More Bumpass photos
Bumpass was removed from my RR before I got a digital camera, and With film cameras I did not document my RR as much as I do now, as it wasn't easy to share the photos. Here are some ancient black and white photos of Bumpass that I have found and scanned.
My best guess these photos were taken in My folks driveway @ Timberlake near Meridian Mississippi in 1978 .
Bumpass was a marvel of design and construction. at two feet by six feet in two sections; it fit into it's twelve square feet a passing siding, a station, a two stall engine house, a log loading ramp, a switchback, an iron furnace and an iron mine. with room for a creek winding through it. The plywood back drops allowed the two halves of the layout to be assembled into a 2 foot x 2 foot by 3 foot box for transport, and fit neatly into my pinto wagon.
There was room on the end of the passing siding and switchback leads for a 25 ton shay and two short cars. As a portable RR it worked well, but it was a judgment error, however, to build a much larger RR around it. It might have worked had The larger RR been committed to very small power, and short trains made up of small cars, but I built a big Sawmill, and then had to look like I was trying to feed it. You can't feed a double band saw mill with trains that can make it through Bumpass, it just can't be done.
The track work in Bumpass needed a lot of work. I had never sealed the homasote by painting it before putting ties down, so the homasote held moisture, and spikes would rust out in five or ten years, so continual maintenance was needed. The benchwork was heavier than it needed to be half of Bumpass could be handled by one man; but when it was bolted into it's box form it took two men and a mule to move it. It would have been a lot of work to restore, and was too heavy to be an ideal portable, so I salvaged all I could and put it on the burnpile.
If I am forced to downsize, I will consider revisiting the Bumpass concept. I have toyed with the idea of doing something like it in On3, or something more expansive in HOn3. It is very nice to have something like Bumpass, so you know you could move to a new house, and have a fully functioning railroad up and running in less than a half hour.
In the photo that shows all of the Bumpass module note the Toyota truck in the background. Perry's Gizzzard , now the oldest portion of my RR, was built to fit in that truck.
The evil voice of the model train demons keep whispering in my ear Bumpass was designed to fit in a pinto wagon, what could you build that would fit in the back of your Suburban!
Bill Nelson
