitely worth the price. 

The cars were built from Silver Crash Car Works SP boxcars which are well-made and go together easily. Unfortunately, they are no longer available from SCCW but may be on the used market. The trucks were the swing-motion Allen trucks used by the CP and SP and still available through Shapeways. I used Reboxx wheelsets for the trucks which worked fine. The trucks are fairly fragile and do not endure much flexing to insert the wheels. They do, however, glue back together easily with CA adhesive. Couplers are Kadee 711s.
   For anyone interested in more information on the fast freight lines, see Railroad History No. 141. RRH is a publication of the Railway Locomotive & Historical Society (www.rlhs.org) and is a great railroad history magazine. That issue has an article entitled "Origin & Growth of Fast Freight Lines" by William W. Chandler. The article was initially published in 1889. John H. White's book The American Railroad Freight Car also has some good information.

Bridges and Boxcars

One of the finished trusses temporarily mounted on the piers. The finished bridge will be assembled on the layout.

The last few weeks have again been hectic with traveling to various events. The annual Virginia & Truckee RR Historical Society was held in Carson City Nevada at the first of October and was great as usual. It's the only place that I know where several early railroaders, both modelers and historians, gather. If you aren't a member, take a look at their website (www.vtrrhs.org). The society has a great quarterly magazine and publishes at least one book on the V&T each year.
 

Built in 1885, the wood structure lasted until the late 1890s. This view looks
 south into Oakdale

When I finally ended up at home, I decided to start construction on the Stanislaus River Bridge. This bridge was built in 1871 and allowed the S&C to enter Oakdale. It had two 140-foot wood Howe Truss bridges and several hundred feet of approach trestle. In amongst all the other things, I started on the two Howe trusses and managed to get them finished. It was not difficult work, just tedious. I started by making a jig so that the four sides needed would match and started cutting and gluing stripwood together. Making the metal tension rods took a little bit longer.
 

Each bay of the bridge had five tension rods at the joint. Mine were made from .015 inch music wire. Grandt Line NBW
castings cored .020 inches were used for the nuts at either end of the tension rod.

When the truss bridges were done, I started on the wood piers but then ran out of wood. I ordered a huge supply and, while waiting for it, started work on some Silver Crash Car Works boxcars. These are 28-foot cars and follow a Southern Pacific prototype, just perfect for the S&C. I purchased 20 of these a few years back and am just now getting to them. These managed to get finished except for paint. I'm waiting for the trucks to come in so I can paint everything together. This was not a great setback since the wood arrived in the interim. This allowed me to finish the two piers (the third pier is trestlework).

Ten boxcars await paint. The prototype of these cars was built to handle trade for the California Fast Freight Line, a traffic
expediter arrangement between the Central Pacific, SP, Union Pacific, C&NW and Rock Island.

   The jig for the trestles has been made so I will probably start putting the bents together next. More later after the paint arrives and/or the bents get built.

More Buffalo Bill

One car, two different sides. Artwork by John Ott greatly enhanced the appearance of these cars over my earlier attempt.

As I mentioned in my post on the Buffalo Bill Advance Car 3, I had the artwork for cars 1 and 2 and wanted to build those.  Those cars were a little more problematic as they would have to be scratchbuilt. Fortunately, I had good photos of both cars and could scale dimensions from them. The first thing I learned was that the cars had different lettering on each side. That would make things more interesting on the layout since both sides of the cars can be seen from different parts on the railroad.
 

Car Number 2 with just as much colorful lettering as Number 1.

The first thing I did was scale out the cars using the wheel diameter as a standard. According to this, both cars were about 50 feet long. Coincidentally, this was the same dimension as the MDC passenger cars. I used the floor and roofs of these cars as the basis. The windows and ends were Westwood parts. For those who might not be aware, Westwood made passenger car kits around the late 1960s. They used a series of windows and doors to build up their car sides. I have a number of these parts and found what I needed among them. Evergreen styrene passenger car siding took care of the sides. The doors on Car No. 2 were built up from .020 thick styrene.
 

Prototype photos of Car Number 1.

