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'20s,'30s and Beyond Model Railroad

Replicating the Golden Age of Railroading

Gil Morales' module

On Gil's module, Louviers, Colorado circa 1935 is dominated by a molybdenum processing plant Gil kitbashed from a Magnuson kit. Other structures include scratchbuilt handcar shed and cabin and resin kit commercial buildings. The ATSF/Rio Grande shared-rights mainline is paralleled by the Colorado and Southern's dual-gauge track which connects with other HOn3 trackage.

As a modeler, Gil is interested mainly in narrow gauge steam railroads, especially the Colorado & Southern. For years he has been building models depicting the 'Colorado Road', and have been operating them under the guise of the freelanced "Critchell & Southern Railroad". In his paradigm, set in the late 1920's, the prospecters who inhabited the settlement of Critchell, a mining area about 35 miles SW of Denver, found a large vein of Yttrium, a substance used to harden steel. Tensions overseas and an expanding industrial economy made steel a lucrative commodity at that time, and it justified the building of a railway from the Colorado and Southern's South Park line at Waterton up Deer Creek Canyon to the mining camps around Critchell. The "High Grade Road", as it became known for both the ore it moved and the steep hills it climbed, was a quantum mirror of the operation at Climax, and bought or leased considerable amounts of equipment from the Colorado & Southern, thus giving it a very similar look and feel.

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