Building a Modular Freelance Model Railroad Part One B: A Look at The Omaha And Saint Louis Railroad

     To help aid in understanding the concept of this modular freelance layout, it would be best to look at what I am modelling and give a back story on how it was created, what its purpose is, and its general history. There are a never-ending list of advantages and disadvantages to deciding to modeling a freelance model railroad. The key advantage to modeling a freelanced model railroad is that you get complete creative freedom with every aspect of the railroad, this also proves to be the disadvantage because you must come up with everything and create it on your own. There is no concrete guide line to follow unless you model your railroad by implementing other existing railroads rules and procedures. I have had around 10 years of development of the Omaha and Saint Louis Railway before I have attempt to model a layout that is solely about this freelance railroad. Not to say that you need a decade before you cut the first piece of lumber for the train layout, but it does help to have a strong idea before you take on a freelance railroad layout. This article won’t be about how to develop a freelance railroad but it will cover the fictional brief back story of the O&SL, the type of equipment, region it operates in, and how the idea started in the first place.

How It All Began

     It is funny how an idea starts, most have a direct and obvious connect to a problem and some just come out of the blue. Back around 2006 or 2007 I was really getting into Microsoft Train Simulator, and still enjoy it, I was getting a handle on using third party generate routes, rolling stock, and locomotives. I was starting to understand how to paint and was beginning to learn how to create my own routes for the program. I can honestly say that it is a tough program to work with and is somewhat unstable to build routes with. The idea for the Omaha and Saint Louis railway began here in what is known a V scale or Virtual scale. The route idea came from wanting to create something of my own and the limitlessness of V scale was inviting to a freelance modeler because if you wanted to you can model the whole route and every single piece of equipment your railroad has without spending next to nothing, the only thing wasted would be time to create anything you wanted. Sounds like the best thing in the world, right? I was very eager to begin this route, the name for the railroad comes from the two end points of the entire route. The region is a favorite of mine and that is the reasoning for the its location, simple as that, it is a different landscape than what I prefer to model with my Burlington Northern equipment (Montana region) and I have family that lives in the southern Missouri area and once I had first traveled there six years after conceiving this railroad, I found the Missouri area to be a great landscape to model. Then, the problem with V scale came around; it is a tough scale to master, it is very complex to build a route from scratch in this form and the interest in doing so was lost in a few months but the idea of the O&SL concept stuck with me as I began to design the paint scheme and my modelling effort for the railroad transferred over to HO scale and so began the ten plus year development of the railroad. 

What is the O&SL?

     My fictional back story begins in 1878 with the creation of the Omaha and Saint Louis Railway beginning chartered to build a line first in between Omaha, Nebraska and Kansas City, Missouri to create a line to move livestock and perishables. The railroad is in direct competition with the surrounding railroads and its main selling point was that they tended to be the cheaper of the surrounding railroads for shipping costs. Naturally as business grew so did the line and by 1903 they had reached the large railroad terminal of Saint Louis, Missouri. Seeing how established the other railroads were in the densely populated city, the O&SL struck a deal with the Chicago Burlington and Quincy (later, Burlington Northern) to use their year as an eastern endpoint. Once that deal had progressed the O&SL entered into another venture, they provided an alternate route option for other railroads. The O&SL isn’t as large as say the Union Pacific but they can offer up a dedicated, well maintained rail line from three major rail hubs in the central Midwest; Omaha, Nebraska, Kansas City, Missouri and Saint Louis, Missouri.

     During the 1960’s the O&SL began to change its corporate image starting with its paint scheme. Originally the locomotive and a few railcars were painted in a light blue and black scheme with the entire Omaha & Saint Louis spelt out. As the 1960’s progressed into the 1970’s the full name began to disappear and the current scheme retains the light blue and black paint but with a simplified “O&SL” lettering on the equipment. One thing that stands out on all locomotives and cabooses is an American flag with the stars always facing the front of the equipment. Another spotting feature on the locomotives and cabooses also began receiving the Operation Life Saver logos by the early 1980’s. My history for the railroad stops here in the late 1980’s/ early 1990’s. It stops here because of my general interesting in railroading, I tended to shy away from overly graffitied freight cars and large modern locomotives. For the Omaha and Saint Louis in the early 1990’s the railroad has evened out with its route and customers, they have a great balance between money coming in and going out. During 1990, the railroad began itself first full on investment of itself by replacing railroad ties and improving maintenance on its buildings that have be neglected do to keeping its profits at a point where the railroad can survive any down turn in business. 

The early Omaha and Saint Louis Locomotives featured this scheme with the name spelt out.

As the railroad progressed into the 1970's, the locomotives featured the name still spelt out but the "O&SL" enlarged.

The last of paint scheme changes for the lettering feature plain "O&SL."

     My plans for this proto freelance railroad is to evolve it into something that a causal model railroad will look at and almost second guess that it was a real railroad at some point. In the past, I have that joy in hearing if that is a really railroad just based on the locomotive that I have. It is a rewarding question to hear, to know that you have nearly fooled someone into believe that the model railroad is in fact a real railroad. I hope to enhance this experience by creating a very believable layout to show case the Omaha and Saint Louis. As this blog continues, the layout construction will begin and the track plan will take shape. Until next time, don’t play with trains; model railroads. TRWBM.

