Wordless Wednesday #30

A railfanning break

It was a good open house last weekend. I had 50 or so people, some who had not stopped by in a few years, and some first timers. Glad to talk and share the layout with those who made it.

Taking a break from the layout posts, here are some pictures from a rail fanning excursion. 2 years ago in October 2016 I was up in Bethlehem PA for a work event. I had a few hours to get trackside before the evening's events so I drove around a bit and found some good spots to catch trains. I saw plenty of trains, all  Norfolk Southern. But lots of activity.

Going through pictures in my Photos app, I came across these and did a little editing on them and trashed the ones that did not come out too good. Here is a quick look at some of the shots from that afternoon.

It was a nice fall day to be out, a warm mid-October day, with some good colors in the sunshine. I came across these GP38-3's in the yard at Bethlehem.

Driving a bit further west I found a good spot where the main line came right up to the road. I'm sure it is a popular spot to watch trains, but I was the only one there that day. I saw quite a few trains and some light engine moves while I was there.

And plenty of crew around as well, doing various things.

Here was a crew change in progress. A van had pulled up and a crew came out. The crew on board had just dropped a trash bag out the locomotive window (the white spot in front of the lead truck). This was cool to watch the changeover.

Further to the west was a large yard but I really could not find a way to get anywhere to easily take some photos. I could see things from the road as it elevated on the adjacent hillside, but there was not a good spot to pull over. A lot of engine movements came in and out this end of the yard.

Hey, got one of those Spring Mill Depot PD3000 covered hoppers that needs some current day weathering? Here is one in a plain NAHX paint scheme.

This was an interesting movement. This was an RPU6 slug, attached to an SD40-2. More info on the RPU6s here.

The steel mill stacks in Bethlehem are easily seen from all over the area. 

The old mill is now an interesting area with a museum, an outdoor theater, bar, restaurant, and more. It is adjacent to the casino. I have a lot of pics of the museum, but that could be a separate post really. Well worth a visit. 

A nice elevated "park" gets you up close to the stacks and other parts of the mill. There are even a few old hopper cars here on some elevated track showing how coal was delivered.

Great Photos on Flickr

If you have not seen this (growing) collection of photos on Flickr, its worth checking out. Great images from MA, VT, NH, ME, NY, 1970s and 1980s.

The Michael C. Bump collection on Flickr:
https://flic.kr/ps/3pz4NQ

Images have been slowly added over the past few weeks, so worth a follow if you are on Flickr (you'll get a weekly email if any new photos are uploaded).

TBT - North Stratford NH 1999

On one of our vacations to New Hampshire, this time in 1999, we took a drive up into the north country of the state. This fairly remote area has just a few roads and a couple rail lines, and not too many people or houses. By this time, the former MEC and B&M lines in this area above Whitefield were being operated by the New Hampshire & Vermont Railroad. This track was in OK condition, but showed the effects of less traffic and even less maintenance.

However once above Groveton, as route 3 curves and twists northward paralleling the right of way, you eventually get to North Stratford, and see some real signs of active railroad life,

Here the former Grand Trunk line was now the main line of the St. Lawrence & Atlantic. The track is in great condition, and there is plenty to take in. However, as usual, I am not there at the right time to see actual trains in action. No problem though, still plenty of interesting things to observe.

The station and track are in excellent shape as seen here. The old semaphore is no longer used, but it is cool to still see it in place.North Stratford served as a junction point between the Maine Central and grand Trunk years ago, although not too much traffic was interchanged here, as the GT continues south to Portland Maine to do most of the interchange with the MEC there.

But this is the point where the Maine Central continued north along the Connecticut River to get to Beecher Falls Vermont and the still very active Ethan Allen furniture factory. On this day the line north is state owned and operated by the New Hampshire Central. Before that this line was operated by the North Stratford Railway, who took over from the MEC after the state bought the line. More info about that can be read here on my nekrailroad.com site.

