For this layout, I made adeparture from the usual tabletop or sectional-type railroads &’ve builtover the years, and went with a shelf design. The remodeling I’ve been doing onmy home left me with several spare hollow-core doors, some as narrow as 18 inches,so benchwork was no problem (and cheap, too). I installed heavy-duty shelfbrackets to the walls of the room, using a stud finder to locate the wall studs& an impact driver to fasten the brackets. On each door I glued down a1-inch layer of blue foam, which I got from the local mega-hardware store (insome locations, you can get 2” thick foam, and also in pink, but either oneworks well). The layout surface was placed at such a height that the distancefrom track top to floor is 54 inches; this gets the layout a little closer toeye level, and still allows for me to reach to the back of each section to dowork or rerail an errant car. The lack of legs below the shelving makes for acleaner appearance, and allows me to store all kinds of things below the layout(which can later be hidden with a curtain to make things even neater)
The room itself was painted white,and sported a door leading to the outside on one end (it used to be part of thegarage). I used thin foamboard for backdrops on the layout, and painted thebackdrop a pale blue with paint I found at WalMart (at, again, my favoriteprice-cheap). There is a window in the room, and I have plans down the road toplace a small window air conditioner in the window come next summer.
I used N scale cork roadbed gluedatop the foam (Liquid Nails for Projects works great for this), and laid mytrack atop the roadbed. Why N scale? Well, I’m modeling a secondary line in theFrisco system, which means no fast trains around these parts, and the N scale roadbed’slower profile helps with that. The yard and main was laid on the roadbed, withsome spurs and the Merico/Flex-o-Lite spur laid directly on the foam. Code 83track is being used in Betner yard and the main, while the long spur is allcode 70. I’m leaning towards using code 83 in the staging yards.
The tracks have been electricallyisolated using plastic rail joiners, and each section is being wired up. Thelayout is run using an NCE Powercab system, which is great for those of us whoare not electronically savvy (like, well, me). So far, I only have threeDCC-equipped diesels, but in time I hope to figure out how to install decodersto several others (mostly GP7s and GP38-2s, and maybe even my WalthersTrainline GP15-1s if possible). This means all of my six-axle fleet will beidled, as will my GP40-2s and U30Bs. Sorry, they’re not for sale… J
(This was designed using Atlas’RightTrack software, which is free (see a pattern running through thisarticle?), although there are other programs for such uses as well, includingthe old-school method of pencil to paper)
Here’s a trackplan of what I’mbuilding. Again, operations focus around Betner, next to Campbell Soup. I don’thave the tracks into the plant finalized yet, so they’re being laid directly onthe foam. Obviously, I cannot model the entire facility without annexing therest of the garage, so I’ll be using a lot of building flats. I envisionperishibles, flour, tinplate rolls (for the cans), and various other itemsinbound, with canned soup and other products outbound. This facility served asa business magnet for all the railroads serving Paris in the 60s and 70s,shipping soup in all directions of the compass.
At the upper right, I’mcontemplating cutting a section out & lowering it to model the Loop286/US82 underpass at the south end of the plant. That will most likely happenbefore any scenery gets built. The staging you see at the lower end representsboth the Frisco/Santa Fe yard as well as Hugo, and will be behind a lowbarrier. This will allow me to manually swap out cars to represent returning“Soup Trains” (Frisco’s Paris-Hugo switch jobs, of which 3 were scheduled) aswell as the interchange of cars with the ATSF, MP and SP. I wish I had moreroom, as these roads by themselves would be fun to include, but alas, this iswhat I have to work with so far.
Pleasekeep in mind that this plan is NOT a final version- I may yet make changes as Igo. Someone a whole lot smarter than me said “make your plans in sand, and yourgoals in concrete”. Seems to make a whole lot of sense when building a layout.
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Or, My Trials &Tribulations in Building an HO Scale Model Railroad depicting Paris (Texas,that is…..)
I’ve been involved on & off inmodel railroading for almost 40 years, mostly in HO scale. For the last fewyears, however, I had to resort to N scale to satisfy my modeling jones. I evenwent so far as to build a small railroad on a hollow-core door, which workedwell for me, as I was living in a duplex (and then a small apartment).
