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A
Brief History….. Before
the arrival of the railroad the town of Stack’s Fork, New Mexico had
been a quiet township servicing migrants travelling to the new West
along the Santa Fe Trail. With the arrival of the Atchison, Topeka and
Santa Fe Railway a.k.a. the ‘Santa Fe’, the town enjoyed a brief
period of prosperity before slowly withering away to what is today,
the name of a passing siding on a railway map. The railway, however,
flourished extending to eventually reach the Gulf of Texas to the east
and southern California to the west. Prototype
vs Model Stack’s
Fork was built to depict Santa Fe operations from 1993 up to 1995 when
the railway merged with the Burlington Northern. Although Stack’s
Fork won’t appear on any map of the area, the inspiration for the
layout is the Raton Pass route running from Belen, New Mexico to La
Junta, Colorado. The tunnel section of the layout is a loose
representation of Raton Tunnel, located on the Colorado / New Mexico
border. ‘Modellers
License’ has been applied in respect of a couple of details. Firstly
the line is well known as still having semaphore as well as colour
light signals in some locations, however only the colour light variety
are modelled here. Also most intermodal traffic (road-trailers and
containers) would have been routed over the less steep ‘Belen
Cutoff’ route through Texas and Kansas but to add a bit of variety
we have supposed that, due to engineering work, this traffic has been
diverted over Raton. Traffic
to be seen on the line consists of the afore mentioned intermodal
traffic as well as more conventional general merchandise in the form
of boxcars, tank cars, covered hoppers etc.
. Amtrak passenger services on the
line are represented by the ‘South West Chief’, running between
Chicago and Los Angeles. Construction
/ Stock The
layout itself is 10ft in diameter and is constructed with a
combination of 12mm chipboard and 2x1 softwood bracing. The concept of
the circular shape was based on the ‘California Coast’ ‘N’
scale US layout i.e. to
allow maximum viewing area and storage space by having storage tracks
on the inside of the circle. PECO Code 75 is used throughout; if I’d
started building today I would have used PECO’s new Code 83 as it is
more accurate for US prototypes. Points are remotely operated by a mix
of SEEP and PECO point motors. Locos
are from the major US manufacturers e.g. Atlas, Athearn, Kato, Proto
2000. All have received an appropriate degree on extra detail to
represent Santa Fe locos operating during the period modelled. Coaches
and freight cars are a mix of RTR and kits with additional detail
added where appropriate and practical. |
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