Thank you for finding that early video of the St Croix. It was fun to see friends, so many now gone. I agree the track does not look as elegant as a 3-rail highline, but there are good reasons it has ended up as it is. Since I'm the one that made those decisions, I'll offer some background. In around 2013 I was given the task of leading the highline rebuild. It had 3 gauges on 4 rails as the early video shows but was in disrepair. All those wooden posts you see in the video were rotten. We had a decision to make, with one active highline participant: tear it out or total rebuild. I couldn't see tearing it out due to the history and the fact we had a tremendous member who did use it, so hoping a rebuild would increase participation I took the job. We were offered several hundred feet of 2.5" oil pipe casing for free to use as posts, which saved thousands in cost. If we were going to put in 5 years of labor rebuilding this, I wasn't going to put wood back in so we could do it over in another 15 years. We were also offered free use of the Manitoba Live Steamers concrete forms to pour the post bases, and I took them up on that generous offer. In return, I decided to add a 5" gauge rail so they could run their engines on our track. That made 4 gauges on 5 rails. Lastly, another board member suggested we add one more rail, a 7.5" gauge rail for two reasons. The first reason was that it would allow us to roll a large-scale flatcar around the track with welder and generator as we made repairs and added the 5" rail. The second reason was it would act as a guardrail since we weren't adding any kind of anti-tipping rails at this time. I, like you, didn't really like the look of it, but I did like the function of it and making things easy for our welding volunteer was a priority. So, 5 gauges on 6 rails. There's at least one more unplanned gauge in there that works, but we won't count that.shild wrote: ↑Wed Dec 16, 2020 12:10 am The St. Croix RR highline itself has ugly track these days. How many gauges is that? Very bad taste trying to be all things to all people like that. But I found this video from when the high line was wood and it looked a lot better. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qa2iLpxjoh4
Although I agree it's somewhat unattractive I have to disagree with your opinion it's in bad taste. It was done for valid reasons and is seeing a decent increase in usage. Having Manitoba guys bring their 5" equipment to meets has been wonderful, and we've had a member from South Africa join who has 5" gauge equipment. Our member who was my original reason for starting the rebuild is close to completing his 3rd locomotive. I had to hand off the project to him halfway through since I moved out of the area and he did a fantastic job with it. He always was the brains behind the operation! Many people who've used the ground-level 4.75" gauge track are also running that gauge on the high line. The track is rock solid being all steel and concrete and has taken minimal adjustment after several Wisconsin winters, I think it will last for 50 years or so without much maintenance. I'm admittedly biased after investing so much sweat in this, but I think the project has been totally successful and invite you to come enjoy one of our meets in the future.
