Basically I'm trying, with the design expertise of a German friend, to realise G&M Junction on the old M&StL. This Junction was a couple of miles south of Grinnell Iowa and here the branchline to Montezuma via Ewart left the mainline of the 10 district. This district was between Marshalltown and Albia, via Oskaloosa, all in Iowa.
The branchline was build by the Grinnell and Montezuma Railroad and ultimately ended up in the lap of the M&StL in 1912. It last featured in employee timetable no 34 of the Eastern Division of the M&StL dated 23 june 1935. It was gone when the first systemwide timetable was published on 2 october 1938.
This is a fragment of M&StL employee timetable Eastern Division 34 of 1935. I got it from a CD-ROM made by the M&StL yahoo group. Note that in the era that M&StL still had 3 divisions, this branchline was part of the Second District of the Eastern Division. Later the mainline would become the Tenth District when divisions were abolished.
The idea is to cut the two modules in such a way that reassembled at Fremo americaN meetings there is a junction module and a module with a curve. The latter are always needed and I think planners will find a use for the junction too ;-).
It looks as if a third segment might be needed. Anyway, everything is to be transported together.
Here is a pic showing the slight curve just to the south of the junction. You can see the trees in the pic above (black dot near the railroad crossing) behind the last locomotives and the photographer was standing near the railroad crossing, which will feature on the module too. It seems to me that the distant trees just to the right of the nose of the leading locomotive probably stand on the right of way of the former line to Montezuma.
I do not own the picture, it can be found here: http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=280086
I think the landscape is not quite a featureless plain but it comes close, don't you think? This type of landscape is ideal for modules that have to be transported to meetings by train. Not much in the way of objects sticking up above the railhead yet the curve, railroad crossing and trees offer some perspective and interest in a picture. The trees will be taken of the module during travel and probably stored inside the module. This gives a quite compact package as the modules themselves are 61x40x10 cm at the moment.
