My Northern Pacific Butte Montana Layout.


Here is a 26 minute Video I found on the Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge:
 
Chet, Was the gate on the N.E. Yellowstone entrance road and is it still there?
 
Enjoyed the video Mark. I actually have stock in the railroad. Back in the 60's when I was in the Navy, they were trying to raise money and I bought a few shares. I had totally forgotten about the stock until one day I got a letter wanting to know if I wanted my dividend or wanted to roll it over for more stock. I have ridden on the railroad a number of times and A perk of being a stock holder was getting to ride in the cab. We have also ridden on the Cumbres and Toltec numerous times. Not too far and a nice road trip away from the interstates.

The east gate is still there. The road through the park from Gardiner is open year round so the road is kept open to Cooke City, MT. A great place to snowmobile in the winter. We've gone there a number of time to snowmobile. The Soda Butte Lodge in Cooke City has some outstanding food. In the summer, you can go a few miles east of Cooke City and take US212 over the Beartooth Pass into Red Lodge, MT. Talk about some outstanding scenery. Here are some old pictures I took over 20 years ago.

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That's the Beartooth.

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Miles of switchbacks. These pictures were taken in July I believe.
 
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montanan said:
I got ragged on because my tank car was a Texaco tanker. Conoco tank cars supplied the town. Thursday I will have a Conoco car so I won't hear any whining.
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Hmmm, I am surprised they would choose an Oklahoma supplier. One would think they would have stayed closer to home with Sinclair, Mobile, or Phillips.
 
Chet, in your photos just above, are the switchbacks on the Bear Tooth Highway? I have been through Sunlight Basin on the Chief Joseph Highway, where the Bear Tooth Highway connects up, a couple times. Once by Index Peak that you show in your photos and through Cook City, then through Yellowstone's N.E. Entrance and on to Mammoth. Never been over the Bear Tooth Highway and I understand the scenery is breath taking there! I've never been to Gardiner, either.
 
There are a lot of switchbacks on either side of the summit. I think the most are northbound out of Cooke City. Once you get high up, the road is fairly straight until you start dropping down into Red Lodge. The last photo is you descend into Red Lodge. The 6th photo is look south showing the highway climbing up.
 
Iron Horseman said:
Hmmm, I am surprised they would choose an Oklahoma supplier. One would think they would have stayed closer to home with Sinclair, Mobile, or Phillips.
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We don't have many different gasoline brands up here. Currently, we have Exxon Mobile, Cenex, Conoco, Phillips 66 and Sinclair. Texaco bailed out around 1980 and I haven't see a Standard Oil station around lately. From what I understand, whe gas is refined, additives specific to a brand is added an then it is shipped out. Independent refineries ship out gas and diesel for multiple brands.
 
montanan said:
We don't have many different gasoline brands up here. Currently, we have Exxon Mobile, Cenex, Conoco, Phillips 66 and Sinclair. Texaco bailed out around 1980 and I haven't see a Standard Oil station around lately. From what I understand, whe gas is refined, additives specific to a brand is added an then it is shipped out. Independent refineries ship out gas and diesel for multiple brands.
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Texaco sold out to British Petroleum. Phillips 66 and Conoco are now one and the same and as such the Conoco "headquarters" is no longer in Oklahoma. I'm not even certain the Tulsa refinery is in operation anymore. We have Cenex in Kansas too, but I don't know where they fit in the big picture. I mentioned the three I did because each of them had refineries in Wyoming or Montana in the 1930s.
 
We have a couple of Cenex stations near the cabin and one has a complete hardware section from basic plumbing to door hardware. Along with the typical beer, liquor and snacks. It's in a town called Poy Sippi!

Greg
 
Here in Belgrade, MT, we have a Cenex store called Rocky Mountain Supply and they have quite a variety of goods. Not only is it a convenience store, they have an outstanding sandwich shop, sell clothing ( I like my western shirts and they have a nice selection) and also sell ranch supplies and much more.
 
We have Cenex, BP, Holiday and various other distributors that are fairly local, here in Northern Minnesota. My guess is this is pretty typical of the rest of the country. Knowing how Big Business works, my guess is that the amount of companies represented is smaller than it appears!
 
In another thread I made comment on the fact that finding power for a Northern Pacific modeler can be difficult. I have found that repainting and re-detailing a locomotive for the N.P. to be fun to do. However, installing a DCC Decoder and especially a DCC sound decoder can be frustrating! I tend to look for locomotives that where available for the N.P. at some point in the past in DC Operation. If there where no locomotives specifically painted for the N.P., then I look for them that are close in details to an N.P. loco and repaint them to represent an N.P. loco!

For diesels, on my roster, the locos I have that where decorated for the Northern Pacific are: An Atlas RS-1, A Stewart Baldwin VO-1000, and two Life Like Proto 2000 GP-7s. These four locos have been converted to DCC. I have an A-B set of Athearn F-7s re-painted for the N.P. with DCC added. For DCC with Sound I have an Alco S-4 Northern Pacific switcher from Bachmann and an RS-3 that was an Erie Loco I repainted to N.P. from Bachmann. I'm also adding an EMD SW-1200 by P2K that I am currently converting to DCC. I would prefer to have all my locomotives with sound as I tend not to use the non-sound locos as much.

I will describe what I have for Steam at a later date as I'm running out of time this morning.
 
Mirrors are fun additions to layouts and optically expand the size of specific details. A secret to there use is to angle them so that they can not reflect things that you don't want them to reflect (yourself; or, other people). Where they will reflect track work, attempt to get them so that they are 90 degrees to the track.
 
NP2626 said:
For diesels, on my roster, the locos I have that where decorated for the Northern Pacific are: An Atlas RS-1, .
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That is one fine locomotive and a great paint job. I thought they got the yellow just right on that one. I still kick myself for not buying both road numbers that were offered at the time. As opposed to the RS-3 that I have several of - all with the same road number.
 
Easy enough to paint over the numbers and get an RS-3 decal set from Microscale and renumber them.
 
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