The second layout I signed up to operate was Dave Goodson's Colorado Consolidated Railways located in the Juanita District of Kirkland. Dave's large scale outdoor layout has 1400 feet of track and over 70 switches (all but three are hand thrown). Trains are mostly Bachmann 1:20.3 models and all are powered by RCS Battery controllers. Most engines are also equipped with Sierra Systems sound units. All engines and cabooses have lights. Dave and his group operate, rain or shine, every Friday night during Daylight savings time and every other Friday night during Standard time. From experience I know that at 5 PM it is dark during the winter months. Our group arrived at 7:20 PM to begin operating, one other carload of operators were already at work when we arrived. I was immediately assigned a train and switchlist #6. My train was an LGB Mallet with full sound and lights. We started out of the shed which is the main storage yard with two cars. I did not get much of a chance to have an overview of the layout we went right to work. Dave's brother was my switchman and guide for the run tonight. BTW as we arrived Dave was hostelling engines around getting trains ready to depart when he said, "This is a smoking railroad -- Light'em if you got'em". We were advised later that the smoke from the operator's cigars kept the mosquitoes at bay. I did not get a trackplan of the layout to keep, so you will have to visualize this trip over the pike. We headed out of the make-up/storage shed onto the main line. (Picture 3) Checking for uphill trains, as they have the right-of-way, we eased up one leg of the wye, and as we prepared to back around, another train came thru and got in front of us going downhill. (Picture 4) After we turned we waited on a siding as the train ahead switched a large mill complex (Picture 2). When they were done it was our turn, we had some pickups here. After we were reassembled into a train we checked to see if anyone was coming uphill. There was one approaching so we waited till he was clear and backed out onto the main and drifted down to a creamery, where we had some more pickups. After those were made we headed for the town at the end of the track. (Picture 1) We had to set out a car, set out the caboose, turn the engine, pick up the train and caboose and then shove the caboose onto the turntable as it has markers on the rear.
We were in the clear as the next train entered the town, after he cleared we left uphill the way we came. We went through the same leg of the wye we started on, but this time we kept going thru the tunnel and down the side yard to another end of track. by this time it was dark and the lights really helped us to keep track of the front and rear of our train. We again had a pick-up and drop and had to again turn the engine then the caboose. This was a really tight area and clearances were minimal for the amount of train we were hauling. We headed up hill and did some switching in a hill top location over the tunnel. We backed back down the line we came up and then went to the right to a yard where we had to leave a hopper car. This was interesting in that you needed to use a small porter loco from the mine to deliver a hopper and pick up the one we were leaving. We did some other switching at industries in this yard as well. There were trains coming at us from all sides so we backed out of the yard and ducked through the canyon around to the storage building and another town and some more switching. We looped around again and hit the wye and the junction into the storage shed, by this time it was after 10:00 PM normal quitting time for the railroad. We had covered all the trackage except the town after the one we backed out of (we had no switching moves to make there.)
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Picture 1. Town at the end of the branch line. Along the fence of the side yard. Turntable is past operator |
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Picture 2. The mill is switched on the way down hill and again on the uphill trip. |
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Picture 3. The line from the right is leading out of the storage area towards the main line. At the top of the picture is the wye we will turn on and travel down past the gate towards the mill and the end of the line. |
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Picture 4. Our train has turned on the wye, but we needed to wait for the previous downhill train working the mill. We are the Mallet, two refers and a Combine. |
This is terrible drawing done from recollections of the layout. It got dark before i could get some more pictures.