Inasmuch as I appreciate the greatstuff N scalers have these days, I had a large amount of HO scale rolling stockand locomotive fleet gathering dust, and I longed to finally build an HO scalelayout in my own home, with no landlords to answer to. This became possible inMay 2010, when we purchased a 3-bedroom house with an enclosed garage. Almostimmediately I started doodling track plans to fit the garage, but overwhelmingopposition (not to mention a lot of extra stuff we couldn’t fit inside thehouse), put the kibosh to those plans.
Undeterred, I looked at alternativelocations for my new empire, and was given a 6-by 11 ½-foot room off the den.Well, so much for mainline modeling in HO…….However, it WAS a place to build,so I started doodling track plans to fit.
Location(or, what area am I modeling?)
There are quite a few layout plans out there,both in print and online, and I scoured through every single one I could. I wasalso bitten by the prototype modeling bug, and wanted to model a specificlocation on the Frisco as best I could. While a generic place on the Frisco(say, a small town in Kansas or Oklahoma) would have been fun to try, I wantedto go more toward a specific area.
In the 1990s I had built a layoutbased on the Frisco in Miami, Oklahoma in a spare bedroom of our home. It wassomewhat freelanced, and was named the Oklahoma & North Eastern, coveringthe former Northeast Oklahoma RR between Miami and Baxter Springs, KS. I had asmall fleet of Alco roadswitchers, but I also included Frisco diesels if Iwanted to run the layout like the Frisco’s Miami Branch (which it was known asfrom 1964 until the BN merger). It had several shippers, generated a lot ofcarloads, and provided for switching opportunities, and was fun to run until amove to Colorado in 1999 led to its dismantling.
I’m not against freelancing, and myrailroad had a degree of plausibility that made it realistic to me, but againhaving been bitten by the prototype bug, I wanted to do a more realistic job ofbuilding a layout that any Frisco modeler would instantly recognize.
I also started to restrict my searchto towns & cities in which Frisco had a substantial number of shippers, andwere locations I was familiar with. Based on that, I had a list of thefollowing areas:
· Miami,OK (former NEO RR trackage)
· Paris,TX
· Ft.Smith, AR
Ialso looked at the Fairgrounds Branch and West Bottoms in Kansas City, KS;Tulsa, OK’s Howard Branch; and the Muskogee,OK area including the glass plantsand Ft. Howard Paper. However, I stuck with the first three choices since Ialready knew these areas, and had sufficient information on these areas.
Ft. Smith was a sizeable area, anddue to the space available I was not pleased with the possibility of what partof the city to subtract, plus dealing with the interchanges with MP and KCS.Miami’s major shipper was the B.F. Goodrich tire plant, with maybe a couple ofminor shippers, and I didn’t want my layout to be a one-shipper pike (apologiesto modelers of mines & steel mills), plus I had already “been there, donethat” with the O&NE. So, that left me with one place- Paris, Texas, on thesouth end of the Central Division‘s Arthur Subdivision.
WhyParis? (or, Really- Why Paris?)
My N scale HCD layout was loosely based on theeast end of the Ardmore & Arkinda Subdivision, and included poultry feed,pulpwood & paper mills as shippers. I am also aware that the CentralDivision has been well-covered from Monett to Ft. Smith, but largely ignoredsouth of there. The Arthur Subdivision not only sported Oklahoma’s onlyrailroad tunnel, but was Frisco’s first main line into Texas, interchangingwith the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe at Paris for moving cars on to theDallas area.
Despite the rugged grades over theBoston and Winding Stair mountain ranges, this line served as Frisco’s gatewayto the Southwest until a line was built from Tulsa south to Irving, TX,bypassing the mountains altogether. Even though the Ft. Smith Sub had the shippers,south of Poteau to Hugo, OK it was a virtual no-man’s-land, both in populationand shippers. A local freight running thrice weekly plied this line (known asthe Arthur Sub) between Ft. Smith and Hugo, while the Hugo-Paris segment sawmore
cottonout of Paris in earlier times).
Besides Campbell Soup, there wereother companies served by the Frisco:
· Merico,bakers of Earth Grains bread
· Flex-o-Lite,manufacturers of reflective lenses
· PrecisionPackaging & Printing, cardboard box manufacturing
· ValleyFeed Mill, inbound & outbound agricultural products
Also,Babcock & Wilcox, Phillips Lighting, Speas Vinegar, and a massive cottongin were served by the Texas & Pacific and shipped cars via Frisco as well.
