Keepin' it real.........in HO scale

Before I get tied up into the layout room, I want to cover a couple of other things in designing a model railroad. If you're freelancing, you options are limited only by your own concept of what you want. If you're a prototype modeler, the options are much less- the more of a stickler you are about getting it right (what we medical lab folks call being anal), the less the options.

I'm leaning towards the prototype, but following the philosophy of Allen McClelland, who built & operated the Virginian & Ohio, an HO scale line depicting a fictitious railroad serving the coal mines in the Appalachias. Even though the V&O was freelance, Allen added details to buildings, locomotives, rolling stock, and the general scenery to make one think he or she was actually in the Appalachain mountains. He followed the philosophy of "good enough"- that is, adding sufficient detail to make something appear realistic. While some would go so far as to paint the caboose toilets in a color that existed on a certain day & time (OK, an exaggeration, but you know what I mean), Allen added enough details, say, on a diesel locomotive to make it look like it was ready to lug coal.

As a clinical laboratory scientist, I have to pay close attention to details to ensure the results I turn out on patient samples are correct, 100% of the time. I do pay attention to detail in my hobby, but my work is not nitpick-free (warning to potential nitpickers who come to visit: DON'T. Nitpick, that is. Ever. ). Still, I want enough to make people think I AM modeling a small town in northeastern Texas.

To that end, I rely on topographical maps I find on the Internet to see where the tracks go (or went, if they've been abandoned). Since I lived in & near Paris for 12 1/2 years, I have a good sense of where the Frisco's trackage goes, since this later became BN and later Kiamichi. I also can get an idea of where the shippers are that were served by Frisco.

Model railroad research, or why you must do your homework

There are several schools of thought in reseaching, building & operating a model railroad. One is freelance, which could be anywhere from "imaginary-but-quite-plausible" (think Allen McLelland's Virginia & Ohio) to off-the-wall (let's model EVERYTHING). The other is strict prototype (or as close as possible), which is where such folks as Tony Koester dwell. Then there is somewhere in between- that is, basing the railroad on an actual location, but stretching the timelines and plausibility a bit. All of these schools of thought have their supporters, and IMO they're all valid- after all, it is indeed your model railroad, and you do what pleases you.

Since I'm a devoted Frisco modeler, I lean more toward the prototype school, but faced with space constraints, I find myself having to makesome adjustments to include the industries that the real Frisco served in Paris, TX in the 1970s. Plus, I also am restricting my work to the north side of town, ignoring the Santa Fe-Frisco depot & joint yard and the interchanges with MP and Cotton Belt (well, not entirely........it'll be a staging track, but I'm getting ahead of the story here).

OK, I have location, so I only need to research the following items:

• Year modeled


• Shippers served


• Motive power used

I chose the 1970s because of the type of motive power I had (mostly 4-axle EMD and GE hood units). Only a few locomotives are in the older black & yellow scheme (two GP7s), which lasted until the last GP7 was retired in December 1979. I have five GP7s total on my roster, and from what I've found out, they were used extensively in secondary & local service, especially on this part of the Central Division. I also have two GP15-1s, a model that came to Frisco in 1977. Using these 7 locomotives together, I'm somewhat restricted to 1977 if I want to stay prototypically realistic, so 1977 it is (reserving the right to move up to 1980 provided I remove the GP7s and add a couple of GP38s in the mix, which I can do with ease). For the sake of simplicity, 1977 it is.

Paris has a massive Campbell Soup plant, first built in the mid-1960s. It has since expanded to include Prego sauces and Pace picante sauce, and still ships out soup like nobody's business. In the '70s, it was still a soup plant. Next is Merico, the bakery that made Earth Grains products (it's now a Sara Lee plant, and still quite busy). Not far from the Merico plant is Flex-o-Lite, which makes those reflective glass beads seen in reflective lenses. The other two shippers I'm including (and also found on the north side of town) is Precision Printing & Packaging (making corrugated cardboard boxes) and VFM, a feed mill and shipper of outbound grains. The interchanges with the other Paris railroads will be represented with a staging track, and they can be considered a 6th customer of sorts, since Campbell and Merico sent products in all directions out of town.

