Logan Valley


Here is the next town down th eline. After leaving Logan, the main line climbs up a two and a half percent grade and passes the Van Dyke farm and the cattle loading pens and ehter the town of Churchill.

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The tracks pass a home and comes into the town.

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Across from the home is a grain elevator and Vincent suppy which is a farm implement supplier, lumber yard and hardware store. Looks like a young man has come courting in his hot rod pickup.

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This Karst Stage bus is an early representation of a current business in the area. Today Karst Stage has a number of tour busses and smaller busses and carries passengers from the airport to various venues in the area including the two ski areas we have.

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The tracks pass Tschache Oil which was named after a friend, Junior Tschache whos family made their fortune in the oil industry.

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Next to Tschache Oil is the freight station which was scratch built over 25 years ago. I have some REA sighs hanging around to put on the freight station. Been doing that for over 20 years. Can I procrastinate or what.

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Next to the freight station is the passenger station.

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Across the street from the passenger station is Ed's Market and the local Chevy dealership.

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As the tracks leave they pass a park and a couple of homes across from what is now an irrigation manufacturing facility and the local auto repair shop.

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As the tracks leave town, they pass a thome up on the hill above.

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The industries in Churchill have purposely be locate so there is a switching problem. A locomotive servicing the cattle loading pens, grain elevator, Vincen Supple and the irrigation plant linit the locomotive to only have room for 2 freight cars at a time. Make it quite interesting, plus some industries meed the locomitive to drop cars from the front or the rear. Switching can take quite a long time here. I recently stationed a small switcher in town which will pick up all of the outbound cars and set them out on the passing siding to be picked up by a local freight train and it will in turn spot any incoming cars.

Nect we'll move down the line to the town of Anceny.
 
The grille on that black Ford V8 pickup outside the oil dealers, promted a memory of my father when he was a milkman in our town. That was the model he drove on his deliveries. Milk was delivered in the cans stacked on the back (covered with canvas over a frame) and householders would leave their "Billy" (Usually a quart aluminum pot with a lid and wire hoop handle) out in a covered wooden box, for the "milko" to fill from a can with a ladle. The money would be left in the box with the Billy. As the roadway where we lived finished about a 1/2 mile or so from our house, there was a communal box for most of the Billys where the roadway ended. Great fun when it was wet.
 
Chet, you must have a fortune invested in automobiles! Great scenes and wonderfully detailed, thanks for showing!

When I was a Kid in Bloomington Minnesota, we had milk delivered by the milkman, too. The milk came in Quart bottles (may have had gallons, too) and where simply set in a wire cage holder at the back door in the morning and the first one out the door, brought the milk in and put it in the refrigerator. Our empty bottles where put in the wire cage for the milk man to pick-up. Milk was delivered on specific days of the week; so, we knew when it was coming. Back then the Milkman delivered cream, butter and milk, what we call whole milk now; or, skim milk. There was no 1% or 2%. At school, I remember drinking my milk from single serving little milk bottles. They had a paper cap on the spout and a cardboard seal that had a little tab that you picked at and would pop up and allow removal of the seal. The cap and seal became a great toy that you could shoot across the lunch room. However, if caught doing this, you were likely to pay the principal a visit. Bottled milk delivery was an industry that died a sudden death when the plastic and laminated cardboard containers hit the market. I don't think that milkmen kept their jobs very long after plastic came around.

Delivering milk in glass bottles was a large recycling industry that went by the boards. This industry going away may have started the dairy store industry, which then morphed into the C-store industry.
 
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Mark - I have been collecting period correct vehicles ever since I started the layout. At first, Alloy Forms probably had the best ones, but over the years other manufacturers have come on board and any time I find one that I don't have, I scarf it right up.

We never had milk delivered. We got it right from the source, from a cow. We had a few milkers at the ranch. When we moved back to Montana we went to a local dairy farmer with out gallon jugs and got the milk from the tanks that the dairy processor would pick up the milk.

Toot - We also has a "fat fender Ford" pickup at the ranch. Learned how to drive on it.
 
Now here are some photos of the next town on the layout, Anceny. All of the towns on the layout are real towns but some modelers license was taken putting in industries that could have existed in them. Anceny is actually just a wide spot in the road today. Years ago there was a grain elevator and cattle loading pens that were serviced by the railroad. The cattle pens still exist and are rather run down and not used. The grain elevator is now serviced by trucks.

