Good research day at the Tennessee Library and Archives

I spent several hours Tuesday at the Tennessee State Archives and Library doing research on the towns out in west Tennessee that the NC’s Nashville Division ran through between Camden and Union City. This was not my first trip to the archive for NC&StL research; in fact, I’d guess this was my fourth or fifth trip. But I keep finding new stuff. This trip was nicely productive. This was my second or third trip to the archives with my buddy Mitch Mercante, who is researching Nashville ca. mid-1950s as well as both the NC&StL and the L&N.

My first goal on this trip was to look for maps that might contain information on the towns and/or the NC in those towns. I’ve already studied the USGS maps for the area as well as the Sanborn maps, so I’ve got quite a bit of map-derived information already. This trip I talked a bit to the archivist in the manuscript collection about what I was looking for and she had a couple of ideas of other maps that might be useful. So I followed her suggestions which led me directly to great new information on the NC’s track layouts in all of my towns. Who knew that highway department maps would provide the last level of detail that I needed to finish my track planning?

Apparently the Tennessee Highway Department (what is now TDOT) undertook a major highway mapping and inventory project in the mid-1950s. Out of that detailed street maps were created (or updated where they had previously existed) for every town of any size whatsoever in TN. Those town maps also have detailed track layouts for the railroads in the town. These are large maps, so the level of detail is quite good relative to the railroad track layouts. The maps for all of my towns are dated 1956, so they reflect the track layout a few years later than my target of 1950/51, but they do reflect the track layout before the L&N acquired the NC and made major changes in some of the towns.

This gives me 3 or 4 sources of trackage information for the towns: USGS maps, Sanborn maps for those towns where Sanborn maps exist, the NC&StL profile diagrams that I found in the L&N archive, and now the TDOT maps. These are all for slightly different dates but if I combine them I have very good information on not only the NC’s trackage but all the trackage of the interchange railroads in each town.

With the TDOT maps I was able to confirm that the trackage info that I already had was accurate and sufficient for my purposes for Huntingdon, Gleason and Dresden. But for Bruceton, Martin, McKenzie and Union City I found either a different track layout or some other differences between the TDOT maps and the other maps. As a result, I ordered scans of these four maps. The archive will scan and put on CD the maps and mail them to me. Given that these are large maps, getting scans of them is the best way for me to get something that I can use.

The TDOT maps are quite a bit more useful than the other maps that I have, so I plan to use the TDOT maps as my track planning foundation and then supplement them with info from the track profiles and the Sanborn maps. The TDOT maps are at a scale where all of the individual tracks are clear. The NC’s profile diagrams unfortunately are so small, and in some cases so smudged, that in the larger towns many individual tracks aren’t really visible. The Sanborn maps are in many segments and some of the segments are in different scales, making it very difficult to piece together an overall map of each town. But taking them all together, I’ve got exact track diagrams, details on all the rail-served industries (from the Sanborns) with dedicated sidings, details on the railroad’s infrastructure such as water pipes, section houses, depots, freight houses, etc.

I never thought that state highway department maps would provide the last bits of detail that I needed to really feel comfortable that I could lock down track plans for my major towns. Now, I just have to stay patient for the four or five weeks it will take to get the CD from the archives. In the meantime, I can block out the overall layout from the information that I already have, leaving just some details inside the town limits to be resolved when I get the maps.

Layout Planning Givens and Druthers

One generally accepted step early in model railroad layout planning is compiling a list of user requirements for your layout, or as it is known in model railroading, “Givens and Druthers”. I believe this term was coined by the late John Armstrong, probably the best known model railroad designer, and if it wasn’t it was certainly popularized by Armstrong. Givens and Druthers is what it sounds like – the constraints or requirements that your layout design must satisfy (Givens) and those that you’d like to satisfy but can fudge a bit or trade-off against each other in order to arrive at a satisfactory design (Druthers).

Here’s a first cut at my list of Givens and Druthers. I expect to update this list as I get further into making design choices. I will be planning the layout using a track planning CAD package designed for the Mac, Empire Express.

Givens

Scale – HO

Era – steam-diesel transition era, more narrowly for my prototype railroad 1948 – 1953, more narrowly still, late summer 1951.

