Name: Jemez & Rio Grande (“The Chili Line”)
Layout designer: Jim Gore
Scale: On30 (1:48 proportion on 30″ narrow gauge track)
Size: 12 x 16 feet
Prototype: Denver & Rio Grande Western Santa Fe Division
Locale: northern New Mexico
Era: October 1951
Style: island style layout with continuous run
Mainline run: 64 feet
Minimum turnout: no. 5
Minimum radius: 22″
Maximum grade: 4 percent
Originally appeared in the December 2014 Model Railroader. Click on the link to download the PDF of this track plan.
Interresting Layout. To be more realistic, "Pajarito" could be renamed as "Buckman" and "Valle Grande" as "Santa Fe." The era being set as October 1951 really refers to a ghost railroad. Unfortunately, the real "Chili Line," running from Santa, Fe, NM to Antonito, CO, was abandoned in the early 1940s (probably in 1941) and the trackage sold for scrap. Stations still exist in Santa Fe; Embudo Station, NM; Tres Piedres, NM and Antonito. Bridge piiings still exist at Otowi (SR 502) and along SR 30 south of Espanola, where the in-town route ran along the present Railroad Ave. Remains of a turntable exixt at Embudo Station along SR 68 north of Espanola. The original route also served several pueblos in northern NM. If it could have remained until late in 1942, the need for delivering supplies to the secret Los Alamos Laboratory (now Los Alamos National Laboratory), where the Atomic Bomb was developed, might have kept it profitable throughout WWII. However the fact that large quantities of materiel and soldiers being unloaded at Otowi Station would probably have compromised the secrecy required. Instead, all materiel and people went into a building on Palace Ave (P. O. Box 1663) in Santa Fe and never came out, having been loaded into blacked-out buses and non-descript trucks in the back of the building. – wrsrr