December 30, 2020
TR-C&NW RR
by R.G. Blocks, Photos by author
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During the late summer of 2020, virtual crews of the TR-C&NW RR were lead symbolically by an actual humanoid, Chief Engineer Roger, who doubled as Road Installation Supervisor. Tunneling into the OutaSite Region to extend the Mt Anna Division of the railroad westerly was his work from summer until Christmas. Mt Anna Division work consumed available cash and efforts of those who chose the burden of honest labor as an alternative to simply holing-up while Covid 19 ran wild. We hasten to add that Covid 19 has not been detected in their Mt Millie or Barb’s Butte areas or as far south as Furnace Mountains. Our Mt Anna Division right-of-way takes us along Reflection Ridge and finally Southwest of the Furnace Mountains where we’ll transfer loads to Glen Ellyn and elsewhere from Ivankovic Station at Mirror Lake.
Above, James Jamicich, my grandson, and his intended Alexa take a break during Christmas Week, while laying virtually all of the track of the Mt Anna Division within the OutaSite area of the TR-C&NW RR. I cannot thank them enough. No whips or chains were involved.
As an old visionary, we know dreams that include unresolved negative events cause one to toss and turn then begin the next day with baggy eyes. Well it seems that the Mt Anna Division work adds 115 feet or 12.5 Smiles of Main Line leading to nearly 41 ft or 4.4 Smiles of single ended sidings, Hence, in the Mt Anna Division nearly one third of the trackage is potentially involved in loading, unloading, transferring or interchanging freight. This is indeed a revenue positive division. We’ll sleep well.
Speaking of dreams, it was 2004 when we started the TR-C&NW project. Its purpose was to help children learn to negotiate with adults, use common tools, to plan, build and dream. These two grandkids, James (also above) his sis Laura Mae, scoured the neighborhood for new construction materials (with a Radio Flyer Wagon) that would otherwise be consumed in the carpenters ‘burn-pile’. It was in part, these scrounged boards that form our layout. Roger 
attempts to remain intact while demonstrating the cross-cut saw.
The observation that Mt Anna’s Division track is 19.04% of the TR-C&NW’s total trackage is significant. From an owner’s view, that means we’ll now have about a fifth more track to clean, ballast and maintain. A concern was the cost of bridges underlaying 12.8% of division track, all of which was completed in the current fiscal year. This consideration has left our company in a manageable but somewhat tenuous financial position. We trust the Three Lakes potato harvest is a bumper crop, that our local wood products are needed and that output from Mica Mine is in high demand. Fortunately, our interchange and transfer business, while revenue positive in this and past years, will, with this major trackage addition, seem to be a ‘lock’ for business in the coming five years.
The TR-C&NW was initially planned in 2004 and constructed in time for progress talks be given at the WISE division prior to the 75th Anniversary Celebration of the NMRA held in Milwaukee during 2010. One room, 16 ft by 23 ft contained the backbone of the layout with return track hidden in crawl space. Given that we could not conveniently build an around the wall arrangement and wanted four divisions (for multiple operators) a vertical approach on an island was adopted. The layout is a linear out and back in its extreme and took an amazing 42 minutes for one train to venture across four divisions then return home after visiting the extremes on the mainline. But, lets take a quick view of our initial sketch for the TR-C&NW.
The plan, as shown, was built with some modification in the period 2004 through 2010.
Each Division can be viewed as a vertical layer. Each layer can be operated as conventional AC or its DCC complement.
Layers are all interconnected. Hence, simply following the Timetable it is possible to travel from Division to Division from Layer 0 to Layer 3 and back again.
An economic recession took place in the USA from 2007 to 2009. The construction trades were mightily impacted in Northern Wisconsin. Thus, we dug-out a portion of the crawl space, laid fresh block, insulated, and plastered walls, moved the furnace and many pipes and ducts and began the expansion of our railroad.
The following photo shows my grand-daughter, Anna, who, over the course of two years, 2007 to 2009, along with myself build a mine called HersOrMine that sits on Mt Laura but spans three divisions.
We built the mine out of cardboard and pink construction foam with a surface of 20 lb printer paper and a rood constructed out of an old window shade. It is a very convincing model that we spray painted in the garage. Anna has been involved in every facet of the layout. Wiring, plastering, track laying. she does it all. Here are four photos of HersOrMine. Anna is now a student of Chemical Engineering at Purdue University.
Below, in 2009 Anna joins Roger under the layout stringing 12-gauge block feeder wire.
An Engineering Drawing of the Mt Anna Division in Room 1 is shown below.
The extreme end of our TR-C&NW is at Mt Laura in the center of the drawing. Getting there has been seriously lengthened by a major expansion into Room 2 (formerly Out-A-Site crawlspace) and begins at the lower right at the end of Just-In-Time bridge.
The following engineering drawing, labeled Mount Anna Division, Appendix D, is drawn to a scale of 1 cm per 1 foot. which describes the 227.1 square feet of tables comprising about 64.5% of available floorspace in the OutaSite Mountains (Room 2) area of our rail empire.
It was the track in this area that was laid by James and Alexa just after Christmas 2020.
All model railroads use selective compression. Ours is no exception. One mile (5280 ft) in the real C&NW RR is the same as ((5280/12)/4) or 110 ft of O gauge track. So, with a 1:1 clock a mile in a minute means going 110 ft in one minute. Towns on a model railroad are generally a few feet apart. We travel from town to town in seconds. We typically do not have stations located hundreds of feet apart. So, what to do?
Normally, a real train might take 3 miles to accelerate to a speed of 60 miles per hour. That scales out to 330 feet of O gauge track just to get to speed. However, if we use a 12:1 fast-clock, we can divide that distance by 12 and we need a more realistic 27.5 feet in O gauge to accelerate to 60 mph. Thus, with a 12:1 clock we see that one mile is 9.1 feet. Hence one hour is represented by 5 minutes which is 1/12 th of an hour., or 5min x 12 = 60 m/hr. One Smile is 9.17 feet. Thus, with our 12:1 a mile in a minute means moving 9.17 feet in one minute. A Smile is a unit of length that represents 60 mph with our 12:1 clock. Simple.
Total mainline track, with completion of the Mt Anna Division, is 64.56 Smiles or 594 feet. Thus, whereas it took 42 minutes to circumnavigate the entire domain a few years ago, to replicate the same voyage (up and back) we would be at it for about 47 minutes with only 1-minute stops at the 12 passenger stations located on the main line and 1 minute stops at the 3 division sand-fuel and interchange points.
Total track amounts to 817.75 ft or 89.2 smiles with 49.25 ft of single ended spurs and 126.5 feet of passing sidings. Clearly, we have a start.
So, here are my helpers in the last six months: First, Beth helped work on Bridges:
Barbie helped work on the supporting structure for the Mt Anna Division:
And Sam helped with the anti-sway tracking of the narrow-gauge T&O line.
We will close with thanks to Anna on the front left, and her dad Jim on the right for their considerable work last summer laying the track on the Mr Laura Division. Laura and her husband Aaron on the left and my daughter, Laura’s mom, Barb is seated next to husband Jim.
Thank you all.
Written by Roger G Blocks for the TR-C&NW’s shareholders which include those shown.
Enjoy,
RGB