2. A Brief Fake History
As I developed the track plan over the course of a week or so, I couldn't help but invent stories in the back of my mind to justify all of the stuff I was modeling. Some of it's quite fanciful, but not so far afield that it couldn't have happened. So, enjoy my fake history (sprinkled with a few nuggets of truth) of the Mountain Vista Railroad:
Sometime in the early- to mid-1800s, as was popular in that era, a mineral spring resort popped up in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Developed by James D. Kingsley (a descendant of Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island), the Bearcamp Springs Resort was a little unusual in that a train, running on part of an abandoned branchline, ferried vacationers to and from the nearby town of Augustine, where Kingsley's new White River & Northern Railroad met the Boston, Concord, Montreal and White Mountains (later the Boston & Maine).
By the end of the Nineteenth Century, the resort had fallen on hard times, and the abandoned railroad was purchased by Stephen "Stephy" A. Greene (coincidentally also a descendant of Roger Williams), who established a brewing company in the remains of a former furniture factory at the White River & Northern terminus in Augustine.
The railroad sat idle until Prohibition, when Mr. Greene put his investment to full use selling mineral spring water and other tonics as a means to help keep his business alive, using the railroad to haul it down from the old mineral springs in the mountains to his brewery for bottling. Once Prohibition was lifted, business resumed as before, with the added twist of using spring water for the brewing process, although he drew the water directly from an aquifer as more economical option to running the railroad.
As of 1955, Greene's grandson, Stephen III, had inherited the brewery. Rather than continue paying property taxes on a non-functioning railroad that would prove challenging to sell, he revived it to serve as a tourist attraction, renaming it the "Mountain Vista Railroad." Plus, he began refurbishing the old Bearcamp Springs Resort. The venture was successful enough that he was able to open a brand new brewery a few miles away. He then turned the original brewery into a working museum as an additional attraction for the railroad (while the kids rode the train, mom and dad got hammered).
Incidentally, with the railroad came a Shay, which was in dire need of repairs before it could be put into service. In order to get the tourist line running sooner and more economically, Stephen III purchased a switching diesel from the Boston & Maine, and put the Shay on static display.
Reference
As it happens, there was once a place in New Hampshire that's eerily similar to my layout concept: Cohas Springs in Londonderry.
Founded in the late 1800s, the Cohas Water Company bottled water at the spring in Cohas Park, Thousand Acres. Visitors arrived by rail, passing through scenic pine forests. (The rail line was an interurban that ran from Manchester through Londonderry to Derry; service ended circa 1940.)
The little bridge in the image above is now abutments in the woods, below.
According to historic maps, the trolley line that ran through the park paralleled the Manchester & Lawrence Railroad for a couple of miles through what was once called Depot Village, in the middle of which was Smith Corner (below), on the north end of Londonderry.
On the map below (circa 1950s), Cohas Park is off the top left corner, and the trolley line running through the park is the dotted line, which continued south to Derry. Cohas Park itself has been obliterated by the Manchester-Boston Airport as well as the Londonderry Industrial Park.
The surprise discovery of Cohas didn't inspire any changes to the layout; it only provided some justification for what I did. Some of the coincidences are a bit spooky: for instance, I'd planned on adding a long staircase from Bearcamp Springs Station up to Bearcamp Springs Resort, not unlike the beast seen in the images above. Also, there used to be several water wheel mills in the area, and now there are several small breweries.
True Facts
Roger Williams is the founder of Rhode Island; Stephen A. Greene, a resident of Cranston, RI, was a descendant of Roger Williams. James D. Kingsley is my nom de plume, and I am likewise a descendant of Roger Williams—thus I'm also a distant relative of Stephen A. Greene, a wonderful old gentleman I'd adopted as my grandfather while vacationing in New Hampshire when I was young. How I miss the dear man, taking walks through the woods together behind his summer home, looking for wildflowers, listening to his war stories, and devouring his wife Dorothy's fantastic fresh blueberry pie...
And now you know why the name Stephen A. Greene appears on nearly every layout I've ever built.