The Oregon Lower Valley Railroad (OLVRR)

A couple of changes have happened since starting this blog. The railroad name has changed from the Scripter Basement Railroad (SBRR) to the Oregon Lower Valley Railroad (OLVRR). Here’s a picture of the ‘pass’ Sami and I created for the new name. OLVRR subtly represents ‘Oliver’, our grandson. The ‘Lower Valley’ refers to it being in our basement, and ‘Oregon’ is the intended locale. The colors of the lettering represent the colors of my all-time favorite railroad paint scheme, the ‘Black Widow’, probably named for the overall black scheme, with the red highlight at the bottom. The layout design shown in the first blog entry has evolved a bit. Here’s the design that is being built: And, last but not least, here is the full photograph that appears at the top of each blog entry. The lead locomotive is in Southern Pacific Black Widow paint, and the following units are in Southern Pacific’s ‘Blood Nose’ paint.

  Our lives changed after I finished college and my military obligations. I now had a full-time job at Freightliner. My interest in trains became active again, and I focused on American Flyer and S-scale, which I was familiar with from my childhood. I didn’t have space to start a layout, but I began exploring new possibilities with the American Flyer items I had gradually acquired from Goodwill and other places, to replace my original train, which my father had given to neighbor kids when I left home for military and college. At this time, American Flyer was effectively history because the company had gone out of business, but it was not yet collectible, so starting my collection was not difficult or expensive. I decided that stock American Flyer locomotives, cars, and track didn’t look very realistic, and could be improved upon. I worked in the direction of “hi-rail”, which is defined as a compromise between ‘tin-plate’ toy trains and highly accurate scale models. Stock toy t...