Trinity County Narrow Gauge

[McCRRR19]

This is a project I've been working on for a couple of years, and this is the third version. I wasn't happy with the first version, and it was built while I was still figuring out the nuances of the route editor. 2nd version was lost when my hard drive took a dump, so third time is a charm. It is still very much a work in progress, not sure if it is anything that will be released, but I decided it would be nice to share the progress I've been making. The Trinity County Narrow Gauge is a fictional 3 foot narrow gauge road in Northern California. The line starts in Etna, California near the southern end of Scott Valley, there the TCNG interchanges with the Yreka Western Railroad, assuming they were able to follow through with their plans to build west of Yreka, CA into Scott Valley. The TCNG runs south from Etna to with the end of track at Hayfork, CA, about 130 miles, with two branches, one up Coffee Creek to the town Abrams and another branch up Weaver Creek to Weaverville. The main industries served are mining and lumber. To try and make it seem as plausible as I can, the mines, mills, and towns served are ones that exist or once existed in Trinity County.Essentially, I'm trying to create a fictional railroad around the real history of the area. Ideally, I wanted this route to be set around 1915, but around 1960 Trinity Dam was built which formed Trinity Lake inundating 20 miles of the Trinity River, along with the headquarter town of Trinity Center, which was relocated when the lake was created. So, I have to kind of create some anachronisms, since even if the TCNG existed the railroad would probably have been abandoned a number of years before the lake was created and a lot of the mines were closed and abandoned by 1960. I have a relocated main along the lake in place, but I'm not totally happy with it, and I'm still doing some "surveying" in hopes of finding something better and more plausible. Anyways, the idea for the TCNG started as an idea for an HOn3 layout (which is still something I hope to do), but creating the TCNG virtually helped to visual how the railroad would be laid out if it really existed. Here are a few photos showing the progress made so far. The entire main line is in, but as mentioned before, there will probably be adjustments on the section along Trinity Lake.

Here is the railroads headquarters and main shops at Trinity Center, from left to right the buildings are paint shop, car shop, machine shop, boiler house, and roundhouse. This is where Trinity Center was moved after the lake was created. The actual town site is on the hillside to the left out sight in the picture.

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The next few photos show the trestle over Hatchet Creek a few miles north of Trinity Center. The peak in the back ground of the first photo is Ycatapom Peak.

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A major junction point on the TCNG is at Coffee Creek Junction, here the Coffee Creek branch leaves the main and heads into the Trinity Alps to Abrams. Here is the mainline bridge over Coffee Creek, the mountain in the background is called Billy's Peak Lookout. The depot (which can be seen) is in center of the wye which creates the junction, the interchange yard is just beyond.

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Scott Mountain Summit the first of two summits on the TCNG, the other is Hayfork Summit to the south.

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[buzz456]

There is so much exciting stuff coming to RW right now! Thank you for sharing. Keep it going and keep us informed.

[BoostedFridge]

Looking great Tim!!

[McCRRR19]

Thanks for the kind words!

Here are a few other areas on the TCNG that have seen some scenery added, but far from finished. Not sure how others do scenery, but I tend to do random areas a little at a time. Once the track was laid, I've spent more time running trains trying to get a realistic operating scheme figured out, rather than putting in the scenery.

Here's a few shots of Abrams at the end of the Coffee Creek Branch. The branch is about 18 miles long and serves a handful of mines, most notably the Dorleska and Yellow Rose gold mines (some silver was also mined). The actual mines themselves are on the opposite of the ridge just above my make-shift mill in the third screen shot, but I always envisioned a cable system to carry the ore over the ridge to the mill and the railroad. But so far there isn't anything like that for TS2016 yet (and I'm not much of a hand at creating 3D objects) so, the ore is trucked to the mill instead. Supplies for the mine are also off loaded at the mill site. The area went through a few name changes, originally I called it "Trinity Meadows", but after recalling the name of a camp ground in the area, and a name seen on some topo maps, it was renamed "Big Flat", but after some further research, I discovered there was a post office in the area for a short time called "Abrams" which is the name it is now. Some extra info on the Dorleska Mine. http://visittrinity.com/history/mining/dorleska-mine/

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Next screen shot is on the the 3.5% climb up to Scott Mountain Summit. This is the climb out of Scott Valley when heading south into the Trinity Alps and Trinity River. At this section the railroad crosses over a ridge while gaining elevation and is looking downgrade. There is a siding here called "Chapman" and a water tank, just out of sight in the curve. Chapman was the name of a mine located on this ridge, but I haven't found a whole lot of information on it, but I included an abandoned ore bin in the trees to mark the site.