Prototype – Nashville, Chattanooga, and St. Louis Railway. Nashville Division west from the Tennessee River through Union City, TN. Also possibly bits of the NC’s Memphis-Paducah Division. Interchanges with the GM&O at Union City and IC at Martin are givens. Interchanges with L&N at McKenzie, CB&Q and IC at Paducah all druthers.

All track plans based on prototype track charts and Sanborn maps.

Operating crew – Must operate well with a single operator running local or through trains. Must support up to a five or six person crew operating two active locals and either one active through train or one yard operator.

Maximum size steam locomotives are class L 2-8-2s and class J 4-8-2s and 4-8-4s. Also 2-10-0 Russian Decapods.

Initially single deck.

Benchwork with hollow core doors in 12″, 18″, and 24″ widths. Incorporate two existing 30″x48″ benchwork tables.

No benchwork attached to walls since we hope to sell current house and get a place more in the country as soon as housing market recovers a bit (yeah, I know, might as well attach stuff to the walls). Also, for same reason, layout designed in domino (doormino) fashion so that layout can be relatively easily moved to new location.

Druthers

Option for continuous operation for visitors.

Minimum mainline curve radius – 30″. Could go tighter in yards/industrial areas – however, NC used 2-8-0 and 2-10-0 locos for yard switching and local freights so can’t go a whole lot tighter than 24″.

All prototype mainline was single track with relatively frequent passing sidings.

Layout size – initially limited to 30′ x 11′. In addition to the 11′ width, another 2′ to 3′ at least is available as aisle space along 1 side of the layout during operating sessions.

Control – Digitrax DCC.

Track – Atlas code 83 on mainline, code 70 on industrial and yard tracks.

Turnouts – min. number 6 on mainline, prefer number 8 where space permits.

Scenery – multiple prototype-based LDEs of towns with open running room between towns. Foam as scenery base both for light weight and ease of construction.

Focus on freight operations, both local and through freights. Passenger operation from Bruceton west to Union City was local-only, twice a day. Memphis-Nashville through passenger trains ran only Bruceton and east. In a second or third stage, I want to model the passenger operations at Bruceton where 4 trains met twice a day, but not in this initial stage of construction and learning.

Selective compression and selecting industries

Unless you are have an auditorium to fill with a model railroad you almost certainly have to go through the painful process known to generations of layout designers as “selective compression”. An alternative phrase I recently read on a model railroad discussion group was “proportioning” rather than “compression” and I actually prefer the concept of proportioning. Whatever the terminology, the process involves selecting those portions of the “real world” that you are going to be able to incorporate into your model railroad.

One set of decisions involves which prototype industries that you are going to need to eliminate, shrink, or suggest in order to get your model to fit in the space available. Even a relatively modest town, such as my Martin or Union City, have industries too large to completely model and more industries than can likely be captured completely in a model. Some need to be eliminated. Some can be modeled but shrunk down considerably, possibly by including a much compressed version of a key structure or structures. And some can be represented by a siding but no structures – the structures are in the aisle or on the backdrop.

The trick, or so it seems to me, is to make choices that allow you to have a scene or scenes that are recognizably the place you are modeling while losing structures or whole industries. This means not losing signature industries that anyone who knows the area would expect to see. It means ensuring that the industries that are retained still have some balance relative to the range of things that are in the prototype, e.g. if you are modeling a Kansas branch line, you’re going to have several grain elevators no matter what.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time with a number of research sources finding out what industries were in the towns that I am modeling. I’ve also tried to find information that would help me understand which industries are signature industries in the context of the region, the town being modeled, and the time frame. The Sanborn maps have been immensely useful in this research as they name all of the industries along the railroad right-of-way or that are clearly rail-served. My Sanborn maps are not exactly the right dates – some were last updated three to ten years before my 1951 modeling target – but they provide a great snapshot of the industrial and commercial nature of the towns in question.

