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This article is reproduced from the January
92 issue of the old printed membership directory,
observations made for this reproduction are
identified like this in the article.
Where is the Garfield Central RR ?
By Wally Lloyd.
In the June/July/August 1991 issue of the Garfield Clarion Wally Lloyd helped to answer member’s questions about the Garfield Central’s design. That article is reprinted here. Recently several members have asked about the basic scenery idea for the Garfield Central Railroad. Everybody knows the railroad is a Class 1. bridge line somewhere in the Appalachian, but beyond that things get foggy.
Where is the railroad? It is in the Appalachian mountain area, but not in a particular state. Instead it is in parts of Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and maybe a couple of other states.
Having small, steep mountains and ridges lets us crowd the tracks into smaller areas, and still have the terrain look logical. Modeling the Rockies wouldn’t let us do that; everything would be too big. In the Appalachians, tunnels and bridges of a reasonable size look like they belong.
The idea is the railroad, at least the part of it we are modeling, is in a very mountainous area, with a couple of big rivers, and one fair-sized city. No specific piece of the USA is exactly like the railroad’s area, so we use bits of several places.
The feeling of the area is important.
Williamsport and Bridgeport are in a river valley, with a large river running between them. It’s like Harpers Ferry. It’s kind of old, sooty, dirty, with lots of brick buildings. Colors are muted, not bright.
Clarendon Gap is also a river town. It would be accurate to make it like Dante, Virginia on the Clinchfield. Dante is a little company town, with most of it being a five-track railroad yard. It’s squeezed into a little valley, with a creek and a road running down one side. You cross the creek on a little bridge to get over to the row of houses that make up the town. The sides of the valley are steep, and covered with trees. There’s a YMCA and a white church. There are hoppers, hoppers, and hoppers. Dante is a major coal-sorting and weighing place on the Clinchfield. There are also coal-loading ramps for trucks.
I digress. Back to the story.
Georgetown is mostly not there. It’s assumed to be fairly big, so only a few city blocks can be modeled; the part Al has been doing. More of it should be visible at the edge of the main freight yard. With maybe some brick building flats. (Just enough to irritate John, when he has to reach over to fiddle with some cars.)
A couple of important parts of the railroad are not visible.
What we know as West Loop is the start of the run to Pittsburgh, and East Loop is the beginning of the division heading to Baltimore. Only a couple of miles down each of these lines we interchange with other railroads.
A couple of miles beyond the West Loop tunnel portal there are connections with the Clinchfield and the Southern.
Just two or three miles beyond the East Loop portal there are connections with the B & O / C & O.
We need new names for the loops. So we start thinking properly, our operations will work better.
I’m digressing again; back to the general idea of the scene.
Picture narrow valleys, the sides steep and heavily forested, with the railroad running either lengthwise along the valley or cutting across on bridges, and tunneling into the ridges.
The nearby hills are dark green, but they get bluer and bluer as they get farther away. If it’s not raining now, it soon will be, or it just quit.
The time is a while ago, not the distant past, but not today. We can run any kind of train we want. I usually try to do things that match the late 40’s or early 50’s. if you are modeling today, you can still have the old stuff. Modern sheet metal building and container handling facilities can’t be made to fit into a 40-year old setting.
So where can we get ideas? Well John has brought pictures down to the club, and so have Wally and Chuck. We can probably be persuaded to bring ‘em down again. Ask.
Look at books. We did not design this railroad to be a copy of the Clinchfield. But, the first time I saw the Clinchfield back in the early 80’s I knew the Garfield Central and Clinchfield were buddies. See if you can find a copy of Steve King’s book
Clinchfield Country
Publisher: Old Line Graphics (June 1989 and out of
print), ISBN-13:
978-1879314016 in the library. The photos in the book are us.
Look in Model Railroader, Railroad Model Craftsman and the
no longer published Mainline Modeler. The articles last year
1991 on the layouts in Pittsburgh show the same kind of country.
Look around you. Railroad crossings (not the new rubber kind, but the old ones of asphalt or planks), trees, brick buildings, loading platforms, track - really look at all these things. Try to copy the feeling, the colors and the details in your modeling.
Take photos. Study the photos. The more you use real life as your guide, the better your models will be.
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