The Saga of B&SGE Combine No. 7
The Saga of B&SGE Combine No. 7
My HOn3 model of Blacklog & Shade Gap Eastern combine No. 7 is kitbashed from a MDC Overton combine. According to the fictitious history I've developed for it, the B&SGE provided mail, express freight, and passenger service with mixed trains during the period that I model (the 1930's). Eight regularly scheduled round-trip mixed trains operated weekdays and Saturdays, originating at opposite ends of the line (Blacklog and Richmond Furnace) and meeting "in the middle" at Tuscarora Valley Junction, from where the train from Richmond Furnace continued on to the Tuscarora Valley RR's southern terminus at Blairs Mills.
Combine No. 7 was the regular accommodation on the mixed trains operating over the Path Valley Division (the eastern half of the B&SGE's system) between Richmond Furnace and Blairs Mills. In this grainy, old black & white photo, the photographer caught the car sitting in front of the TVRR's Blairs Mills depot on an overcast summer day. The combine has been turned, facing south, and is waiting while the crew picks up south-bound freight cars for the return trip to Richmond Furnace. In actuality, the photo is a "captured" video frame shot on TVRR modeler and historian George Pierson's Blairs Mills module.
In another "period" view, another anonymous photographer shot Combine No. 7 as her train pulled into Spring Run, PA with empty hoppers to to be turned over to the Cumberland & Susquehanna, a narrow gauge line connecting the Tuscarora coal field with the Western Maryland near Shippensburg, PA. The B&SGE had four connections to the outside world: the interchange with the East Broad Top at Blacklog, the TVRR connection, the C&S, and the Pennsylvania RR's Cumberland Valley Branch at Richmond Furnace. This shot is another "vidcap" taken on Ric Case's huge freelance EBT-themed layout, which I visited during the 1997 National Narrow Gauge Convention in Cincinnati.
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