The end beams of the platforms were cut off the MDC floor and Cal-Scale end railings installed. A "possum belly" tool carrier was installed on each car built from scribed styrene. The duckbill roof of Car 1 was an MDC part. The contours of this roof are a bit strange so I used drywall joint compound to fill in the unusual groove on the roof which was then sanded smooth.
   The lettering decals were made from the tremendous artwork developed by my friend, John Ott (www.ottgallery.com). It was adapted in the same way as Car No. 3. Trucks were from Bitter Creek Models (www.bittercreekmodels.com).
 

Prototype photos of Car Number 2.

Now I have three advance cars. How were these used on the prototype? A few weeks before the show was due to hit town, Car No. 1 was sent out with a crew who would paper the town with posters advertising the show. When the job was done, it moved on to the next town on the show's tour. Meanwhile, Car No. 2 was visiting the outlying towns close enough to the show town that residents could join excursions to see the show. Car No. 3 was held in reserve. If another, competing, show tried to play the same town, No. 3 was dispatched on the first train. They would again paper the town, stage some sort of exhibition, anything to draw attention to the Buffalo Bill show instead of the competitor. It should work for some additional car movements on my railroad. In any case, they are nice-looking cars and were fun to build!

Civil War Railroading

The General in the Kennesaw museum.

One of my long-time interests has been the Civil War incident called The Great Locomotive Chase. Ever since seeing the Disney movie in 1956 (I was very young then), I have wanted to visit the area where the raid took place. Last week, I finally had my chance. My wife, Becky, is a quilter and one of her associations held a convention in Chattanooga. While she was learning more about her hobby, I was roaming the Georgia countryside looking at antebellum railroad depots (several still survive!) and locomotives.
   Both the General and the Texas (two of the locomotives used in the raid) are still in existence and preserved in Kennesaw and Atlanta respectively. The Kennesaw museum, The Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History, is where the General is situated and has a great display on the raid. Also, very nicely, it is located adjacent to the tracks of the old Western and Atlantic Railroad and just about 100 yards from where the train was stolen on April 12, 1862. Both of the engines have changed considerably from their Civil War era appearance but the restorations are probably the best that could have been done with the information at hand.

The Texas as found in the Cyclorama building in Grant Park.

  The Texas is located in Grant Park in Atlanta in the same building with the Battle of Atlanta cyclorama. It is not as nicely restored as the General but it is still preserved.

Erected in 1890, the graves of the executed members of the party surround the monument.

Chattanooga is the home of a Veterans' Administration cemetery and contains many of the soldiers killed during the battles for that city. In 1890, the surviving members who participated in the Great Locomotive Chase erected a monument to their comrades in the raid which contains the names of all who were there. The seven members of the party who were executed as spies are buried adjacent to the monument.
 

Buffalo Bill Rides Again!

John Ott's great artwork resulted in this car built from an MDC passenger car kit. Note the wood blinds in the windows.

One of the many weaknesses I have is for circus advance cars. These are the cars which moved ahead of the circus to plaster the advertising posters over every barn and building side they could find. The cars were usually decorated very gaily since they were a rolling billboard. Way back in the March 1995 issue, Railroad Model Craftsman published an article of mine on how I built cars 1 and 2 for the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show. The cars themselves were scratchbuilt but used commercial dry transfers. I was able to fiddle with the transfers a bit to get a couple of different colors and I still use them on the railroad.
  Recently I discovered that there was a Car No. 3. John Ott (www.ottgallery.com) had turned up a prototype photo of the car and had made some artwork for the lettering. His car looked fantastic so I asked if I could use the artwork to make a similar car. He generously agreed. The result is my Car No. 3. It is basically a Model Die Casting coach. Very little was done with it other than to replace the truss rods with nylon fishing line and use body-mounted couplers. Intermountain wheels also replaced the kit's plastic ones.

Eager employees of Bill Cody stand before their rolling office.