But back to North Stratford. A string of boxcars on the siding is of interest. First, some interesting older paint schemes, some with new stenciled owners, others with signs of years of use.

A string of boscars sits on the siding. Appears to be dropped for the New Hampshire Central by the St. Lawrence & Atlantic, but that is a lot of cars for that small railroad...

I walked down the track to get a better look and a couple photos of the boxcars there

New Orleans Public Belt boxcar looking very much like the Athearn PS5344 that at the time had been recently released, the last of the Athearn Blue Box kits. Here we see it re-lettered and some nice weathering on top of its 1970s paint job

Ubiquitous for this area from the late 1970s into the early 2000s were these Berlin Mills boxcars with their distinctive jade green paint. They hauled paper regularly from the paper mill in Berlin, and could be seen on the Boston & Maine local between White River Junction and Berlin, until that service ended, and the tracks were later removed.

A closer look at the tack board reveals this and the other boxcars spotted here were dropped for interchange to the NHCR, the New Hampshire Central, on August 8, 1999. 

The New Hampshire Central did not have a lot of local customers, but in the 1990s htey constructed a railcar repair facility. This provided plenty of traffic for the shortline, to take cars in for various repairs, and then return to the St.L & A for active service on the nation's rail network. You can read more about the repair facility in an article I wrote for the NER coupler, click here (be sure to click through to the original page as I may not have updated the new page by the time you read this).

On another siding I find this bulkhead flat built for pulpwood loading. Here a truck can pull up alongside and load logs onto the car to then be moved to a paper mill by the StL & A.

The St. Lawrence & Atlantic was previously the Grand Trunk, which was very much a child of parent Canadian National. On other trips, it was easy to find plenty of CN equipment, and even CN locomotives on the trains operating on this line, even after the StL&A took over in 1993. One time I found a train with a good number of Central Vermont GP9s in Green and Yellow operating a train through Berlin NH.

Another look at the North Stratford area reveals that there was once a bit more activity here, back in the Maine Central and Grand Trunk days. A small yard facilitated more interchange, but most of those tracks are now removed.

These ties in the dirt speak to another time when more tracks were needed to facilitate operations at North Stratford.

A trip to New Hampshire in 2017 revealed not too many changes to North Stratford. The StL&A is now part of the Genesee & Wyoming system, and the ex-MEC Beecher Falls line is still active. The rail car repair facility has been converted to a propane transload, and the line beyond the facility has a stock pile of older cars not currently in service, probably earning some money for the storage service provided.

I'll soon be laying some track on my layout for the North Stratford area. This will be mostly about facilitating some additional operations for the MEC, adding a passing siding, a spur or two, and the line over to Beecher Falls (greatly condensed) for the North Stratford Railway to service a scled-down version of the Ethan Allen furniture plant. This is all up on my shelf area that was added in a moment of inspiration after I thought I had completed the basic layout footprint. I will be digging through my prototype books and articles to draw out some ideas and inspiration for this small area of the layout.

Wordless Wednesday #24

How I Spent My Summer

Well, Summer is officially over now and Fall is here. I realize I have not posted since May, so a whole season has passed. I must admit that I have been pretty tied up with other things and have not done much model railroading. But hopefully now things will settle down and progress will continue on the layout. Plus there are some events coming up I need to prepare for.

So much like going back to school, here is my How I Spent My Summer report, specifically from a model railroad perspective.

I wrapped up Spring finishing up a flatcar load project. Inspired the Kalmbach Freight Car projects book I picked up at Springfield, I worked on an open lumber load for a bulkhead flatcar. This used inexpensive wood strips purchased at Michaels, glued together and then "tied down" with EZ-Line.

This Walthers NAFX bulkhead flat was sitting unweathered and crying out for a nice load. It also allowed me to add some needed weight concealed within the load.

