Bob Burroughs
Second Division
of the Cumberland, Shenandoah and Piedmont Railroad
July
29, 2007
Over 35 people of all ages, 19 of them
PD members, filed into Jan and Bob Burroughs' open house on
Sunday, July 29th to view Bob's ongoing restoration effort of the late
Ken Wiman's Southport Terminal Railroad, now the Second Division of the
Cumberland, Shenandoah and Piedmont Railroad. Revived and
running, the 13x17 foot layout is being updated to DCC and sound by
Bob. Continuous running was the order of the day, with several
young engineers at the throttle of many of the trains.
The main two terminal points are Southport and North Fork
(really!) A wye allows for continuous loop running, but the
layout has many destination points, several of which provide for train
to ship transfers, (including a freight car ferry) as well as through
train and local passenger service.
There are two operational highlights. A coal mine
actually loads hoppers with pre-determined quantities by dialing the
number of "tons" per car on an old fashioned rotary telephone
dial. The mechanism for the mine has been restored and Bob has it
operational at this time. In the future, Bob hopes to restore to
operational status an ore unloader that features rotating an entire
hopper car to dump its' load into a waiting ore ship, triggered when a
loaded hopper rolls down an incline into the dumper much like a hump
yard, is clamped, then elevated and rotated, righted, lowered then
expelled to a gravity switchback track to return to an empties track.
Bob bought the railroad from Ken's estate several
years ago and his restoration efforts are ongoing, with the replacement
of many what were then state-of-the-art electronics especially, as well
as cleaning and repairs on much of the layout. Bob also has a small 4x8
switching layout that crews can "warm up" on before taking out a run on
the Second Division.
The pictures show the rewired turnout control panel (DCC has eliminated
the block control system), the working coal mine, the Southport
harbor area, a view (upper left) of the 7 actual foot cantilever bridge
across the center of the layout, the ore hopper unloader, and Layout
Tour Coordinator Tom Brodrick presenting Bob with his Certificate of
Appreciation.
(click on thumb
to view larger pcture}
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