A shipper’s directory would have been hugely useful in this process but it appears that the NC&StL never published such a document. I’ve seen them for other railroads and I’d love to get my hands on a similar document for the NC but nobody I’ve talked to has ever seen one. I do have an L&N document from the early or mid-1960s for those portions of the NC that were still being operated by the L&N and it gives a very useful list of railroad customers in many of the towns that I am interested in. It also indicates which ones used a private rail siding and which used a local team track or shared siding. Unfortunately Martin and Union City are not listed in this document – apparently by the time this document was published the L&N had shifted responsibility for those towns to other railroads.

I’ve also found information on some industries and some towns in articles in the NC’s employee magazine. The Tennessee State Archives has also been useful as it contains things like books published for a town’s centennial celebration, which often contain pictures of downtown and/or industries as well as ads from prominent local businesses. Some of the towns I am interested in had city directories published in the late 40s or early 50s that list all local businesses and their addresses, which has been helpful in figuring out if industries on the Sanborn maps had changed names or gone out of business completely by the time I am modeling.

From all of this information I’ve been able to come up with reasonably accurate lists of rail-served businesses for the towns I am interested in modeling. I’ve also been able to see at a regional level which industries were most representative of the region circa 1950 and hence need to be captured on the layout in some form. For example, this process allowed me to understand the importance of the ball clay mining industry to the region and the importance of showing it on the layout. I also learned that cotton was still an important crop based on the continued operation of rail-served cotton gins in several of the towns between the Tennessee River and Union City.

Here is a list of industries that I consider essential to model in order to have my railroad be recognizably the NC in West TN circa late 40s/early 50s:

1. Ball clay mining/processing – already discussed in earlier posts to this weblog. Unique and important industry across a 3-county area that I am modeling. Must have.

2. Cotton – there are numerous cotton gins on the Sanborn maps for this area. Some survive into the early 60s based on the L&N industry listing. Must have at least 1 cotton gin.

3. Grain elevators/feed mills – west TN is a typical rural area with lots of farming and that means elevators and feed mills. There are several such captured on the Sanborn Maps. A couple of them are near the center of important towns or are clearly major rail shippers. Probably should have at least two to have the right balance with the prototype.

4. Lumber-related industries – there are a many industries that process wood across this area. There are a number of railroad tie plants in the area although none in my most likely to be modeled towns. A Camden book talks about a large pulpwood yard or woodlot near Camden that shipped to a large paper plant west of Paducah, KY so certainly this would have traveled west on the NC from Camden to Bruceton and then north on the NC Paducah branch. There are many sawmills mentioned in historical documents. Some documents suggest that there were sawmills with rail service between towns where the Sanborn maps don’t go. In the towns I am modeling there are several large lumber companies which incorporated sawmills. There are also industries such as barrel stave manufacturers (multiple), a whiskey barrel plant owned by a large distiller, a chair leg plant, a veneer maker, etc. Some of this needs to be represented but I haven’t figured out which yet other than I have to do either Dixie Dan Lumber or Southern Star Lumber, both in McKenzie, if for no other reason than their names.

5. Livestock raising/shipping – most of the towns I am modeling have stock pens served by the NC. I’m not clear if these were for cows or pigs or both. But must have 1 of these.

6. Bulk oil/gasoline dealers – very typical of almost anywhere in the country circa 1950. Every town I am considering modeling had 2 to 5 of these served by the NC and/or an interchange road like the IC or GM&O. Need multiple of these if I’m going to retain the industry balance of the prototype.

7. Coal, ice, and building supplies – there are a number of these in my towns. Some are just coal, some coal and ice, at least one coal and building supplies. Typical for small towns anywhere in this period. Two of my towns have these industries right in the middle of key interchanges so they will be getting modeled.

8. Shoe and clothing factories – there were shoe and clothing factories all over the mid-south in the 1940s and 50s. Almost every town had at least one. I’ve got both pant and shirt factories in at least 3 towns. Union City had a large Brown Shoe Co. factory but it’s on the GM&O. I believe Dresden had a shoe factory at one time but I believe it opened after the period I am modeling. I’m still trying to figure out what to put on the layout. I’m waiting until I visit Martin and Union City later this spring to take pictures and visit libraries and historical societies before making any final decisions on this – it will likely depend on me getting better pictures and other information about these particular factories before I decide.

