I've spent several months working and making Dugan modelgenic. It's not finished yet, but it's coming along. Dugan was a station on the Placerville Branch and lasted til the line was abandoned in the 1980's. Its located between Latrobe down the hill and Shingle Springs not too far east. I've made it a TO (train order station) with lower quadrant Tomar built semaphore as well as being the designated maintenance crew point for the branch. Small cabins on the property allow the men some downtime from maintaining branch trackage.

The truth is I'd rather build the Placerville Branch then operate it; least right now. I know that for several reasons. The latest is that about a month ago I finished up a summer of building projects.

First, I apologize to readers for not writing in this summer. I've just been too busy with family matters including having to travel back east for sometime to assist someone close. These things happen, particularly as we age.

I have been in the layout room working like crazy as time allows. I've built a number of kits, done some scratch building, installed my first operating lower quadrant TO board at Dugan, built some tall pines, replaced some blue point manual switch controls with Tortoises, and got a bit of scenery work done. 

Center Peninsula - Placerville Branch

Folsom Station circa 1962

​Double headed GP's running westbound off the branch near White Rocks

My design givens were this -

Although I had wanted to build in Hon3, modeling the logging line of the Michigan-California lumber Col., I wasn’t willing to sell off my stash of HO equipment. I had just retired and I wasn’t confident that I could pull it off financially, so I kept my HO gauge equipment and looked for a standard gauge to model.

It took a while, but I got the “under the back porch layout room” cleaned out. Old cabinets went upstairs to the garage as repurposed storage.  A paint bin with all the old paints that previous owners had stored, went to recycling, while the bin was used for storing tools and miscellaneous boxes.

​Earl Fruit Icing Platform, Folsom Ca.