Western Pacific RR

From 1910 until being merged into the mighty Union Pacific Railroad in 1982, the Western Pacific was one of the Western USA's most popular railroads. Attracting fans from all over the world, the WP's short but diverse route featured everything from urban industrial trackage in the thriving metropolis of the San Francisco bay area to the scenic splendours and sleepy mountain communities of the famous Feather River Route and on through the desert wastelands of Eastern Nevada and Utah. The WP had a unique character all it's own.

Today, the WP survives only as the Feather River Subdivision of Union Pacific's growing railroad empire.

Model Railroad

Click on the thumbnails above to get a view of the Western Pacific RR and the Feather River Route or Canyon Subdivision that I will be modelling.

Model Railroading

Why would a grown man want to play with toy trains?  It is very hard to admit this one to people.  For me there are several aspects that I find appealing.

The first is creating something with your hands.  Model railroading covers many aspects from carpentry, electronics, modelling to computer software and hardware aspects in the building phase. 

Prior to this there is research into the history of a particular railroad and the region you wish to model, geography, why the land looks like it does in a particular area. Understanding industries the railroad served and the economics of that region. There is track planning, fitting as much of what you want to in the space provided.

After this there is operation, running trains to schedules and following the rules of the prototype.  Maintaining equipment and building or improving models to achieve scenes like in the pictures above but at 1:160th scale. 

It provides me with a vast range of interests to keep  me busy.  It also provides an interest that can be shared with the family and understanding friends ;-)

My Layout is currently being built in my basement. Ultimately it will fill a 36' x 12' room and have 2 decks.  I am using a Digital Command Control system (DCC) supplied by Digitrax.  Digitrax is the brain child of a New Zealander now living in Norcross Georgia with a business supplying the model railroad fraternity around the world..

DCC moves from the traditional DC power systems used for years and turns the rails into a LAN.  A 5 amp square wave AC current is supplied to the rails and a digital signal is fed over this.  Each locomotive has it's own decoder which contains a small microprocessor this accepts packets from the tracks addressed to it and then provides rectified DC current to the motor and lights to send the locomotive in the desired direction at the chosen speed. This allows for multiple locomotives to be independently controlled on the same piece of track.

Ultimately I think I am just a sick puppy.