Who is interested in the SR&RL and Maine 2 footers? Post here.

I originally embarked on a revamp of the SR&RL stock just enough to get them all onto the DLS. What I am looking at now is more of a total rebuild and naturally I am would like to know how many people are interested enough to make this worthwhile. I would also like volunteers to test the updated assets.

Perhaps it would be worth forming a group.

Here is your chance, stand up and be counted.

Peter

Hi Peter,

I sure would be interested since these little babies ran up north of me a few miles, well a couple of hundred miles in their original life. Later on the they ran on a local tourist attraction called Edaville Railroad where they were used to haul out cranberries from the bogs down in Carver Mass. The small Masons were used on the BRB&L too before that line was electrified. I think they sold off some of their coaches, made locally too in Laconia New Hampshire, along with their locos to the Maine 2-footers.

Now for help. I'm not much of a content creator, but I can test if you wish, or fix textures. That's about the height of my abilities.

If you are interested, there's a group called Yesterdayz Trainz. Bill69, Janton, Dave Snow, Frogpipe, and many others are members and all are great content creators. If you are interested in joining, membership is free, and I'm sure the team would gladly help. Send me a PM with your email address and I'll send off a registration form.

John

John

You have an email on the way.

Peter

I'm always interested in narrow gauge railroads and their sometimes curious rolling stock.
It went a little to the back burner here after I upgraded from trs2006 to ts2010 and now ts12, mainly because I couldn't get bdaneal's beautiful steamers working properly in these newer versions. That doesn't mean however that I've lost interest in this type of railroading, not at all, so I would very much welcome an effort in getting good working narrow gauge stock and assets for ts12.

Greetings from sunny Amsterdam,

Jan

Hi Peter.
I am interested , and willing to test anything too, not too sure how things work and I am sure there are plenty capable trainzers available to help , I would like to learn more though.

I made a 2 foot gauge trestle kit consisting of 45 different parts. Trestle splines, bridges, transitions, ends, etc.. All on the DLS.

Ben

In an old Model Railroader magazine there was an HOn3 shelf layout, (Nagansette RR ???), and it had lots of switching, and a sea side dock, using very small dinky locos ... this could easily be addapted to 2' gauge

cascaderailroad said:

In an old Model Railroader magazine there was an HOn3 shelf layout, (Nagansette RR ???), and it had lots of switching, and a sea side dock, using very small dinky locos ... this could easily be addapted to 2' gauge

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The Narraganset Pier was one route but that was an HO standard gauge model based on the railroad of the same name - a former New Haven branch line.

Dave Drury made a route that was featured in a book as well as originally in an article in Model Railroader. This was the Carrabasset Dead River Railway. I have the book and it has useful techniques for hiding things that we're not supposed to see. He also included some nice black and white (obviously) photos of the original 2-footers in and about Rangeley and Sandy River.

John

You mention curious in connection with narrow gauge. These little ones were working railways in every sense and because they had to be worked by full size people they were BIG in relation to the gauge. I had a book once that showed how large a narrow gauge engine would be if it was built to the same proportions but standard gauge, it would be a monster that would eclipse even the largest US steamer.

Of course, no-one intended to travel at 100mph on narrow gauge track, 15-20 mph was fast enough.

Peter

narrowgauge said:

You mention curious in connection with narrow gauge. These little ones were working railways in every sense and because they had to be worked by full size people they were BIG in relation to the gauge. I had a book once that showed how large a narrow gauge engine would be if it was built to the same proportions but standard gauge, it would be a monster that would eclipse even the largest US steamer.

Of course, no-one intended to travel at 100mph on narrow gauge track, 15-20 mph was fast enough.

Peter

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Hi Peter,

The lines I mentioned were worked at the 15-20 mph range, except perhaps for the Boston Revere Beach and Lynn which operated as an interurban before they electrified. They did this by putting electric motors in most of their old heavyweight coaches. That must've been quite the site to see. My grandmother remembered riding on them on her trip to Marblehead. She'd take the BRB&L, affectionately called "The Narrow Gauge" to Lynn, including the ferry across to East Boston up to Lynn. She'd then switch to a trolley car and continue to Marblehead. This must've been a fascinating trip.

John

narrowgauge said:

You mention curious in connection with narrow gauge. These little ones were working railways in every sense and because they had to be worked by full size people they were BIG in relation to the gauge.

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Well, with 'curious' I was mainly pointing to design decisions and solutions in relation to sizing constraints you mention above. I mentioned rolling stock, but the same can be said about some track layout design. Over here again lack of available space at sheer inaccessible locations can result in curious, read intriguing track layout design for these kind of railroads. Something I find fascinating.

Greetings from sunny Amsterdam,

Jan

I'm getting close to the point of uploading most of the SR&RL roster. I have used mesh libraries as follows, Locomotives, Freight, Passenger, Maintenance, and Commodities. in the first four, I have applied automatic numbering so within limits, you can use multiples of the stock. In case where the SL&LR had only one or two of a particular design, using more that two will duplicate the number applied unless the settings in the config.txt are changed. The limits I mentioned refer to the range of numbers used for each stock type.

Passenger coaches and cabeese all have passengers, all Mexican at the moment. What others can I use? I need suggestions but remember the period, present day figures are not acceptable unless you are running as a tourist line.

