The Virginia Midland HO Railroad Blog: May 2017

Thursday, May 25, 2017

Neat little railroad that would make an awesome model railroad

Railroads like the Virginia Blue Ridge Railroad is a little known short line that ran between Lynchburg and Charlottesville, VA. Most who knew anything about it was that they ran steam locomotives into the early 1960's! So they were a popular railroad then. I've always like their green and black SW1's. The short line ran to various industries and interchanged with the Southern Railroad at Tye River. During this rainy week, I think back to the one of the worst natural disasters in the the state of Virginia. In August of 1969, the remnants of one of the most powerful hurricanes in US history, Hurricane Camille parked over Nelson County Virginia. During that night, a world record 27 inches of rain fell in 3-5 hours; 5 inches in a half hour! The devastation was unreal as you could imagine. Thankfully the Southern Crescent did not leave Charlottesville that evening because of a washout south of town. Little did they know the real carnage that laid ahead.

Here are some pics of railroad damage: (Garland Harper pics)
Hurricane Camille damage

Great article on the the Virginia Blue Ridge Railroad:
History of the VBR railroad

A model of the VBR SW1 #10

Tuesday, May 9, 2017

NMRA James River Division meet this past Saturday

This past Saturday I gave a talk on the construction of my HO Virginia Midland railroad. The presentation was at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA. It was a rainy Saturday and this was the first time I have ever given a talk at a meet. It went well and had many compliments afterwards. Looking forward to doing it again as this presentation only covered mainly the upper level. Definitely a part is in the works for the lower level.

After the presentation and meet, I had lunch at Arby's and visited a layout just south of town. Bob Macioni's layout was an HO layout that took up all of his basement. It looked 100% done and was a large layout.