Recently, I decided to roll back the clock on my model railroad to the last days of steam. Doing so requires some reworking of the layout as it currently exists to move away from a proto-freelanced version of the Pend Orelle Valley Railroad and towards a more realistic interpretation of the Metaline Falls Branch as it was in the mid-1950s. So I figure now is as good of a time as any to start a blog detailing my modeling efforts.
The Metaline Falls Branch is a small branchline located in the dramatic and remote landscape of north eastern Washington state. During my time period of the 1950s, it was owned and operated by the Millwaukee Road. A local freight originating in Spokane Washington would work it’s way up the line following the Pend Orelle River as it flowed towards the town of Metaline Falls working a variety of industries (mostly forrest products) along the way. A large cement plant at Metaline Falls provided a great deal of the rail traffic on the line. Powerful articulated 2-6-6-2 locomotives were needed to pull long strings of 2-bay hoppers loaded down with cement out of the valley and back to Spokane.
The layout itself has been under construction since 2019 and has been 100% operational for a while. However, forward progress on structure building and scenery pretty much stalled out a few years ago. During that period of downtime I had developed a great interest in the transition era and especially steam locomotives. So, I sold off all my modern equipment and started redesigning the layout.
My updated plan preserves the vast majority of the construction and trackwork that has been accomplished up till now. I work slow, so I’d prefer not scrapping everything that has brought me to this point. This means that much of the layout does not follow the prototype arrangement very well. I’m largely fine with this as the layout was originally built to take the best advantage of the space it is in and I am happy with how it operates currently.
Perhaps my biggest deviation from the prototype is the way I’ve depicted operations at Newport, WA by turning it into a base of operations for the Metaline Falls branchline. Cars from both the Milwaukee Road and the Great Northern are interchanged here and there is a small locomotive servicing facility where my steam locomotives can refuel and rest between jobs.
My next steps are to begin the process of demolition of the few areas of the layout that will be affected the most, so look for updates on that in the coming days. I plan on using this blog to document the build process moving forward, however if interested, you can see what has led up to this point on my Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/mfrailroad and 10 years of previous efforts modeling the Pend Oreille valley can also be found on my old blog: https://mfrailroad.blogspot.com/