One year later: Let there be railroad

It's trite, but how quickly a year goes by these days. More than a year. I have been busy with just about everything but this record of the construction of the CTC Railway. And despite the inaction on the blog, the railroad has grown enormously. It is tracked, ballasted, rock-molded, painted, blanketed with what must be thousands of trees, airbrushed into fall colors, and is now having its industries and structures built.

I also bought a used Prodigy Express DCC system, and got two new DIgitrax DCC decoders for my Atlas SD60 and Atlas MP15 for Christmas (how many guys have a beautiful wife who is a great mom and who also buys them decoders?). The last engine, the GP38-2, already had a Lenz decoder in it that I am having a tough time figuring out.

I have even made a set of car-forwarding waybills for my 26 freight cars, been dissatisfied with it, and created a new system in Filemaker that lets me add new cars and destinations easily, print out reports and use them to run an operating session.

As of this writing, I have about a half dozen industries "open for business."

One of these days I will throw the blog open to public view. Guess we're getting close, now that there is a lot to look at.

Here are some pictures. Refer to those earlier, long-ago posts for how I came up with the industries.



Building Tenbridge pylons, looking south.


Same, looking north.



This is looking down on the interchange yard area, with the long-ridge divider blocking the staging tracks back against the wall. I think I took this to show the span of Tenbridge (Walthers double-track bridge kit) and the towers (scratchbuilt from Plastruct and cardstock) sitting and waiting for installation.



Here's where the branchline rounds the hill on Moccasin Bend. This was at the foam-smoothing stage, when I was sculpting the landscape and carving drainage ditches, etc.



Here is the same scene months later, with rock and scenery in place and track being ballasted.






The plate-girder part of Tenbridge was scratchbuilt with Plastruct and basswood. Even the plate girders were scratchbuilt out of sheet styrene with thin strips glued on. That took a while, but I could not see paying a lot for pre-molded plate girders when they can easily be made.



Here's the two plate girder sections of Tenbridge on the work table for painting.



The whole deal, with roadbed in place, looking "south."



Daughter paints the foam, turning pink into olive drab in one day!



Tenbridge coming together! Still need to put the towers with their counterweights in place.



This is the south end of the interchange yard, where there is a little swamp full of dead trees.



The branchline crosses North Chickamauga Creek on this wooden trestle bridge. The concept is based on a little wooden trestle that crosses South Chickamauga Creek in reality. The real North Chattanooga branchline doesn't cross any streams to speak of.



Here's Tenbridge, relatively complete, with the water done and the riprap on the shore installed. The riprap is just road gravel picked up near my house, held in place with matte medium.



Here's a closeup of the riprap on the north shore, under the bridge.



This view is from the south end of the interchange yard, looking north. The staging tracks are at left.



Newly laid and glued ballast at Colco Furniture Co. in Red Bank. Looking back, I really wish that I had not used any roadbed on the branchline. Too late to change that. I would have liked to have that light-duty branchline feel.



This is Signal Mountain Cement in its first stages - nothing but pieces of PVC pipe and parts from an old HO coal facility. It's looking a lot better now but still isn't ready for its close-up.



Here's Ergon Terminaling, still under construction. The barge bulkheads are made of the middle layer of some "fine gauge" corrugated cardboard that I steamed apart. The oil/asphalt storage tanks were cut from a wide cardboard spool. The pipes are electrical wire from household conduit, bent and straightened to shape and painted white.



This is GEO Specialty Chemical so far, a manufacturer of water treatment chemicals. The buildings are scratchbuilt, but I based the big one on Pikestuff's modern warehouse. Many of my buildings are scratchbuilt replicas of commercially available kits. I can find reference pics online, then draw up "my version" on graph paper.



Here's a nice view heading into the interchange yard from the south. A sharp right curve and you're in the yard.



Finally, for right now, here is Chattanooga Brick and Tile in Red Bank. The pallets of bricks are just little wood blocks, appropriately painted.