Andrew Dodge's
Denver, South Park and Pacific
I would describe Andrew Dodge as both a perfectionist and an extremely
accomplished modeler. Andrew's On3 layout of the Denver, South Park,
and
Pacific is a highly accurate representation of the railroad as it
existed in the fall of 1882. On Sunday, September 12th, 35 members and
friends of the Potomac Division came out and visited Andrew's layout,
and no one went away disappointed! Andrew, a professional historian,
said he chose modeling the fall of 1882 because this would be the
railroads last year before the introduction of Westinghouse Air Brakes
and a new series of locomotives built by Cooke. He also liked the year
because it would allow for an accurate representation of an end of
track operation at the towns of Breckenridge and Gunnison. Andrew began
construction of the layout in late 1989 with the building of the lower
Platte Canyon bridge, and he progressed into Breckenridge by 2001. All
of the track is handlaid Code 70 and all of the turnouts on the layout
are stub switches that Andrew hand-laid including two 3-way stub
switches (Andrew informed me that stub switches were no longer allowed
on most railroads after the turn of the century. Andrews talents do not
stop with his layout construction, trackwork, or scenery. All of his
steam engines are either scratch built or heavily rebuilt commercial
models, and all of his rolling stock freight and passenger cars is
scratchbuilt! The ten locomotives operating on the layout have sound
and DCC decoders, which are controlled with NCE radio throttles.
BRIAN W. SHERON
Jalbum 8.2
