I’ll be honest. Building models for BMR, such as the NMRA and Brickworld exclusives, the bulkhead flatcar, and now six versions of an extended vision caboose, has been fantastic. I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything. But it’s now been over two and a half years since I added a locomotive, or any piece of rolling stock for that matter, to my personal fleet, coming from my to-do list rather than BMR’s.

This was a topic of conversation between Cale and I at the end of 2018. We were hanging out together over the final weekend of the year getting ready to announce the T-1 and prepare for other things coming up. At that point, it had been a little over two years since I built a locomotive that was good enough to keep. (I did build a 2-10-4 in that time, but I don’t count it because it never worked properly and has been mostly dismantled.) That had to change.

Several locomotives were brought up as contenders for my new project. My primary goal was to select a locomotive which could be built from start to finish with a minimum of custom work and electronics. In essence, I wanted a strong jumping off point instead of having to perfect several new techniques like a drive-train. Cale and I had recently completed the S160 2-8-0 for Brickmania, so I was inspired to build a similarly sized locomotive: a 2-8-0 or 2-8-2 would be the perfect size, it could use the same “golden” drive-train as the S160, and I had no suitable freight locomotives. I began to look through my build list and found a locomotive that met all the criteria.

The Buffalo Creek & Gauley Railroad

Growing up I was gifted a boxed set of VHS tapes called “American Steam: A Vanishing Era.” These old tapes comprised of old black and white and color film of steam railroading right up to the end of mainline steam power and beyond. My favorite was “Steam Shortlines of the South” which was a collection of footage from numerous small steam-powered railroads in the Southern United States. The Buffalo Creek & Gauley was one of these railroads, although featured for only a few minutes. The tape showed a hefty 2-8-0 switching strings of coal cars at the line’s interchange with the Baltimore & Ohio. That was my first contact with this incredible shortline.

The Buffalo Creek & Gauley was a coal hauling railroad with connections to the B&O in Dundon, Clay County, West Virginia. If there was ever a perfect West Virginia coal-hauling shortline, the BC&G was it. The line ran from Dundon all the way to the mine in Widen, West Virginia with several unincorporated towns along the way.