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While this hasn't seen any scenery work done yet, it does give an example of the how rough the terrain is in the Trinity Mountains, and why a railroad was most likely never built in the area (only exception being LaMoine Lumber and Trading Co.'s logging railroad had a few logging spurs that crossed over the the Shasta/Trinity County line, along with an incline down to Hall's Gulch off of the East Fork of the Trinity River) This is looking down at the upper reaches of the Trinity River. From Scott Mountain Summit down to the Trinity River the railroad has a 4% grade. Down below at the confluence of the Trinity River and Tangle Blue Creek is Trumble Ranch which is where helpers are added to freights heading up to the top of the mountain. The upper section of railroad is about a thousand feet higher than at Trumble Ranch down below.

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[McCRRR19]

Here are some maps of the TCNG, give an idea of the route taken. The GoogleEarth image I created when I was initially planning the TCNG when I was making plans to do it in HOn3 (which I still hope to do one day). North is towards the upper right corner

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Here is how the route looks in the sim. The disconnected branch is the old line I had laid that went around Trinity Lake that more or less followed the route Hwy 3, (which I haven't finished "abandoning") but I was never happy with that route, so the new line more closely follows shore of the lake, with one big bridge across at a narrow point.

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[McCRRR19]

Some other scenery work. Other work I've been doing is replacing the track from the Durango & Silverton route, that I was using, with the newer track from the Clear Creek NG route. I find the lighter rail and the dirt brown ballast to be more fitting for how I always imagined the track to look. First screen shot is along the Coffee Creek Branch.

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On the 3.5% climb up to Scott Mountain between Callahan and the summit, there's a loop with part of it on a large fill, here a freight with 4 engines (there are two more cut in mid train) crosses this fill.

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Some other work done at Chapman, close to the halfway point on the grade between Callahan and Scott Mountain. As I mentioned in a previous post, "Chapman" was the name of a mine that was nearby, which I'm modeling as abandoned.

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Also with the recent Clear Creek NG route, there has been some wonderful assets for the mining industry. Here is the Fairview Mine, along the shores of Trinity Lake, about a mile above Trinity Dam. The old topo maps I've seen show the mine being above the level of the lake, so the with the newer alignment I laid along the lake, it gave me a chance to add the mine

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[BoostedFridge]

Great work Tim! You are doing a wonderful job of capturing the feel of the area.

[McCRRR19]

A little scenery experiment. Been experimenting with a way to create dredge tailings. The operation of dredges along the creeks and rivers of Northern California was a common way of mining the placer gold. In Trinity County gold dredges were operating as late as 1959. There are many places where dredges once operated along the TCNG. The largest areas of these are now mostly under the waters of Trinity Lake, but a lot of these at the upper portion of the lake are exposed when the lake levels are low. There's a spot on the upper sections of Coffee Creek there was a dredge operated by Mires and Underseath, and that's where I'm experimenting. By using one of the crescent shaped "gravel piles" and manipulating it with the scaling tool, I've been able to sort of recreate some dredge tailings, or alteast give the impression of tailings. Not perfect, but it's a start.

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Here is the satellite image of that area.

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Also, here is a photo and some information on the Mires & Underseth Dredge that came from "Mines & Mineral Resources of Trinity County, CA 1965"

"Mires and Underseath (Abrams, Alcan Mining Company, Coffee Creek, Larsen and Harms, Mires and Garner, Western Mines Company) Dredge. Location: sees. 28, 29, 30, 31, 33, 34, T. 38 N., R. 9 W., M.D., about 12 miles northwest of Carrville. Ownership: Mrs. E. L. Joseph, Helen Gates and Evelyn Spiegelman, 182 Commonwealth Avenue, San Francisco, California.
A partnership including Roy Mires and Carl Underseath purchased a bucketline dredge from the Poverty Hill Dredging Company at La Porte, Plumas County, May 31, 1946, and moved it to Coffee Creek in Trinity County. The dredge was installed on the Monroe placer west of Hickory Creek and started operating about the first of May 1947. The partners had a lease on a strip of land extending about 8 miles along Coffee Creek from the mouth of Union Creek to Big Flat. A camp was built at Hickory Creek to accommodate a crew of 15 men.
The dredge was built on 25 steel pontoons making a hull 100 feet long, 50 feet wide and 7 feet deep. The bucketline carried 82 buckets of 6-cubic-foot capacity, and it was driven by a 100-horsepower electric motor. The trommel was 6 feet in diameter and 30 feet long with 22 feet of tapered holes %-inch to '/2-inch in diameter. It was rotated by a 40-horsepower motor. The staker belt was 30 inches wide and 40 feet long, and it was driven by a 25-horsepower motor. There were eight cross sluices and two downstream sluices 28 inches wide, fitted with rubber-covered wooden Hungarian riffles on each side of the trommel. Quicksilver was used in the top sections of the cross-sluices and in the distributor trough beneath the trommel. Most of the gold was recovered in the distributor.
The gravel was 18 to 30 feet deep, and the bedrock ranged form soft shale to hard serpentine and granite. There were many large boulders.
Electric power was obtained from a General Electric Company 350-kilowatt generator driven by a Busch-Sulzer Bros, diesel engine. Diesel oil was stored in four steel tanks, each 7 feet in diameter and 25 feet long. The dredge was operated on three shifts of 8 hours each with a crew of 20 men.
The dredge was capsized in 1948, and there was no production recorded for that year. In 1949 Mires and Garner (Western Mines Company) operated the dredge from March 1 to November 15. There was no production recorded for 1950, and the dredge was taken over by a San Francisco bank in June. In April, 1951, the Alcan Mining Company, Larsen and Harms) took over the operation of the dredge near Big Flat. The gravel at this location was 35 feet deep to a hard gabbro bedrock and there were many boulders and cobbles. The operation was closed down September 15, 1951, and the dredge was purchased and dismantled for scrap in 1955."