Inaddition, Frisco interchanged with Missouri Pacific (former Texas & Pacificline between Texarkana & Ft. Worth), Southern Pacific (former T&NO, neeTexas Midland) and the Santa Fe (the aforementioned GC&SF line fromDallas). Also, from 1910 to 1956 it swapped cars with the Paris & Mt.Pleasant Railroad, which ran exclusively between these two towns before calling it a day in1956.
Friscoand Santa Fe shared a yard and passenger depot in Paris, and swapped offswitching duties. Interchanges with MP and SP were done through Santa Fe.During the time frame I’m modeling (1975 to 1980), Frisco had three localswitch jobs scheduled to work Paris, as well as run cars to the yard in Hugofor outbound train 739 and bring in cars from inbound train 738.
LayoutPlanning (this is where the Givens & Druthers thing comes in)
Okay,so much for the background stuff- on to the planning. J
Sincethis is a Frisco layout, I wanted to concentrate on that railroad- however, dueto lack of space I could not include the MP, SP or ATSF directly. So, given thesmall space, I restricted the area modeled to the north side of Paris. Thanksto online topographical maps, I was able to find one for Paris, and narrow inon Frisco’s industrial switching:
Thelarge gray area at the top is Campbell Soup, while the track to its right was(and is) known by the railroad as Betner; it served as a small yard forswitching Campbell. Continuing down from Campbell, you can see Valley Feed Milland Precision Packaging, and a spur going off to the left to serve Merico, Flex-o-Lite,and (I think) Paris Industries. Down atthe bottom of this map is the Santa Fe/Frisco joint yard. Based on thispicture, I chose to just model the Campbell switching at Betner plus the spur.The Santa Fe/Frisco yard and the line north to Hugo would be represented bystaging tracks, semi-hidden from view.
Aftermore research, plus a desire to be a bit more faithful to the prototype, Isettled on the following specifics for my railroad:
· Code83 and 70 track
· Nscale roadbed on the main, with track laid directly on the surface for spurs
· Minimumradius 22 inches (one 18” radius for one spur)
· Four-axlediesel power, mostly GP7s and GP15-1s (both of which I have)
· Runningno faster than 20 miles per hour
· Manually-operatedturnouts
· DCC(major departure from my DC block-wiring mentality)
NoticeI didn’t mention sound decoders in my locomotives, although I DO have one FMH10-44 switcher and one GP7 so equipped.
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I am a member of the Tulsa Area Layout Operations Group on Yahoo, and as such I've been privileged to operate & see many fine model railroads in the Tulsa, OK area- the major single thing making them alike was that they are wired for DCC. One of these fine folks, who models the Kansas City Southern's 3rd Sub in HO scale, did an easy-to-follow presentation on using DCC at our local NMRA meeting, and demonstrated it on his layout. After seeing how the wiring would go in, how decoders could be added, etc., plus operating on some other DCC layouts, I was hooked.
So, after searching online (including eBay) for good prices on a DCC system, I finally purchased an NCE starter set for 150 dollars (about 25% off the MSRP). It should be arriving early next week, and once I get enough track laid on my a-building HO scale Frisco layout, I'll hook it up & test it out.
I have at least 3 DCC-equipped locomotives, plus several others that are DCC-ready, so I foresee no problems for immediate operation. My layout only runs 1 diesel at a time, and since all the aforementioned diesels are Frisco, I'm in luck.
SO, into storage go my power packs (two MRC TechII models that are solid performers), and into the trash goes my block-selection panel (four Atlas Selector switch sets screwed onto a painted piece of plywood). Wow, no brass track, no horn-hook couplers, no power packs, no zip texturing, no Tyco trains.....the journey just keeps getting better! ]]>
Since then, I've been wanting to build another HO layout, but due to space considerations I found myself restricted to either a branch or a terminating city. As a member of the Frisco group, I felt obliged to do a town on the Central Subdivision, most notably Paris. Easy, since I lived & worked there for 11 1/2 years.
Paris was once served by 5 different railroads (Frisco, Texas & Pacific, Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe, Texas Midland, and Paris & Mt. Pleasant). Frisco's first main line to Texas went over the Boston Mountains in Arkansas and the Winding Stair range in Oklahoma to reach Paris, where the GCSF (a Santa Fe subsidiary) had a branch running north from Dallas.
