Welcome to the Owens River Valley Railroad
The Owens River Valley Railroad is based loosely on Southern Pacific Operations in the Owens Valley of California. The SP operated a narrow gauge line from Laws to Keeler until 1960, and a standard gauge line (the Jawbone Branch) from Mojave to Lone Pine until 198?. Until the abandonment of the narrow gauge, the two lines interchanged at Oweno.
Laws is located about 6 miles north east of Bishop at the north end of the Owens Valley. In 1910, a line was proposed to run from Bishop to Laws, to provide rail service to Bishop. The line was graded, and in fact most of the original grade still exists. However, it was never built. Such a line offers many interesting modeling possibilities... agriculture in Round Valley, mines in the Tungsten Hills and Bishop Creek Canyon, and more.
Although it is a freelanced road, I am basing it on Southern Pacific equipment practices. In fact, all native road equipment will be based on Southern Pacific prototypes as much as possible. This can present a challenge, as not many manufacturers are currently offering Southern Pacific equipment. This is not much of a problem with freight cars, but locomotives are a different story. Two boxcars of the same era pretty much look the same except for color and lettering (to me at least) but the difference between an SP and a Santa Fe steam engine are obvious. Expensive brass isn't always an option, so I've had to find alternatives...
EBay and other places to find equipment
I've found EBay to be a good place to find SP equipment at reasonable prices. You need an account to buy on EBay (if you don't have one, you can create one here.
Like anything else, there are certain things to be careful about, but overall I've found buying items on EBay to be a satisfying, worthwhile way to find SP equipment.
Besides EBay, some manufactures do offer equipment based on Southern Pacific prototypes. In HO, Accurail and Red Caboose often have SP freight cars. Walthers has a pretty nice C-30-1 caboose. Sunset Models is coming out with M6 and M9 Moguls sometime later this year. In S Scale, P-B-L offers SPNG boxcars in 3 different styles. Railmaster Imports has kits of the SPNG engines 8, 9, and 18, a T12 that could be used to build SPNG engines 11 and 12, and the "Little Giant" diesel. The most exciting news this year in S Scale though are the SP 2-8-2's and 2-10-2's coming from River Raisin Models.
Another alternative is to kitbash an existing non-SP piece of equipment to more closely resemble an SP prototype. A good example is the 2-6-0 Mogul from IHC. Although not based on a specific SP prototype, it can be made into a fairly credible Southern Pacific M4 Mogul. It's not available from the manufacturer any more, but you can find them all the time on EBay for around $30.00 - less than half the price they sold for new.
NEWS (November, 2007)
Nothing yet, but check back for updates on the Owens River Valley Railroad.
Updated November 26, 2007
