blackburn49
1st Class Member
Copper Center, Alaska
Engineer
Posts:1826
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 | | 08/06/2008 4:23 PM |
| Posted By blackburn49 on 08/05/2008 11:15 PM
I haven't showed you the sideview shot yet. Care to guess as to the length of the combined passenger consists?
Bueller? Anyone? . . .
Anyone? | |
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ThinkerT
Alaska
Foreman
Posts:193
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| | 08/06/2008 9:10 PM |
| Sixty feet...assuming the passenger cars are two feet long each and I didn't botch the count too badly in the earlier pics.
Out of curiosity, was the cat just being clumsy...or trying to see if the trains were 'killable'? | | | |
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blackburn49
1st Class Member
Copper Center, Alaska
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| | 08/06/2008 10:54 PM |
| The four passenger consists as seen in this lineup measured 79 feet end-to-end.
It appears the cat was clumsy when jumping over one of the Mac locomotives, knocking over four of the beer cars and derailing an engine in the process.
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sbaxters4
1st Class Member
Southern Minnesota.. Brrr!
Brakeman
Posts:53
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| | 08/07/2008 7:04 AM |
| | Ron, your layout gets more and more impressive everytime you post. The amount of time and track you have is astounding. I can only imagine the number of hours you have put into such a great layout. Wish I had that kind of space to work with too.... Keep going!! | |
Scott Baxter
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blackburn49
1st Class Member
Copper Center, Alaska
Engineer
Posts:1826
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| | 08/08/2008 9:16 AM |
| | The strange summer weather continues. Mostly we are seeing almost non-stop rain and very cold mornings. Over to the west in Anchorage they say lightning strikes yesterday--very unusual for Anchorage, especially this late in the summer. It has been mostly too wet to run the trains. I have now come up with the two-day rule. If we have a second good day in a row I run the trains (that first day where sun might appear typically only lasts a few hours before the rain moves back in). | |
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blackburn49
1st Class Member
Copper Center, Alaska
Engineer
Posts:1826
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| | 08/08/2008 9:22 AM |
| Posted By sbaxters4 on 08/07/2008 7:04 AM
Ron, your layout gets more and more impressive everytime you post. The amount of time and track you have is astounding. I can only imagine the number of hours you have put into such a great layout. Wish I had that kind of space to work with too.... Keep going!!
I expect to continue with the Phase II development next year since the need for some type of protected outdoor railroad yard has now been established. That part of the project will bring the railroad even closer to the ground. Maybe by the time I finally reach ground level in a year or two I can begin the final phase. Fortunately it does not appear that I will be running out of space any time soon. | |
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blackburn49
1st Class Member
Copper Center, Alaska
Engineer
Posts:1826
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| | 08/09/2008 11:24 AM |
| | We had a hard frost last night AND the Northern Lights are already beginning to make their appearance. That COULD mean that the clear weather is finally returning, but it also is an earlier-than-usual harbinger of winter. Some of the elders are saying we are in for a long, cold one. I also note that yesterday I saw the first of the leaves that have turned colors . . . | |
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blackburn49
1st Class Member
Copper Center, Alaska
Engineer
Posts:1826
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| | 08/11/2008 9:46 PM |
| Iti s the first day in many where I finally have a good view of the mountains to the east. What is obvious to me as I take these shots is that some branch pruning will be in order for next year. The view of the mountains has become obstructed at the east loop--the best angle for obtaining a background mountain shot.
Here I have taken it from a higher point just off the Kennecott model structure:
And here you can see it in relation to the tracks.
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blackburn49
1st Class Member
Copper Center, Alaska
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| | 08/21/2008 12:38 PM |
| In May 1996 I purchased the Copper Center Bar. It was a plain structure that was only seven years old at the time. Very little had been done to the interior. I had plenty of room for the overhead railroad I intended to install there.
What I did not have was a shop. I was leaving that behind when I vacated my home in Fairbanks. At the time I purchased this, I thought I was done with model-building except for a few remaining items that I had farmed out to a shop in Fairbanks. There a carpenter would cut the pieces I had drawn out. I then assembled them in his shop and moved them elsewhere for the painting and detailing.
But I did not forsee the need for a new shop. After all, I was done building structures--I thought.
The old Copper Center Bar, looking east, winter of 1995.
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blackburn49
1st Class Member
Copper Center, Alaska
Engineer
Posts:1826
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| | 08/21/2008 12:44 PM |
| Along with the Copper Center Bar, which included a full beverage-dispensary license, I had acquired the remnants of an old trailer court--Twin Spruce Trailer Park. About half the spaces were already vacated. But I had tenants in four spaces, one vacant trailer that had possiblities for a shop or other uses, one trailer I had set aside for my own residence and one wrecked unit that would eventually have to be removed. There was also a small laundromat on the property.