Inasmuch as each railroad has an interesting history, I am obviously focusing on the Frisco, and the customers it served in the 1970s. Since 1964, Campbell Soup has had a major presence in Paris, and is still a fixture there now, making & shipping their famous soups, Prego sauces, and the Pace picante sauce line formerly made in San Antonio, TX. Other customers were Merico (bakers of Earth Grains products), Precision Packaging & Printing (cardboard boxes), Valley Feed Mills, and Flex-o-Lite (manufacturers of those glass beads flund in reflective lenses).
At one time, 3 switch jobs were scheduled on the Frisco, serving local shippers and interchanging with the other railroads and heading noth to Hugo, OK to swap cars & return. This was, and is, 4-axle territory, and since I'm interested in the mid-1970s, GP7s will figure to be the diesel of choice (good thing, since I have 5 of them). All of these shippers are on the north side of Paris, which works well for me, since I don't have the space to model the Frisco-Santa Fe joint yard and the impressive depot.
The tracks won't be an exact match in the layout I'm planning, but they'll be as close as I can get them, and will hopefully have sufficient "flavor".
Here's what I have so far:
- Space- 6' by 11.5'
- Scale- HO
- Minimum radius- 22" main, 18" sidings
- Track- code 83 and 70, both Atlas & ME
- Grade- none
- Benchwork- hollow-core doors salvaged from remodeling the house, held up by shelf brackets & angled bracing
- Control- hopefully, DCC (anybody got a good system for sale cheap?)
- Place- Paris, Texas, south end of the Arthur Subdivision
- Era- 1975-1977 (allows for GP7s and GP15-1s, both of which were on the Central Division)
Thanks to the availability of old Frisco employee timetables and topographic maps found online (as well as my memories of the area), I have a decent head start. ]]>
Naturally, the resident model railroader (me ) was already scouting out territory for a new layout, checking out one of the bedrooms and even part of the 2-car garage. However, the local Department of the Interior had other plans, none of which involved the spaces I wanted. What I had left to choose from was (and is) a 6-foot by 11 1/2-foot spare roomlet carved out of the garage. Not exactly sufficient space for my plans of modeling Class 1 mainline action in HO scale (and yes, even after dabbling in N scale with the holow-core-door layout I used to have, I wanted to return to HO, because I actually enjoy detailing out my locomotives, and I can do that much easier in HO).
What to do, what to do.........
Ah, not a problem- fire up the computer, boot up the trackplanning software (I use Atlas's RTS for its ease & cost), and start e-doodling.
Now, before I did that, I had to set a list of things I was looking for- like John Armstrong's "Givens & Druthers" philosophy.
To be continued...... ]]>
Wagoner, county seat of Wagoner County (funny how that works out) is a community of about 7700 folks 50 miles southeast of Tulsa, OK, and about 15 miles north of Muskogee. It sits at the crossing of the former Katy main between Parsons, KS and Denison, TX, and the former Missouri Pacific line between Coffeyville, KS and Van Buren, AR. Not far east is the site where the Kansas, Oklahoma & Gulf's line from Baxter Springs, KS joined up with the former MP, splitting off at Okay to continue into Muskogee and onward to Denison.
The KO&G line north was abandoned in 1962, and the lines in Wagoner eventually fell under UP control (MP in 1982, UP via MP in 1988). Instead of Jenks blue & John Deere green & yellow, it's Armour Yellow that dominates the colors of the road power here.
I don't have a set number of trains that roll thru Wagoner daily, but I can tell you that it obviously isn't as high as it was last year due to the recession. However, of the traffic, it's mostly coal and unit grain, with general merchandise and a daily auto-rack train on the former Katy. If you're looking for hot stack trains, save your camera batteries for a short trip to Claremore and the BNSF- no stacks here.
One semi-cloudy weekday this past February I had the day off from work, and not wishing to stare at four walls in a motel room, I headed north to Wagoner to capture some of the rail action. Those shots will come up in the next few installments. ]]>
Genset 1276, mated to:
GP38-2 2277 (not sure if this isn't an ex-Frisco unit- I'll have to check it out)
On north I go to the famous Saginaw Interlocker. Once three different railroads crossed here (Ft. Worth & Denver, Santa Fe and Rock Island), now only two (BNSF and UP). The biggest features of this area are the Union Equity and Attebury grain elevators, and the flour mill to the south.
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SD40-2 7819, obviously of BN heritage, and behind it what may be an SD60M- I'm not sure, just guessing based on the road number (8116).
