Along the Line Nov-Dec 1946: Thompsonville

Mail Service New Haven Style

A two-page article on moving mail by train. There is some interesting information on how mail is moved on trains, and it notes that there are 27 60-foot RPOs, 25 30' Compartment RPO/Baggage, and 5 15' Compartment RPO/Baggage cars. It notes that 263 trains are authorized for mail service, with 85 with RPOs, 46 with full-length storage cars, and the rest with lesser amounts of storage mail. Three trains, 179 and 181 Boston to Penn Station, and 180 in the reverse direction, have multiple RPOs. It is believed that Train 180 carries more mail than any other train in the world.

There was a 15' RPO on train 131/136 through New Britain, and Bethlehem Car works has a model (which I'll be building soon). The 60' RPO was available as a NHRHTA kit made by F&C and can be found on eBay from time-to-time. I have one partially built that will be going to Chris when I complete it since I won't need the 60' cars.

Nearly every passenger train through New Britain when hauled by locomotives carried storage mail in the baggage cars. In addition, a car was spotted at New Britain Station which went to Hartford each evening on Train 472. Steel baggage cars of two different sizes, with both clerestory roofs and turtle roofs, were also previously available from NHRHTA kits made by F&C. I have a couple that I started myself and a couple started by Ted Culotta to finish, plus two from Lee Ritchie's estate. In addition, Bethlehem Car Works makes kits for the wooden baggage cars. I have two of the kits, but the first release had incorrectly spaced doors. I started modifying mine, but will probably scratchbuild them instead, since I'd like to try scratchbuilding a few cars and they seem to be a relatively easy option.

Rug Cutting de luxe

As many of you know (and it's mentioned in my clinic on Prototype Modeling), I was originally building a layout featuring Windsor Locks and Thompsonville. Both towns featured a number of industries, but the largest was Bigelow-Sanford Carpet Co. This brief article provides some details about the business. Of particular interest is the indication that they are increasing capacity to 30,000 pounds of raw wool annually. Between Thompsonville (their headquarters) and Amsterdam, NY they are believed to have the greatest carpet-producing capacity in the world. In addition to handling freight, two passenger specials handle the annual employee outing to Rye, NY.

All carpet wools are shipped from Scotland, Ireland, India, China, Tibet, Iceland, New Zealand, Africa, Persia, Syria, and South America, and transferred to rail. Which means shipments from the California coast are just as possible as from New York, Boston, or the south.

Thompsonville itself is a very compact town to model, although the bulk of the traffic is Springfield - Hartford and/or New Haven passenger trains, usually a round trip hourly, if not more. Many of these are full length, 10-12 heavyweights, Pullman-Bradley lightweights, or the stainless steel cars depending on the era, with I-4 and I-5 steam locomotives, or a pair of DL-109s. So not short trains.

Main St. runs along the factory, and crosses under the railroad just south of the passenger station, and then crosses over the CT River. The passenger and freight stations are separated from the Bigelow-Sanford factory by Commerce St., but it really seems like little more than a driveway

Across the tracks is the International Casket Hardware Co., plus the Bigelow coal trestle and power house. 

I was recently looking through these after I was contacted by Jim, who is modeling the Springfield line in N-Scale. One map in particular that I found very useful is of the station area with a diagram for a new oil unloading facility:

This is the next section of this map showing the rest of the Bigelow factory and power house:

The oil unloading facility was installed on the side track for the International Casket Co, but is for Conn. Light & Power which was located behind the driveway for the Casket Co (about where the tank car diagram is). It's nothing but a simple pipe with a second line for steam heat.

I know that the track next to New Britain Station received tank cars for Stanley Tools, but I've never been able to identify how they were unloaded there. Until I find something indicating a different approach, I'll model a simple standpipe like this.

The map highlights how compact this scene is though, starting with a bridge over Main St., then the passenger and freight stations on one side, and International Casket Hardware Co on the other side, with the Bigelow-Sanford power house behind that. 

George Ford Photos

Back when I was planning on modeling Thompsonville, George Ford was generous enough to loan me a series of photos and slides that he took 1968-1970. With his permission, I'll share some with here.

Here's the station, looking toward Springfield:

You can see Bigelow Sanford behind the station, and a little further down the tracks is the freight house. The picture is taken from the bridge over Main St, you can see the girders between the tracks.