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blackburn49
1st Class Member
Copper Center, Alaska
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Posts:1826
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| | 08/21/2008 12:51 PM |
| The first order of the day was to paint the bar. The seven-year old structure had no paint on it at all. This barn red-with-white is the color scheme that would ultimately set the tone for the rest of the property. The laundromat building was also repainted to these colors at the same time.Â
It is, of course, based on the historic Kennecott Copper Company colors used in their original mine at Alaska.Â
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blackburn49
1st Class Member
Copper Center, Alaska
Engineer
Posts:1826
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| | 08/21/2008 12:55 PM |
| I also added a new sign below the original CCB sign that would enable me to advertise my new overhead railroad. Although I had picked up the CCB in '96, I did not begin installing track overhead until two years later. There were simply too many other projects that took priority as I began the long process of cleaning up and transforming the property.
It says "Copper River & NW Railway" I was very proud to be able to actually advertise that model name--a referenc to a piece of local history which had all but vanished. Few knew much of the CRNW Railway in those days. | |
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blackburn49
1st Class Member
Copper Center, Alaska
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| | 08/21/2008 1:18 PM |
| Here is an aerial of south Copper Center taken in 1996 showing the location and some of the features of the property as it was back then. The trailer park is now largely gone. In those days there was no easy access to river. Three acres of the property were on the south side of a dike installed by the Corps of Engineers in 1965 as a flood control measure. Eventually I would have a road built over that dike and some of that land cleared. This would become a camping site along the river oriented toward those who wanted to take advantage of the railroad-themed bar while staying nearby in something resembling wild conditions. In 1996 it was wild over there (with the occasional bear, moose and all the rest).
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blackburn49
1st Class Member
Copper Center, Alaska
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Posts:1826
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| | 08/21/2008 3:40 PM |
| By 1998 I had begun adding fences that extended from the bar. This one looks down the front driveway toward the CRD in a westerly direction. By 2000 this driveway would cease to exist.
The original intent was to fence in a beer-garden. Who would have guessed that eventually much of this fencing would serve as supports for an extensive outdoor model railway?
The beer garden would become the basis for my first outdoor model railroad. But when I first built it, I had no such plans.
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blackburn49
1st Class Member
Copper Center, Alaska
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Posts:1826
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| | 08/21/2008 3:48 PM |
| In this 1996 aerial you can see the CRD building (the red arrow points right to it) in relationship to the old Twin Spruce Trailer Court.Â
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blackburn49
1st Class Member
Copper Center, Alaska
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Posts:1826
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| | 08/21/2008 3:56 PM |
| The 1998 view includes most of the area now occupied by my outdoor model railroad. The tree in the foreground is the one around which the east turn-around loop for the Phase II line was built. To its left is where I would place the historic CRNW lineshack in 1999. As you can see the area was just a flat weed field. I had no idea I would be building anything out here !
You can see the east window of the CRD bar. That would be replaced by double doors once I had built the beer garden fence. To the left is the previously-mentioned laundromat building which was painted in the same manner as the old CCB--now the CRD Saloon.
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blackburn49
1st Class Member
Copper Center, Alaska
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Posts:1826
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| | 08/21/2008 4:05 PM |
| The beer garden fence was quite attractive. Unfortunately only a year later much of it would be displaced by the upcoming outdoor model railroad. Here you see the new double doors installed now that a beer garden area had been built.
Looking east along the new fence in 1999: This was the last year that this driveway in the front of the CRD would be used. The fence in the distance eventually became the location for the Cicely model structure. The solid fence in the front became the south edge of the Kennecott model structure.
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blackburn49
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Copper Center, Alaska
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| | 08/21/2008 4:47 PM |
| The Cicely model structure would ultimately be located in this area: about three posts from the solid fence in the distance.Â
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blackburn49
1st Class Member
Copper Center, Alaska
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| | 08/21/2008 4:51 PM |
| In that same year (1999) I had one of the very last surviving CRNW lineshacks moved from Chitina to this location.
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blackburn49
1st Class Member
Copper Center, Alaska
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Posts:1826
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| | 08/21/2008 5:04 PM |
| In 2000 we buillt the 20 X 26 foot Kennecott model housing structure over the old driveway:
The model was to be placed on the second level. The ground level would serve as a shop for a brief time a few years later.
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