Layout Design - 0 - Designing the WWSL

In Layout Design Process 4 - Railroad Modeling I identified that the layout design process can be broken down into three primary functional areas: Concept, Structure and Layout Detail.

Layout Detail. Layout Detail identifies the parameters within which the layout must be designed. It is broken down into two main elements: 5) Layout Design, and 6) Construction to build the railroad.

  

Under the element Layout Design, the following areas are considered: 

1. Prototype v Freelance
2. Theme
3. Geography
4. Layout Design Elements
5. Vignettes
6. Station Maps
7. Track Plan Analysis
8. Technical Specifications

Under the element Construction, the following areas are considered:

1. Room Preparation
2. Benchwork
3. Lighting
4. Human Factors

Designing the WWSL 

At this point in time in my research it became clear to me that to do my railroad justice I needed to come up with a beginning and develop a corporate history that 'ends' with the era I was going to model. Based on my research I made the decision to 'interject the WWSL' into history just after World War I. The NP, the CMSTP&P (MILW), and the UP were established in Grays Harbor and were conducting business. Here is the link to the Corporate Histories page of the blog - starting with the County of Gray's Harbor, and the three Class 1 railroads, the Northern Pacific, the Milwaukee Road and the Union Pacific.

I was particularly interested in the Montesano area. Montesano was the centralized location for three logging railroads - the Schaefer Brothers Logging Company located north of the Chehelis River and the Clemons Logging Company and the Saginaw Timber Company south of the Chehelis River in what the Forestry Department names the Vesta-North River Watershed. Unfortunately none to the three logging railroads actually interchanged with the Class 1's. All three took their logging trains to log dumps along the Chehelis River, and moved the logs to the sawmills in Hoquium and Aberdeen via log rafts. Finished product was either loaded into ships to other West Coast or Asian ports of call or moved in freight trains originating in the Class 1 yards in Hoquium.

What Montesano did have that made it an ideal spot to base a short line railroad was 1) a 75 car length rail siding, and 2) a railroad bridge crossing the Chehalis River and linking the NP, MILW and UP. So let's start our alternative history with finding articles of incorporation for a logging railroad being formed east of Seattle in the Upper Green (along the Northern Pacific main line). A quick renaming within the legal documents became the source for the organization of the Olympic Peninsula Logging Company.  

 

The Olympic Peninsula Logging Company (OPLC) overlays the original rights of way of the Shaefer Brothers Logging Company in early 1920, a right of way overlay I 'imaginate' from the activities of the US Spruce Division. Research revealed that the US Spruce Division laid out plans to construct some 30 logging railroads in the Pacific Northwest to provide aircraft-grade spruce to the war effort. Only 13 were actually build and one in particular was finished on 19 days after the end of hostilities and never saw a single log hauled for the war effort. Now there's an opportunity for a budding entrepreneur! The created history of the OPLC is located here, the US Spruce Division here.

 

Using real life economics of the period and logging railroad operations in general in the Pacific Northwest lead to the creation of the Western Washington Short Line. The OPLCs business and financial activities during the Great Depression caused management to split the railroad operations into two operating companies. The WWSL came into existance as a common carrier in 1932, a not-uncommon strategy among logging railroads in other areas of the country but not in the Pacific Northwest. Common carrier was often used to condemn lands through eminent domain statutes for railroad right of way, keep out competitive logging companies, and entitle freight rate sharing adantages with connecting railroads. 

In the next blog I will discuss the concepts of prototype and freelancing modeling as they apply to the WWSL.