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[landnrailroader]

Colleagues,

I have started on the tracks for the L&N MainStem route, and I start at the
south end of the former PRR bridge over the Ohio R. At around mile 4.5
we come to Osbourne Yard (L&N) formerly called "Strawberry Yard". This
is a 5 miles long classification yard that CSX has largely shutdown and has
closed the hump, but I am including a reasonable facsimile of it.

I remember some 15 years ago, one of our number then started doing
Proviso Yard in Chicago and of course he quickly came upon some of the
limitations of MSTS, then before X-tracks. He was advised to compress
it, like many of us have done with our HO layouts etc. So I am compressing
this one. It will stretch the full length, but the receiving yard has 9 tracks
instead of 20 or so, and the departure yard has 10 tracks. The "bowl" is
represented with 3 tracks, and between the south end of the receiving
yard and the north end of the departure yard, lies a 3 track car repair area.

When I get Louisville done except for interactives, I may release it as a
separate route into the "unfinished" category, and I'll probably do that as
well with Nashville. In between lies about 175 miles of first class mainline
that in my Uncle Harry's day as a passenger engineer was one fast track
by southern states standards. The "running ground" was from Salmons, KY
to Mitchellville, TN, almost without a curve for several miles and a 79mph
limit.

Jerry Sullivan
Docent, C&TS RR
Retired from CSX & SR

[eolesen]

Funny you mention Proviso... I started working on portions of it Tuesday, and am doing a similar slimdown. Length stays as-is but width gets reduced to what's useful.

[landnrailroader]

Colleagues,

Some of you may wonder about this "Mainstem" name. The L&N line from Louisville to Nashville is where it all
got started in the early 1850s. This line is probably better known today as the "Mainline Sub." of CSX but as
far back as I can remember my uncle telling me the tails of the rails, he called it the Mainstem, 1st & 2nd Subs.
and in the beginning he held seniority on only the first Sub. and it's branches, i.e. Louisville to Memphis Jct.,
just south of Bowling Green, KY. The 2nd Sub. was from there to Montfort just north of Nashville where the
line becomes part of the Nashville Terminal, which had it's own management and was joint with the NC&StL,
the latter also owned by the L&N. So in remembrance of John Harry "Oil Can Willy" Eubank, who got his last
form A and running orders in 1979 at age 91, after retiring in 1958 at age 70, it will be called the "Mainstem".

Jerry Sullivan