Article & Photos By David Yadock
Dry Gulch & Western, A Photo Series Part 11
By now I am sure some of you have been wondering about how I got some of the city names and building names for my layout. Allentown should be obvious. It is named for John Allen. My main town of Ellison is named for Frank Ellison. Some of the other smaller towns are named after close friends or relatives. A lot of structure names are also named for coworkers and friends. I find it a good way of naming businesses and such.
My layout name, Dry Gulch & Western, came about in a strange way. It involves a very long explanation but the namesake town on my layout is called Dry Gulch. The town’s initials are DG which is GD backwards, again a little homage to the Gorre & Daphetid of John Allen fame. Now on to the last pictures of the photo tour.
Photo 51 shows the stub end of the wye in Allentown. This photo also gives a good overall view of the layout. If you look between the two large mountains in this photo (center left) there is a valley that goes all the way to far wall. There are actually 5 different mountain areas visible when looking down that valley.
Photo 52 shows how other parts of the layout can be used as a backdrop in this photo. Careful cropping of photos allows this to happen. Allentown is a mix of a lot of different structures. The flour mill was carefully built to hide the wall corner yet allow for freight traffic.
Photo 53 gives a view of the layout rooms other corner along with a close-up view of the industrial section of Allentown. The future city of Ellison will be located in that far corner.
Photo 54 shows a good section of the layout while standing beside South Allentown. Allentown is to the left and Newport is to the right. Dry Gulch is directly behind Allentown and is directly above the large control panel. Gornitzka Crossing is just to the right of Dry Gulch and Ellison is tucked into the room corner. If you look really hard you can see the town of Alpine by the stone arch bridge on the far back wall.
Thus, ends this part of the layout tour of the Dry Gulch & Western RR. I hope everyone has enjoyed the trip around the layout. I also hope that viewing the layout in this photo series has given some impetus to work on you own model railroad project. In a few weeks’ time I’ll show you what I have been working on since these photos were taken. The Covid-19 pandemic has given me the opportunity to devote some time to quite a few model railroad projects. There has been quite a bit more work done on the layout. I have also spent a great deal of time working on various locomotive projects. The energy spent on these locomotives will increase my roster for future layout operations. I hope everyone had a good New Year and the management of the Dry Gulch & Western is looking forward to a great 2021!
David
David,
I’ve enjoyed this tour – very much – thanks for taking the time to do it.