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Decisions, Decisions:
Why Model the WWV?
Unless its owner is extraordinarily
well-off financially, all model railroads, with very few exceptions, are
compromises. Actually, a model railroad is nothing BUT compromises, for
decisions must be made not only in shrinking salient parts of the prototype
down to a ridiculously small scale, but in era, equipment, fidelity to
prototype, method of operation. . . the list goes on and on.
I used to think my “dream railroad” would
be the jointly-operated NP-UP Camas Prairie, part granger, part
logger. With its rocky canyons, steep grades, huge wooden trestles, and
trains of logs and 40-fo ot grain boxcars, it’s a natural. When the
modeling bug hit me hard again in 1993 after a decade’s absence, I was
living in Spokane, Washington, in a great house with a full basement. Even
looking at the available space, it was apparent that to squeeze even a
portion of the CsP into the apparent vastness of a 40’ by 25’ room would
be a grave disservice—in my mind, I wouldn’t be happy doing the Camas
Prairie without Lapwai Canyon in all its glory.
We won’t even discuss the compromises that
would have had to take place to shoehorn an HO version of the CsP into a
10’ X 11’ spare bedroom, which is all the space I had available in when I
moved to Texas in 1995.
What could fit in a room this small? In
Texas, we don’t have basements, so a spare bedroom it would have to be, at
least until the next move to a bigger house, several years down the road.
I had several boxes full of equipment germane to my original plan to model
the Camas Prairie in the 1960s, but it was clear that I wouldn’t be
satisfied with “Camas Prairie In A Bedroom.” But what to model? I dabbled
with the theme of a Union Pacific branchline meeting a logging shortline
(inspired by the UP Condon branch and the lumber hauler Condon, Kinza &
Southern in northern Oregon), and even built bench work and got laying
track. I had most of the equipment needed to equip the railroad, but given
the small space, the railroad seemed constrained. . . and the track plan
and track work were less than satisfactory. The railroad came down about a
year after I started construction, the screw holes in the drywall plugged,
and the room revered to being a storage unit for all my model railroad
stuff.
Choosing a Prototype
The experience forced me to look at what I
really enjoy most in the hobby: spotting and pulling cars on industrial
spurs, the place where “the railroad meets the customer.” While I gave
some thought to an urban switching operations, or some sort of car
barge/industrial yard type layout, my interests lie in Eastern Washington,
the Palouse Region, and the Clearwater country. I grew up in the Seattle
area, but my best experiences and memories of watching trains are in
Eastern Washington. Luckily, both NP and UP had scads of branchlines in
this area, and they frequently crossed each other, often in little rural
towns with grain elevators and farm implement dealers. Several places in
Eastern Washington and North Idaho featured more than two railroads—the
sawmill town (and now tourist trap) of Coeur d’Alene until the 1970 BN
merger hosted FOUR railroads (NP, GN, UP subsidiary Spokane International,
and Milwaukee Road); to the south, at Palouse, Washington, the NP,
Washington Idaho & Montana (a Milwaukee subsidiary after 1960) and GN’s
former Spokane, Coeur d’Alene & Palouse all interchanged.
Creating A Shortline Scenario. . .
To take advantage of my limited space, I originally
decided to create, partially out of thin air, partly inspired by actual
railroads, a small shortline which would interchange with the NP and UP.
The big roads would appear out of staging, drop of a few cars in the
shortline road’s tiny yard, and return with outbound cars. The shortline
then would sort these cars and distribute them to its online industries.
I’m a big fan of the timber industry, so a lumber mill was a requirement.
The mill would ship finished lumber in boxcar and on flatcar, and
waste-product woodchips for use at a distant pulp and paper mill. And
since Potlatch Forest Industries had such influence over the Camas
Prairie, I decided that wherever I decide to locate my railroad, it would
serve a PFI operation.
I’m also a sucker for the eastern
Washington fruit industry—strings of ice bunker (drip, drip, drip!) and
mechanical (whrrrrrrrrrrr!) reefers ready for loading at one of the large
brick or concrete fruit sheds in the Yakima, Wenatchee, or Walla Walla
Valley. While very little fruit moves by rail out of Washington anymore
(the trucks have gotten it all, and what reefers there are ship frozen
French fries), the artifacts of the railroad’s perishable era remain. In
Yakima, Sunnyside, Wapato, Selah, Walla Walla and a half-dozen other
places in the southern half of the state, paved-over spurs, old packing
sheds, and weedy right of ways give hint to the importance the railroad
once played in local agriculture. And most of Eastern Washington is
tree-free, a bonus, as I’m not into intensive scenery, as operationally it
adds little to the railroad. While some folks may like to sit for hours
and make hundreds, even thousands of small trees, it ain’t me, babe.
So now that I know what kind of traffic I
want to ship, what locale and railroad could I pattern my shortline after?
The choices became clear in Yakima and Walla Walla, both places served by
UP and NP. At Yakima, the Union Pacific-controlled
Yakima Valley
Transportation Company operated an electric freight
railroad into the 1980s. UP yellow steeplecab switchers plied quiet
residential streets and busy boulevards to switch fruit houses large and
small. The street-running and curbside railroading is a huge appeal, as are the tight curves and little
locomotives. Across town, NP’s White Swan branch actually passed through a
lumber mill’s log yard to get out of town; other NP branches in Yakima
reached northwest to Tieton, and southeast to Moxee City—these were all
populated with packing houses.
YVT is very appealing—and quite well
known. I didn’t feel like stringing trolley wire (though a flat
plastic
kit by
Cannonball Shops of a generic GE steeplecab switcher—very close to the
YVT 298--makes this tempting), and to dieselize it would take away most of
its charm. To the east a little more than 100 miles was the other
prototype for my bedroom railroad, the Walla Walla Valley, another former
interurban that operated south out of Walla Walla to College Place,
Washington and Milton-Freewater, Oregon. This railroad was a Northern
Pacific subsidiary, not quite as well-known as the YVT. After WWII, WWV
replaced its electric motors (at least one of which is planned as a brass
kit by Cannonball Shops) with Alco HH660s, which lasted until shortly
after the BN merger and replaced by former GN and CB&Q SW1s in 1971. The
railroad eventually abandoned in 1985.
The prototype trackage arrangement in
Walla Walla was a rat’s nest of intersecting NP, WWV and UP tracks. At
Milton-Freewater, there was extensive street running and another cluster
of improbable track arrangements. For modeling, Yakima’s strength was its
location on the Northern Pacific mainline; for Walla Walla, it was being the
center of a small cluster of both UP and NP branchlines, as well as the
WWV. I opted to model Walla Walla, and originally decided to create my
proto-freelanced shortline, Walla Walla Traction Company, be a stand-in
for the Walla Walla Valley, circa 1969. This satisfied me long enough to
get a layout up and running. . .
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Originally, I planned to model the
Camas Prairie, and its large wooden bridges (seen here is Half Moon,
largest on the railroad). But a move to Texas in 1995 changed those plans.
. .
More manageable to duplicate in a
spare bedroom was a portion of the UP-owned Yakima Valley Transportation,
but, OY! Modeling overhead! YVT GE motor 298 is seen on Yakima city streets
in this
December 28, 1962, photo from the collection of Bob
Rathke.
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