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Some of the dredge tailings on the north end of the lake were from by the Carrville Dredge. Which operated this large dredge. Information came from the same source as the information on the Mires & Understeth dredge.

"Carrville Gold Company Dredge. Location: sec. 8, 17, 20, 29, T. 37 N., R. 7 W., M.D., on the Trinity River near Carrville. Ownership: Thurman and Wright, 625 Market Street, San Francisco, California.

The Carrville Gold Company, Duluth, Minnesota, started operating a bucketline dredge on the Trinity River near Carrville September 15, 1939. The dredge was built by the Yuba Manufacturing Company. The steel hull was 149 feet, 4 inches long, 68 feet wide, and 10 feet deep. The digging ladder was 119 feet long and included 75 buckets of 12-cubic feet capacity. The weight of the digging ladder was supported by an idler pulley in the well. Electric power was purchased from the California Oregon Power Company. Power to drive the digging ladder was furnished by a 400-horsepower motor. The trommel was 8 feet in diameter and 48 feet long with 33 feet of screen having 'X-inch to %-inch holes. The trommel was rotated at 8 revolutions per minute by a 50-horsepower motor. The stacker belt was 42 inches wide and 123 feet long. It was driven by a 50-horsepower motor. Accessory equipment included a D-7 Caterpillar bulldozer, 300-ampere Lincoln arc-welder, an acetylene generator with cutting tools, an Ingersoll-Rand 300-cubic foot capacity air compressor mounted on skids, air-power tools such as chippers, hammers, grinders, drills, and a double-drum winch operated by a 35-horsepower motor. The sluice box cleanup was worked down in a long torn and then ground in a ball mill with quicksilver. The crew varied from 24 to 32 men.
The dredge was closed down during World War II, and no production was reported from 1943 to 1945. Dredging was resumed in March 1946, but a broken tumbler caused a shutdown from July to December. Breakdowns and repair costs where the dredge was digging in sec. 20, T. 37 N., R. 7 W., M.D., made operating unprofitable, and the operation was finally shut down June 1, 1947. It has been idle since. "

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[McCRRR19]

I haven't worked on the TCNG for the last couple months, a few other games caught my attention for a while (mainly an Age of Sail game called Naval Action). Anyways, most work on the route lately has mainly involved installing bridges and trestles (I think I have about 75% of the bridges installed), other work has mainly seen the changes to yard tracks, spurs, and sidings in a few places as I work towards finding a good operating scheme for the TCNG. One of the main changes has been around Weaverville and what I refer to as "Weaver Junction".

The first big change was at Weaverville. Originally, when I planned out the TCNG, Weaverville was served by a branch leaving the mainline at Weaver Junction at a spot where Weaver Creek meets the Trinity River (the current junctions for State Hwy 299 and Hwy 3 to Hayfork are also in the area). The branch would be served by a daily mixed train that originated and terminated at Trinity Center. So facilities at Weaverville were sparse, mainly a depot, water column, turntable, and run around. With a industry spurs. After some more research and pondering. I decided that Weaverville needed to be of more importance. Weaverville is the largest town in Trinity County, the county seat, and has always been the hub of activity for the county, so I made some changes that I feel reflect this a little better. Mainly expanding the industries in the area, and increasing the amount of freight coming in and out of the area, along with getting rid of the idea for the little mixed train running in and out of town. Trains will still originate and terminate at Trinity Center, but here will be a couple more trains. Essentially, my figuring for this, was that if the TCNG was real, when first being built, Weaverville, probably would have been the main goal for construction, so Etna to Weaverville would be the original mainline with the line to Hayfork being a it's own individual mainline of sorts or a long branch.

Here's Weaverville's depot as it was originally, pretty simple and not much to it, the oil distributor is the spur towards the bottom right, there were two more spurs but they are out of sight behind the camera.

