Farmrail's Quartz Mountain Flyer

Hi everyone!  Sorry for the lack of blog posts, but Army life has been as busy as ever since we re-deployed from Korea.  I'm the executive officer for our headquarters company now, and earned my Expert Infantryman Badge back in May!

In August, my wife and I went up to southwest Oklahoma to ride The Quartz Mountain Flyer.  The Quartz Mountain Flyer is an excursion operated by Farmrail for the city of Lone Wolf, OK.  It operates on the "Orient Line."  We boarded near the Quartz Mountain Resort (At the intersection of Highway 44 and 44A) and took a nice ride on a beautiful and unusually cool and cloudy day for August.  This trip really was a treat, and I can't recommend it enough.  Here's some photos and a YouTube video from my channel:

When we got to Altus, OK the night before the trip, there wasn't much
going around the yard.  This GNBC locomotive was tied down on the
south end of the yard.

There were a couple long cuts of tank cars stored in the
Wichita, Tillman & Jackson RR yard.  From what I've heard,
there has been little traffic on that line lately.

The Farmrail crew readies GP10 GNBC 8251, which was trailing behind for the
northbound portion of the trip to Lone Wolf, OK.  

GNBC 8253 was the lead locomotive for the first leg of the trip

There is an old Cotton Belt boxcar being used for storage at Lone Wolf

Looking north down Farmrail's "Orient Line." This line doesn't get much
use, but by the looks of the pile of grain (or feed) on the tracks, there
must be some sort of traffic from time to time.

Hanging out in the vestibule on the trip back south as we
pass through the Quartz Mountains along the shore of
Lake Altus-Lugert

Posing in front of GNBC 8253 at Lone Wolf

A shot at the back of GNBC 8253 as we climbed back on for the trip south

After we got off the train near Quartz Mountain Park, I asked the engineer
if he was taking the train back to Altus.  It turned out, he was, and I was able to
chase it and get some great photos!

The Stillwater Central's Dayton Job

The Stillwater Central RR runs a local job in Oklahoma City from their yard southeast of downtown (the former Frisco yard) west to Wheatland, OK and the industrial park there, and works all the industries in-between.

I believe the name "Dayton Job" is from the Frisco or Burlington Northern days, and has remained even though I don't think the Dayton plant is still in operation.

It took me some time to capture this job in action, but I finally found them working near Stockyards City in southwest OKC.  There are a variety of industries around here, including lumberyards, a gas dealer, concrete plant, and a Trinity Rail Car plant.

Here are some of the photos I got:

Pulling two-bay Trinity hoppers from Capitol Steel at S Pennsylvania.  The Trinity Rail Car facility
is directly behind me.  I couldn't tell what was being delivered with these cars.  There were conveyors for
transferring the contents to trucks.  Maybe frack sand?

The engineer kept blowing the horn because the crossing gates wouldn't trigger as he
pulled out of this spur.  People kept foolishly trying to pass on the road as he inched out.
The gates finally went down when he was about halfway through.

The Dayton Job backs up with the hoppers it picked up, backing into "Stockyards City" where
it left the rest of the train.

Here, they pulled several empty center-beam flat cars from Fox Building Supply.  I couldn't see the whole train at this point but I think from here they shoved loads back into this particular lumber yard.

A closer shot at one of the locomotives.

One last shot of the switching action.

I have some video footage that I'll put together and upload on YouTube later.  I'll post the video here when its done.  In the meantime, enjoy!

Union Pacific Oklahoma City Switcher

Hi everyone!



I'm back from our rotational deployment to the Republic of Korea and have tons of new content for the blog.  I spent two weeks of leave in Oklahoma, where I did a good deal of railfanning (my wife is such a good sport) and I have also made lots of progress on the model railroad.  Its been challenging to figure out how to post everything and weed out pictures and videos, but here is my first compilation:











I love watching shortlines and industrial switching operations, and I think there is a shortage of stuff about this kind of railroading in Oklahoma.  So, I followed the UP's OKC switcher around on two separate occasions and got lots of good photos and videos (as good as can get with an iPhone camera that is).



This was a fun operation to railfan because most of the spurs are easily accessible from public roads.  The video explains each switching move the train made in each clip.



