The ET&WNC in HOn3 - George L Carter Railroad Museum Apr 2019

At the George L Carter Railroad Museum on the campus of ETSU, the Mountain Empire Model Railroaders are constructing a model of the East Tennessee & Western North Carolina RR in HO scale. The large layout showcases the entire line from Johnson City, TN to Cranberry, NC as it appeared in the railroad's heyday. Although compressed to only eight scale miles, all of the major landmarks of the "Tweetsie" are present and built to exact 1:87 scale. Almost all of the structures are or will be scratch built, as will be an entire fleet of rolling stock. Over the past year the town of Roan Mountain was built, and work is currently underway on the community of Crab Tree. Unfortunately, all but one of the brass Ten-Wheelers has been taken back out of service for various repairs, leaving the layout once again dominated by the reliable Blackstone C-19s.

In this video we follow Linville River Railway 2-8-0s 6 and 5 one a long freight from Johnson City towards Boone, then catch ET&WNC 4-6-0 11 returning to Johnson City with an excursion train. Then just for fun, we see Norfolk Southern's Pennsylvania heritage unit hauling a long string of narrow gauge freight cars.

Huge thanks to my friend East Tenn. Firebox Productions for running the trains while I filmed this.

I apologize for my recent hiatus. I was too busy with my final semester at ETSU to chase any trains this spring, but now I've graduated and have some big plans for the remainder of the year. Starting with a trip westward next week...