Mopac Mike – railfan and model railroader – featuring the Meramec Valley & Pacific Lines
Updates were made to the website recently, including updating the posted track plan drawings, and adding a slide show of images and descriptions of (fictitious) customers located along the MV&P route.
On the layout itself, the turntable installation was completed in the Newburg yard. Prototypically, Newburg had a turning wye. I didn’t have room for this on the layout, so I gave them a turntable to turn locomotives. Several new block signals have also been added recently.
Big news around town is the sudden disappearance of the strange blue-covered ground along with the simultaneous coloration of the snow-white rock surfaces. “It’s as if some huge monster appeared from outer-space!” exclaims long-time resident Clara Bell, who has also reported seeing bright lights on the horizon that come and go in an instant “like a flying saucer-like thing; kinda like that, you know? Those rocks along that bluff used to be white as plaster! Overnight, they just started takin’ on color.”
The end-result of all the commotion, is that a Midwestern farm has grown over and covered the blue-foam surface, complete with a two-story farmhouse, barn, pond, cornfield, people, and most of the usual farm implements you’d expect to see on a typical 1960-1970 farm. Of course, as Clara would be quick to point out, “seeing is believing. I saw that flying saucer-like type thing with my own good eye!” Clara has only one eye, having lost the other one in a tragic child-hood accident. Details are sketchy, but it had something to do with an apple placed on top of her head, and you guessed it – there was a bow and arrow involved. “I’m a natural blonde” reports grey-haired Clara. “My mother always used to tell me that I was blonde in one eye and blind in the other. I’m really not sure what she meant by that, though. How can you have a blonde eye?”
Enough about our grey-haired blonde. This is about railroading, remember. Since seeing is believing, here are some photos of the farm that grew and now entirely covers the area the locals call Blue Foam Flats.
My passion for model railroading has changed and grown over the years. What hasn’t changed is my affection for the two railroads I remember most from my childhood, the Missouri Pacific and the Frisco. A move several years ago caused me to abandon my previous layout, but when it came to rebuild, I stuck with my favorite scale, HO, and my favorite roads, Mopac and Frisco.
My freelanced Meramec Valley and Pacific Lines is based on the Missouri Pacific Lines Sedalia Sub from St. Louis to Kansas City, Missouri. The modeled portion of the Frisco is from Pacific to Newburg, Missouri. The name for my layout comes from the Meramec River Valley, which the eastern portion of the division traverses before reaching St. Louis.
The MV&P operates under the freelanced notion that the Frisco continued to lease trackage rights from Mopac from Pacific to St. Louis, rather than constructing their own line. The towns of Sedalia and Valley Park, and Newburg are represented. St. Louis is staging for westbound trains while Kansas City is now represented by a recently added freight yard.
Two of the most frequently hauled commodities on this freelanced operation are coal and grain. The layout is set in the early 1960’s to mid 1970’s. First generation diesels are still plentiful, but you could see an occasional SD40.
Welcome. This is my new blog, Keep on Trainin’, where I intend to keep everyone informed of the latest progress on my current HO-scale model railroad layout, the Meramec Valley & Pacific Lines. This blog will serve to compliment the MVP pages. Check here for the latest layout updates and rail-fan photos.