What Time is it in My World?

I decided to set the N-Scale NAR in the Fall of 1979...

The choice of 1979 was made for several reasons:

1. I was 10 years old then and remember that time quite fondly... Like many other modellers out there, I wish to recreate this time of my life when everything seemed "perfect"...

2.The NAR was celebrating its 50th anniversary in 1979. There were special trains run during the summer and the NAR had just applied the "names" on the sides of all their locomotives... something I would like to recreate as it really pinpoints the time modelled.

3. The NAR ceased to exist in 1981 as a separate entity: CN bought out CP's share late in 1980 and the railway was fully converted to CN subdivisions in 1981.

4. The NAR had just received their signature, double door boxcars... at the time they were brand new and represented a "Golden Age" on the railway which showed hope and growth for the future.

5. CN's Great Slave Lake Division was in full swing in 1979 and generated much traffic for the NAR with grain and lead-zinc ore going south... agricultural and oilfield products going north.

6. Most of the grain elevators in the Peace country were still standing, in a myriad of colours and schemes; Alberta Wheat Pool, UGG, Cargill and Pioneer... and there was a ton of them.



c. Bruce Selyem

 

I chose the Fall/Harvest season, specifically, because:

1. The extra traffic generated by the Fall grain rush dictated that the NAR lease locomotives from its mother companies... CN and CP... and ran them together with their own power. This made for some wonderful sights of all three paint schemes seen at the front of the same train (and, as any model railroader will attest... the more excuses you have to buy locomotives... the better!!!).

2. The Fall colours in the Peace country are absolutely astounding... breathtaking, even. This is also something I wanted to recreate.

3. The grain rush also means that there were all sorts of harvest activities going on in the surrounding country side... Details that would add interest for those viewing the layout when displayed. There was swathing, combining, tilling, baling and, most of all, truck after truck delivering the products of all this activity to the grain elevators that dotted the country like Easter Island statues.

Now... for the "problems"... I mean anomalies.

The UGG elevator in Peace River may not have been standing in 1979... in fact I can't be sure if any of the tracks that served the other "riverside" industries weren't torn up by that time either. My research has not pin-pointed these dates yet but I will be including those features in the plan because it adds so much to the visual and operational interest of the layout... A grain elevator, fuel distributor, propane distributor, 2 warehouses and a lumberyard! All of which I want to model!

 

 

The Biggest Anomaly...

 

My plans for modelling the "West Hill" at Peace River (Duet) are dependant on having something to block the view to the north so that the trains can disappear and return to the scene via the two "horse shoe curves" they used without having to model the entire "right of way"... The perfect solution to this is Highway #2. At two places on the west bank of the river the railway crosses under the highway and then, once it reaches the top, goes over the highway on a concrete bridge... Perfect solution... The highway creates a view block by dropping directly from the top of the hill onto the auto bridge... I don't have to model anything north of the highway!!!

 

 

 

Only one problem... That path of the highway didn't exist in 1979. Construction of the new path for Highway #2 only began in 1981... after the CN takeover of the NAR. Before that time the highway descended the west hill by crossing the tracks at a grade crossing near the top of the hill (seen in the centre of the photo above) and then followed on the south side of the tracks until it reached the bottom, crossed the tracks at the wye located just west of the rail bridge and, with a very abrupt right hand turn, climbed onto the auto bridge to continue its journey east/southward.

 

How do I resolve this???

 

Well... thankfully there is a little tool known as "Modeller's Licence" which will allow me to move the highway's construction back in time 2 years!!! (very little is known about this technique other than it involves flux-capacitors, the use of string theory and careful manipulation so as not to upset the space/time continuum and create a black hole that would doom us all!!!)

 

Therefore I will be modelling the highway as it appeared in the summer/fall of 1981... so... joy of joys... a full blown highway construction scene complete with excavators, scrapers, bulldozers, pile drivers, concrete work and even paving crews... It should be a lot of fun!