Jim Brewer’s Norfolk Southern Railroad
By
Brian w. Sheron
Sunday,
March 21st, turned out to be a warm, first day of Spring, and about 33
members of the Potomac Division took advantage of the warm weather to
visit Jim Brewer’s Norfolk Southern Railroad.
The
layout depicts the Norfolk and Western Railroad (now part of the
Norfolk Southern Railroad) along the Shenandoah River between
Hagerstown, Maryland, and Roanoke, Virginia, in 1956, when the railroad
was transitioning from steam to diesel. What Jim has actually modeled
is about 80 miles of the N&W Shenandoah Valley Division between
Front Royal and Waynesboro, Virginia. He has represented Roanoke and
Hagerstown with eleven common staging tracks.
The
first thing you notice about Jim’s layout when you descend the stairs
to his basement is its size! The layout takes up two basement
rooms. One is a huge 93’ x 30.5’, and the other is 24’ x 20’, or a
total of slightly over 3,300 square feet.
The
layout boasts about 400 feet of mainline track, all of which is Code
100 flextrack. Turnouts are Shinohara with either manual ground throws
or under-table Tortoise switch machines. The layout is powered by a
Digitrax Radio Chief DCC system, with 5 control stations/boosters and
both radio-controlled and tethered throttles.
One
of the best parts of model railroading is interaction and friendships
with other model railroaders. Jim subscribes to this and regularly gets
together with a number of his friends who help him not only operate the
large railroad, but also help him build it. A substantial portion of
Jim’s layout is finely scenicked, a testament to Jim and his crew’s
handiwork.
Jim
is the former editor of “The Arrow”, the official publication of the
N&W Historical Society, and like a true historian, he has taken
numerous trips to the Shenandoah Valley to collect data on recognizable
structures that were present in the 1956 time frame. From this
research, he has built high quality reproductions of these buildings on
his layout to accurately reproduce entire streets in towns through
which the railroad passed. More pictures of Jim’s magnificent layout
can be found on the “Prior Layout Tours” page of the Potomac Division’s
web site
(http://home.comcast.net/~Potomac_NMRA/).
Jalbum 8.2