Here's the freight house:

This is a great view from just past the Main St. bridge. You can see the Westfield Plate Co, which was the location of the International Casket Hardware Co. earlier (I don't know when it changed) on the left. The coal silo is part of the Bigelow-Sanford Power Plant, I think.

From past the freight house:

And a little farther down the track, looking back toward Hartford:

Here's the station looking toward Hartford:

And the bridge over Main St. from track level:

Main St. itself crossed the CT River just past the station:

Bigelow-Sanford had a 25-ton locomotive to work the coal trestle and plant. The old Grandt Line model is the same prototype.

Here are a some views of along the Bigelow plant. The first shows the back of the freight house.

There was also an industry track that went into the plant itself, this is taken looking down that track toward the main line:

FL-9 2049 in front of Westfield Plate Co.

The back of the station:

Pontoons on the NH

This is a series of pictures of gondolas loaded with containers  pontoons on the New Haven.

Jack Consoli noticed the Navy Pontoon markings on them, and provided several links in the comments below. I'll leave my comments on container loads here.

There is a long article on container loads in this Freight Traffic Report, you'll need to go to pg 311 (the actual page number is 186) for the start.

Chapter 8 of this book is also very interesting, but it's a preview, so some portions are not available.

I'm not sure I recall seeing any in service photos of containers on the New Haven, so it was nice to get a small collection of them. They all seem to use the same types of containers, and one I haven't seen before. I don't know if these were purchased by the New Haven and these are outbound. Perhaps this is a record of a test. In any event, they are shown loaded into gondolas from several roads.

These first is a B&LE 36608, The 3rd number looks like a '6' to me, but could be an '8.'

Here's a B&O gondola of an unknown road number. The journals were repacked in July of 1943, and the repack markings are pretty clean. There's a nice collection of chalk marks too.

This is one involved in an accident, reporting marks are not visible.

Canadian Pacific, repack '43. Note the white ring painted around the hole for the brake release rod.

"Note broken bands & wires" is written under the photo.

Southern, repacked in '43. It's a 65' 0" long mill gondola. While Southern purchased some AAR Standard 65' gondolas, that was much later than this photo. 65' gondolas were also considerably narrower than shorter gondolas to maintain clearances. Compare the amount of space between the sides and the containers with the photo of the CP car above.

And PMcK&Y 90318, repacked in '42.

Note Alton (C&A) 38802 next to it. 

Obviously these pontoons wouldn't have come my way, but what's not clear to me how widely containers were used. For example, I don't know whether they would be likely to show up in New Britain. I think the biggest surprise for this group of photos was the number of different roads represented. Unfortunately, there are no HO scale models in plastic or even resin kits for any of these classes of gondolas as far as I know.

The Rapido 52'6" mill gondola looks close to the CP one. The only version I've seen has a 1953 build date, and has external tie down anchors on the exterior, which aren't on this particular prototype. I don't know if the ends differ, but otherwise they look like they are very similar cars.

More Routing

Other than the historical interest, how can the routing information be used on a model railroad?

If you are using more prototypical waybills, then the routing information is included on those. But I also think it's useful for building trains that will be running on the layout, as I've noted before.

This is a Freight Interchange Report for the New Haven, 1929. I don't recall where I got this, but it's interesting in that it shows how many cars were received at each interchange over the course of a year.

The map includes the traffic from 1918 through 1929, here's the list for 1929, arranged by road and interchange since it's the closest to my era.

B&A Framingham    47,742

B&A Milford    1,270

B&A Pittsfield    13,497

B&A State Line    39,029

B&A Westfield    11,536

B&A, B&M Boston    109,447

B&A, B&M Springfield    156,235

B&A/B&M Worcester    260,873

B&M Ashland    123

B&M Clinton    931

B&M Concord    2,768

B&M Easthampton    750

B&M Fitchburg    19.082

B&M Holyoke    5,078

B&M Lowell    56,357

B&M Northampton    3,651

B&M So. Sudsbury    1,738

B&M Turners Falls    1,866

CV New London    57,878

CV Norwich    792

CV Willimantic    58,670

LIRR Fresh Pond    29,650

LV, CNJ Harlem River    265,104

Maybrook     553,029 (ERIE, L&H, LNE, O&W, NYC)

