October 22nd, 2009

The October 2009 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman has a interesting article on a subject rarely modeled. Seems a fellow in New Jersey has a model railroad based on the Western & Atlantic. The W&A is a shortline owned by the state of Georgia and leased by CSX. It was formerly a part of the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway. It's not unusual for a model railroad to portray a short-line; what makes this layout unique is the period modeled. The HO scale Western & Atlantic is set in the 1860's about 18 months after the Andrew's Raid made history with its ill-fated attempt to sabotage Confederate supply lines.

I have a special affinity for 19th century railroading, especially "pre-bellum" railroads. The Allegheny Eastern was originally conceived as a portrayal of the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1859, two years after it was completed and the year before Lincoln's election and all hell broke loose. While I wasn't able to pull that off, it is very cool to see someone who has succeeded at a similar attempt. The fact that the W&A was done with Mantua locomotives and rolling stock is also pretty neat. I had used the same equipment and was intending to modify those little Mantua 4-4-0 American's to represent Pennsy motive power. The W&A uses the little engines with few modifications and they look just fine.

I also enjoyed the fact that the article is surrounded by advertisements from companies that specialize in models from that period in history. There's quite a bit of equipment and structures available that weren't available even a short while ago. Open top stock cars, conductors cars, ventilated house cars and best of all, Winans "camel" locomotives are all available. The "camel" comes in not just one, but three different versions of this pre-bellum "superpower" in it's original form. There is even a "modernized" version, depicting a "camel" as it would have appeared in 1870 or later.  They also make 20 ton iron "pot hoppers" used by the B&O and other railroads at that time. They were among the first metal freight cars built.

Although I never got the chance to build the Allegheny Eastern in its 1859 setting in any analog scale, the virtual All East did run as a nineteenth century railroad for a while. I created quite a few virtual models of Winan's camels, iron hoppers, iron boxcars, wooden freight cars and passenger equipment. Some of them were patterned after Mantua cars I had purchased for the HO scale version, others were created from plans in hobby magazines and books.

The camels were based on German drawings published in John H.White's book "The American Locomotive". The locomotive "Susquehanna" in the left image is detailed to match photos of Baltimore and Ohio engines from the 1850-1860's. It's lettered for the Lehigh & Atlantic Railway and Canal Navigation Company, my 1859 version of the Lehigh Valley / Jersey Central. Locomotive 191, shown on the right, is built and painted to represent a B & O Winans from about 1854. The locomotives were delivered with those odd spark arrestors and a green paint job. I'm not sure of the exact shade, but according to contemporary accounts it was sloppily done and not very attractive. The pinstriping shown on 191 was probably not part of the factory package.

The car behind #191 is a riveted iron "pot" hopper car, built about the same time and used extensively by the B&O. That road had hundreds of these little 20 ton cars. The cars look like they have truck assemblies, but in reality they are flexible beams that do not swivel. Instead they allow the wheel sets to shift sideways when passing through curves.

Another set of models were built for the digital version of the Western and Atlantic circa 1862 shown here in a view of Moon's Station. The locomotive is Jon Davis's model of the "General" and the various cars in the train were provided by a half dozen different MSTS modelers. The route was coordinated and constructed by Zoe Topper and Ed Hawkins and should still be available at Train-Sim.com

The train shed shown here was built for the Atlanta section of that route. I also created a model of the big W&A roundhouse. The poly count is so high on both models that they had to be loaded into Route Editor in sections.

Another locomotive from the period is this Hayes ten-wheeler shown here pulling a contemporary set of coaches. The model was created by Marcel Sanchez and really shows the detail and colors commonly used on engines during this period. The Hayes looks like a Winans design, but was not. It was developed by the B&O Master of Machinery, Samuel Hayes. The tender shown here is a typical "camel"
tender, including the canopy and low deck for the fireman to reach that huge firebox. Many of these engines had a secondary coal chute to allow the fireman to reach the front of the firebox without leaving his "cozy" perch. Note also the flexible beam "trucks". Apparently the pivoting truck as we know it today was a revolution that took decades to adopt.

Another modeler who has developed pre-bellum motive power is Jon Davis. Although his most well known model from this period is the Western & Atlantic "General" (in several versions) he has built a number of others. His "General" shown here ias it appeared in 1862  is also the basis of Allegheny Eastern 4-4-0 "Panther" also shown here resplendent in her purple paint. On the lower right is John's rendition of the "Yonah", one of the W&A locomotives involved in chasing Andrew's and his troops through Georgia. Yonah looks to an older design with the Bury firebox that was "modernized" sometime in the 1850's. Railroads have always recycled their older equipment. The wheel arrangement on the tender  and lead truck, the slanted cylinder saddle and the outside frame are all hallmarks of an earlier decade.

The odd lettering on the hoppers and some of the locomotives was actually pretty common for the time. PRR locomotive tenders were often lettered Penna RR (all in caps with the P and RR in larger letters. This is the origin of the Allegheny Eastern's "All East" moniker seen on Panther's tender.  The fact that it reads as "all east" is a coincidence that the marketing department exploited to full effect.

Jon has produced other 19th century loco's. These examples from the latter decades represent the zenith of motive power in the 1880's and 90's including the W&A "General" as rebuilt in 1892. Noticed that the lead truck has been replaced and her cylinders have been moved to a more conventional location. More of Jon's work can be seen at jonmdavis.com

The first half of the nineteenth century was a free for all of ideas and inventiveness for railroad design. Standardization only came into vogue as a lesson learned by the U.S. Military Railroads and taught by men like Hermann Haupt and J Edgar Thompson during the Civil War. Before that each equipment builder had their own idea of what worked and what didn't. It was a time when a watch maker like Matthias Baldwin or a horse trader named Ross Winans could just up and start building locomotives. Locomotive engineers were the truck drivers, pilots, and astronauts of later decades and the railroads themselves were "the work of the age".

Well I think that's about it for now...Thanks for listening.