J&B Railroad

 

The John & Bonnie Shortline Railroad is a private 1/8 scale, 7.5 gauge, railroad  for the use of family, mostly grandkids, and close family friends.


We started in 2006 and have been working more or less steadily over the years. We have 750' of mainline and 2 sidings. There is a 40' trestle and a 24’ tunnel. One siding goes to the kids play cabin and another into a pending car barn.


We have an engine, flatcar and gondola. The engine is a Generic Electric from Plum Cove Studios. It uses 2 deep cycle marine batteries to power a 24 volt motor on each axel. I use Tom Bee trucks and working couplers.

 

The last big project was replacing track. On some of the 8 year old track a tree root had grown and was lifting the track. The options were to either create a lengthy grade over it or relocate. We opted to relocate. We removed 60 ft of track past the tree and created a new roadbed bypassing the tree, further into the woods. The new length turned out to be 128 ft  and had some challenging radius on one of the curves.

 

The project took most of early spring 2018 but was ready for the May-Sept 2018 running season.

 

There was also the regular track work. We found that some of the older sections have ties that are rotting. This allows the gauge to move, especially at the connectors. We were having an increased number of derails. We checked and fixed the bad spots. However, it pointed out the need to begin replacing ties in some damp or original (over 10 years old) sections.

 

This spring the project of tie replacement begins. We are replacing wood with plastic and adding tie plates. These options were out of budget when the track was laid. This year we are working on all the connection locations. We are going to have a multi year project of replacing every 3rd or 4th tie each year. The plastic ties are slightly wider so we are planning to replacing the 30 wooden ties per track panel with 20 plastic ties per panel. This will save roughly 750 ties on the entire system. 

 

Right now, February 2019, we cannot even see the right of way for the 15" of snow we have. 

 

It will be interesting to see how the track does. We already can see that there will be a lot of tree debris to clean up. We found that a large branch spiked right through the roof of the tunnel. Another much bigger limb, 10" diameter, missed the tunnel and track by just 12". 

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Lauren and Grandma

(Lauren is 16 now)

© jtegt 2012