Initially I had hoped to model the feed mills on the eastern side of town, however, the necessary trackwork required to make a functional model simple would not fit in the space I required (approx. 13'x2'). A second choice included the downtown area historic buildings, old ACL depot, and the infamous boll weevil monument, but this design did not leave much in terms of operations, either.
Instead, the western portion of the city, featuring a pair of peanut mills and other misc. industries did make the cut. In fact, it was ideal for the part. There are three spurs, a crossing with main street, railroad office, and a small pile trestle that all could fit the space well and be fully operational. Thus, my initial plan was based on this area.
As you can see, the mainline is pretty much a straight shot, just like the prototype. The spurs are also proportional and laid out exactly as is the case in the real world, as is true with many of the buildings and roads located around the tracks.
With this model, it must be portable, therefore it was designed just shy of the full width of the room. Benchwork will likely be plywood with a boxed frame of 2x4" boards, with a pair of 2" thick extruded foam board on top, and a 1" foam board at the very top to form the subroadbed and give extra clearance for the bridge located to the extreme right. The entire setup will simply rest on a trio of heavy duty shelf brackets from Home Depot to add to the portability of the model and allow storage beneath it.
The surrounding terrain is relatively flat, save for the roads that duck under the railroad trestle and small cuts and fills along the railroad between the main street crossing and the bridge.
From a functionality standpoint, trains post-1987 will enter from the right with a locomotive on each end of the train, just like the prototype. This allows both engines to work the facing and trailing point spurs with ease. In the real world, the train is setup like this at a runaround track on the opposite side of town, for our purposes it will arrive this way to begin working the local industries. Typically, two tank cars are spotted on the oil track, and a pair of covered hoppers at each of the other spurs. For representation of predecessor railroads, the local arrives from the left to work the mill tracks across Main St., with the facing point spur already been served earlier on the trip towards the former end of the line at Elba.
The only feature that would be changed between eras are the railroad equipment themselves, and removal of the train order board located next to the railroad's office. During the early to mid 1980s, SCL/SBD/CSX would have used whatever power was on hand at nearby Dothan to run locals on this branch line, from U18Bs and U33Bs, to larger GP38 and GP40 locomotives. This offers plenty of flexibility in terms of motive power. Today, the Wiregrass Central uses a pair of SW1500's, but previously GP7, GP8, GP9, GP10, GP15-1, GP18, GP30, NW2, GP38/GP38AC, and GP40's would have been used throughout its near three decades of operation. This allows for a large, healthy assortment of locomotives to mix and match to display different eras on the branch, down to the month and perhaps day. As the end of the line beyond the office building was utilized for railcar storage, "run through" freight cars of different varieties can be used to make things interesting and perhaps add operational challenge.
