The Wyoming Valley & Western Railway was created by Sam Meehan in November of 2012. What follows is a look into the modeling story, appearance, and real-life story of this freelance regional powerhouse.

THE MODELING STORY

The story of the Wyoming Valley & Western begins in the early 1980s when Conrail decided to sell off a cluster of branch lines and industrial track in the Wilkes-Barre, PA area. 

An investment firm by the name of S.M. Creative Holdings was interested in entering the transportation industry and would purchase the cluster from Conrail. A new company, named the Wyoming Valley & Western Railway, would then begin operations in June 1981. Shortly after this, the new shortline would also acquire a short segment of D&H trackage from Butler St. in Wilkes-Barre, to the connection with Hudson Yard a few miles north.

The WV&W was quite a busy shortline upon startup, as many customers in the area returned to rail service after a hiatus due to poor service from Conrail. The WV&W attracted even more business through frequent service. This prompted the D&H to leave a portion of their Hudson Yard open for interchange traffic after they moved operations to Taylor Yard near Scranton.

In 1988, the D&H was thrown into bankruptcy. The New York, Susquehanna & Western was appointed to operate the D&H until a new buyer could be found. Service was impacted during this time, especially on the south end. This brought challenges for the WV&W to be able to serve their own customers effectively as the D&H was the railroad’s largest interchange partner.

In 1989 the WV&W’s parent company, SMC, began to explore the option of buying the D&H as a way to expand and solve the service disruption issues they were facing. Later that year, a bid was placed by SMC for the acquisition. The purchase was approved in

1990 and the WV&W would take ownership of all remaining D&H trackage, locomotives, and trackage rights in April 1991.

The WV&W had begun to turn things around on the D&H by 1995. The once small shortline had adapted well into a regional railroad.

As the Conrail split became a reality and was fast approaching, Norfolk Southern was already looking for ways to enter new markets and divest of redundant trackage. The newly expanded WV&W was their ticket into Montreal to interchange with CN as well as a shortcut to Allentown from Binghamton. An agreement was reached by mid-1998 that would result in the sale of Conrail’s Buffalo Line as well as a portion of the former Erie mainline sometime after the split, which NS had deemed redundant to their system. In turn, NS was granted trackage rights across the WV&W system between Harrisburg, PA, and Rouses Point, NY. The WV&W would take control of the Buffalo Line just over one year after the Conrail split in July of 2000.

The WV&W would go on to operate this system into the present day. Gradually increasing traffic volumes system-wide has made the WV&W a particularly busy regional railroad by the 2010s, with pool traffic stretching across the country. Several batches of second-hand locomotives were acquired from various sources since the 1990s to handle the expansion. The most common type of traffic moved across the system is manufacturing goods, especially in the Wyoming Valley. Other common commodities hauled across the system include sand, LPG, ethanol, coke, stone/materials, grain, coal, and intermodal.

THE APPEARANCE

The first color scheme used by the WV&W on locomotives was solid maroon with a few different lettering variations ranging from a large logo on the hood to lettering spelling out “WV&W”.

The first repaints of this color scheme appeared in the mid-1980s. These early repaints were done before the WV&W completed their Parsons Shops in north Wilkes-Barre. 

In 1995, a new image was designed and implemented. The red and gray color scheme

symbolized a reborn and fully capable WV&W, a healthy mainline railroad ready to compete in the northeastern market. Patched units still outnumbered painted units at this time as the railroad was acquiring motive power in droves since the D&H acquisition.

Some variation is seen across both paint schemes based on experimental alterations and locomotive type. For rolling stock, oxide brown with white lettering is the standard for boxcars, while open top hoppers and gondolas can be seen in both oxide brown and black. For covered hoppers and MOW equipment, light gray and black lettering is most common. However, several examples of covered hoppers exist using a red logo with black data as well as oxide brown.

THE REAL-LIFE STORY

In November of 2012, I began to dabble with the concept of creating my own fictitious railroad to operate on our small home layout at the time. The first units for the WV&W were old Bachmann and Athearn bluebox models “patched” with a copy paper cut out spot logo scotch taped on the side of them. The first unit that I stripped and painted was an old Bachmann Spectrum GP35.

I began to take it much more seriously upon joining the Hudson Model Railroad Club in January of 2013. Being introduced to a few freelance roads owned by other members and having a much larger layout at my disposal fueled my desire to build up the WV&W. Not having any experience with custom modeling in the model railroad hobby, I threw myself into the thick of it by trying my hand at various different methods to paint and decal early WV&W units. Starting with alphabet sheets and piecing together the initials, I moved on to experimenting with printing my own decals on ink jet waterslide paper for the first two years before having custom decals made.

As time went on, I would acquire an airbrush and begin teaching myself how to use it. The upgrade in paint quality and overall appearance of the fleet was a huge motivator to paint a lot of units in a short amount of time. With every new unit there was something I tried to do better than on the previous. I was beginning to add details and experiment with weathering. There was no set story for the railroad yet, so the fleet was quite diverse. It was just fun seeing things come together and running consists of solid red and gray WV&W power.

In the years that followed I would continue to use the WV&W to learn from and enjoy the hobby. The time had come to finally lock in a story and rationalize the fleet, as I had amassed over 70 painted WV&W locomotives with no real rhyme or reason. I wanted to re-invent the railroad with a realistic story and a planned-out fleet of super detailed locomotives that reflect that story. I’ve come up with what seems like a dozen different modeling stories over the years, all of which I like to consider “placeholders”.

The WV&W spent its entire existence thus far based out of the Hudson Model Railroad Club. The HMRRC maintains a 2,000 square foot layout located in Hudson, PA next to the site of the former D&H Hudson Yard. It is a layout that I’ve spent countless hours working on with the membership over the years. It has also seen every iteration of the WV&W since its creation. While the HMRRC will always be home, the WV&W will be running on true home rails in the future.

The current WV&W is what it was always meant to be. It has become an essential part of my personal brand, and served as a mentor that showed me the ways of custom modeling through years of trial and error. Thank you for following along! I am forever grateful for the support over the years. Be sure to follow the Wyoming Valley & Western Railway page on Facebook. You can also join the Facebook group, where I post more detailed progress on WV&W projects.

Happy freelancing!

WV&W creator and owner,

Sam Meehan.

Facebook Page

https://www.facebook.com/wvwr3006

Facebook Group

https://www.facebook.com/groups/825050665336785