There is more to come, but in the meantime, I hope y'all enjoy!

Model Railroad Progress Update

I am back from Korea!

It was a great tour, but I am happy to be back in the US of A, spending quality time with my lovely wife, eating plenty of BBQ and burgers, and of course, working on my model railroad.

A quick introduction to my layout: Its a fictional branch of one of my favorite prototypes, the Farmrail/Grainbelt system in western Oklahoma.  My layout depicts a "what if?" sort of scenario: a piece of the old Katy Northwest District from Elk City to points north is saved by a small short line and is later absorbed by Farmrail.

It's HO scale, built on shelf brackets and two hollow core doors in an L-shape in our spare bedroom.  Here is a track plan:

Operations are designed to be simple: Farmrail's Elk City switch job creeps up the branch a couple times a week to switch the Co-op elevator, team track, and the yet unnamed factory or warehouse.  There's been a recent uptick in traffic lately with lots of frack sand being delivered to the local drilling operations.

My layout has been hugely influenced by David Barrow's South Plains Industrial District project layout in Model Railroader as well as James McNab's Grimes Line layout.  However, the work of Lance Mindheim has been the most invaluable.  His book "How to Build a Switching Layout" has been my model railroading bible as I build my first serious attempt at a pike.  Its full of straightforward, easy to follow, and cost effective steps to tackle a small layout one project at a time and make a dream a reality.

Now, on to some photos of layout progress:

Since this is my first layout, and I don't plan on taking it with us to my next duty station, I tried to keep the cost down and focus on learning modeling techniques.  I built the benchwork on shelf brackets and hollow core doors (I even got a deal on the doors because one was slightly damaged).  Fascia and the backdrop are both Masonite.  I painted the backdrop a simple sky blue, as I'd rather have the eye focused on the layout than on scenes painted on the backdrop.  Track is Atlas Code 83.  I operate the turnouts with my fingertips rather than wiring a bunch of switch machines.  Next time I will definitely be using spring loaded turnouts from Peco or Micro Engineering.

I wired the layout with a Zephyr starter set from Digitrax.  Then, I weathered the track with some dark brown spray paint from the hardware store.  Next, I began ballasting the track with ballast from Arizona Rock & Mineral.  This has turned out to be a great investment.  I also got a little ballast spreader from a British company called Proses, and this has proven to be a great tool.  The ballast is all applied and now I'm working on applying layers of dirt to the grain elevator area.  Next projects will include building the staging cassette, installing a control panel for the Digitrax system, building and weathering the warehouse, and installing the road that bisects the track on the layout.  

I hope you've enjoyed this update, please stay tuned for more!

The Blackwell Northern Gateway RR

Hello everyone!

I've been deployed to Korea and thus not had much time to update this blog, but I still have high hopes for it.  I'd like to share some pictures from my last railfanning trip before I left the states.  I was lucky enough to catch a rather obscure and not often used shortline in action, the Blackwell Northern Gateway RR.  It was late on a Sunday afternoon in May 2015; my wife and I were coming back from a short visit with family in Kansas.  I call my wife the "train whisperer" because it never fails: when she accompanies me, the shortlines stir.

The Blackwell Northern Gateway RR was formed by the Blackwell Industrial Authority to utilize a former AT&SF branch that is now owned by the Oklahoma Department of Transportation.  It is operated by US Rail Partners.  The line connects to the BNSF at Wellington, KS.  There seems to be some seasonal grain traffic, but the Blackwell Industrial Park looked pretty dead and it appears that for now, this little operation is kept afloat providing car storage.

When we visited, we found a fairly long train of two bay hoppers creeping into Blackwell.  The crew shoved a few of them back into one of the industrial park spurs before tying the operation down for the night.  I noticed that they had brought a chain saw with them on the locomotive; makes sense due to the fact a large storm had just passed through and there might have been fallen branches on the tracks.  The crew gave me permission to walk down into the small "yard" to photograph the locomotives up close.

Enjoy!

Here's the link to the full album with more pictures and some more detailed descriptions:

https://picasaweb.google.com/108956544727138884104/BlackwellNorthernGatewayRR?authuser=0&feat=directlink