9. Sand and gravel – there is a very large gravel tipple served by multiple tracks near Camden. There is also a very large sand pit at Lipe, which is between Camden and Bruceton. Both loaded large numbers of cars. I’d really like to get one of these onto the layout but may not end up modeling those towns so it’s still up in the air a bit. Certainly not going to be included in the first two or three LDEs.

There are a number of other industries with private rail sidings that I’ll undoubtedly end up including but none appear at this time to be critical signature industries that must be included. There are also a number of industries that appear multiple times in this area but which ship and/or receive from team tracks, e.g. automobile dealers, farm implement dealers, boat dealers, misc small industrial customers, etc.

More on all of this as I post information on specific town LDEs.

Modeling a clay pit – another option

In my most recent post, I talked about modeling the ball clay pits in west Tennessee. I also posted a couple of pictures. In that post, I talked about the freshly dug clay being scooped into trucks and then transported to the processing location/rail siding. There’s another option which is to have freshly mined clay loaded into narrow-gauge side dump cars like those shown in the pictures below. I know of a couple of mines that had these narrow-gauge railroads in them. I believe that they were gone by 1950 but I don’t know that for certain. At least one was still operational in the very late 1930s so maybe it made it to the late 40s.

Here’s a picture of a picture of a small tank loco in a clay pit pulling a string of “ore” cars loaded with clay. I believe I took a picture of this picture in a museum in McKenzie, TN. The clay pit in question was located about 3 miles southeast of McKenzie.

Here are a couple of other photos courtesy of the TN Archive. Both show the narrow-gauge mine railroad on the left on the elevated track. The trackage on the right is standard gauge track that belongs to either the NC&StL or L&N (both served mines that used narrow-gauge railroads). The second photo shows clay being dumped from the side-dump ore cars into box cars.

This final image is a small insert from the Sanborn map for McKenzie, TN. It shows a location very much like that shown in the two pictures immediately above. The standard gauge siding on this map was fairly long and came off the NC&StL about 3 miles east of McKenzie. I’m not certain if this is the location shown in the photos above – I suspect that it is not.

Tell me that this wouldn’t make a great model railroad scene.

Modeling a clay pit – prototype info

As previously noted, one industry that will anchor my layout to the west Tennessee area is ball clay mining. I plan to model a ball clay processor as shown in a prior post regarding Gleason, TN. I also plan to have a scene showing a ball clay pit where the clay was mined before being trucked to the processing site.

Ball clay mining is very similar to surface mining (strip mining) for coal. The overburden layers of dirt, less valuable types of clay, etc. are stripped from above the layers of ball clay and dumped off to the side. Then the layers of ball clay are removed and trucked to the processing site. Once the ball clay at the site is exhausted, the site is restored – or today it is, the old pits still exist as big overgrown holes in the ground.

Luckily for me, the Tennessee State Archives have digitized a collection of photographs of ball clay mining taken in west Tennessee. Most are dated just before the start of WW 2 so I’m using them as representative of what the clay mines would have looked like about 10 years later. Here is a link to a group of the photographs, plus I’ve included a couple of shots below to give an idea of what these pits looked like.

This is a 1938 or 39 photo from one of the Bell Clay Co. pits around Gleason. It shows overburden being stripped from on top of the clay. This is the general look that I want to capture in my modeled scene. That steam shovel is very close to the model that Jordan makes in HO scale. And those dump trucks are available from somebody (Sylvan?). This photo is courtesy of the TN Archives.

Here’s a photo I took last year near Gleason of a clay pit that has been recently abandoned. I’m not sure how much more reclamation/restoration work will be done here. This gives some idea of the color of the clay – it’s very light-colored, not the deep red that usually comes to mind when you mention clay in the southern U.S. I scooped up a Venti-size coffee cup full of very fine clay this color from the side of the road leading to this pit so that I have an accurate match for the color. I also think that what I have is fine enough that I can use it as a top layer of my scenery in this area.

