The Bedroom-sized Walla Walla Valley Railway (September 2001-October 2004)

NOTE: Due to our family's move to a new home, the WWV layout discussed here is now "past tense." In early October 2004, I hosted the last operating session on the bedroom-sized WWV, and shortly afterwards dismantled the railroad for the move. A new WWV is in the planning stages, featuring more prototypic track arrangements as well as some rural running. For the final photographs of the WWV in operation, click here.

On an earlier incarnation of this website, circa early 2001, I wrote of my Walla Walla Traction layout: “. . . it’s altogether possible that with more research and knowledge of the Walla Walla railroading scene, I’ll abandon the WWT concept and go whole hog WWV. . .the more I research railroading around Walla Walla, the more I’m convinced that this mid-sized commercial city with a maze of industrial spurs and three railroads provides a limitless amount of great operation and modeling.”

This did, indeed, happen. Two things pointed me down the road to modeling the actual Walla Walla Valley and distancing the layout from the fictional WWT: participation on the Layout Design and Operations/Industry Special Interest Group lists on Yahoogroups.com, and correspondence with Marc Entze, a railfan, modeler and historian in Walla Walla.

Through the internet groups, I was able to bounce ideas and questions about how a shortline would have handled its interchange business. I wasn’t sure that I wanted 1/3 of the visible area of the layout consumed by a double-ended switching yard, when a prototype shortline would likely do much of the sorting of interchange cars out on line. Removing the yard would also allow me to add a couple of industries, as well as better model the urban/industrial atmosphere important to the theme of the railroad.

Questions I had about “how” the WWT would interchange led me to research UP and NP operations in the Walla Walla area during the era I model, the late 1960s. As a result, my interest in the Walla Walla Valley really took off, fueled in the early summer of 2001 when Marc Entze began sharing with me his research of library and museum documents relating to the WWV. His photographs of existing buildings once served by the WWV and hand-drawn maps of Walla Walla and Milton-Freewater convinced me to take a critical look at the fictional WWT.

Goodbye WWT, Hello WWV. . .

It wasn’t long after the WWT was featured on a layout tour of the Lone Star Region NMRA convention that the decision to instead model the WWV was made. Changes to more closely mimic the WWV included:

• Removal of the four-track yard, replaced by a few commercial buildings and a bulk oil dealer. Two tracks were retained as a short run-around.

• The line to Potlatch mill became street trackage.

• The WWT roundhouse was replaced by a cannery; the ice house was replaced by a beverage distributor.

• Bench work was added for a scaled-down version of the WWV’s brick car barn on North 13^th Street.

•  A hole was punched through a wall into the closet, allowing a version of the NP “Valley Yard” interchange with the WWV.

• The original three-track hidden interchange yard became strictly a staging area for UP interchange cuts.

The era of the “new” layout based on the Walla Walla Valley was kept about the same, from roughly 1968 to 1971. The WWT SW1’s were “retired,” and replaced by models of the two BN SW1’s acquired in 1971 and sublettered for the WWV, and a pair of Alco HH660’s, kit bashed as WWV 770 and 775. Further cementing the identity of this railroad as the Walla Walla Valley, is the freight car fleet, heavy on insulated boxcars and silver Northern Pacific mechanical reefers and based on actual WWV waybill and car movement records preserved at Whitman College.

My own research into the Walla Walla Valley continues. I spent a few days in February 2002 photographing the remnants of the railroad and its environment and digging through company archives. There’s lots still to learn, and a ton of material that will prove useful in a future, hopefully larger incarnation of the WWV.

Next: Operating the layout

WWV's Carbarn Both of WWV's HH660 switchers are fired up and ready for a day's work outside the railroad's brick carbarn, a holdover from electric interurban days.	UP, WWV meet WWV's 0700 switcher waits clear at Orchard Siding for Union Pacific's transfer run to arrive with interchange cars.	Switching cannery The WWV 0700 switcher pulls the loads from the Rogers Walla Walla Canning spur, the first of three such switches the railroad's largest shipper recieves each day.	UP heads for home The Union Pacific geep off the transfer run ambles onto Rose Street while the WWV job waits in the clear, ready to return to Orchard siding and begin the job of classifying the day's cars.
At Termicold Fireman Frank Curcio rides the front platform of WWV 770 as it switches Termicold cold storage. In the late 1960s, WWV stil ran with a five man crew--engineer, fireman, conductor, and two brakemen. That cab could get crowded.	WWV jobs meet By 1100, the afternoon WWV switches has come on duty, and the two jobs meet at Orchard siding, where the morning job is switching ice reefers bound for the Blue Mountain Prune Grower's co-op.	The Honkytonk The 1100 switcher passes Marvin's Highball Lounge en route to switch the Potlatch mill. Marvin's is always hopping, and a frequent stop for WWV crews for lunch. . . you just can't get enough of those picked eggs they sell at the bar!	Parallel switching For a few hours in the afternoon, both WWV jobs are hard at work at the same time. On the far left, the 0700 job switches Rogers Canning; on the right, the 1100 job runs down Rose Street, past the Conoco jobber, en route to the Potlatch mill.
Switching Conoco By 1968, the era of bulk oil deliveries to the Conoco dealer on Rose Street is nearing an end. Here the afternoon job prepares to couple onto an empty, bound for refilling at Conoco's refinery complex in Billings, Montana.	Passing signs A brakeman passes hand signs to the engineer while picking up a pair of woodchip racks at the Potlatch mill. The chips will be forwarded to Pasco on the NP, then travel the SP&S to a paper mill in Camas, Washington.	Leaving Potlatch A brakeman flags down traffic on Rose Street at the afternoon switcher returns from Potlatch with a few cars of woodchips and finished lumber.	Heading for home Proceeding at a cautious walking pace, WWV770 eases down Rose Street past the Conoco jobber, enroute back to the NP Valley yard to finish distributing outbound cars for NP and Union Pacific.

 

ABOVE: The engineer fishes for a new pack of smokes as he waits for the rest of the crew outside the WWV carbarn to clamber onto the 770 for a day of swiching.

Current track plan of WWV layout. Click on image for full-sized view. Rendering by Donovan Furin.