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Here is Weaverville's depot area rearranged and expanded. The added tracks gave a spot for cars caring LCL freight to be spotted at the depot, a private warehouse is the other spur across from the depot, there is know also a 3 or 4 more industrial spurs added behind the camera, mainly two more mine spurs for a couple dredges that worked in Weaver Valley, a spur for a machine shop, and another spur for a mining supply warehouse. Along with the spurs for the LaGrange Mine warehouse and mill, oil distributor, and Trinity Mountain Lumber's mill, there's plenty going on in Weaverville now.

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The next change came at "Weaver Junction". the location where the line to Weaverville and the line to Hayfork split. Initially, there was nothing here but a switch. But after running some trains, I found that with the size of trains I was trying to run into Hayfork, needed more helpers than I thought would be needed. I didn't really feel it would be economical to run a train with 4 engines all the way from Trinity Center to Hayfork, especially since Trinity Center to Weaver Junction is all a relatively easy down hill grade following the Trinity River, but the climb up to Hayfork Summit is a ruling 4% grade. So, Weaver Junction is now home to the helpers for getting southbound trains up to Hayfork Summit. One of the main reasons for these changes stems from the addition of new narrow gauge models. Mainly Britkit's wonderful 2-8-0 and the C&S 2-8-0 from the Colorado Central Route. Before those engines, the only narrow gauge motive power for the sim was the k-27 from the Silverton route, which is a bigger and stronger engine, but never what I was picturing to used on the TCNG, plus I could run the whole 130 miles from Etna to Hayfork with out having to fill up on water with that k-27.

Here's Weaver Junction as it was. Not much here, the depot at Douglas City can be seen in the distance. Going straight takes you to Hayfork, the track to the right heads up Weaver Creek to Weaverville.

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These two shots show the helper facilities at Weaver Junction, with a freight from Weaverville sitting at the junction. I've turned the junction into a wye, and added an engine house, and water tank. Only thing missing a fuel column and I haven't figured out where to fit that in, since it's a bit of a tight spot, but trains can make the hill to Hayfork now.

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[gtrtroger]

Very nice work... Looking forward to more.

[OregonRider]

where can i download it

[buzz456]

where can i download it

You can't. It's still a work in progress.

[McCRRR19]

where can i download it

As mentioned above it is not available for download anywhere, and it is very much a work in progress. And as mentioned in my initial post, I'm not sure if this is anything I will release in the future, but I figured it would be nice to share my progress with people. If it is released, I must admit, I wasn't really keeping things organized in regards to the assets, so there will be quite a number routes and other individual assets that would need to be installed for it to work.

Tim Stricker
Gillette, WY

[McCRRR19]

A few more updates to my rather random and sporadic way of doing scenery, mainly I've just been putting in scenery in random places trying to get the right feel for a particular spot, then slowly spreading out from there, then jumping to some other random spot, so there's little patches of half done scenery every so often. More time gets spent running trains as well (I'm also the kind of guy, who once track work is done on a model railroad, it's quickly nicknamed the "Plywood Pacific" as I get too caught up with running the trains, instead of finishing scenery. :P )

Anyways here's a section of the line north of Trinity Center along Trinity Lake. The little cove the train is passing was actually made by hydraulic mining many years before the lake was filled. About a mile or so north of this spot, is the hillsides are scarred from more hydraulic mining that was once common in placer mining. I've yet to find a good combination of ground textures and scenery items to represent this.

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Next is a section along the line to Hayfork. The train is heading south, and climbing up a 4 % grade to reach the summit, then down the mountain to the valley where Hayfork lies. The train is mostly empty flats for the two lumbers the make up the primary industries around Hayfork.

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Not really a whole of scenery work on this part yet, but I still wanted to share this. With the release of the recent Sac. Northern route, it's added a few more assets for me to borrow from. So, I found the the car barn from the little yard at 40th & Shafter makes a rather neat 5 stall narrow gauge engine house.

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Tim Stricker
Gillette, WY

[McCRRR19]

Been a while since I've made an update. Made a few changes to some industries and mainly, the location of the interchange. I wasn't happy with the hodge-podge interchange I had set up in Etna, which was intended to be the northern terminal of the TCNG, but I decided to extend the railroad the other 10 miles or so, to Fort Jones, and I put the interchange with the standard gauge Yreka Western there, which I'm happier with, and I the terrain of the valley was a little flatter for such facilities. But I've left the TCNG yard and engine house in Etna, so cars from destined for the interchange are shuttled back and forth between Etna and Fort Jones.

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Other scenery work has been done near Hayfork Summit where a number of large trestles and rock work were needed so the road to Hayfork could be built.

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Lastly, I've done some scenery work along the upper parts of the Trinity River, here a southbound freight rolls down stream a few miles north of Coffee Creek Junction.

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