Building A Moveable Freelance Model Railroad Layout Part One: An Overview

     In January of 2017 my fiancé and I moved from our small 450 square foot apartment where I have done all my previous work for this blog and now we are renting a house with a nice sized basement. Being a HO scale modeler from the beginning I began to eye ball the basement as a space of my own to finally build a train layout but a question came to mind, “what am I going to model?” This is a tough question for me to answer, for years now, I have been buying trains with mostly one railroad and one specific route in mind. I have always enjoyed the Burlington Northern and their famed Marias Pass route in northwestern Montana. Nearly 70% of my rolling stock and locomotives reflect that area and railroad. I was left with a difficult decision that went along with my original question in mind, the basement was nowhere near the overall space I had always planned on utilizing for this massive Marias Pass layout of about 40’X60’. What I had in front of me was around a quarter of that size 25’x9’. With us only being in the house for a month I sort of put the layout idea on hold and focused on another corner of the basement that is around 10’x10’ that worked out perfectly as a work bench and display area, which this will receive its own blog to talk about that whole event in the near future.

     As a few months had passed, I came back to the layout space and forced myself to make a choice. I wasn’t going to let all my HO scale models sit in their boxes and only come out when I got the itch to set up an oval of Kato Unitrack and run trains on the living room floor. I had to do something with this space. The planning really took off from there. In this new series, I will be blogging about this build process and about my plans. I hope to make mistakes and take you along as I solve them and learn from them, and lastly, I plan to have a ton of fun with this hobby and build, as it should be. It is a rewarding and challenging hobby and I have never turned away from it so why should a smaller space than I had hoped for change my drive for a great model railroad layout?

What to model with the space I have.

     This space I have mapped out truly is a fair amount of space to work with, I know a lot of people who would be ecstatic to have this area to use. The thought of not modeling the Marias Pass route sort of bugged me in that I had spent almost three years of and on planning for it and doing research on the route and now nothing would become of it other than knowing a lot about a railroad route that really had no significance in my hobby or daily life. The thought of only modeling a small area of the route then came to mind but it proved to be more of a letdown as I began to draw out a track plan on paper because I honestly could not decide on a spot to do, it just wouldn’t be the same as having the all the key spots on one layout.

     A few weeks went by and one day as I was looking over my shelves of trains it dawned on me that I could model the second-best thing I had on my shelves. Many years ago, I have created a proto-freelance railroad to operate on my local model railroad club. The railroad is known as the Omaha and Saint Louis Railway and I have done around a dozen locomotives for this railroad and I have modeled about a dozen or so rolling stock to go along with these locomotives. I had already created a half way believable history for the railroad and even a paint standards chart and roster sheet to follow. Why not explore the possibility to model something of my own and do it my way, so to speak? After some more thought, the measuring tape came out and I was off to the races on figuring out what kind of bench work I could create with this space. I created another challenge for myself to conquer in that I wanted the layout to be in modular sections so that if we had to move, since we are renting the house, it would be easy to do so with minimal disruption to the layout itself. The concept for this was simple. Make each section no bigger than 2’x4’ to make it easy to move around and have all electronics plug and play in between each section. This is the plan I want to follow, and that has played a part in how I build and design this layout. In the early part of planning this layout I went with the idea of using a measuring tape and some masking tape to layout the basic shape on the floor, this creates two situations. First, it gives you a physical idea in 2D form of what the layout will look like and secondly, you can walk around it to see if there are any problem areas when it comes to walking around the layout. At first, I was going to maximize the area with the biggest design I could fit but I still didn’t know what area of my proto-freelance mainline I was going to model. After laying down the tape one night I left the space alone and let it kind of simmer in my mind as I continued about my normal daily life. 

Original taped out design of the bench work.

Another view of original design of the bench work.

     The bench work outline continued to evolve as I kept looking it over. Originally, the total length would have been 25’ but as I started to sketch out the track plan that area that was included with the total length proved to be unnecessary to the look and feel of the layout. Once I had the outline of the bench work taped to the floor it was time to figure out the points of interest. First, I put the bench work plan onto graph paper by drawing it out as four squares to the foot, this helped with keeping myself honest when I drew out any ideas on the paper. The next challenge was to find a location for the layout for me to model. I had bought a railroad atlas for the northern Midwest states that included whole region in which the Omaha and Saint Louis operates in. My criteria for the region was that it had to have access to a Burlington Northern line for an interchange because I have so much BN equipment and I would like to have another interchange to add variety to bring railcars on and off the layout. My searching on the railroad atlas found the towns in the state of Missouri in its northeast corner outside of Kansas City. The track plan and design really began to take shape after this discovery.

Bench work tape design evolution as of April 2017

     The towns from West to East would include: Camden, Lexington, Dover, and Grand Pass. Camden is a very small town that the Burlington Northern happen to run pass and Lexington, Missouri happened to have the Missouri Pacific pass near it as well. A bonus was that the two towns were close to each other and the Missouri river was in between them. As for Dover and Grand Pass, they were relatively in a close straight line from Lexington and seemed logical for the O&SL to pass through them. With the towns figured out and the geography now know for what type of topography the layout would have, the next step is to decide on industries and yard space. This will be covered in the next chapter of the build. TRWBM.