Freight cars are all loadable and here I need some help. I need suggestions about freight goods for the open gondola and flat car. I'm not very happy about the pulp rack load, if I provide dimensions can someone make a decent looking load.

I would also appreciate it if someone volunteered to make some flat car loads, again, I would supply sizes to match the existing attachment points but if necessary I can apply more. Rough dimensions for the flat cars would be to fit into 5'6" x 27' or 5'6" x 31'. Five attachments and one central single. One problem with an early period line like the SR&RL is that goods were not palleted, and many present day goods did not exist.

One caveat. All these items were made for UTC early on in my modelling career so any shortcomings must the viewed with that in mind. At this stage I have not added LOD, I will do this once the current work is uploaded. I am open to suggestions and questions.

Peter

Originally Posted by narrowgauge
I need suggestions about freight goods

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Might there have been milk cans in the boxcars?

Originally Posted by narrowgauge
Passenger coaches and cabeese all have passengers, all Mexican at the moment. What others can I use? I need suggestions but remember the period, present day figures are not acceptable unless you are running as a tourist line.

Click to expand...

Could you use Elvenor's Old Western Passengers?

Originally Posted by cascaderailroad

In an old Model Railroader magazine there was an HOn3 shelf layout, (Nagansette RR ???), and it had lots of switching, and a sea side dock, using very small dinky locos ... this could easily be addapted to 2' gauge

The Narraganset Pier was one route but that was an HO standard gauge model based on the railroad of the same name - a former New Haven branch line.

Click to expand...

I found a "Narragansett Bay Railway & Navigation Company" HOn3 layout that could also be made into a virtual a New England two foot line.


Sometime I'd like to get around to making route of the two foot gauge Mount Gretna Narrow Gauge Railway of Pennsylvania.

The ones I used are Elvenor's, it was just that they looked more like Mexicans and I couldn't think of the correct name when I posted.

Milk cans, good suggestion. I think I have a photo of some that would date back to that era. Big question, would they travel in a box car or did the line have an insulated car for perishables like milk, meat etc. Does it get hot enough in the summer there to make an insulated car necessary?

Peter

narrowgauge said:

The ones I used are Elvenor's, it was just that they looked more like Mexicans and I couldn't think of the correct name when I posted.

Milk cans, good suggestion. I think I have a photo of some that would date back to that era. Big question, would they travel in a box car or did the line have an insulated car for perishables like milk, meat etc. Does it get hot enough in the summer there to make an insulated car necessary?

Peter

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Hi Peter,

The local standard gauge railroads such as the Rutland, Boston and Maine, and Maine Central had insulated boxcars which they ran with their hotshot passenger trains and as consists. These were called milk trains and the B&M and MEC ran the last ones in the early 1970s. I remember seeing a car or two at the old Edaville Railroad which was a tourist attraction in South Carver Mass. The owner had rescued a good amount of Maine 2-footer equipment before the routes were scrapped. The collection has since been moved back to Maine and is now part of the Narrow Gauge Railroad museum up there. Their website says nothing about the collection sadly, so I didn't bother to post a link.

It sure does get quite hot and humid up this way during the summer months. The temperature rises up into the high 30s and sometimes about 40C on occasion with humidity up on the 70-90% range. We call this the hot and sticky dog days of summer which lasts from late July to early September sometimes.

John

i wouldvery interested in the ng rolling stock and locomotives

Most smaller lines that I have heard of just used plain boxcars.
SR&RL wasn't necessarily small, though.

My knowledge of the SR&RL is, sadly, limited. However, even the smaller Wiscasset, Waterville and Farmington had dedicated insulated boxcars for milk service. The WW&F Railway Museum recently built a replica of one of these cars, as described in this thread on RYPN. Apparently, the SR&RL also had some dedicated cars, according to the SR&RL Railroad. However, that includes no information on if it was a specially equipped car or just a conventional boxcar. At the very least, it was specially designated and lettered for the service.

For pulpwood, I would actually suggest making an animated load. To do this, make a box with multiple height segments (with each segment being about the height of the car's side sills.) Then, split each vertical section off into a separate mesh. When animating the load, you can basically telescope these segments to hide the load in the frame of the car. Pencil42 has a pulpwood product set up as a bulk commodity and has some flatcars set up with an animated pulpwood load like I'm trying to describe.

Cheers,
Ben

Ben

Welcome back. Are you just lurking or does this mean more creations from you.

I have rechecked my information and the SR&RL had a "Cream Car", #145 built as a lightweight box car 14500lbs with an end door. To add to the confusion, they also possessed #59 with an end door with Sandy River as the original owners. I think they may have painted these red with a white roof.

I'll look at Pencil's pulpwood product but if it is made for a 3ft car it may be too wide for the SR&RL pulp wood racks which were conversions from flat cars.

Peter

narrowgauge said:

Welcome back. Are you just lurking or does this mean more creations from you.

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Both.

narrowgauge said:

I'll look at Pencil's pulpwood product but if it is made for a 3ft car it may be too wide for the SR&RL pulp wood racks which were conversions from flat cars.

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As mentioned, it is a bulk product requiring an animated load (think coal or woodchips) so it can be used on any gauge of car. It does put the burden of making the texture and mesh on you, though. Or me, if you want to outsource it.

Cheers,
Ben