Howdy, I'm fascinated with this town and it's railroads and I wanted to incorporate a little bit of all of them into my layout idea. Basically what I'm trying to do is model Jerome itself, the Hopewell Tunnel and Clarkdale. I loved the concept of John Olsen's Jerome and Southwestern layout featured long ago in Model Railroader but I didn't think it did the town of Jerome itself any justice. A map of the Verde Tunnel and Smelter yards at Jerome would be extremely useful, along with at the Hopewell Tunnel. USGS maps are extremely useful but are still too far zoomed out to provide detail of the yards. I think there was a small brochure produced on the railroads and there was a book written specifically about the Narrow Gauge to the town but never one about the VT&S itself, would I just be better off getting something like a book about the UV mine?
Just because I want to get it off my head, my J&S would use a mixture of actual locomotives that ran on the VT&S in the late 40s (USRA 2-6-6-2s, USRA 0-6-0s, Plymouth ML-8s) along with some fictional stuff (A boxcab with siderods, geared locomotives and maybe a diesel road switcher or two). The Jerome section would be based off of the real track layout except it would be dual gauge and extend to the Verde Central mine (A mile SW up Hull canyon). Instead of the NG breaking off north of the town to Prescott it would head down Hull Canyon, over a summit and onto a "Custom" Smelter and other NG facilities. The NG (I'm thinking I would call it something like the Black Hills, Verde & Western) would be more run down than the J&S and would incorporate a few oddball locomotives (0-8-2t based off a Roundhouse 3-1 kit) and a few recently purchased old C-19s from Colorado to help with the war effort. Since the mines were running at capacity during WWII the Govt gave special funding to help keep the NG open so copper could be moved out for the war effort ASAP. The NG would also be supported by a few of the independent smaller mines like the Verde Central and a few other fake ones I'll come up with later that don't use the smelters in Clarksdale and also a logging camp and sawmill further up near Mingus Mountain, maybe even at one point there was a branch to Cherry.
The Town of Jerome would also have a freight station built right on the upper part of US 89 and would require a switchback to get to and was built under the condition that the city of Jerome would handle the freight itself once it arrived in the Jerome yard (Via an old Gas Plymouth that has tumbled down the Cleopatra hill right into main street more than a few times more than a few times in it's life)
