"HO-key" Railroad Backstories - Part 1

Getting this locomotive onto my HO-scale layout required a lot of imagination, and a little bit of compromise

On my HO-scale railroad layout, I always try to emulate my prototype railroad, the Washington, Idaho & Montana Railway (WI&M).  Of course, I realize that compromise is a necessary ingredient in any model railroad, and I can’t even count the ways my little version of the WI&M differs from the big one.

But, I do take some pride in those few instances where I can say that, to the best of my knowledge and ability, a particular part of my railroad is “just like the real one.”  And in other instances, I can show a clear correlation how some feature of the prototype WI&M is directly represented by the model I have built, even though it isn’t exact.

But sometimes my modeling muses (sirens?) lure me in a totally different direction.  Most often, I can ignore them when what they suggest deviates too wildly from my chosen prototype, but sometimes the urge is too strong.

Take my infatuation with Baldwin diesel locomotives, for instance.  I don’t know when, but at some point in my early years of rail enthusiasm, the boxy lines of those Baldwins caught my attention.  I hadn’t even seen any in person, but because they were different from what I did see around me, I found them strangely compelling.



A grainy black-and-white photo of this particular locomotive in an old issue of Trains Magazine is what sparked my initial interest in Baldwin diesels.  Photo by an unknown photographer from my collection.

The good news for me was that two particular examples of Baldwin diesels once did serve the area I model.  The Northern Pacific bought two DRS-4-4-1500 road-switchers in 1947 for use on their Eastern Washington branchlines, and they could be seen leading freight and passenger trains through Palouse, WA (the WI&M’s western terminus) up until about 1954.  But, to my knowledge, they never operated on the WI&M, and why would they have?

I did detail and paint an HO version of the NP road switchers for interchange work on my WI&M layout – I even installed sound in it recently, and it sounds pretty friggin’ awesome.  I also obtained an NP Baldwin VO-1000, which were used extensively by NP in the Spokane area, but not on the NP's Palouse & Lewiston branch. (Again to my knowledge – anyone want to show me a picture and prove me wrong?)  The DCC sound installation is currently in progress on this one.

But then, there were those 6-axle Baldwins that other logging railroads operated!  One enclave of these worked the Oregon & Northwestern RR up until 1984, and another flock of them hauled logs on the Rayonier operation north of Grays Harbor, also until 1984.  If only I’d been older and had gotten turned on to those two outfits a few years earlier, I could have witnessed those monsters in action!

An example of ITT Rayonier's 6-axle Baldwins that roamed the Olympic Peninsula.  Photo by an unknown photographer from my collection.

One of four Oregon & Northwestern RR 6-axle Baldwins that worked in the 'desert' of Eastern Oregon for many years.  Photo by an unknown photographer from my collection.

Any model railroader’s balm for missed opportunities is to make a trip to the hobby shop.  I acquired another Stewart Baldwin road switcher, and started wondering how to fit it into my plans for a WI&M layout.  My first divergence into fantasy railroad modeling, to align my interests in Baldwins and in the WI&M, fell along the lines of “what if the WI&M had bought new locomotives from Baldwin instead of Alco?”

Logic said a shortline like the WI&M would probably have accepted Baldwin’s suggestion for a paint scheme, and I liked the ones that had been applied to the Duluth, South Shore & Atlantic’s and O&NW’s engines.  I hybridized them using the DSS&A colors (yellow and green with red strips), but using the O&NW striping pattern (their colors had been yellow and rust, with horizontal rust-colored stripes wrapping around the hood ends).  It didn’t hurt my case that Rayonier also shared a similar scheme – yellow and green with no stripes.  For lettering, I also followed the DSS&A’s use of red “railroad roman” initials along the side of the hood, and I selected the number 33 for the cab sides.  I then applied some airbrush weathering to the sides, and I used “Baldwin dust” to smudge up the roof.

Baldwin dust?  Well, that came from an interesting relic.  This locomotive modeling project began while I was completing college in Utah.  A local hobby shop was selling a consignment item for another customer – an actual piston removed from a Baldwin diesel engine.  The nearby US Steel - Geneva mill had recently scrapped or re-engined nearly all its old Baldwin switchers, so this piston likely came from there.  I wanted to buy it and turn it into a glass-topped end table, but a look at our student budget put a stop to that idea.  So, with permission, I scraped a bunch of the carbon deposits on the crown of the piston into an envelope for use in weathering my HO Baldwins.  Although I’ve misplaced that envelope since then, a healthy coat of Dullcoat applied to this and an Athearn Baldwin S-12 project I’d painted in a matching scheme ensured they’ll never lose that (to me) key element of realism.