NYC Beacon    9,148

NYC Boston Corners    224

NYC Brewster    790

NYC Millerton    359

NYC Port Morris    12,023

NYC Poughkeepsie    5,653

NYC Rhinecliff    677

PRR Bay Ridge    430,803

The top 5 Interchange Points account for 77% of the traffic on the NH:

Maybrook - 26%

Bay Ridge - 20%

Harlem River - 12%

Worcester - 12%

Springfield - 7%

Add in two other roads that aren't represented yet, the CV at Willimantic and New London (3% each); and the LIRR at Fresh Pond (1%) and you have 84% of the traffic, covering all of the Class I roads that interchange directly with the NH.

What about the other 16%? We know that many interchanges were used for local traffic only. For example the B&M at Northampton, or B&A at Westfield, generally handled traffic for the Canal Line north of Plainville. This is true of almost all of the other interchanges. 

Looking at New Britain

As we've learned, the Interchange Points that handle traffic bound for New Britain are all of the top 5, plus Willimantic and New London. Obviously not all traffic that came through these points are bound for New Britain. But the percentages can help set a baseline for determining how much traffic is on each train. 

If we only consider interchange points that have published routes to New Britain, the percentages are:

• Maybrook - 31%
• Bay Ridge - 24%
• Harlem River - 15%
• Worcester - 14%
• Springfield - 9%
• Willimantic - 3%
• New London - 3%
• Fresh Pond - 1%

We could adjust the numbers for Bay Ridge and Harlem River by attempting to remove coal. It's my understanding that only coal for destinations along the west end of the Shoreline and NYC came by car float, and the rest was routed via Maybrook. Based on the 1950-54 numbers, coal accounted for about 15% of all traffic. Remove 15% of the cars from Bay Ridge and Harlem River and the numbers change slightly.

• Maybrook - 33%
• Bay Ridge - 21%
• Harlem River - 13%
• Worcester - 15%
• Springfield - 10%
• Willimantic - 3%
• New London - 3%
• Fresh Pond - 2%

We also have to consider routing within the New Haven, because many of these are consolidated at Cedar Hill or Hartford.

• Cedar Hill (Bay Ridge, Fresh Pond, Harlem River, New London, Worcester) - 54%
• Hartford (Springfield, Willimantic) - 13%
• Maybrook - 33%

Note that Maybrook traffic was run via Cedar Hill in 1949, 1950 and 1954 in my era, so that mix is:

• Cedar Hill - 87%
• Hartford - 13%

Building Trains

So how do we assign this to trains?

To make the math simple, we'll say 100 cars will move through these interchanges.

• 54 from Cedar Hill
• 13 from Hartford
• 33 from Maybrook.

In 1948 there are the following in-bound trains that will be staged:

• OA-4 (Maybrook) - 16 cars
• OA-6 (Maybrook) - 17
• NY-2 (Cedar Hill) - 27
• EA-2 (Bridgeport) - ??
• NY-4 (Cedar Hill) - 27
• HDX-5 (Hartford) - 13

EA-2 is an unusual case, handling traffic for Waterbury, New Britain and Hartford from Bay Ridge, Harlem River, and Maybrook via Bridgeport. It connects from primarily from GN-4, plus OE-2 and NO-21 and I believe is largely LCL traffic since it's the reverse move of ANE-1, part of the Speed Witch. So we can shift cuts to that train as well (this it the last year it ran). 

These are blocks bound for New Britain, though, which means the trains will have cars bound for other destinations too. Those are some long trains in HO scale. I think for my prior ops sessions we moved about half that. so:

• AO-4 - 8
• OA-6 - 9
• NY-2 - 13
• EA-2 - ??
• NY-4 -14
• HDX-5 - 7

That looks more manageable, although the NY/YN freights will still be large. But we can move a portion of that to EA-2, or three 9-car blocks.

• NY-2 - 9
• EA-2 - 9
• NY-4 - 9

In my case, though, we're modeling the day job. So all of these trains, except NY-4 and HDX-5 run overnight. They are staged as cuts left for the crew to work.

