120 Squares of Ontario

Bill Schopp's take on southern Ontario railroading | RMC Sept '61

Cal's Lumber Yard seems to be the gift that keeps on giving.

While rereading E. L. Moore's Cal's Lumber Yard construction article again I realized I'd forgotten that there's a narrow gauge track - represented by some N-gauge track - running into the main building for hauling lumber out to the yard for stacking. It got me wondering about all the narrow gauge projects he'd done, and I started to look back at them. The September '61 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman has his Slim Gauge Carriage project on building an HOn3 passenger hauler, and right below it is a Bill Schopp article on a layout design of his for a 10' x 12' HO pike called the Toronto, Lake Shore & St. Lawrence Ry: a railroad based in southern Ontario running from Toronto all the way over to Cornwall in the far east.

Is it realistic? Yes and no. The cities and towns are in the correct east-west order: leaving any of the platforms in Toronto (A: I assume the platform setup is Union Station, and that roundhouse is the the John St. roundhouse) the first stop going east is Oshawa (B: Oshawa is indeed east of Toronto, but being a Scarborough lad I would have made the first eastern stop Guildwood :-) ), then following the loop we next stop in Belleville (C: which is east of Oshawa), continuing along the inner loop we reach Kingston (D: which is actually at the beginning of the St. Lawrence River, so I assume the generic 'River' is the St. Lawrence), and finally at the end of Ontario is Cornwall (E: it too is actually on the St. Lawrence, but not on this layout). And this being a Bill Schopp design there's a line for RDC operations - his gas-electric line - for making runs between Toronto and Kingston.

I don't see me building this - even though an N-scale version might be interesting - but I admire Mr. Schopp's ingenuity.