 

One of the Geneva Steel Baldwins - could this have been the source of my 'Baldwin Dust'?
Steve Gartner photo from my collection.

I did not have an operating layout at the time this, so my WI&M Baldwins went into their boxes and suffered through several moves.  About 20 years later, I dug them out to see how they would fit into my layout scenario.

Like Dorothy in Oz, they awoke in a whole new world.  My prototype-based WI&M layout was well underway and populated by a series of more accurate WI&M models.  I had thrown most of my “what if” ideas in the trash, and had committed myself to “representational” prototype modeling.  That’s a catch phrase for my modeling philosophy:  get the key elements as accurate as possible, and fill in the rest with close-enough stand-ins to represent what was really there.

In a nutshell, these Baldwins really didn’t fit.  It also hurt their case that their mechanisms were hopelessly out of date Athearn-clones and that Stewart’s original in-house design for the six-axle Baldwin trucks sucked, to be ‘blunt’ (serious diesel fans will notice the lame pun here).  Stewart had upgraded its Baldwin road switchers to much smoother Kato-style mechanisms several years later.  Their newer motor, drive and truck design were more conducive to DCC operation and sound, and they matched the quality of the mechanisms on my newer fleet of locomotives.

I bided my time watching eBay and soon nabbed a four-axle Stewart/Kato model for cheap.  That went to re-power my NP Baldwin, which I knew would find work on the layout.  And then, I got my hands on a newer six-axle model to upgrade my WI&M Baldwin.  But, I still had a hard time stomaching a “fantasy” WI&M locomotive.

One of my biggest hang-ups with fantasy modeling, or free-lance as it’s often called, are the often hokey backstories modelers conjure up to justify their layouts and models.  A healthy imagination is a good thing, but retaining some plausibility is also important to me.  If I was going to work this engine into my operating schemes, I would need some justifiable reason for it to have been that way.  I puzzled on this for a while.

The idea hit me while I was writing an article on the prototype WI&M for the historical society newsletter I edit.  I was writing how the Potlatch Lumber Co., the WI&M’s builder and owner for many years, had maintained a separate fleet of steam locomotives for running up to the harvesting sites and herding the logs down to where the “mainline” railroad would haul them to the mill.  They kept their WI&M and logging company locomotives separated mostly to avoid government-mandated inspection frequencies that only applied to “common carrier” railroads.

A Whitcomb diesel owned by Potlatch Forest Industries, circa 1955.  Tom Kreutz photo from WI&MRy. HPG collection.

Would this thinking also apply to a diesel?  Again, there were lots of examples where lumber companies maintained their own diesels, including a handful of other Potlatch Forest Industries operations around Idaho and the country.  But, railroad logging in the Potlatch/Palouse watersheds ended in the early Fifties – trucks were more flexible and cheaper for the short hauls either directly to mill or to truck-rail reloads.  So here was where I inserted another “tiny” bit of reality.
When I built my 1955 and later era WI&M layout, I located a single logging spur that left the Harvard siding and “disappeared” through the backdrop.  There had not actually been any such siding at that time and in that place.  I’d intended it to represent all the old logging spurs east of there and the rail-side locations where I knew logs had been occasionally loaded onto trains.  What if this represented an active spur?  What if it was of fairly new construction in the mid-Fifties or later to reach some new harvesting site?  What if PFI needed its own diesel to handle traffic on the spur?

Actually, the mid-Sixties made even more sense to me.  By that time, PFI had sold off the WI&M to the Milwaukee Road, who, in turn, parceled off the WI&M’s old Alco switchers to other owners (the WI&M continued to exist, but used Milwaukee locomotives and equipment from then on).  So, to operate their own logging railroad, PFI could follow the lead of Rayonier and the Hines Lumber-owned O&NW and acquire used Baldwins from class one railroads.  And, as in earlier days of cooperation between PFI and the Milwaukee Road, PFI could contract for permission to haul the trains all the way to the mill over the WI&M tracks (using WI&M crews to allay any argument from the unions).

So, with that thinking in mind, I went ahead and made some minor changes to my HO Baldwin, and concocted a ‘hokey’ backstory (see Part 2) to justify my decision.