Page 10 - NMRA Roundhouse March-April 2018
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 The Cornhill & Atherton RR
 Rob Clark Part 1
Company housing sits right next to the tracks as the train pulls out of Atherton. Having features on multiple levels greatly increases interest and believability photos by Rob Clark
 Recently I was kindly invited by Peter Bowen to submit some pictures of the Cornhill and Atherton Railroad for
publication in Roundhouse. My first thought was to provide a general overview of the railroad, but Peter pointed out the similarities of some of the C&A model scenes with that of 1930s depression era photographs taken by Marion Post Wolcott.
camps, her photographs show how the railroads were woven into the fabric of life in coal country.
Marion was a talented photographer frustrated with being given “mun- dane” photo tasks by her employers. When she moved to the US Farm Security Administration she was able to follow her desires to document America’s wealth inequalities, its race relations, the poverty and deprivation experienced during the Depression. Jack Delano, John Vachon and Dorothea Lange are some other well- known photographers from the same stable.
My very first exposure to US model railroading was seeing John Allen’s Gorre and Dapheted in the August 1967 Model Railroader. I was hooked on US model railroading, but could never aspire to the huge size of the G&D. I finally found in later life the time and funds to do some railroad
modelling and also I am fortunate in having a purpose built room, which at 11’x8’ is small by US standards, but sizable for the UK. Using a double deck design with a third staging deck for interchange gives a generous main line run and great operational flexibility. But what period and style to model?
The Cornhill and Atherton railroad is an entirely fictional HO scale short line set in 1930s small town America
Having a small room means sharp radii and steep grades so short trains with small locomotives fit well.
John Allen ran many smaller engines on peddler freights and incorporated
 Woman coming home along railroad tracks in coal mining town, company houses at right, Pursglove, Scotts Run, West Virginia
In September, 1938, photographer Marion Post Wolcott travelled to West Virginia on her first assignment with the Farm Security Administra- tion. She spent nearly a month pho- tographing an area that had come to symbolize the poverty and despair of the Depression. Although her focus was on the people living in the coal
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