Selecting a prototype railroad to model

I’ve been researching the NC&StL seriously for about 2 years and more casually for another 2 years before that. The casual research started shortly after we moved to Nashville in 2005 and I started trying to learn about the railroads that had operated through this area during the steam-diesel transition period that I wanted to model. I quickly learned that there had really only been 3 railroads that served middle Tennessee: the L&N, the Tennessee Central, and the NC&StL.

I wasn’t initially sure what my criteria were for selecting a prototype railroad. I had been interested for many years in modeling coal operations but by 2005 that had pretty well passed – I was interested in a bit more variety in terms of industry, traffic mix, etc. than most coal operations seemed to offer. Plus, while I wasn’t sure about most of my criteria, I did know that I wanted to model a prototype that operated in my new home area as I wanted to be able to do most of my research locally. I knew I wanted to model the steam-diesel transition era but thought that I wanted to focus more strongly on steam than diesels.

The rest of my criteria evolved as I did more research into the local railroads, as I gained some experience as a member of a local model railroad club, and as I caught up with what had been happening with prototype-based modeling, DCC, layout design philosophy and a few other topics.

For some reason, the L&N never clicked with me. If I had wanted to model coal mining the L&N in the Appalachians or in central KY would have been a good candidate. Or, if I had wanted to model the Birmingham area with its steel industry the L&N would again have been on my list. But I decided that I wasn’t interested in mountain railroading and I didn’t want to look as far away from home as Birmingham or Louisville. So, despite plenty of Alco diesels, which I love, the L&N was eliminated.

I looked more seriously at the Tennessee Central but it too failed to satisfy my modeling and operating interests. The TC in the vicinity of Nashville seemed like a shortline more than a class 1 railroad. It had little bridge traffic and limited interchange traffic. The most interesting parts of the TC line are in east TN but that again is mountain railroading and scenery which I wasn’t interested in. I liked aspects of the TC’s steam and diesel loco rosters but that wasn’t enough to overcome my other issues.

The NC&StL, on the other hand, clicked for me almost from the beginning. First of all, it was a Nashville headquartered class 1 railroad. It had been a profitable and well-run railroad during almost all of the 20th century up until its acquisition by the L&N in 1957. It had an adequate and interesting mix of bridge traffic as well as interesting local operations on most of its mainline divisions as well as interesting branch lines. It had interesting urban operations in Nashville, Chattanooga, and Memphis if I decided to go in that direction. It had an interesting mix of steam locos, including the great J-3 “Stripes” – 4-8-4s that pulled both passenger and fast freight traffic. Unfortunately, it dieselized very early, with most steam gone by 1951 and the last steam off the line by 1953. And the diesel line-up was pretty dull. But I was planning to focus on steam so that didn’t seem a big issue.

Based on the above, I transitioned from casually interested in the NC to committed to the NC. Next problem – what portion of the NC to model and what time period. I’ll cover those decisions in future posts.

Gleason TN LDE

One town I’m considering for an LDE is Gleason, TN. Gleason is a very small town that has seen much better days. The old NC main line still runs through town but today it’s the KWT (Kentucky West Tennessee) shortline. I am leaning towards making Gleason the first LDE that I start modeling.

Here’s a track layout of the “heart” of Gleason. The track layout is close to a direct copy from the NC&StL engineering department track profile chart. The building with the two circles next to it is Spain Bros. Milling (that’s the current name, not sure what it was in the early 50s). The small rectangle south of the tracks is where the depot stood – it’s gone now. Downtown Gleason sits north of the depot and east of Spain Bros. Milling.

Spain Bros. Milling is a small, modelgenic milling operation. A few steel grain silos, corrugated siding with a nice assortment of rust and old signs. A very typical small town industry.

Downtown Gleason was never a major rail traffic destination or source – it’s the other industries to the east and west of Gleason that generated rail traffic.

Gleason is the center of the best ball clay mining area in the U.S. Very, very pure ball clay has been mined around Gleason for over a century. There’s a three county area around Gleason that sits on top of large deposits of some of the best ball clay in the world. Ball clay is a very pure, white clay that is used to make fine china and other ceramic products. It’s almost pure white because it has very small amounts of other minerals, especially iron. Ball clay is strip mined all over this region. There are abandoned ball clay pits everywhere and also many still active pits. There are several major shippers of ball clay still active on the KWT line, including the examples shown below.

