It's been almost a year now since my last post and COVID is still with us and raging eleven months later. I've thankfully been off the road since that time, which one would think might allow for more time in the basement working on the railroad. Alas... the bold, new, highly-connected post-pandemic world of 24/7 video Zoom meetings seem to keep one's behind firmly planted in his home office desk chair. This especially became the case after management figured out that since us (formerly road-warrior) consultants are no longer wedded physically to a client site we can theoretically juggle multiple customers (e.g. 5+) and their associated projects simultaneously, or so the bosses believe. While I don't miss the weekly o'dark-thirty drive to the airport, then the 'fly-change planes-fly again-rent car-hotel check-in shuffle' I do miss only have one or maybe two client projects to oversee at any one time. Sometimes "being careful what you wish for" is a truism, especially when one longed for home while on the umpteenth business trip that year.
So needless to say, despite being grounded due to the pandemic I really didn't make much progress on the layout, other than solving a vexing engineering problem with the overhead LED light bars that had been bedeviling me for a long while. I still have to solve the rear and low-profile front backdrop design - will likely go the aluminum trim coil route there - so it may be some additional period of time until tracklaying begins in earnest. Meanwhile, I try to make some incremental progress on the basement empire while operating at the current restricted speed as dictated by workload and my boss by fait accompli, as in "No hobby time for you... TWO YEARS!" (with apologies to Seinfeld's Yev Kassem character). Not sure if I'm going to rebrand myself as "the Resistance" but perhaps a little leisure-time insurgency is indeed warranted in these odd times.
Performing the delicate balance of freelancing while maintaining reasonable plausibility takes a lot of homework, often historical in nature. While I have my favorite prototype roads from the upper midwest like the Soo Line, Milwaukee and the North Western I've always wanted to be the captain of my own ship - my own James J. Hill, albeit in miniature form. This is where developing your own road and alternate history comes into play, sort of the model railroad equivalent of fantasy football where - armed with your modeler's license - you can do what is necessary to bend history to serve your own purpose. It is a good thing I'm a bit of an amature cartagrapher and student of industrial history and archeology, which can become a hobby in and of itself at times. It was in the course of another round of 'desk-bound' research that I came across a trove of old Penn Central ZTS maps for the Saginaw Sub.
ZTS, or 'zone-track-spot' maps are the railroad Operating Department equivalent of the aforementioned Engineering Dept. station maps. However, where the focus on the latter is turnout size, track curvature and other civil engineering minutiae the operating folks are more concerned with the car capacities of each track, industry names, spotting locations and the like. Railroad crews are usually issued ZTS maps for their territory and use them to learn where certain tracks are that may be identified on their switchlist, and how exactly to spot them at a customer for loading or unloading of cargo. This new tranche of information has provided a lot of answers on old industries that used to be customers on the old Michigan Central, especially on those tracks that have long ceased to exist.
In the map above you see the ZTS drawing for the Carrollton-Zilwaukee area just north of Saginaw Yard, which is figured prominently on the top part of my layout drawing featured in the previous post. While I had planned on modeling the large Saginaw Grain terminal and adjacent Huron Cement facility I hadn't yet identified what industry would be featured on the far, upper left-hand side of this switching district. The newly discovered ZTS for the "snake track" (my name for this extended industrial spur) shows a couple possibilities - either Schaefer Chemical or Kretschmer Wheat Germ. Both companies are surprisingly still in operation at new locations, and you can find the latter product on your local grocery store shelves as a so-called "super-food." I still need to find out what types of rail cars served both businesses, however for the time being this riddle has been solved.
I also have ZTS maps for the Midland branch and the Wenona terminal area in N. Bay City so analysis of these wonderful maps are ongoing to firm up the industries and supporting trackage in those respective areas. While not much has been accomplished this year in physical form the design refinements supported by the newly uncovered documents ensures the layout will be both accurate and engaging for visiting operating crews and spectators alike. As the general manager of this proto-freelanced road I'll also have the satisfaction in "owning" the fictitious company - something not available to pure prototype modelers that are copying a section of actual railroad from its 1:1 scale reality, warts and all. Creating a fact-ional alternate history can combine the best of both worlds, but it takes diligence and work to pull it off in a convincing manner. I hope the DM&M will measure up well to roads like Allen McClelland's V&O and Eric Brooman's Utah Belt. Achieving that milestone down the line is what keeps me focused and on-task, albeit apparently from my desktop for the time being.