Junk carrying junk.....lol.......you gotta admit- it would make a great feature for a model railroad. My guesss is that it's in a RIP track.
Two 3GS21Bs being used as a switcher. These units are set up for remote control operation- there are warning signs for vehicles entering the property of this. In this shot, the duo is shoving two cars back onto a RIP track.
Yet another classic model-railroad-car-with-load- a depressed-center flat with transformer. ]]>
C40-8W 939 in the new "Power Bar" scheme & logo was leading C44-9W 4811 and GP60 8719 off the wye.
Closer shot of the 939
I drove on up the road underneath the wye, past the yard tower (CAUTION- unless you are a railroad employee or have a release from the BNSF, do NOT drive into the parking lot, , or any of the access roads off of the public road on the west side of the yard. BNSF has no-trespassing signs all over, and they are very serious about it!), and parked off the shoulder of the road, where I got out & started shooting pics of all the diesels I saw.
If you like Gensets, you'll love BNSF- they have quite a few of them here and down in the Metroplex. At Alliance, they're used as yard switchers and also can be found on the service tracks. Here is where I found this one:
3GS21B 1282 at rest. The red sticker on the cab side indicates it's operated in remote mode. When idling (which it doesn't do much of), it sounds like any other diesel engine used for an emergency electrical generator.
SD45-2 6465 at rest- looks like it's in for a little maintenance. I was suprised to see this old warhorse still in service. ]]>
It's a fairly new yard not far from the small community of Haslet, a wide spot in the road north of Fort Worth, built about a half-mile west of the present BNSF (ex-Santa Fe) main line. It's a major intermodal port for the railroad, and also is the interchange point for KCS trains to & from Shreveport and points east. To the southeast is the massive Alliance Airport (primarily air freight and corporate aircraft), and to the northeast is Texas Motor Speedway, which hosts NASCAR Sprint, NAtionwide, and Craftsman Truck races each year.
The yard itself is not easy to case out, due to its isolation an strict no-trespassing policy. However, being the stubborn cuss I am, I was bound & determined to find a spot to catch whatever action I could find.
After leaving Sherman, and stopping by Silver Spike for the latest copy of N Scale Railroading, I went south on I-35W towards the Ft. Worth area. I knew I had to get off the Interstate somewhere to get close to the yard, but I waited until I got down close to the Speedway. Little did I know that NASCAR was in town, and was running their Nationwide series race at that time. Fortunately, the traffic was really light, but I had never seen so many cops along the roadside before. They take traffic control very seriously.
I looked for a sign for the Alliance YArd exit for the intermodal yard, got off the I-road, and headed west. I crossed the original (and still in use) ATSF main, State Highway 156, and proceeded along to the intermodal yard entrance. After not being able to find an access road around the yard, I doubled back to SH156, where I noticed an auto unloading & ditribution yard. In the yard I found this:
Former Union Pacific SW10 1236, lettered for JTPX and used as the switcher.
After getting shots of this critter, I headed south on SH156 until I got to Haslet proper, and turned right. I was through town in three blocks, turned right and left again before coming up to the south end of Alliance Yard. The road, which is public, passes underneath the yard and main tracks and a wye before coming alongside the yard tower and maintenance building.
When I got to the first underpass, I saw three diesels from Omnitrax parked on the south end. I pulled the truck into a driveway to the diesel tanks, got in the bed of the truck, and aimed up at the engines. Sadly, due to foliage I was only able to get pics of two of them, but here ya go:
SD9 1752, originally built for the Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range.
In front of it was this switcher:
SW1200 2008, an ex-SP unit. Sorry, but I couldn't get a road number for the SD in front of it. Not sure where these were headed. ]]>
So come July 2, Good Lord willing & the creeks don't rise (and in Texas, that's been a problem lately), I'll be an employee of Wilson N. Jones Medical Center. Our family have all been patients there at various times, and I'm impressed with their facilities. Reason I was surprised by the salary is that they usually hire new lab techs with associate degrees from the local school for low wages- I have a Bachelor of Science degree (3 years college, 1 year medical technology school, plus a nationally recognized registration- well, except for California, which doesn't recognize anything but their own, the idiots), with 27 years in the field. So, there's a little pressure to perform, but I'm not worried.
