The Woods Line -- I

John Allen's G&D layout is a major inspiration for mine, although I have maybe half his space. One thing he did was incorporate logging operations in his plan. There was a log reload at Sowbelly, which is depicted on this RMC cover. As far as I can tell, logs were loaded in the scene here at Sowbelly and hauled to a sawmill at Andrews. I don't have space for a sawmill, so the logs will need to go to a sawmill in staging.

John Allen was also in my parents' generation, and the railroad scenes that inspired him mostly date from the 1930s, 40s, and early 50s -- he seems to have lost interest in the prototype when steam was phased out, as well as when lines like the Virginia & Truckee were abandoned.

I come from a later generation, and I like diesels and newer equipment, though I don't rule out the steam era completely.

Railroad logging hasn't completely disappeared. But up into the 1980s, the BN and Milwaukee Road hauled a lot of logs in the Pacific Northwest. My own operation is inspired by late operations like these, as well as other late log haulers like Weyerhaeuser, the Camas Prairie and the Oregon, California & Eastern. It currently uses power leased from BN/GN.

My woods line runs from a connection with the main at Loma Linda, over a trestle, past a wood chip loader, and ends at a more modern style log reload. The engine house at the connection was scratchbuilt from foamcore and Paper Creek building papers, with Grandt Line parts:

The reload area is currently in work. Here's how I roughed it out:

This won't be the G&D at Sowbelly, but it'll be an equivalent scene, 50-60 years later. I'll go into finishing the reload in my next post.