Ideal Frisco locations to model

Discussion in 'General' started by friscobob, Aug 23, 2012.

  1. Iantha_Branch

    Iantha_Branch Member

    Only down side of Wichita is no 6 axle units on that line..... I remember seeing some were on the web site about how they tried an SD45 and it derailed. (food for thought, what did they do for passenger service? FP7's or Steam Generator GP7's?) But oldguy and bob are right, any thing could [potentially] be seen any were. To my knowledge there are some exceptions though.

    EDIT

    I just got to thinking after I posted the above that if anyone wants to make a shelf type layout, Lamar, MO would be a good candidate. It would fit good in a rectangle, and would have plenty of industries to switch (era dependant, 2012 era = 1 industry :() and an interchange with the MoPac. There's a few different posts on here of research about the layout of it and the industries for Rick McClellan's interest for his layout and my personal interest.

    Ethan
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 25, 2012
  2. Rancho Bob

    Rancho Bob Member

    In the '50's Joplin was at the end of the MOP branch from Carthage. Katy came into Joplin from Parsons via Galena. Santa Fe via trackage rights out of Pittsburg. Only KCS and FRISCO were "through" railroads.
     
  3. friscobob

    friscobob Staff Member Staff Member Frisco.org Supporter

    The A&A Subs were home to gas-electric doodlebugs that met at Hugo. The Arthur Sub, until February 1958, hosted 709/710 at thhe end of passenger operations, and had eith an FP7 or a GP7 at the head end.
     
  4. Depending on the Era add the North Arkansas(M&NA) to your list of Joplin connections. It came in on Trackage rights via KCS.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 26, 2012
  5. Joseph Toth

    Joseph Toth Member

    Carrollton, Texas!

    North of Big D, crossed the Katy and Cotton Belt at grade right in front of the SSW depot which served as a joint agency for the SSW, Frisco and Katy. The three way crossing was once maintained by Tower 77 until automatic interlocking replaced it and the tower was torn down. The Frisco maintained "shotgun shacks" for track workers. I attended the 11th grade with a Mexican boy whose dad worked for the Frisco in that capacity and they lived in one. This was in 1961! In the 1920s the Texas Interurban Railway operated their trains from Dallas to Denton over the Katy via trackage rights as well. Just up the line a few miles north is Frisco, Texas, site of the new location for The Museum of the American Railroad, formally The Age of Steam Museum at Dallas Fair Park.

    My wife's health prevents me from returning to Dallas but after their move is completed I want to contact them via Tim Blackwell, Editor and Publisher of The Cowcatcher Magazine, www.cowcatchermagazine.com, to see if a Frisco GP7 can be obtained to be placed on display with Frisco #1625 and #4501. A tuscan red caboose would be nice too. I just never could accept the o/w colors on the crummies. Black and yellow diesels were a big loss but the cabooses shouldda remained tuscan!

    The Museum doesn't have a single GP7 or a decent caboose other than a small 4-wheel T&N job for that matter. It is only fitting that the Frisco be represented in Diesel and caboose in Frisco, Texas, with one of each!

    Joe Toth
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 27, 2012
    friscobob likes this.
  6. yardmaster

    yardmaster Administrator Staff Member Administrator Frisco.org Supporter

    The River Division-Caruthersville Branch is still a favorite of mine, and one that I still hope to model someday.

    I figure that between Kennett and Hayti, I could include Bragg City, MO (depot with a grain elevator spur and team track) and Pascola, MO. The former had a non-connecting junction with the Cotton Belt; the latter had a connection to both the Pascola and Deering Branches, prior to abandonment in the mid-1930s.

    Even in its heyday, there was just enough traffic that 1-3 operators could probably be kept busy, if operations if your pleasure.

    Kennett or Hayti could represent staging. Or, I've always thought that a visible interchange with Hayti could be nice so that mainline passenger traffic could meet up at the Hayti depot with the Caruthersville Branch bull moose. Even the line onto Caruthersville had several industries and businesses in Hayti itself. For dessert, Hayti also had a small locomotive shop and yard.

    For further reading:

    http://www.frisco.org/shipit/index.php?threads/hayti-mo.1526/#post-8752

    http://www.frisco.org/shipit/index....rsville-branch-river-division.1455/#post-8277

    Best Regards,
     
    Last edited: Oct 30, 2015
  7. yardmaster

    yardmaster Administrator Staff Member Administrator Frisco.org Supporter

    As an addendum, I've tried starting a section in "The Meteor" for building what I hope would become a "Small Layout Design" catalog. However, with my available time, I've thus far only sketched ideas for Southeastern Junction.

    I'd personally love to see other's contributions. I would love to see more plans, ideas, research, etc. Maybe I can set up some sort of protocol so that we'd have a standard format for researching and presenting ideas, for consistency's sake.

    Best Regards,
     
    Last edited: Oct 30, 2015
  8. FriscoFriend (Bob Hoover RIP 4/12/2018)

    FriscoFriend (Bob Hoover RIP 4/12/2018) Passed Away April 12, 2018 Frisco.org Supporter

     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 27, 2012
  9. mvtelegrapher

    mvtelegrapher Member

    The E's made it to Wichita on the Meteor connection on a regular basis. Bob is right in that their A-1-A truck configuration distributed the weight in such a way that it did not create a problem with bridge loadings or light rail on this line. The FP-7s and the boiler equipped GP7's also were used. Jim McKeel of Wichita grew up in Neodesha and told me a story of him at around age 12 riding the train from Neodesha to Carthage to visit relatives and the conductor putting him in the cab of one of the E's at Altamont
    where the engineer let him blow the whistle and run the train until he got off in Carthage. Try that today on Amtrak!