I covered motive power in a way when I discussed era modeled, but I'll touch on it again here. The Arthur Subdivision (Paris-Ft. Smith) was never a heavy-duty main line, and became more of a secondary route with the completion of a line from Sapulpa, OK south to Irving, TX which bypassed the steep grades on the Central Division as a whole. In the diesel years, this line was 4-axle territory, with GP7s handling the work. Hugo, 25 miles north of Paris, is the hub of this area, and is on the junction of the Ardmore & Arkinda and Arthur subs. Aside from the coal trains which run between Lakeside, OK and the WFEC power plant near Ft. Towson, four-axle diesels rule. GP7s usually finished their careers on the secondary lines and in switching service, being replaced by GP15-1s on the Central Division. I'm not sure if it ever happened, but I wouldn't be surprised if GP38AC/GP38-2s didn't work Paris as well during the Frisco years.

I'll discuss the layout room and trackplan in a later post.

The St. Louis-San Francisco Arthur Subdivision (Paris, Texas)

Yes Virginia, there IS a Paris, Texas- it's not just a title for a movie. This community of 25,000 souls is located in northeastern Texas, about 100 miles or so from Dallas. It is the home of a large Campbell Soup plant (if you eat Campbell Soup, Prego spaghetti sauce, or Pace picante sauce, it was made there), Sara Lee, and Kimberly-Clark (they make Huggies). Also, football greats Raymond Berry and Gene Stallings are from this area. So are my two youngest sons, Kyle and James, born at the former McCuistion Regional Medical Center.

At one time, Paris was served by five railroads: the Texas & Pacific; a Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe branch from Dallas; the Texas Midland from Terrell (later became a Texas & New Orleans line); the Paris & Mt. Pleasant; and a subsidiary of the St. Louis-San Francisco from Monett, MO. Starting in 1956, changes came to the railroad scene:

• The P&Mt.P abandoned its entire line between these two cities


• The T&P became aa subsidiary of the Missouri Pacific, and its identity was slowly being absorbed by the Mop


• The TNO line was washed out north of Commerce around 1970 or so, severing connections- not sure if they ceased operations into Paris at that time, but IIRC they abandined the track in the 1970s


• The GC&SF line was sold to shortline Kiamichi Railroad as its subsidiary Chaparral, running between Paris & Farmersville. It stopped operating & abandoned several years later


• The Frisco was merged into Burlington Northern in 1980, and BN sold off the line into Paris (along with trackage in SE Oklahoma and SW Arkansas) to the Kiamichi Railroad


• The MP became part of the Union Pacific, which spun off the T&P line to Texas Northeastern. TNER pruned back excessively to operations bewteen New Boston and Texarkana, TS, allowing UP tgo rip up trackage between New Boston and Paris- the line west to Sherman is still intact, but except for a short segment Sherman-Bells, is dormant

Which leaves just one railroad- the Kiamichi- serving customers in Paris these days.

However, my modeling focus is going to be on the Frisco, which served Campbell Soup as well as several other shippers, and interchanged with Santa Fe and SP (GCSF and TNO, respectively) in Paris (it indirectly swapped cars with MP through the Santa Fe).

I model in HO scale, and obviously I model the Frisco. I did have plans to build a model railroad based on one of the busier subdivisions, but due to the available space I found myself forced to model one of the on-line cities. Since I lived in & near Paris for 13 years, I became familiar with operations there, and through the frisco.org website as well as conversations with former Frisco railroaders in Hugo, OK (the juction point of the Arthur and Arkinda & Ardmore Subdivisions and base for Frisco operations in this area). I had also researched the area in & around Miami, OK, a town of 12,000 in the far northeast corner of the Sooner State, since it had a large B.F. Goodrich tire plant and was the onetime home of the Northeast Oklahoma Railroad serving the lead & zinc mines in the region. However, I had already "been there, done that" with another model railroad, and wanted to move on to something new. Since I had information on Paris, I went with that.

In my next post, I'll go over the research I did, why I chose Paris, and what trackplan I came up with for my "room".

Let's get this party started........

Well, some time ago I made the template for this blog, so now after so long (or too long), I have decided to burn my Procrastinators Society card & start posting stuff in this thing. No politics, no religion- those are for other blogs. I have my beliefs, and they may not be yours. That's fine- this blog will be mostly about my trials and tribulations as a railfan, model railroader, and healthcare employee (well, mostly about railfanning & model railroading).

Oh yes, I don't like SPAM- either as "food" or as posts, so don't even try- you Spam, you get blocked. My plumbing works, the wife is happy, I'm OK financially, I have no rich Nigerian banker friends or relatives, so don't-do-it!

Now, on to the good stuff................