Hello! I am new to the forum and am excited to be a part of the community. I have lived in Salem, Missouri for the last ten years. Before that I lived in Aurora, Colorado and grew up in the Yakima Valley in Washington State. We owned an orchard and a dairy, and was an indentured servant at an early age. I was a TSR (Train Service Representative; a fancy way of saying Switchman/Brakeman/Engineer) for the Washington Central Railroad (Now a fallen flag. It was purchased by the Burlington Northern). I am interested in the Frisco's Salem-Cuba branch line especially from the 1880's -1930's. I have stood on the loading dock (this is all that remains) of the Frisco's depot in Salem. It is very hard to get pictures and information from the locals. Most of them have only very hazy memories or no recollections of a railroad in Salem. Shalom, ya' all!
Welcome aboard! I share your era of interest. My Zalma branch is good for late 1800s up to about 1925. I also modeled a locomotive (#151) that was on your Salem branch during that era but I use it on my own branch. Rule #1
Welcome to Frisco.org. You have spent time in a neat place. I once enjoyed a tour of hop farms in the Yakima Valley. During one visit the owner gestured to shoulder-high pallets of the most beautiful golden delicious apples you could imagine and said, "Take all you want, they got hail damage and are headed for the apple-sauce plant where I'm only getting nine cents a pound for them." Yes, I have sweet memories of the Yakima Valley.
Jim; Do you have any information about locomotive #151 (or any other locomotives that were used on the branch, for that matter). I would suppose Frisco used mid size to small locomotives- nothing bigger than a Mogul (2-6-0) or smaller than a 2-4-0 Porter. I would be interested in any photos of your #151. Thank you!
Ardean .. Here is a link to one photo of #151. http://www.frisco.org/vb/showthread...Branch-(photos)/page23&highlight=Zalma+branch you might do a search on posts by Jim. He did a complete "build" thread on his mods, I believe.
Using a photo from another site I transformed an OO scale Rivarossi 4-4-0 Genoa (out of production) into my attempt at creating the #151 in HO scale. The first photo shows both together for comparison. I have several of those old Rivarossi 4-4-0s. I straightened the boiler, scatchbuilt the cab, increased the tender heigth and replaced all other parts with brass HO scale detail parts. The tender contains a new NWSL motor with flywheels, a Tsunami DCC sound decoder and a sugar cube speaker. Lots of tedious work allowed me stuff that all in there plus add a working headlight. She ain't perfect but darn close to the prototype. Here's a couple of pics.
Jim, Thank you! This is by far more information than I have been able to locate in Salem. You're right, your locomotive is almost spot on of the prototype. So the 151 was a 4-4-0. Thank you so much for your help (I hope you don't mind if I save the pictures to my computer).
