Introduction

This website is about modeling logging in On30" - my way. Which means I will cover stuff I find interesting, not every possible aspect of the subject. See my "philosophy" below.. At current, this site contains the following sections. Please check back occasionally, this is very much a work in progress..

A bit of philosophy..

O scale has always been a favorite scale for modeling logging railroads, with the possibility to build detailed models of the funky machinery which makes logging so interesting in the first place.

With the Bachmann On30" Shay, O scale logging has become possible without taking out a second mortgage on your house. But there is a strong risk that we end up with something that looks more like a 3/4 size Disneyland reenactment than the real thing.

The first issue is track gauge. Most logging railroads were standard gauge, and for a reason: Logs are bulky, and hard to balance on top of a narrow gauge car. This is particularly true if we are talking about old-growth trees in the Sierra Nevada, or the coastal rainforests of the Pacific Northwest, where trees are seriously big! And this is what most of us think of as logging..

Still, there were a few 30" gauge logging railroads on the west coast. I have gathered information about these in the 30" prototype part of this website. The lesson we can draw from the prototype is to think small. No-one in his right mind would build an empire in this gauge. The largest of the California 30" gauge loggers - the Empire City Ry. - operated with six locomotives over its lifetime. The Sloat Lumber Co. had one 20-ton Shay to bring in the logs, an 18-ton Porter to switch the mill, and nine log cars.

A small outfit like this would not pay its way if it required large investments to bring out the product. The prototypes were all additions to existing logging operations, or located close to an existing railroad. They were a low cost way to exploit a marginal source of trees which could not justify a big-time operation. The Molino Timber Co., and the Empire City both logged hard to reach stands at the top of inclines. The Sloat Lumber Co. supplied a sawmill located on a siding of the Western Pacificīs Feather River Route.

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