Change of Direction

Clearly, this project was put on hold. Due to a rapid series of extreme life changes I was unable to even get my original project off of the drawing board. Currently I find myself in a state of being unable to host a layout of any kind at the moment, at least in HO scale. Therefore, I have shifted gears to working on projects for a future layout with the same theme.

The idea is the future layout can still effectively represent most of the 1978-2016 period with the changing of era specific details: railroad equipment, signs, buildings, vehicles, etc. To this end, a couple of older reference photos are available here:

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=4478666
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=3124430
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=3492036
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=3191195

These images show an SCL U18B working at Enterprise, the two small block TO office buildings constructed and used by the SCL/SBD, and finally a train over the now abandoned Enterprise-Elba portion of the branch line.

As I have chosen 1978-79 as my starting point, a healthy assortment of U18B's are in order. Other motive power up into the Wiregrass Central era include the patched U33B shown above, Seaboard System GP38-2's, and based on photos from Dothan: GP16's, U23B's, GP30's, and other patched/repainted U18B's. With the Dothan Subdivision being a secondary mainline, I would imagine whatever power could be found on hand at the yard in Dothan was utilized on the branchline locals. In addition, the SCL and SBD may have maintained an independent road switcher based in Enterprise in order to handle switching of the various industries there. However, evidence of this is obviously quite difficult to come by.

The ultimate plan for this project includes the custom detailing, painting, and weathering of the prototype's motive power on this branch. The starting point will be undecorated Intermountain U18B's with FB-2 Bloomberg trucks. 9 of such locomotives will be built, with the ability to represent the SCL era with 5 locomotives for the period 1978-1983. A family lines U18B will supplement the year 1983, a patched SBD U18B for 1985, a full SBD U18B for 1986, and finally an early CSX U18B for the final years before the Wiregrass Central takeover. This ratio will represent the steady transition to the more common use of GP16's and GP38-2's, among other power, in the mid to late 1980s. At the same time this allows representation of the SCL-FL-SBD-CSX mergers and the unique period for paint schemes this produced.

Upgrades to the stock U18B kits from Intermountain include replacing the cab, replacement lighting, and accurate frame details.