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Today I visited Dave Balser. He lives near me in Hemet.
His Onion Valley Mining and Lumber Company is an On30 circa 1934 railroad set in the Sierras. There were three previous OV layouts. The first was an HO layout featured in the May 1996 issue of MODEL RAILROADING. The second was an HO layout with a HOn30 branch line featured in the June 2006 issue of MODEL RAILROADER. This layout was that same earlier layout converted to On30. All three layouts were located in Encinitas.
The current layout is a work in progress. It features the hand laid track and turnouts made using Fastrax templates. This is a point-to-point railroad with a turntable to staging shelves. The mountain-theme backdrops were painted by a local artist in Dave¡¯s community.
Motive power includes typical logging geared locomotives and Critters. Most of the cars are ready to run wood cars from Granite Creek. Dave is a member of the Dead Rail Society and has four DCC radio controlled battery locos. Scenery is about fifty percent complete and many structures are completed.
Dave operates using a simple car card system. This system is more in tune with his small railroad theme and avoids the complexity and paperwork associated with systems designed to imitate operations on Class One railroads.
He authored an article about this system, titled "Commodity Movement System For Shortline Model Railroads", which appeared in the January 1998 NMRA BULLETIN on Pages 27-31.
Below are some photos I took.
Bob Chaparro
Moderator
Bob Chaparro