by Craig Chandler/photos by the author
Working at the Salina, Kan., newspaper as a staff photographer during the mid-1980s was one of my favorite jobs. My love of photography was enhanced by the railroad right outside the front doors of our office. Running down the middle of the street was an active branch of Union Pacific (formerly Missouri Pacific) with daily trains running north and south between Salina and McPherson. Trains of boxcars and grain hoppers would slowly rumble by every day. My favorites were the unit trains of Kyle Railway grain hoppers being sent south. UP would also spot boxcars of newsprint rolls for our presses at the siding beside our building. We couldn’t print photos when the newsprint cars were switched as the vibration made the enlargers wobble with the locomotive just on the other side of the wall. Of course, I may have made that up to give myself an excuse to walk outside and watch the locomotive.
On both sides of the tracks the asphalt street was filled with hundreds of wide tar strips to cover the cracks. The strips were so wide and numerous, you could see them in Google Earth satellite photos. On a hot day all you could smell was asphalt and you had to play adult hopscotch to walk across the street to the parking lot or risk having your shoes stick to the street.
I model the Santa Fe in Kansas during the 1980s and my layout is a proto-freelanced branch line that connects Hutchinson and Salina — two towns where I worked as a photojournalist — plus Coldwater, Kan., where I spent a week photographing wheat harvest (See “Modeling Slip Form Silos with Photo Prints” in the March 2022 issue, and “Model a Modern Wheat Harvest” in the June 2023 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman).
ABOVE: The author had plenty of photos of the newspaper building but very few of the street. As a reminder, always take more reference photos than you think you’ll need!
Modeling Fourth Street
I knew I had to model Fourth Street and the Salina Journal building on my layout. The newspaper and Fourth Street sit on the front of freestanding benchwork that allows continuous running. On my layout, Fourth Street is a spur — only there to switch the newspaper since having numerous main line trains rolling through a neighborhood street wouldn’t seem correct. (Yes, I have Santa Fe switching the newspaper and not Union Pacific. Hey, it’s my railroad!)
In Salina, the area to the south of the newspaper borders a park so it’s mostly scenery. To the north, residential and small businesses line the streets. I knew I could model a couple of houses and a local set of businesses.
ABOVE: The unfinished road on the left contrasts with the finished road.
The benchwork under Fourth Street is a freestanding 12’6” by 24” wide. The underside of the benchwork is where my workbench and bookshelves are. I spend a lot of time at the workbench and knew I wanted the area above to be well-detailed. Fourth Street is at the front of the benchwork and the main line runs behind the scene hidden by the buildings, trees, and scenery.
I modeled the street 36 scale feet wide, which came out to be 5”. For planning purposes, I placed the track and a turnout on the benchwork. A mock-up of the newspaper building was made out of foamcore and I slid it north and south in the area to make sure there was room for two locomotives and two boxcars to switch the siding without running off the edge.
ABOVE: Black craft paint in a syringe draws the tar lines on the street. Notice the paper towel where I dabbed off the needle tip before and after each line.
The Track
Once I had the track where I wanted, it was time to build the scene. I wanted my track to be slightly raised from the level of the wood between the rails and the street so the track would be easy to clean. The UP used the same size wood timbers between the rails they used in crossings. Blair Line two-lane wood grade crossings worked perfectly for these. I used a single crossing to experiment with the track. After a little trial and error, I laid the track on N scale cork roadbed and then used HO scale cork roadbed parallel to the smaller roadbed. I didn’t separate the two pieces of the roadbed but just laid it as a long strip with a rectangular cross section.
I laid the track with Atlas Code 100 track and a Peco Code 100 right-hand small radius turnout. The turnout is only three inches from the edge of the layout so it can be flipped back and forth with my fingernail. The prototype switch is controlled by a switch under the points covered with a hinged plate. I modeled that with an extra hatch from my Cannon & Co. parts bin…