Several good things happen here:
- I will be home
- I can keep an eye on and better guide my two teenage sons
- I will be home
- I can finally start on a new layout
- I will be home
- There's some major-league rat-killin' to do, and I'll be around to do it
- Did I mention I will be home? :rolleyes:
Inasmuch as I've enjoyed shooting trains hither, tither & yon, as well as meeting several Trainboarders (Fitz, Hemi, and Charlie among others), it's time to put away my travelin' shoes and grab a couple of spikes & nail my feet to the ground. I've got 15 years left in this career, and I'd rather spend it at home with my family. After all, Saginaw ain;t that far away, and niether is Silver Spike in Denton, nor Discount Model Trains in Addison. Oh yeah, UP's ex-Katy Ray Yard up in Denison, and the BNSF main and DGNO in Sherman.
To quote Ozzy Osbourne, "Mama, I'm coming home". ]]>
So, after some considerations and not a lot of scribbling, I've decided to gather more materials (I've already had cars, diesels & track) for the construction of an N scale Frisco layout. Yes, it'll be Frisco- a secondary line somewhere. No, not too sure where, but with the rolling stock I have, I'm leaning toward something representing the former Ardmore & Arkinda Sub between Hope, AR and Lakeside, OK, in a time period before the arrival of the GP15s (unless I can find a decent N scale model). This means forest products, paper, lumber, chemicals for papermaking, sheet tin, perishibles, feed for poultry, pulpwood, etc.........no coalies, doublestacks, SD-anything.
With three Frisco diesels ready to go, plus two more I can paint into SLSF colors (1 U25B, two GP7s), and another caboose or two, I'm reeady to go. And I can put that Walthers N scale paper mill to use now :D , plus the switcher I bought from Hemi 2 years ago.
I foresee trips to Denton & Silver Spike (or even Addison & Discount Model) in my future........must have more Code 55 (got lotsa code 80, which will be staging track). ]]>
This is the HOG line looking southwest. About 1/2 mile ahead, it'll swing off to the right, passing Norbord (maker of OSB sheets) to the right- one of its shippers. A spur goes on southwest- a remnant of a track that used to go to Albany. It's used for car storage, and some of the cars have been there long enough to get entangled in kudzu. Don't let that vegetation fool you- the tracks are in good shape. ]]>
Looking south on the NS main. I'm standing on the siding here. NS's track is 132 lb. rail on wood ties, and in excellent shape. This is MP 64.5 on the GS&F North District between Macon and Valdosta. To my left is the place I was telling you about, which is on the site of the former deopt, torn down many years ago.
Looking north towards Macon. The HOG crossing is in the forground, while the CSX is behind it.
Looking east along the CSX, which is 136 lb. rail on concrete ties. Notice the HOG diamond in the foreground, while behind it is the NS interchange track. There's a slight uphill grade here, cresting at 7th Street. Further east, and off to the right out of sight, is the local CSX offices. The HOG intercnahge track goes off the left about here, and the power for the local switcher is kept here when not in use. Those cars you see to the left in the background belong to passengers ridint the SAM Shortline excursion train. That little white building just ahead of those cars is the local HOG offices.
CSX main, looking west. Just ahead it goes off to the northwest, and further out of town about a mile or two it'll swing further north- if you want to pace a train north, go back to US41- it'll meet up with the CSX main a couple of miles south of Vienna. Speeds for both CSX and NS are 20-25 MPH thru town due to the numerous road crossings, and 10 MPH for HOG freights. ]]>
Everything else I kinda figured out by detective work, guessing, and SDL (Sheer Dumb Luck).
Should you wish to eat or stay in Cordele, all of the good restaurants and lodging is on US280 near the I-75 interchange. MAtter of fact, so are the fast-food places.
There IS a hobby shop in town- Trackside Trains, which is in a room off of Wee Ones, a children's clothing consignment shop along the CSX tracks. It's open Tue-Sat. Not much in selection, but I was able to find and buy a decaled & detailed SCL U33B (even powered) that I'll use with my Frisco diesels (saw SCL power on runthru on the Cherokee Sub). HO and N, plus sells Digitrax DCC stuff. Also carries Kalmbach magazines, some book, T-shirts, and hats. It's on Pecan St., which is reached by turnong north at the Walgreen's off of E. 16th Avenue and turning north, and it's the very first building past the RR tracks to the left.
Chances are I will NOT be here again (if I can help it, the boss is an, er, uh, back opening of the GI tract), but hopefully someone can use this guide and spend a few hours shooting in Cordele. ]]>