Missouri Pacific Railroad's Bagnell Branch
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Welcome
to my HO scale layout of Missouri Pacific's Bagnell Branch. The layout represents the summer of 1954 in the
central Missouri Ozarks. This is my fourth layout. The first, like most of us, was a Lionel train
set with the track screwed down to a 4' x 8' piece of plywood when I was 10 or 11 years old. It was painted grass green
with a watchman that came out of his shanty when the train came by (which was pretty often due to the speed of the train).
No switches to worry about or meets with other trains, just hours of fun watching it go around in circles. My two
brothers and I would over fill the liquid smoke, filling the room with small clouds - (much to our
mother's dismay).
Jumping
ahead to the 1970's, my second and third layouts were based on the Mopac's White River Division. The prototype
railroad had five tunnels and fifty-two bridges and tons of scenery. These two never got beyond the 'Plywood
Pacific' stages (due to two moves from St. Louis to Omaha) but I did learn when building these layouts how to gather
prototype information from Sanborn maps, ICC evaluation maps, gathering photos and site visits.
After not
having scenery on the previous layouts, I decided this next one would. My kids, now adults,
had never really seen a 'real' model railroad - just Dad's trains traveling over gray homasote and plywood with a few
buildings sitting on top the plywood - pretty boring. I now had my second chance with the grandkids; complete a
model railroad like my kids had seen in the magazines all these years. This layout would be smaller
(not my initial choice but Mrs. D had strung barbwire between me and the finished basement) so I regrouped
the troops and 'claimed' the furnace room as my layout room.
I decided to
model a branchline with a turn-around local and make the track plan 'point to point'. Crews operating the
train had to figure out their switch moves in advance of leaving the origin yard. A branchline operations
was attractive to me in that it provided a chance to model my two favorite railroads (Mopac and Rock Island) and
to operate a relaxed 'backwoods' atmosphere (remember Pettycoat Junction?).
One summer
my father and I traveled the former Bagnell Branch and photographed and measured the 1881 depot at Olean
and 1912 depot at Lohmann. The feed mills at Lohmann, Olean and Russellville were intact, as well as,
a couple of railroad bridges. Since the line was abandoned in 1962 it wasn't too hard to follow the old right-of-way.
My wife's family farm was 9 miles from Eldon so I was in the area during summers on family reunions and float trips
down the Osage River. These trips gave me many of the ideas for trying to capture the the beautiful Ozark
scenery that would be incorporated on the layout.
Needless
to say I was hooked as you can see from the following pages; I hope you enjoy the ride down the branch.
Charlie
Duckworth
I've run out of room for additional photos
on Tripod so if you want additional views of the Bagnell Branch join my Yahoo Group. I also post regular updates
to the branch. You won't be flooded with emails ( I'm not that industrious).....
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