The New Name

A while back, I realized that the name Wolf River & Nicolet was out of place: The Nicolet Forest wasn't so named until sometime in the 1930s, when the federal government took it under protection as part of the effort to re-propagate it. So began a lot of ruminating and dithering as I contemplated a new railroad name. In the process I also thought more clearly about the railroad concept.

The end of all that has resulted in the name Wolf River & Lake Superior Ry. Co., a short line that grew out of a logging line but attained common carrier status and links Green Bay and Superior in an arc across northern Wisconsin through the woods and lakes around Eagle River and then the Lake Superior Shoreline through Ashland. At more than 300 miles from terminal to terminal, it's a bit long for a true short line, perhaps, and being the 1930s, it's struggling to remain independent. Expect trains from the C&NW and perhaps the Milwaukee Road to make use of its tracks from time to time.

And we have a settled-on herald as well. Here it is:

Further Revisions

Mostly these days I am mumbling in the corner and thinking out loud about this railroad project over at the Model Railroad Forums (see the blogroll).

But I will bring things a little up to date. After some further tweaking of the track plan, I have it about as complete as I think I can.

(The color coding has been just to make it easier for me to do some grade calculations when working on the plan in SCARM, the free Model Railroad CAD program I've been using. It has no other significance. I've been assured that based on the scale of my plans for operation, I probably do not need to divide this into power districts. That said, I may actually gap it for power districts now with the idea that I would implement them later.)

The biggest further change has been to add a combined reverse loop (mostly hidden) and wye (mostly visible) in one corner to make it possible to run out and back operations, either from staging to staging and back, or from Eagle Junction to either staging  and back. Through trains can start in staging and run from St. Matthew through Eagle Junction and Aaronsburgh and back to staging, or they can run the opposite direction.

I will probably make further revisions, particularly to Aaronsburgh, now that I am in the 1:1 planning stage. My objectives with Aaronsburgh will be to both allow for as much operation as possible (in other words, increase opportunities for picking up and dropping off cars) but also to make sure there's room for the urban scene (albeit small, northern Wisconsin, 1930s urban :-) ) that I envision.

The triangle to accommodate the wye/loop at St. Matthew hasn't been built, and won't be until the actual planning is complete. I want to make the loop and wye occupy as small a space as possible so as to make the triangle as small as possible, and I'm reserving that task for the 1:1 planning phase that I am now entering.

I've put the first 2-inch layer of foam on 3 of the 4 sections. The fourth piece just needs to be cut to fit, and I need another tube of adhesive for it.

Name Change?

I'm thinking about changing the name of my fictional prototype railroad from Wolf River & Nicolet. It turns out that the Nicolet Forest didn't get that name until the 1930s. Although I am setting the railroad in that decade, it doesn't seem plausible to me that the name would have predated the forest's having been named that. (The US Forest Service named the forest for the 17th century French explorer Jean Nicolet.)

I really like the ring of the name, but even though it is freelanced, I do want it to be as plausible as it can be given the setting in geography and time. And I also have second thoughts about the use of Wolf River. As far as I can tell,  names of carriers in the region reflected communities served, rather than just geographic features.

So I think a name change is likely...

Revised Track Plan

A few weeks ago I ran into a professional in the model railroading field. We met a few years ago when I wrote about Milwaukee's unique status as a center for the hobby. When I had interviewed him, I mentioned I was itching to finally get going on a layout. On the occasion of our reconnection, he asked whether anything had come of that, and I told him that, indeed, it had.

"Well if you ever need any advice on anything, just send me a note," he said -- and not just once, but several times -- so I think he wasn't just being cordial.

So I sent him the plan I posted previously, and got back a detailed and helpful assessment of it. He thought it was pretty good, but suggested some changes: Improving the reach at Aaronsburg, reconfiguring the siding and yard at Eagle Junction so that the yard and engine terminal was closer at hand to the central operating area; making the staging track double ended; and bringing the three tracks on the lift-out close enough together that the lift-out itself can be narrower than 18 inches originally contemplated.

Taking his advice to heart, I revised the plan. Probably the biggest change was getting rid of the triangular space in the upper right corner of the operating area so that the reach to Aaronsburg is now within 2 feet or so. The staging area also underwent some major revision, and various other tweaks were made.

I like the way it looks.


The full plan

Staging details

Visible Track Only

I've only added two structures: The engine house (A Walthers kit I bought some time back on eBay), and a planned brewery that will be part flat, part 3-d structure, located in Aaronsburg.

And for the fun of it, here are some 3-D renderings of the layout.

We have a trackplan

I've been working on the details this week. I decided to use a freeware program for this purpose... pretty cool, actually.

Here is a trackplan, in a couple of forms, and then a rendering 3-D style...

Thank you, Craigslist!

Last night DairyStateMom, DairyStateKid-M, and I hauled home four slabs of 4x8 by 2 inch DOW Styrofoam XPS insulation board. I bought the material at a substantial discount from a guy who had it leftover from a siding job on his home. (The seller kindly helped make it easier to haul in our small vehicles by slicing it into smaller pieces under my direction, reflecting how it would be cut up for the layout.)

I'd been looking for a few weeks for a cheaper source of this stuff, the favored scenery and roadbed material for layouts. Now I have enough for the entire layout. I may need to get a bit more either half-inch, three-quarter-inch, or one-inch thick, but even of that I have some other leftover stuff courtesy of a friend.

The final benchwork section is about two-thirds finished. When it's all together -- this weekend, perhaps? -- I'll post pictures.

Now it's time for me to return to the track plan details. Of course it would have made sense to firmly work out the track plan before even building benchwork, but as I have reported previously, the benchwork was originally constructed with a completely different configuration in mind and only repurposed when I concluded I could do a lot better than the first configuration.

As for the track plan itself, I have compiled a ton of different plans from which I can draw particular concepts for the new configuration. I have a clear idea conceptually for the plan now, but precise elements remain to be developed.

If I don't have the plan finished by about mid-August, I plan to take my drawing supplies on a vacation and hope that by my return, those details will be sufficiently finalized to enable me to start putting down cork roadbed and track -- maybe even by Labor Day weekend!

Typefaces: Updated

A couple of months ago, I posted a selection of typefaces, using the HTML editor to render them. I've realized that they were not consistent from one computer and browser to another. So while I am leaving that post up, I decided to make a new post presenting the same document as a graphic. I hope this will show more consistently the various typefaces I am considering in connection with the Wolf River & Nicolet Ry. Co.

As before, if you wish to comment on which you like best, you would be welcome to do so.

A note, too, on time period, as that might be relevant to evaluating appropriate typefaces: My greatest preference would be to set it in the 1930s, just after Prohibition. I am trying to ascertain, however, whether that is an appropriate time period for the scale of logging I would like to depict. I don't mind if this is an era in which logging is in decline in Northern Wisconsin, which by all I have read so far it certainly was, but I want it to be at least realistic and appropriate to have some continuing logging and railroad operations associated with it in this period and locale.

If in time I conclude that is too far removed from reality (even for a freelanced railroad), I will fall back to the first 20 years or so of the 20th Century, before Prohibition.

If you have any knowledge and information you'd like to share on these points, you're more than welcome to do so in the comments.