Hello and welcome to my brand new blog. This blog will document this model railway’s research, planning, and eventual construction.

After researching many different Island prototypes (Cardigan, Charlottetown waterfront and Murray Harbor, to name a few), I have settled on modelling Vernon River for my modular switching layout.

Here are a few points that helped me settle on Vernon River:

• Vernon River scales out perfectly for a module. Switch to switch the village scales out to just under 6ft long. Measured across, it comes in at about 2.25ft. This scaling means I can model the railway buildings, track and landscaping with absolutely no compression while still having an eight-car public siding and a three-car CO-OP warehouse siding. A small prototype also affords me the option to have staging on both sides of the module; this should be more than enough to keep me entertained.
• Only three switches and six or seven buildings mean I can take the time to super detail the entire scene without getting hung up on the research (which is classic me.) I could hand lay every piece of track and scratch build every building if I wanted without having bitten off way too much. It’s manageable.
• Vernon River, while small, offers a lot of different types of traffic. Some examples of equipment appropriate for this c.1958 prototype would include: reefer cars, stock cars, flat cars, coal cars, boxcars, boxcars with grain doors and potentially even the odd tank car.
• Vernon River still had mixed train service in this era- hauled either by a GE 44 Tonner still in its black steam era paint scheme or by one or two GE 70 Tonners in the classic CNR green and gold scheme.

Stay tuned as I post my research and dig further into this great prototype.

-CM