This first picture is a small section of the Spinks Clay operation located railroad east of Gleason (geographically southeast). The large sheds covering the dry clay is characteristic of the area’s ball clay processing facilities.

This second picture is an aerial view of the Spinks facility pictured above. This aerial shot is captured from Bing maps. The old NC mainline is in the upper right of the picture and you can see the rail sidings serving this large clay processing facility.

Here’s a picture of another ball clay facility located railroad west of Gleason (northwest). This is the Old HIckory Clay Co. Also rail-served. Again you can see the very large sheds covering the white ball clay.

There are three or four of these large ball clay processors lined up along the NC mainline heading west from Gleason towards Dresden. One of them needs to be a major traffic generator for my railroad. I’m thinking of basically compressing the scene shown below in the aerial photo – it shows a clay processor and a brick plant, both rail-served even today. The brick plant is a modern facility constructed after 1960 sometime and owned by Boral Brick. It is the plant in the lower right of the photo. The clay processor is in the upper left. The NC mainline runs behind the two facilities and old TN Highway 22 runs in front of them. Of course, in 1950, that wasn’t “old” TN 22, it was the main highway.

I’m going to have to cheat a bit on prototypical accuracy to include a brick plant in Gleason circa 1950 because it appears that there was not one operating at that time. There were brick plants in the area operating before World War 2 but it appears that the last one may have closed during the 30s or early 40s – I’m still researching the details. And the Boral facility didn’t open until after the L&N acquired the NC&StL. But there were active brickworks in the area so I’m thinking of using a brickworks in Puryear TN (on the NC’s Paducah branch, between Paris TN and the Kentucky border) as inspiration for one in Gleason. With all that clay, and with brickworks being prototypically accurate in the periods both immediately before and after my modeled period, it doesn’t seem like too large a fudge.

That aerial scene above could well be an LDE all its own – two major industries, a couple of industrial sidings and a passing track. So I could have a single Gleason LDE, compressing the scene above and downtown Gleason into one LDE; or I could have two LDEs, a small-town LDE and the industrial LDE; or I could drop small town Gleason and keep the industrial scene above. Not sure exactly what I’m going to do yet – got to see what will fit and what choices I decide to make about priorities.

Layout planning – which towns to model

I’m focusing my layout planning on selecting prototype towns to model as layout design elements (LDEs). The LDE concept was introduced back in the middle 1990s by Tony Koester. An LDE is basically a model of a scene from the prototype where a scene might be an industry or industrial district, it might be a small town, it might be a prototype railroad freight yard, etc. It’s a scene inspired by and based upon the real world.

The idea is that if you model LDEs, you are copying prototype track layouts and industry arrangements that existed in the real world for a reason which will in turn make the operation of the resulting model more realistic. It certainly anchors the model railroad in the real world. LDEs can be used to create realistic-looking scenes on anything from a strict prototype-based model railroad to an out-and-out freelance design. But I think LDEs have come to be closely associated with the railroad prototype modeling (RPM) movement.

Layout design with LDEs is essentially a process of stringing LDEs together, possibly separated by lengths of open scenery or scene blocks or other modeling devices intended to achieve some degree of visual and temporal separation between scenes. Hence the importance of selecting which scenes to model on my NC&StL. Given the nature of the real NC&StL in the area I am modeling, most or all of my LDEs will be based on a specific town in west Tennessee. These feel like my most important selection criteria:

• Which LDEs are most critical to being able to capture the operational essence of the NC?
• Which LDEs give me the ability to capture the “feel” of west TN around 1950?
• Which LDEs allow me to model essential or distinctive NC scenes?
• Which LDEs (or what combination of LDEs) give me an appropriate mix of load generating industries and load consuming industries?