    The hard part of the car was adapting John's art into a usable decal. While I use an Alps printer for most of my decals, it just doesn't do very well with colors which morph into other colors as are on the lettering. If I used an inkjet, the decal would not be opaque enough and the car color would show through greatly changing the appearing. Some of the decal would disappear altogether. To solve this, I printing a white decal on the Alps and applied it to the car. This provided my opaque undercoat. The colored part of the decal was then printed on inkjet decal paper. Aligning the color decal with the already-applied white one was a little tricky but I think the result was worth it.
   With this done, I am enthusiastic about building new versions of cars 1 and 2. I have new and better artwork for them as well, thanks to John. You should take a look at his website when you get time. He's done some interesting things building cars and structures.

A Beginning . . .

The Sierra Nevada Mountains can be seen from the line of the Stockton & Ione. In August, most of the grass on the foothills is dead with some contrasting bushes and trees.

Many of you may have noticed that the Stockton & Copperopolis has had no backdrop other than a painted sky. The main reason for this is that I have been wary of trying to do any painting of hills, trees, etc. In school, art class never really interested me and I have had little in the way artistic training. A few years ago, though, I attended a clinic put on by Dave Biondi of California. He is an excellent artist and gives good explanations of what he is doing and why. We had the opportunity to talk for a while and I eventually purchased a DVD showing how he paints California type foothills. After reviewing this DVD, I finally felt somewhat confident in trying my own hand. If things went wrong, I had plenty of "sky" paint to correct the mistake.
 

The Amador Coal Company mine will be located in Ione. Hillside scenery will be added to the left and right sides of the mine building and blended in with the backdrop.

 Today, I painted part of the backdrop along the Stockton & Ione line. There were no structures as yet so the painting would be easier. Here are the results. I still don't consider myself an artist but at least I feel I can do some justice to the backdrops of the layout.
 

The mine building is left from my last layout in California. It will be re-
purposed into the Amador Coal Company's headquarters.

   Over the last few weeks, I have also managed to install lighting and valence along the S&I. It's starting to look like a railroad!
   Next comes the backdrop behind Ione City at the end of the line.
   By the way, if anyone is interested in the Dave Biondi DVD, it is entitled Painting California Foothills and Forests and is a two-DVD set. It is available from Daryl Huffman's website.

Colorado (Model) Railroading

Harry Brunk's model of the Georgetown Loop on his UC&N RR in Cheyenne. Platforms allowing viewing from different angles.

Over the last week, my wife and I have been in Colorado. Quilt Colorado, an annual was being held in Longmont this year so we decided to go. I told her that I could probably find something to do while she was enjoying her convention. As it turned out, I found a lot to do. The first day I traveled up to Cheyenne, Wyoming where Harry Brunk's fabulous Union Central & Northern Railroad now resides. It is on a second floor of the old Union Pacific depot and is being nicely restored. If anybody is not familiar with the UC&N, the books Up Clear Creek on the Narrow Gauge 1 and 2 can provide you with plenty of material to digest.
 

One of many small scenes in Blackhawk on the UC&N. These structures were
scratchbuilt.

The layout was removed from the trailer in which it lived and was spread out with larger aisles and additional sections being added. Eventually, the railroad will extend all the way down to Golden including a Beaver Brook scene. I was told that Harry comes up to Cheyenne occasionally to help out with the work. It was really great for me to see a railroad whose construction I have followed for the last 20-30 years.
   On the way back from Cheyenne, I stopped in at the Greeley Freight Station Museum. It contains a very well-done model

Wider aisles allow better viewing of large scenes like Idaho Springs shown
here.

railroad which occupies about 5,500 square feet. I am a little skeptical of museum type layouts but this one was done to a high standard complete with mini-scenes and very realistic scenery, bridges and rolling stock. There is a "club" which consists of volunteers who run the museum and explain things to the public. They also get to operate the railroad on certain days of the month. Set in 1975, the railroad can accommodate 85-car trains. It's worth a visit if you are in the area.
 

An overall view of the Oregon Central & Eastern, the freelanced railroad in the Greeley Freight Station Museum. 

The next day I journeyed to Colorado Springs and visited some of the Colorado Midland and D&RG related sites. Visiting Palmer Lake was something I had wanted to do for some time. I was also able to get some photos of some structures which might find a place on the S&C. All in all, I did manage to find something to do.