Scenery

I really need to get to some posts. But here's a revisit to the same location as the last post, the logging line on Harvey's layout. Joseph (and his Mom!) have both been helping at Harvey's. We've been making a lot of puffball trees, and working on the scenery. Joseph did the trees and some of the scenery here, including installing the rock casting above the portal. I completed more of the scenery, including my first attempt at hand carving Sculptamold rocks. I'm really happy with the way they've come out, and pretty happy with how they blended into the rock mold.

Saw Mill

A saw mill? In New Britain!?!

Well, not quite. I'm helping work on a layout for Harvey and he's said that I can include his layout on the blog. So today I'm working on the saw mill. Here's the start of day picture:

I'll provide more details about the layout later, but I built a good portion of these mountains and installed this siding. Since I had started basic groundcover, John thought we should figure out how to install the saw mill, as this is the logging line. 

Harvey bought the mill after it had been cut out from another layout. It's a nice scratchbuilt structure, and half of the roof was left off to allow you to see the detail. So we wanted to make sure that side faced the aisle. The problem was that side originally faced the siding. It just fit behind the siding here, but since it's fairly high it made it difficult to see. So I tried it in a few places on this side of the track and we decided to add some foam to the terrain to give it a home. As you can see, John also added a road to the location and up between the mountains.

I built a retaining wall the night before, and here I'm filling the spaces with grout:

I had started by making a 'template' with what was handy, a piece of newspaper. Initially I was going to transfer that to some other material, but decided it would work just fine as backing. I used The Chopper to cut all of the small pieces then just glued it together. After brushing the grout into the spaces I used diluted white glue to set it while I worked on the hill.

Going back a day, here was the hole I cut in the hill and the piece of foam that was made to fit with the rough placement of the mill:

So I spent the day doing basic groundcover (more grout), decided that the road would stand out more as gravel instead of a dirt road, and installed the retaining wall. The gravel road was a blend of the grout, light gray ballast, and cinder ballast. It will be a lighter color when dry.

There's a lot more work to do, but I did figure out one other thing. I was trying to figure out something to put in the space between the siding and the mainline, partially as justification for the siding to be swung so far out and for them to build the mill on the edge of a cliff. While I was working on it it came to me - a water tower. For that matter, some basic railroad maintenance sheds, etc. for servicing the Shay. This is really the only location where they'll fit. So I think I may try my hand at scratchbuilding them because I'd like them to match the quality of the nearby mill.

Chris Adams Ops Session

Wow. Two posts in one night. Here are some photos from the Second Official Valley Line Ops Session. Due to some technical difficulties I couldn't get these posted until now.

I wasn't running trains this time. I helped get things started, and experimented with a few photos before helping out upstairs for the Photo Library Night that was happening at the same time.

Dave Ramos Ops Session

Chris, Pieter, John, Tom, and new buddy Jim Schweitzer drove down to NJ for an ops session at Dave's place with a much larger crew. Dave's modeling Manhattan in 1947 and it's a really unique layout.

Or really, layouts. I'll give a brief description, but there's a ton more information about NYC railroads at Industrial and Offline Terminal Railroads of Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, Bronx and Manhattan.

The Erie and Lehigh Valley Yards are covered on the site in detail, the High Line and NYC Yard are not.

Chris, Craig Bisgeier and I were operating the NYC West 33rd Street Yard. It basically operates as an independent layout of its own, with freights terminating in the yard. All of the freight is handled at several industries right around the yard, a freight house and REA terminal. We usually had two switchers doing the work of breaking apart and building the freights. It's a cool operating scheme with waybills, cars sit for a minimum time as listed on the waybill and managed by the fast clock. There's also a cleanout track and cars are left  a minimum amount of time based on an egg timer.

Switching out the cleanout track.

 Reefers at the cleanout track.

Anheuser Busch is the large building behind it.

 The gons in this and the next picture are on the Steel Track.

 The Steel Track will eventually have an overhead crane.

 The track to the right of the Steel Track is a Team Track.

The track on the other side of the High Line is another Team Track.

 The large building in the back is the Stanley Soap Co. served by its own track.

The track with the reefers is the Perishable Track.

The two tracks in front of that (that come together in front of the reefer)

are the Terminal Stores inbound/outbound tracks.

The two tracks in front of that are outbound tracks, with an inbound track off the picture in front of those.

Part of the job Chris was handling was servicing the Terminal Stores building. This building is adjacent the Erie Railroad West 28th Street Yard that in Dave's basement is a standalone island in the middle of the room. This yard is served by car float. The Erie also services the Terminal Stores building, and the NYC crosses the tracks from the Erie car float to the Erie yard.

A somewhat blurry picture of Chris taking a picture of the Erie Car Float.

In the background is the Erie Yard, and the large building beyond Chris's camera

is the Terminal Stores Building.

The NYC West 33rd Street yard is off camera to the left and connects to this section via a lift out.

The High Line can be seen around the perimeter of the room.

On another standalone section is the Lehigh Valley West 27th Street Yard. This is another entirely independent layout other than the fact that the LV also services the Terminal Stores building.
I didn't take a good shot of the LV yard, but in the picture above it's behind and to Chris's right.

There is no interchange at all between NYC, Erie, or LV, they just service the Terminal Stores building independently.