• NY-2 - 11
• EA-2 - 11
• NY-4 - 5

NY-4 is a maximum 14 car train due to my staging, but it was also the Canal Line (North) local, so I expect that more traffic for New Britain would be on NY-2, so we can shift 4 cars back to that.

So there would be two Maybrook cuts on Track 5 in New Britain (8 and 9 cars), plus EA-2, another 11 cars also on track 5, for a total of 28 cars.

A Cedar Hill cut of 11 cars will be waiting on Track 6 at Whiting Street Yard. 

During the session, 5 cars will be dropped at Whiting St by NY-4, and 7 cars from Hartford on HDX-5 on Track No. 5 in New Britain Yard.

In '49. '50 or '54 where there are no Maybrook freights, the traffic is quite different, since it moves an additional 28 cars to NY-2 and NY-4. Since I have limits on the length of NY-4, most of these would be left as a cut overnight from NY-2. However, the Maybrook freights were dropped because of a decrease in traffic, so it would be reasonable to reduce the overall session to, say, 30 cars.

• NY-2 - 19
• NY-4 - 6
• HDX-5 - 5

In this case, the session starts with the majority of inbound cars, two-thirds of them. None of these are up at New Britain Yard until HDX-5 comes through. So the feel of ops sessions in these years will be distinctly different.

What About Another Location?

We could use this to look at another location, such as Chris' Valley Line. The Valley Local originates in Hartford, the Air Line Local in Cedar Hill, and then there are the two Shoreline Locals, one from Cedar Hill and one from New London.

• Valley Local - Maybrook and Springfield
• Air Line Local - Bay Ridge, Fresh Pond, Harlem River, Maybrook, Springfield, Worcester
• Cedar Hill-New London Local - Bay Ridge, Fresh Pond, Harlem River, Maybrook, Springfield, Worcester
• New London-Cedar Hill Local - New London (Central Vermont) and potentially Boston.

The most interesting thing here is that all of the cars that route through Cedar Hill bound for the Valley Line north of Middletown will come from the Air Line Local. In addition, since Saybrook is between New London and Cedar Hill, cars hauled by the CV would not go through Cedar Hill like they would in New Britain.

One can also see that for years where there is no Maybrook-Hartford freight (1949, 1950, 1954+) that the Valley Local would likely be shorter leaving Hartford, and receive more cars from the Air Line local.

Along the Line - July 1947 and we're in New Britain!

My favorite issues of Along the Line have a short article focusing on an industry somewhere on the line. 

In this issue, the featured industry is Landers, Frary & Clark in New Britain. Unfortunately, this article is a little light on the details I'm looking for, such as inbound materials ("The New Britain company uses an amazing variety of raw materials to manufacture its products, and ships out a diversified assortment of finished goods."

It does go into a bit more detail about many products they have made, "...faucets for molasses kegs and doorbells - some still in use - that were operated by a crank or butterfly-headed bolt turned on the outside of the door. Other items included mechanical apple peelers, cast iron baskets to hold string for store or home use, tobacco cutters, metal balls placed on the tops of ox horns to prevent oxen from goring people, rings for bulls' noses, calf weaners, and mouse traps."

They invented the first food chopper (Perry's Excelsior Meat Cutter and Sausage Stuffer), which also was the first product in their Universal line of household goods. They were among the first to produce electric appliances such as percolators and toasters, but by my era it includes vacuum cleaners, washing machines, irons and electric ranges. Postwar additions included a pressure cooker, electric blanket, and new ranges.

It does note that they ship carloads whenever possible, to eight district warehouses throughout the country. Unfortunately it doesn't state where these are so I'm doing a little digging to see if I can figure that out for waybills.

On the layout, of course, Landers, Frary & Clark is a dominating industry. The main factory on Commercial Street is adjacent to New Britain Yard and across from the station. It will be 4 to 4 1/2 feet long, which is how long the mock up is thanks to Dick. Although there were several tracks inside the factory complex, I had to settle for one hidden track. I am not aware of how they moved cars once dropped, if they did at all.

A second complex runs along the entire length of Whiting St Yard as well. In fact, it extends beyond the yard, with a pedestrian bridge across Ellis St. The southern part won't be on the layout, since the Ellis St bridge is the view block ending the scene. New Britain native Ed O'Keefe told me that they received materials and manufactured parts at the Commercial St campus, then trucked the materials across town to be assembled and shipped from the Whiting St factory.

