From the primitive 19th century iron horse to the thundering diesels of today, railroads have played an important part in enabling, changing, and sometimes inciting warfare. This talk is an overview of how railroads served in America's wars, and how to apply this information to design and build operating model railroads. Starting with the Crimean War in 1855 and extending to current times, the talk features prototype photos, maps and plenty of examples of world class modeling. It puts special emphasis on the US military in the American Civil War, WWI, WWII and Gulf Wars.

Begining with a couple crooks in the 1860's (Crooks in San Francisco? Say it isn't so) the clinic tells the history of the railroad that ran along San Francisco's Embarcadero from AT&T Park to Fisherman's Wharf and the Presidio. From 1892 to 1992, the State Belt serviced the piers and industries all along the waterfront. It only existed to switch cars and spent a part of the 1920s and 1930s trying to convince the Supreme Court of the United States that it wasn't a railroad at all. The quintessential switching road in a historic location.

I was interested in the State Belt as a possible prototype to model long before I wrote the book, but the research influenced the layout. What did I learn and how I applied it to the layout is the subject of the clinic. I had two goals: recreating the San Francisco waterfront and realistic operations based on WWII. I made choices both about the design and about the operations to make this idiosyncratic fit into a 12' by 12' footprint.

Project layouts are a rich part of Model Railroader's history. Associate editor Cody Grivno gives you a behind-the-scenes look at the HO scale Wisconsin & Southern, the magazine's 2008 layout. In this clinic, Cody talks about the field research he and senior editor Jim Hediger conducted. Over the course of several months, the duo photographed locomotives, rolling stock, structures, and rail-served industries along the WSOR system. In addition to field research, the staff was able to learn more about the WSOR through its website, which contained a list of industries served, inbound and outbound traffic, aerial photos of select industries, and a detailed locomotive roster.

With the research complete, then managing editor (now Model Railroader Video Plus producer) David Popp designed the track plan and the staff selected industries to model. Once the layout was complete, an operating scheme was developed that provided plenty of on line action, as well as interchange with the Milwaukee, Racine & Troy.

This clinic supplements my Layout Design clinic, focusing on the wide variety of facilities needed to service passenger trains at terminals, illustrated with track diagrams and slides of coach yards, Pullman buildings, commissaries, car washers, and mail and express buildings. Switching of terminals is described. A handout includes specifications for servicing platforms and utilities such as compressed air, steam, water, and electricity.

Learn how prototype research can improve your layout's design and operations. Discussion includes tips for researching time and place, types of prototype documents, ICC valuation records, the National Archives and the Library of Congress holdings, Sanborn Insurance maps and other sources of information in a digital world. Freeman's article Research in the Information Age appeared in Model Railroad Planning 2002.

As a public company, the SP issued annual reports to its shareholders that are readily available today. These reports are very useful to modelers in that they contain information about RR operations, locomotives and rolling stock, facilities, paint schemes and various business dealings.

Research for modeling and operating the SVOS was conducted with the aid of more than 60 members of OPSIG, LDSIG and SP, SP&S, NP, UP and GN Railroad Historical and Technical Societies. With their assistance, a 5-drawer file cabinet is packed full of prototypical information now in use to accurately model every station, industry, tunnel, bridge, trestle and the general overall railroad right-of-way and its operation. For example, over 250 prototypically based structures are being created. As a thank you for the efforts expended, Bruce illustrates what is being accomplished and the resulting excitement achieved via prototype modeling.

Bruce will discuss the prototype research he did for a number of buildings located on the Southern Pacific's Natron Cutoff. He'll also talk about creating models of many of these buildings. This clinic will
include a number of never-seen-before historic photos of the Natron area (courtesy of Larry Castle.