The fourth section of the layout is the High Line, which passes over the NYC West 33rd Street Yard and continues around the entire room. The High Line terminates at the St John's Park Terminal inside a large building.

St John's Park Terminal on Dave Ramos's layout.

Note that beyond the angled wall all of the tracks are inside the building.

On the back wall is the active staging that serves the entire layout.

All of these four sections operate independently. 

Here are a few more pictures of the Erie West 28th Street Yard.

Overview of the Erie West 28th Street Yard.

The NYC West 33rd Street Yard is in the back right corner.

  The NYC crosses left to right, Terminal Stores is to the right.

The two Erie tracks are to the car float.

I can't wait to get back down there and try one of the other layouts. Thanks Dave!

The End of an Era

Well, it is with very mixed feelings that I direct you to Bill's most recent blog post.

Obviously I'm quite sad to see this turn of events, as operating on the O&W in Roscoe and Livingston Manor was the first  prototype model railroad that I've operated and the layout has been a huge inspiration for mine. I'm sure that we'll see more fantastic modeling from Bill, but I figured I'd take this opportunity to recount how influential Bill's layout has been to me. If I'd run into Bill earlier, it's entirely possible I'd be modeling the O&W.

I had been out of the hobby for about 15-20 years when we took Jessica on a tourist railroad ride in Easton, PA. She doesn't like loud noises, so she wouldn't get very close to the steam locomotive, but when it was time to leave, she just wanted to stay and watch it as it sat waiting for the next run. She was fascinated. So that was all the excuse I needed to get the trains out of the attic again and see what she thought. Of course, I knew that it was really for my own enjoyment.

I thought my space to work with was small since I only had a portion of at 10 'x 20' basement to work with. I knew I wanted to model a bridge, and thought modeling the Springfield line from Springfield, MA to Hartford, CT would work well. Of course, this was before I realized a 12-car passenger train with double-headed DL-109's would be about 14' long...

After I had come across Bill's website, and read and re-read things thoroughly, I had narrowed my focus to Windsor Locks, the CT River bridge, and Thompsonville. I made a point of hunting him down at my first Collinsville Prototype Meet. We chatted for a bit and learned that we had known each other two other times (going back to when I was in elementary school). Of course, there was no way I'd miss the opportunity to see his layout in person which was on the tour that Sunday.

So I spent the majority of that Sunday there, after quickly checking out a couple of other layouts. To me the whole point of the hobby is to have fun, and the other layouts did a great job accomplishing what the owner intended, but weren't what I was looking to do. When I got to his house it was clear that Bill 'got it.' Or to be fair, since his layout was already built, I 'got it.' This was what I wanted to do.

The point is, for the first time I really understood what prototype modeling was about, and I knew that this was exactly what I wanted to do with my layout. But there was still more to learn as I soon found out.

Bill had an operating session scheduled the next Tuesday, and due to a last minute cancellation I was initiated into prototype operations. It was instantly obvious that my choice of prototype wasn't quite right. My layout would have had a single local freight (like his), and a couple of through freights, but the number of industries was limited, and I was going to have to cut out 1/3 of the local job because of a branch line I couldn't fit. My main concern was the passenger trains. Had I followed the concept to my current design, it probably could have worked to some degree if the trains were going to staging via the helixes I have now. But it still didn't feel quite right.

Moving down the Springfield line I came across an old photo of New Britain. It's not actually on the Springfield Line, but is the first town down the Highland Line which had the benefit of eliminating all of the long passenger trains.

Here's how Bill modeled Livingston Manor:

and Roscoe:

In both towns that Bill selected to model, the activity happens right in the center of town. New Britain was the first town on the New Haven I had seen with a small yard right in front of the station, similar to what I'd operated, particularly in Livingston Manor. The yard there is actually at one end of the town, but still right in the same area.

So, prototype modeling? Check. Small layout? Check. Interesting operations? Check. Compact railroading with a small yard and station in the same area? Check.

I know that none of these are entirely new concepts, but the way Bill's O&W fit them into such a compact and complete layout made sense to me. And it seemed to be entirely different to what I had seen in the magazines before. And I can confidently say that my current layout and approach to model railroading would be very different if I hadn't first visited these two towns.

By the time I got around to starting construction on the layout I pretty much went back to Bill's as both inspiration as well as to make sure I was following as much as possible one of the most well executed layout's I've ever seen on many levels. I wanted to avoid a helix, but once again I found that the helix worked well when properly executed. Although trains did go between towns on Bill's helix (and if running at the proper speed by coincidence also took a prototypical amount of time), looking at each individually the effect was that of a train entering and leaving town.

Now that Bill's O&W will follow the path of Tony Koester's Allegheny Midland, or Dick Elwell's Hoosac Valley, I only hope that it won't be too long before it too reborn again. It's hard to imagine the layout being better, but who knows? I look forward to seeing what he'll do.

And I can only hope that since my Springfield Line layout has already been dismantled and been reborn in New Britain that I've already completed this step!

I routinely see commentary regarding some of the great model railroads of the past, and while I can see the greatness of those railroads, they don't speak to me in the same way that the 'Old Woman in the Back Bedroom has.

So thanks for the inspiration Bill!