THE LOWELL BRANCH

The American Flyer table has given way to a new branch route starting outside Aguila climbing to the town of Lowell, high in the Mule Mountains.  Since this addition contains the most dramatic scenery on the layout and is directly visible when you enter the train room, I have been taking quite a bit of time getting things right and well detailed.

Presently the branch is operational and the scenic highlight, Hell Canyon, as well as most of the scenery is completed.  The towns of Lowell and Courtland are done, and the last remaining project is to build the operating coal mine at Courtland.  The branch has been under construction for two years now and will be so for at least one more. 

Building the Lowell Branch

Although there is the story of the scenicing of the layout in the Building It part of this site, I thought you might enjoy seeing in a bit more detail some of the work to build the Lowell Branch.

If you remember, this is the branch being built on the table on which originally hosted the S gauge American Flyer layout . When designing the concept for the Lowell branch there were two main considerations and an accident of fate that dictated how it would be built.

The first was that when the new Lionel Climax loco was announced, it said to us, "why not create a branch line to a mine using this neat little fellow".  Now, Arizona mines are usually copper, but in this case we would have a coal mine, mainly because we had recently added the Lionel rotary coal tipple to feed the power plant in Douglas. There is coal mined in northeastern Arizona, although not near the Seligman and Paulden part of the state. Remember we never let facts overly bother us.

The second consideration responded to a problem with the appearance of the Flyer table that had always bothered me.  The Flyer control panel was on the end of the table facing you as you entered the train room.  But underneath, it was open and showed all the wires, storage and junk that occupies the undersides of most layouts.  Mary Jane would note photo stories in the magazines where someone had carried scenery down to the floor.  She really liked that effect and said “you need to do that and it will also take care of your problem with the view of the end of the table that bothers you so.” That led to the concept of modeling Santa Fe’s spectacular Hell Canyon bridge, located just north of us, with the canyon reaching down toward the floor.

A design was created to bring track to the Flyer table by bridging the aisle from the main layout and spiraling up to the town of Lowell (a real town in the Bisbee area, about 25 miles from Douglas - next to a huge open pit copper mine, and with a neat one block long commercial street). From Lowell, a branch to the coal mine would wind around the Mule Mountains (yes the real name for the mountains in which Bisbee is located). The main line then spiraled back down, crossed the aisle again to the main table. With two Atlas bridges fitting the aisle space perfectly, track work was completed and test runs started.

Very quickly a major problem evidenced. I would loose the TMCC signal wherever the track looped over itself. Not every engine was affected, but enough that it made operation very problematical. I tried every solution I could find, but to no avail. Finally, in desperation, I took out the portion of the track most affected, removed one of the bridges across the aisle and left the main line broken. I then restored the original main line, making the track to Lowell a branch rather than on the main line.

Operationally I was surprised to find that I really enjoyed this arrangement.  It meant that right outside Aguila we have Lowell Junction where the branch line takes off.  Rather than simply running trains through to the new area, I station a locomotive in Aguila for the branch line run. Now what happens is the local freight drops off empty coal cars and others with freight destined for Lowell. The Aguila based engineer puts a train together and heads up the branch to Lowell. There, he drops off empty coal cars and picks up loaded ones from the mine. He then does the same for any freight destined to locations in Lowell, also picking up cars there. Reassembling the train, he heads back down to Aguila, leaving cars on the interchange track to be picked up by tomorrow’s local freight. Meanwhile, the Climax trundles up to the mine to pick up loaded coal cars.  After returning with them, it leaves off the new empties to be loaded for tomorrow’s pickup . This has turned out to be a lot more interesting than simply running the trains through Lowell.

By the way, after I made the change, Classic Toy Trains magazine published the solution for my TMCC signal loss problem. It involved installing what is called a ground plane antenna to adsorb the interfering control signals between the two levels.

The highlight of the new addition is Hell Canyon. To create that, I arched the track out beyond the end of the table to create an area for the canyon to cascade down the end of the table. I then cut a four foot section of roadbed out where the Hell Canyon deck girder bridge would go.

Scenery is built using my standard procedure of a foam base, carved and coated with texture paint before installation of scenery. The main difference here is the extensive use of rock castings to form Hell Canyon and the cliffs of the Mule mountains. You will see in the photos of Hell Canyon, it is almost all composed of rock castings. In this case I used only epoxy castings. It took three months of casting, cutting to fit, attaching and then filling gaps in with SculptaMold before the painting could begin.

Following a day’s photo session at the real canyon, I had a couple dozen photos of the prototype bridge and adjacent old route 89 highway bridge.  I used these in designing the bridges. Other than length and height, the main  compromise I had to make was that my bridge is curved while the real one is straight. It was scratch built from wood, masonite and plastic structural shapes. I tried to match the structural design of the towers and the of the bridge itself.  A compromise did require me to leave off the walkway and railing of the real bridge, since with my three foot radius curve, the railing would have to extend far off the bridge to clear trains.

Fortunately, I found a kit that matched quite closely the highway bridge, requiring only the addition of arched panels under the main spans.

Below, you can see a scan of scene from the cover of the volume on Arizona Railroads by David Myrick dealing with the Santa Fe’s Peavine. Although much reduced in scale, this shows you the setting I am trying to duplicate.

Mary Jane’s main goal has been accomplished. When you now enter the train room, your eye is drawn to this huge mountain and canyon stretching almost ceiling to floor - and no view of boxes under a train table.

A main goal of the Hell Canyon scene was to see how closely I could replicate the real thing.  Here is a scan of the cover of David Myric's book on the Peavine route with a painting of the bridge and the old Highway 89 bridge in the foreground along side the scene as on the Seligman and Paulden lines.

And here are some shots with trains on the line.

HELL  CANYON Yes, there is a real Hell Canyon. In our area, the Mogollon plateau rises north and east of us and  lies at an elevation of about 7000 feet. On the plateau a series of volcanic mountains have arisen, beginning to the west with Bill Williams Mountain which is about 10,000 feet high. To the south of the Mogollon Plateau is the Verde River Canyon opening into the Verde Valley which lies roughly at 3500 feet. So you can see there is quite a drop for streams coming off the mountains and Mogollon plateau down into the Verde Valley.  Hell Canyon is one of those, coming off the side of Bill Williams and wandering south and then east until it joins the Verde.   However, the canyon lay directly across the route north from the Prescott area to the Beale Stage route, the original main road crossing Northern Arizona. By cutting through both volcanic rock and sandstone, it make quite a steep gorge and well earned its name with travelers. Today's State Route 89 crosses it twice, the northern most crossing is called Little Hell Canyon while the southern gets the Hell Canyon name. The Peavine railroad tracks run west of the highway at Little Hell Canyon (a great photo spot).   A couple of miles south, they cross the highway and run a mile east at the Hell Canyon crossing, the site of our bridge project. View looking west to the old SR 89 bridge from on the Santa Fe railroad bridge.  Today, the highway lies another mile west.

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