Well, I have waited a while to respond. I don't want to offend, for you have been helpful. Perhaps I feel that you are throwing water on a drowning man here. I only have myself to blame, in that I speak of historical accuracy as if it is an easy goal to accomplish, knowing fully well how nearly impossible this lofty goal is, even without a Trainz layout involved!
Well, it's not impossible unless you want to make it impossible. Don't sell yourself short. Take it one step at a time. And above all, have fun with it. Don't make it a chore. If you're happy with it that's all that matters.
Offended? No, but only slightly put off by what seemed your marginalizing of Dave's wvbike.org information. No, it is not sufficient history in and of itself, but it is an extraordinary effort of a travel-logger who attaches historical perspective to his tenth-mile trail ride logs! When I first stumbled across his site, I was amazed that the pristine valley that I liked to fish and hike had once housed up to 20,000 residents working the area's heavy industry. His presentation was the seminal inspiration for my desire to see this history brought to life in Trainz. Inspiring, though not adequate, yet Dave's work deserves credit as credit is due.
I understand what you're saying, but if you truly do want to come close to accurately recreating the area circa the 1920s you're going to need more information than is found on those pages. "There's more to the story..."
If you truly want to learn about the industrial history of the area, circa the 1920s, I can start giving you (links to) historical books, articles, etc. to read that you can access online for free in most cases, enough to keep you busy for a week or so reading through all of them.
Unfortunately, I can't just cut-n-past that list into this message, because the list doesn't exist anywhere outside my head. I'd have to go through my notes, look through my digital archives, and come up with items you'd find useful. For almost every item, I'd have to describe where in the book or document you find useful information and explain why it might be useful to you.
At this point, I have no idea about how detailed you want make your project or how much you know about the "layout" of a coking plant. For example, here's a pic of just one
small part of the Coketon plant below. Is your ultimate plan to try to come close to duplicating this scene when the coke plant was in operation, or duplicate what it probably looked like just after the coke plant was closed? Give me an idea of what you're wanting to do, and I'll try to help.
Another example: If you want to build the "doodlebug" that run into Hendricks that I posted a pic of earlier in thread (or want to get someone build it for you), I can refer you to the full size version of the elevation drawings I have of a slightly newer version of the Mack railbus. Again, you'll just have to indicate where your interests lie, and how far you want to take them.
On the other hand, the task is daunting. As one posted in another thread, I should not speak of route development that gives others false hopes, or something to that effect. This is probably true. Unless I can spawn collaboration, which I lack the clout to do, or come up with massive amounts of free time that I do not have, then I probably will have to scale my ambition back to match my potential, which is quite small.
The best I can do, at this point, is keep the baseboard to 5x15 mile layout, with most a single track from Hendricks to Douglas, then the railyard from Douglas to Thomas, stubbing off the wye at Benbush. A lot of content will have to be borrowed assets, until such time I can replace them. I figure the most critical task at first will be an adequate baseboard. On the positive side, most of the housing in the day was company-provided; all two-story salt-box style housing that was identical house-to-house, save for the color.
Anyway, I appreciate your input. Thanks!
Well, the area you're talking about is already modeled on Joe Folco's
B&O Mega Route so you could just download and install that route and then go about backdating it to the 1920s. All the tracks you're taling about are already done and are in place (along with much of the rest of the WM and B&O lines in the region.) Or you could build it yourself, from scratch. (Keep in mind you couldn't distribute Joe's route without his permission, of course.)
Now, about that concept of "most of the housing in the day was company-provided; all two-story salt-box style housing that was identical house-to-house, save for the color."...
This illustrates what I meant earlier about "there's more to story" ...
Here's a ca. 1906 photo of Thomas, WV. Note that the housing is anything but "identical" in this section of town. Look on the right side of the photo, off in the distance and you'll see the end of town that was actually the "company town" where you'd find a good bit of "identical" housing. The town of Thomas was never a 100% "company town". The company owned section of the town was only a small percentage of the town. Thomas had a great variety of retail stores, hotels, restaurants, a bank, a newspaper, a jewelry store, a meat shop, many fraternal organizations, several entertainment establishments, many large churches, several schools, etc. all of which were owned/operated/run by individuals and private owners that lived in non-company owned housing. Thomas wan't just a "coal camp", it was the area's major retail and trading district. Although the town itself was rather small in size, it was very diverse.
Thomas' depot didn't even look like a typical "coal camp" depot!
Now the "company towns" like Coketon would be a different story. Coketon was a "coal camp" so many of the homes were identical or nearly so. Pic of Coketon, circa 1906 below.
Maybe I should just refer you to
my page on Thomas, which has lots of pics of Thomas and Coketon, since Coketon practically "ran into" Thomas. The mines in both towns were actually connected (underground.) Have look at the photos on that page and let me know what you think. There's examples of some of the non "cookie cutter" homes and building of the town on that page.
That page also mentions the "other big industry" of the general area -- logging and saw mills. There were two mills located on each end of Thomas. And plenty of other mills in the general vicinity. Do you wish to model the lumber/mill industries as well? If not, that's your choice, but I mention it because it was one of the big industries in the area during the 1920s.
So let me know what you want to shoot for and I'll try to help.