Coming into town from Churchill, the main line passes some cattle pens and an oil distributor, off to the right in the next photo.

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This is the last of the plywood prairie that is left on the layout. Originally I had the cattle pens behind the diner. Not a very good location. Diners could lose their lunch before they entered, so the pens were moved out of town and the grain elevator moved to where the pens were behind the diner. Tracks had to be torn out and some shuckin' and jivin' had to be done to make everything fit into the small space.

Here's an old wood kit sitting on the corner across from the Dusty Saddle Saloon.

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Here is the Sinclair gas station. Had to be built from scraps due to the small space available.

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Behind the gas station is the passenger and freight station and the grain elevator. Guess I should finish the freight station. It has been partially built for almost a year.

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Past the hardware store and market is the diner. It has a complete interior, but I don't have permanent power for the interior lighting yet.

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After leaving Anceny the main passes a switchback up to a log loading facility in head into Gallatin Gateway.
 
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Chet -All great photos and a great narrative to go with them.

Mark/Toot - I remember the milk deliveries after we moved to a large town (1200 people) and the pull top milk bottles at school ... before that I remember my dad bringing home a large container of milk and my mother churning butter. Dad and I couldn't wait to get the cream off the top of the bottled milk! My dad loved a big glass full of cornbread and buttermilk - I just never was able to develop a taste for the buttermilk.
 
A quick look at the log loading deck. The first photo is the switchback going up to the deck and the second is the way that they load logs. My railroad, my rules.

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From here we head south to Gallatin Gateway.
 
After passing the log loading area, the tracks cross the Gallatin River and come into the town of Gallatin Gateway.


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Here some folks are fishing and to the left is Gateway Trucking.

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This is the yard entrance with the mainline going off to the right where it heads to meet the Milwaukee Raod and then south to West Yellowstone.

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The yard and engine servicing area and scratch built turntable.

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As the road comes into town, it passes the Post office and the Gateway Cafe and school.

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Here is the yard tower with the meat packing plant and Ice platform to the right.

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Here is the passenger station across the tracks from the post office.

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Down the street is the fuel distributor.

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Down the street is Roberts Milling and Cabinets. This is scratch built using Evergreen sheets and Grandt Line windows and doors.

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Across from Roberts is the grain elevator and the Old Faithful Bar, better known as Staceys. There is a real Staceys in Gallatin Gateway, just like the cafe, school, and the Gateway Market.

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Across from the market is the Meadow Gold Dairy. Gateway didn't have a facility like this, but did have a cheese factory and many dairy farms in the area. A little modelers license here. Behind the dairy is the freight station and the back of the passenger station.

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Off to the right is a switcher setting out a box car at the grain elevator behind the school.

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There is a lot crammed into this space but makes for a lot of switching.

This pretty well updates where the layout stands at this time.
 
I don't but I imagine I should. The way I operate is quite informal as I am a lone operator. I'll bring a train in from hidden staging tracks. I have a number of them parked there. The train will come into one of the yards at either end of the layout and cars would be sorted into a local freight. What ever cars that will work for one of the customers along the main line will be dropped off. Cars will also be picked up by the local.

Some of my loaded cars do go to other industries on the layout. Grain from elevators will be shipped tro a flour mill on the layout. Lumber from a mill can be delivered to lumber yards on the layout or a furniture company.

I guess that I may just be too lazy to come up with a card system as just winging it has worked just fine for me for years.
 
Thanks for the reply, I have a lot less switching but I'm basically the same. All my loads go to certain places then onto the next.
 
If you get one, just make sure there are no cranes near the dealership lifting heavy steel beams.
 
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Jim, I do have an Alloy Forms Chevy stake bed truck that could be a '57. It is next to the John Deere truck adjopining the lumber yard. I have been looking for that Revell auto transporter for a long time. The few time I saw it on ebay I wasn't about to pay what it was bid up to. Saw one go up to over $90 one time. It would be nice, but I do have the freight station down the street where an auto box car could deliver them to. By the way, I did order the '57 Nomad in blue. Should be here next week.
 
What happened t all of the photos? Had a whole slew of them, but they have disappeared with the forum upgrade.
 
There were a lot of them but with the new update, they disappeared. Here's a video tour. It's a bit old though.

 
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