Re: Sumpter Valley Railroad track layout for a model railroad: Baker, Whitney. etc.

Following the excellent maps found here in this thread and others here, I have modified my 'mountain town' to better resemble the 'high valley town' of Whitney. To make it fit I had to reverse things left (West) to right (East). The three track yard will only fit a few cars without an extension off the layout, but that shouldn't be a problem at this time. I put the water tank in the original location (as reversed) to keep it closer to the depot. A two stall engine house is on the siding off the wye opposite the mill connection (as reversed).

Unfortunately, the mill, even compressed, would take up a whole additional section so that will have to wait until I get into setting up operations. The tail of the wye also completely covers the lower standard gauge track which is the switching lead and engine/ caboose track for section 1, I don't like that at this point but I'm not sure how I could further compress a wye and still make it navigable by larger locos.

Now section 3 becomes Alder Springs Trestle without a lot of modification.

Sections 4 and 5 work well for the logging spurs at McCoy though the exact layout will have to wait till I get a map of the area. I would like to have a logging camp set up and two logging areas but I don't know exactly how it would be laid out.

Exploring the Overlay of the SVRy line with Bruce's Google Map West of Whitney is really interesting. I can see why I didn't see it from the highway as for the most part, it is quite a way from the road, not even visible on the aerial photos. The photos of the water tank still in place in Austin in 1961 are really interesting! I haven't found any other photos of Austin, but maybe this would make a better model for my 'mountain town'?

Anyway, here is the latest:



Russell Courtenay
Idaho, USA