The little town of Andrews is beginning to shape up.

It's almost Feb. and I want to keep the blog as current as possible. I've got some guys coming over in February for an operations session and we will be breaking in a new timetable for the trains operating on the railway.
As I said previously, I'm modeling a bit of the WW&F and a bit of the SR&RL's. This allows me to model a branch line which looks a little like Wiscasset and Albion.  Another branch represents the Kingfield area on the Sandy River.  There is also a short branch (in and out of a single track staging yard) called Franklin.  All three of these branches come into the town of Troy, (aka Strong) where cars are switched out, the majority heading down the mainline to the Maine Central interchange at Burnham Jct.
While nowhere near prototypical it allows 3-4 operators to stay pretty busy for a 5hr. session.
The majority of the trains are "mixed runs" but there are a couple of First class Passenger trains running between Troy and Burnham Jct. where folks can board MC trains heading down to Portland.

My end of the line town of Andrews was named for author and modeler Dick Andrews. I was really drawn to Dick's style of writing and his cartoonish artwork in the articles he did for the Gazette.
I had the pleasure of meeting Dick during the 8th National Narrow Gauge Convention as he had done the artwork for the convention T-shirts we were selling.
The town of Andrews tries to capture some of the sights of the Albion yard on the Wiscasset line.
Fellow WW&F modeler (and blogger) Brian Bond had graciously given me a model of the engine house that needed only a bit of weathering.

I've made a start on a small frame turntable for Andrews. It's in place and working however I still need to finish the upper supporting structure, but at least operators can now turn their engine for the morning milk train.

Wow, it's been three years since my last post….shame, shame, shame! That said, a lot of progress has been made on my On30 Sheepscot & Sandy River Rwy. (she was originally named the Sheepscot Rwy. but I felt there was too much of the SR&RL's being built to ignore the reference)

The railway is a composite of the WW&F and the SR&RL's with scenes that reflect (not exactly) actual places on both roads. For instance on the SR&RL's side, my railway begins at Burnham Jct. with a connection to the Maine Central. The line passes through a small junction called So. Troy and then on to Troy, Maine (which looks a bit like Strong on the SR&RL).
From Troy there are two additional branch lines, one to a place called Unity Mills (aka, Kingfield) and a second line to the WW&F section of the layout featuring Sheepscot, a place with the essence of Wiscassett and then finally heading up to Andrews, Me. again looking a lot like Albion on the WW&F.

Confusing, probably, but it allows me to model places of some importance on both lines where visitors who know the the Maine "lilliput" roads will usually recognize.

I built the S&SR Rwy. to "operate" by a small group (3-4) so the three "branches" make sense. Trains begin out of either Troy yard or up in Unity Mills (like they did in Kingfield). The towns along the line were designed to give the operator approx. 30 real time minutes of work before moving on. The way the railway is laid out there are two junctions (not including the std. gauge jct. at Burnham) where trains will meet, adding additional work time to the runs as they pass each other. Ops sessions run so far show  runs of 1 hr. per job.  After a job is run we usually switch jobs allowing each operator to try their hand at each of the jobs on the railway. Ops sessions can easily run 3-4 hrs.