Here are some pictures, taken by members John and Linda
Latimore of Fred and Margaret Twigg’s railroad.
There is also a brief history of the
“Little Sage Hen Lumber Co. and Railroad."
The Little Sage Hen is a fictitious Lumber Company and railroad operating in the high eastern Sierra Nevada range north of Hobart Mills, which is north of Truckee, California. The name is derived from Sage Hen Creek in Euer Valley where Fred used to enjoy fly-fishing in the late 1050’s and early 1960’s.
There was a lot of narrow gauge logging activity throughout the area. The era of our layout is that vague time of the 1920’s through the 1930’s when logging was still a thriving industry and life was simple, or so we now believe.
The layout is like the original setting, where slow change is a constant. All engines are steam; no diesel-electric’s have reached this part of the Sierra Nevada range. They smell funny, don’t sound right, and you can’t see them coming from miles away. They just don’t seem natural!
Our layout uses all hand laid code 250 aluminum tracks with redwood ties and thousands of little spikes to hold the rails down. Track power is applied at just one point in the roughly 200 feet of track and Hillman clamps are used throughout.
A handheld controller is used and both switches are manual. Many of the structures are hand built with more to follow as the town grows. Our golden spike ceremony was held on September 12, 1999.
Jeff Dreon brought some of his locomotives over and ran them for us. The following pictures are of his roster.
