Wakefield Railway Modellers' Society

Under Construction In The Clubrooms

TRINITY, COLORADO

Sn3 (3/16" to 1'-O")

By John & Richard Farline (WRMS)

Trinity is the terminus of a branch line that was built, as a joint venture by the Denver& Rio Grande Railroad and the Colorado & Southern Railway, to tap into the goldfields that were found to the east of the Gunnison area of Colorado in the late 1800s. The time period is 1940 to 1950 and, after years of decline, the town is enjoying a brief respite after new natural resources have been discovered. The last remaining mine, the Belle Vue, is producing ore that has enough gold and uranium content to make the operation profitable. Also, in recent years, a small oilfield was discovered under the town. The wellhead supplies oil through a pipe that is used to load oil tank cars belonging to the Gramps Company of southern Colorado.

The line is operated by the D&RGW, mainly for freight, but with the occasional passenger or mixed train making an appearance. The railroad maintains a passenger depot and a locomotive shed with its associated facilities. Supplies are brought into the town and to the mine by rail. The main recipient of general goods is the Goodrich & Burrows warehouse. Also, a variety of agricultural products are shipped out from the warehouse.

All of the above is fiction, although the D&RGW and C&S did have lines to the gold and silver mines in the Rocky Mountains. As far as we know, there is no settlement in Colorado that bears the name Trinity. Followers of the game of rugby league may notice that some of the above-mentioned names are familiar.

The track plan is a scaled up and slightly modified version of one that the former Wakefield RMS exhibition manager, Roger Nicholls, used for his Crystal Lake layout. Track-work is from Shinohara and Tomalco and all of the buildings are scratch-built and are based on Colorado prototypes.

The majority of the rolling stock is constructed from kits. All but one of the locomotives is a Japanese or Korean brass product. The odd one out was assembled from a cast pewter kit supplied by a company in New Zealand. Control of the layout is by DCC.

The most unusual part of the layout is the method of baseboard construction. The basic board is made from a 4' x 2' x 2" thick sheet of blue polyurethane foam that is surrounded by a plywood frame. The result is a very light but rigid board with a surface that can be cut and carved for scenic effects, if necessary.

Trinity Colorado

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Mike Howden positioning a small wooden building that he has scratch built - with the engine shed, scratch built by John Farline, in the foreground	Mockup of the Belle Vue Mine Once a couple of dimensions have been adjusted, the finished model will be constructed by John Goodrich
John Farline's scratchbuilt water tower dominates this scene. The freight cars were built from PBL kits by Richard Farline	A view looking towards the belle Vue mine with Paul Prentice's scratchbuilt employees changing shed in the foreground. The building between the shed and the mine doesn't belong to the layout but has been borrowed to show the position of another mine building. Construction of this has still to be started. All but one of the layout's structures are scratch built. The odd one out is a storage tank for the mine that is part kit built and part scratchbuilt. Three members have made their very first wooden scratchbuilt buildings for the layout. They are Mike Howden, Paul Prentice and Roy Smith.