The Long and Short

     While 8' seems like miles to my N scale sensibilities, it's not very long for an HO switchback layout. My trains will be limited to a tank engine, one or two cars, and a caboose. Although, since the T&D never willfully discarded any of its outdated rolling stock, I can model 36' boxcars, a bobber caboose, and even Civil War era 28' cars without sacrificing accuracy. My next car will be a 24' wood gondola, the spirit wagon which Uncle Cosmo mentions in his journal.

     "At various times residents of the Topdown terminus, in a haze of intoxication on the products of their distilling apparatus, would clamber aboard the spirit wagon, being built up out of lumber salvaged from the delirium mine shafts, and set it to rolling down the grade and into Drywater. These episodes would rouse the towns temperance league into a raging fury, and since they could not push the car down the switchback, owing to the brake being set by the moonshiners, a moral battle would ensue. Prayer, speeches, banners, and song on the part of the temperancers, against a good natured revelry of illicit commerce and no small measure of a different sort of song on the part of the moonshiners. In time, someone would be dispatched down the hillside to the Drywater yard to implore the tank engine crew to come push the revelers back up the hill."

      The wagon contained a still, a few raggedy tents, and assorted barrels and jugs, not to mention a handful of besotted occupants. Lots of opportunity to add interesting  detail!

     I got the other end on my caboose. From the short end, the pug face is even more apparent. I painted the inside black so that I need not add interior details. The cupola inside is wood brown, since the eight windows will let some light in. The sides will have two windows each, with a blank space between, plus two smaller cupola windows.
     The doorknob on this end I painted with a dab of zinc chromate, which gives it a brass appearance. Once the roof is on, I plan to make railings and grab irons of brass wire, and figure out how to make lights, chimney, and a whistle. I want to have a conductor and maybe a brakeman riding on the platform. It seems the T&D was a great railroad for hangers on, owing to the steep grades up and down the mountain, and unauthorized riders were treated with indulgence.