    John Chambers
     
  10. friscobob

    friscobob Staff Member Staff Member Frisco.org Supporter

    The old coalfields south of Ft. Smith would also be a nice place to model- steam era, Frisco, Midland Valley, Rock Island, all those mines, ..... would make a great craftsman-level layout.

    I like the ideas that are being shared here- keep 'em coming. :)
     
  11. re: Ideal locations...
    Why not Ft. Scott? The Frisco had a major round house (30 stall), a car repair building, and all the the steam related structures in addition to switching local industries. On occasion southbound freights needed a boost to get up the hill south of the yards so one could add a helper district albeit with a yard engine. South of town the main line split into the Springfield and Tulsa lines. Just over the the hill to the southeast were the coal fields around Garland. In addition to the Frisco, the MOP had shops and a round house west of town. Both the MOP and Katy interchanged traffic with the Frisco in Ft. Scott plus each offered through passenger service which crossed the Frisco's north/south main along with their daily freights. So then, I offer Ft. Scott as a good modeling project...three railroads, two shops, and three passenger stations in a small town atmosphere. Larry F.
     
  12. yardmaster

    yardmaster Administrator Staff Member Administrator Frisco.org Supporter

    Larry -
    Interesting suggestion. I'd think that if a locomotive collector simply wanted a nice prototype-based location to store them all, with a bit of track to run in and out, the gigantic roundhouse here would be a nice locale.

    I've often thought that simply modeling a mainline yard would make for an interesting modeling topic by itself. A roundhouse, RIP track, car shops, a track scale plus loads of coal and Bunker C fuel oil in/MTYs out could by itself make for interesting switching.

    Best Regards,
     
  13. Papa Bear

    Papa Bear Bridge Foreman

    For small layouts:

    • Blakely Island
    • Magnolia, AL - Small yard and crew change point on the Pensacola sub.
     
  14. Ditto on Fort Scott, I have always wanted to do this area. I want to include the strip mines between Fort Scott-Arcadia-Mulberry. Lots of my ancestors were coal miners there. As a kid, I was amazed at the "huge" yard for coal cars in the middle of nowhere, seems like it was called Mertz. And the Mackie Clemens tipple North of Arcadia was about the largest building I ever saw in my early childhood. I went looking for it about 6 years ago, (figured it was gone), found a large empty area where it had to have been, appears nothing can grow there now. You don't think of coal being as much of a pollutant as oil, but it must be.
     
  15. meteor910

    meteor910 2009 Engineer of the Year Staff Member Frisco.org Supporter

    Plus at Ft Scott, you could recreate the 1951 accident where a MKT freight T-boned brand new E8 SLSF 2022 "Middleground" on Train 160.

    Nah - just kidding!

    Ken
     
  16. friscobob

    friscobob Staff Member Staff Member Frisco.org Supporter

    I may be in line for more real estate if I can successfully complete negotiations with the local Bureau of Land Management (a/k/a THE WIFE) and get a large layout built for Paris. If so, I can incorporate the ATSF, MP and SP interchanges, as well as the ATSF/Frisco yard in Paris. Plus, I can do a better job of either a staging yard for Hugo, OK, or model at least part of that yard, which sits on the Ardmore & Arkinda Sub. Should that happen, I may just build my smaller layout for test-bed purposes (trying out the DCC system, local operations in Paris vis a vis the Frisco, etc). If not, oh well.......I stil have a layout I can work on.
     
  17. yardmaster

    yardmaster Administrator Staff Member Administrator Frisco.org Supporter

    This brings to mind the article from MR some 5-8 years ago. It was a small layout focused around large roundhouse. The modeler was, first and foremost, a locomotive collector. He wasn't into operating, vis-a-vis long mainline runs or switching; he simply wanted a realistic location in which he could let his HO-scale locos limber up.

    Accordingly, the gargantuan Ft. Scott roundhouse would be a neat location for someone who was a collector o' steam power. It would be a fitting focal point for a larger layout; however, for a steam-era modeler I would think that the roundhouse area would have to be drastically compressed.

    Ken, for my money, I would still love to find a way to realistically model HO-scale fusees and torpedoes that would not involve serious property damage or bodily injury. If so...what a way to prevent scale-sized collisions!

    Best Regards,
     
  18. w3hodoug (Doug Hughes RIP 03/24/2021)

    w3hodoug (Doug Hughes RIP 03/24/2021) 2008 Engineer of the Year Frisco.org Supporter

    Lebanon, MO is still fascinating with respect to switching opportunities. The only thing that would make it better would have been an interchange. One was proposed back in the late 1800's for a line between Lebanon and Ft. Scott, KS, if my poor memory is serving me correctly. Doug
     
  19. ralphie79wi

    ralphie79wi Member

    I intend to model the Fairgrounds Branch and have been documenting my research on a blog at: http://kcspur.blogspot.com

     
  20. paul slavens

    paul slavens Member

    I want to model the line from Tulsa to Sapulpa, I can have a tiny version of Cherokee yard at Tulsa, and the mainline to Sapulpa has 2 small towns Oakhurst and Bowden (known as Norris and Taneha per railroad names) and then at Sapulpa there is a wye to direct traffic to Ft. Worth or Oklahoma City. There are 2 industrial areas along the way with switching opportunities. My bench work is done it starts at one end of my building and runs 40 feet to the corner and then another 30 feet down the adjacent wall to the opposite corner of the building. Along the mainline there is a really neat S curve at Bowden and a lot of small older houses and several oil wells. The original Route 66 runs parallel to the mainline. I'm excited to start laying the track and adding details. My sons are eager to help with the layout, they are 10 and 7 and they like modeling and running trains just as much as I do.
     

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