The Piedmont & East Blue Ridge
Interpretations in On30
I have enjoyed photographing the trains and industrial history of Virginia and West Virginia for many years. I have begun construction of a model railroad that highlights my experiences and discoveries in one particular area along the Blue Ridge Mountains in Nelson County, Virginia. This website is a scrapbook of ideas and activities centered around that model railroad. It is organized into four main categories:
Themes: Information regarding the prototype inspiration for the Piedmont & East Blue Ridge Railroad.
Concepts: The process of interpreting reality through designs and plans for the model railroad.
Construction: Progress being made on building the layout.
Field Notes: Interesting but unrelated railfan and industrial history experiences.
The Themes for the P&EBR are drawn from the small towns along the route of the old Kanawah Canal that still reflect a time when commerce traveled at the speed of a mule walking along a towpath. In the foothills north of the river are abandoned soapstone quarries and the grades of the small industrial railroads that served them.
The Concepts are attempts to represent the theme in miniature. Space constraints of building a 1:48 scale model railroad in a relatively small space require a lot of thought to be given to design in order to fit the necessary parts of each scene into the space available.
The Construction is an ongoing interaction with a wide variety of media and materials that go into building a working model railroad.
Field Notes examine my general interest in industrial history, searching for mills, mines, and railroad lines.
Route of the Piedmont & East Blue Ridge Railroad
The intimate world of obsessed amateurs: outwardly ordinary but inwardly focused, like addiction, on some private creative pursuit. Model railroaders, tattoo artists, trout fisherman, etc. Masters in their own chosen realm. A man's world: Grail Quest in an enchanted forest of gizmos. Passion breeds its own subculture, its own heros, its own literature and terminology, a whole vocabulary of shared mania.
–Michael Flanagan