Although the Commercial St buildings were leveled prior to the construction of Rt. 72, the Whiting St complex is still there. I haven't looked into its current use.

Freight Highlights

This column discusses shipping explosives, noting that this includes things like gasoline, alcohol, fireworks, matches, wet storage batteries, paints and varnishes, cleaning fluids, insecticides, and other commodities. It also mentions other hazardous chemicals, such as sulfuric acid and potassium cyanide, plus explosives such as black powder, blasting caps and dynamite. 

How much of this would affect operations in New Britain? Quite a bit actually. Ensign-Bickford had factories in Avon and Simsbury, both on the Canal Line north of Plainville. They manufactured fuses (for explosives, not the electrical circuit type) and were the inventors of Primacord. Both raw materials and finished products would move under the explosive rules. I covered these rules in this post. These would be on HDX-5 or the YN/NY freights, which wouldn't be switched out at New Britain. But proper placement and handling of the cars must be followed when switching out other cars, and will also require different waybills.

Excursion to Maybrook

There's also an article about a Sunday, May 4, 1947 Maybrook excursion which attracted 681 people. It was hauled by I-5 1407 and required 12 passenger cars. 

They Do the Darndest Things

A one-page article about a new Koehring caterpillar crane. The reason for the article is because it uses a small platform car, that it can power by a small motor. When it reaches its work destination, it can crawl off the platform, then lift it off the tracks to move it out of the way. The other crawler cranes rode on flat cars, and the car had to be moved to a location that was out of the way.

The article states that they believe they are the only railroad in the company that has them. The NH has 5 that have flanged wheels that can be raised and lowered, and five with the platform cars, with five more on the way.

I find this quite interesting since I've never seen a reference to these 16 cranes elsewhere, nor have I seen photos.

That's it this week...

Transformer Cars

These are from a series of photos that I believe Dick passed on to me from Dave Peters. The binder was falling apart, the photos curled, and many water damaged. There are a variety of subjects, but a number of them are of flats and gondolas with loads. Not all of the photos have information, but my understanding is that all of them were taken on the New Haven. I'll start with some photos of depressed center flat cars, known on the New Haven as Transformer Cars.

This is NH heavy duty (aka depressed center) flat 17058 with a large tank from the Norwalk Tank Co being loaded at Danbury (based on the crane in the background). On the back is a note that says they are bound for Buzzards Bay. There is a second tank on another flat to the right. 

Other than the large pieces of lumber to keep the tank from rolling, it appears they are in the process of securing the load. How would you like to be the one climbing that ladder to help tie it down?

This next series is loaded on the same class of cars, but I can't read the road number. Next to it is Wabash 48249, a double door single sheathed auto car. The photos are taken in Boston, and it indicates they are large tanks from Bremen, Germany and bound for Milwaukee. Again there is no date given.

The book also includes a photo of the cast frame for this series of 10 flat cars. Designated as 90-ton Transformer Cars, the photo is dated December 20, 1941.

These cars are easy to model since Eastern Car Works produced one of this exact prototype. The castings are a bit crude compared to the current generation of models, but quite nice nonetheless.

The NYC had 14 cars built of the same design, Lot No. 699-F, 499050-499063, also built in 1941.

Here's the NH Diagram:

There is a second group of 10 cars, 17060-17069, that are nearly identical, with the exception of being 17" longer. This extra length is entirely in the deck, the truck centers and depressed center geometry are the same for both classes. Just extend the deck 8-1/2" on either end.

There are two photos of another class, the 17080-17083, three 125-ton Transformer Cars:

As you can see, these cars are of a different design altogether. Here's the NH Diagram:

These have been released in brass, I believe. Because of their cast design, it may be a good candidate for somebody to 3D print the main casting. Like the Eastern Car Works model, it would need some creative weighting.

This photo is of an unknown class of car (I don't believe this is a New Haven car due to the stake pockets), but I think it's in Pittsfield.

Also included is a 1941 Milwaukee Road diagram for the loading method used by Allis-Chalmers for and this type of transformer:

 

There are notations under "End Uprights" that says it's not used by the NH, and another notation that says, "Not used out of Pittsfield."