the MILW Limestone Junction Branch

The MILW had a strange but long-standing job based out of Bellingham, WA, to run up to a limestone mine in the Cascade Mountains and supply limestone to a cement plant in Bellingham, using an SD9 and a string of ore jennies. There was a round concrete loading silo there that was fed by a conveyor that was fed by front end loaders at the mine. I have a weak spot for ore jennies, but they didn't operate all that much in the Seattle area in 1973, that I can find out, other than (1) copper ore coming down from BC to the Asarco plant in Tacoma, (2) radioactive ore or waste (or both?) that came out to or from Bangor and/or Hanford, and (3) limestone from Limestone Jct. to Bellingham. Let me know if you've heard of anything else.

But my layout only goes as far as Bellingham staging, so the Limestone Jct. operation never made sense to try and model. Until last week. We were finishing up scenery in the Index Loop area, which includes a spur for the Grotto gravel pit just west of Skykomish, and suddenly it occurred to me that there was room for an additional switch there that could make it up a 3.5 percent grade to a new shelf on top of the Skykomish staging yard. And, it would connect directly back into the Bellingham staging yard via the existing connection track between Skykomish and Bellingham. And, the mountain backdrop above the staging yard was high enough, and generic enough, that there was room for this new shelf without modifying the backdrop. And, if it was only two tracks wide (enough for a runaround track) it wouldn't hinder the operation of the Skykomish staging yard significantly. And that there was room above the base of the main peninsula to bring the mine out from the wall and really model the operation of the limestone silo. All of these ideas came in one week!

So, here are the results so far. The silo is represented so far by a white stand-in I cut from a used plastic bottle. Haven't had a chance to paint it grey yet, or make a better one.

Partway through construction:

And now after some quick scenery:

Stay tuned for the when the first operation begins...