Visiting Paul Novak’s Gold Creek Railway


An RS1 switches a cut of cars in the Gold Creek yard (above). The Klinker Coal Com- pany provides a good deal of traffic on the railroad. A GE 70-tonner moves the hop- pers into position for loading from the tip- ple (left). The mining complex is made up of a mix of kit and scratchbuilt structures.


erator, as this was never really a very engaging job. A switching district was built from two modified track plans that appeared in Model Railroader. Named “Terminal Switching District,” it is sep- arated from the rest of the railroad and is reached by a lift-out bridge section. The current scheme consists of up to six crews taking their trains out of the staging yard and running them to their assigned locations. If needed, a peddler freight can be run to deliver additional cars to the various industries. After the operators have pulled outbound cars and spotted the inbound ones, they then deliver the outbound cars to their destinations and return their trains to the staging yard.


Most cars are run on a “two-turn” sys- tem using two-sided waybills. The first side is used to denote the first switching area the car is assigned to and the flip side is used to denote the second place it will go. After moving to the second loca-


64 MAY 2014


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