Candidate LDE at this point include the following towns:

• Camden
• Bruceton
• Huntingdon
• McKenzie
• Gleason
• Dresden
• Martin
• Union City

Other candidate LDEs include these based upon individual industries or scenic features:

• NC bridge over the Tennessee River / Kentucky Lake at New Johnsonville
• large gravel pit with tipple just east of Camden
• large sand pit at Lipe, which is just east of Bruceton
• brick plant west of Gleason
• ball clay pits east and west of Gleason

I can probably come up with a couple of other candidates but this list is already too long to handle in the space that I’ve got. So it has to be boiled down. Here are some of the candidates I am dropping from consideration:

• Camden – nothing very distinctive, fairly generic small town, not much traffic other than the gravel pit, which could be a smaller, separate LDE
• Dresden – not as interesting as Gleason, which is the next town to the east
• Huntingdon – again, just not as interesting in terms of industry, scenic possibilities, etc. as some of the other towns
• Tennessee River Bridge – I love large bridges and it would be a great scene but it would take a lot of space, is out at the far eastern edge of where I plan to model, and doesn’t add anything to the operational possibilities of the layout

It starts to get harder at this point. More on the evaluation of options and choices in future posts.

So, What’s This Then?

This is my model railroad hobby weblog. I am a couple of years into researching the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis (NC&StL or just NC) Railway in support of building an HO scale model railroad based on a portion of the NC&StL. For those not familiar with the NC&StL, you can find some general historical background at the NC&StL Preservation Society website.   

The short version is that the NC&StL was a class 1 railroad centered on Nashville, Tennessee. Its predecessor lines go back to before the Civil War and include the Nashville & Chattanooga, the Western & Atlantic, and the Nashville & Northwestern. It evolved to eventually have mainlines running southeast from Nashville through Chattanooga to Atlanta and west from Nashville to Memphis and Paducah, KY. The NC was partially owned by the Louisville & Nashville for many years and eventually fully acquired by the L&N in the summer of 1957.

I plan to model portions of the Nashville Division, which ran from Nashville west through Dickson, crossed the Tennessee River (Kentucky Lake after the TVA did its thing) at Johnsonville (or New Johnsonville after the TVA drowned the original town), continued through the major yard at Bruceton and then on west through McKenzie, Gleason, Martin, and Union City, where the division ended after 1951. Prior to 1951 the division had continued northwest from Union City to the Mississippi River at Hickman, KY. but light traffic doomed the west end.

I also plan to model portions of the Paducah-Memphis Division of the NC&StL. As you might guess from the name, this division ran from the Ohio River at Paducah KY south through Murray, KY and Paris, TN to the yard at Bruceton, TN where the Paducah-Memphis and Nashville Divisions crossed. It then ran south and then west through Lexington to the major city of Jackson, TN and then on to the NC&StL’s western terminus at Memphis.

Operationally, the NC’s “real” mainline ran between Memphis and Nashville via Bruceton, i.e. the Nashville to Bruceton leg of the Nashville Division and the Memphis to Bruceton leg of the Paducah-Memphis Division. The NC’s through passenger trains and through fast freights all ran this route. The Paducah to Bruceton line and the Union City to Bruceton line ran more as branch lines, although both had major interchanges and both carried important through freight to and from Bruceton.

My current thinking is that I will model the late summer of 1951 although that is subject to change a bit. I’m considering modeling the scenery and towns for late summer 1951 but operating either as 1948 (when I can still run a reasonably complete roster of steam locomotives) or 1951 (mostly diesel but still some steam) or 1954 (all diesel). These small southern towns didn’t change much between 1948 and 1954, and the railroad itself didn’t change a lot in that period, so other than vehicles I think this strategy is fairly safe. It will entail rostering some extra freight cars that will not work in for the 1948 period but that’s not too stiff a penalty for loco roster flexibility.

I currently plan to model some portion of the line from Camden, TN (just west of the Tennessee River) through Bruceton to Union City. I’d also like to model some of the traffic that flows into and through Bruceton from the Memphis lines and Paducah lines, but that may all be in staging for the time being.

What’s the current status? I’ve just about done enough research that I can start constructing the first layout sections. There is lots more research to be done but I’m worried about this turning into a never-ending research project so I’m forcing myself to start building something. Current thinking is that the first layout section will be an LDE (layout design element) based on Gleason, TN. The second LDE will likely be based on either Union City or Martin.

More detail will follow in future posts about all of the above, plus more on my research, updates on construction status and modeling projects, etc.