My HOn3 Silver San Juan |
My HOn3 model railway is based on the Rio Grande Southern Railroad's "First District" which ran 66 miles from Ridgway, Colorado to the divisional town of Rico, Colorado. The era is September, 1941. The purpose of the railroad is to tap the rich mines of the area and to transport livestock, lumber and many other commodities. The railway also brings in goods to the remote communities of the San Juan mountains. (The real Rio Grande Southern RR was abandoned in 1952.)
Name | Rio Grande Southern RR - First District |
Scale | HOn3 |
Size | 26' x 26' L-shaped 21' x 5' Extension |
Era | September 1941 |
Layout Style | Walk around, continuous run |
Benchwork | Open grid |
Subroadbed | Plywood, cord and some homosote |
Track | Handlaid code 55 and 40 |
Turnout minimum | No. 5 |
Maximum grade | 3.5% |
Minimum radius | 24" mainline 22" sidings |
Scenery base | Hard shell over cardboard strips |
Backdrop construction | Masonite and plywood |
Control | EasyDCC w/wireless throttles |
In May 1996, my wife and I purchased our first home. This was an opportunity to start my largest model railroading project ever. We bought an unfinished basement with a new home above it. With some careful planning and a lot of negotiations with my wife, I carved out a sizeable portion of the basement for my train room. Construction of the room started on September 30, 1996 and the benchwork started a month later.
Having a fresh start gave me the opportunity to build my "ultimate" model railway. I had built several layouts in the past. Some were nice. Some were failures. All had issues with them that I didn't like. I had also been in the hobby for a decade at that point and was very active in the model railroader community. Through that fellowship I had visited many other people's model railways. Each one had its nice features and not so nice features. Because of these observations, I set some fairly strict design specifications for the construction of my "ultimate" railway.
I had also decided that I would challange my modelling skills and build this railway to "finescale" standards. The buildings, trestles and other structures are mostly scratchbuilt and detailed following exhaustive research of the prototypes. The backdrops are painted based on photographs and the terrain (rocks, trees, rivers, etc) tries to mimic the real locations as much as possible. I've driven or hiked most of the original railroad grade in the persuit of research and have tried to capture the feeling of those wonderful excursions.
What you see in these pages is the culmination of nearly 20 years work. I hope that you take the time to look around and
enjoy the railway as much as I have.
Craig Symington.