I also started some scenery work at Johnson, building up the landforms and putting in the Route 15 roadway. This has some basic scenery in place and next up will be finishing the road with striping. I'll post more on that once the scene is further along, but I did get a good head start before the summer hiatus. (You can see a bit of the work completed in one Op Session photo below).

In late June I held another Op Session. This included another new operator to break in. All in all it went well, although I still need to work out some wrinkles in the overall plan as we still did not get through a full schedule yet. Here are some pics:

Bill Howard held down duties at Morrisville and has a good handle on things now. Meanwhile Joe Hueber attended his first NEK Op Session, and is bringing the LVRC train through Johnson, where you can see a little preview of the scenery going in there.

Chris Conaway worked the Gilman local job, which had some new twists that worked out well, easing some of the pressure on the St. Johnsbury yard operators.

Phil Duba wa son hand again and worked the B&M Groveton local turn up to Whitefield. This job also had some new twists that I found worked very well. 

Bruce Barrett and Mark Fryzstacki again worked the St. Johnsbury yard and have become quite proficient in keeping things fluid. 

Throughout each month if the summer I was able to attend the Op Sessions at John Rahenkamp's large Clairmont, Lewistown & Western layout. I have been holding down the Bayview job and have taken and posted a number of pics and some video to the NEK Layout Facebook page.

This shot comes from early in the session as I am picking up empty coal hoppers to build the coal trains over in the yard to head back up to the PA coalfields for reloading. This view shows just a small number of the nice urban buildings John has built for the layout.

In July we returned to the White Mountains for some vacation time. I did not spend too much time seeking out the trains in this area as I have visited many times and have many pictures. However one rainy day we took a long ride up north and I came across the New Hampshire Central trackage above Whitefield, up to Groveton and North Stratford. It was interesting to see the freight car facility I visited some 17 years ago is now a trainload facility for propane tank cars (it was raining too hard to stop for pics there). I did get to see an idle NHC Geep in Groveton, and see some repair work in place on the old Groveton Station.

New Hampshire Central GP9 7324 (ex-NYC) sits idle along the mainline next to the empty area that once housed the large paper mill at Groveton. No active railroad activity here in this rainy Monday.
 

Directly opposite the GP9, the Groveton station shows some recent repairs in place on the roof. St. Lawrence & Atlantic trackage between Maine and Montreal (ex-Grand Trunk) is situated behind the station, while the NHC (ex-B&M) track is to the right of the station (where the GP9 was parked). I'm not sure what the overall plan is for this area or the station.

In August we took a trip down to Baltimore Inner Harbor. Not much left of train activity in the area we were, but did see 2 older railroad relics while taking a ride on the Water Taxi.

This older building along the waterfront still shows faded "Railroad" lettering between the 2nd and 3rd floors.

This old pier still has rail in place, which can be seen overhanging the wooden structure. Trees in the background are actually growing on the pier itself, which is not accessible (or too safe looking) for people, let alone rail cars!

Our final stop takes us to Florida. We visited relatives over Labor Day weekend (before the hurricane). Although we flew down, we did leave by taking the Trip-Rail train from Delray Beach back to Fort Lauderdale airport. While waiting for the Trial-Rail train, the Amtrak train 98, the northbound Silver Meteor out of Miami made a station stop. I thought this was cool as I had just recently put a Seaboard Air line boxcar with Silver Meteor lettering onto the layout (see post).

The northbound Amtrak 98 Silver Meteor stops at Delray Beach while we waited on the next southbound Trip-Rail commuter train. The Amtrak train arrived right as we were getting on the platform, so this was the best shot I could get.

So that concludes my Summer report. I'll be back to work on the layout for an open house in November, as well as doing some module work for the NER Newport Convention in November and the Springfield show in January. I also want to get in another Op Session. So there will be more to report in the coming weeks.

Wordless Wednesday #11

TBT - Roosevelt Paper 1998

Nearby where I live now, and also where I lived 18 years ago, is a Conrail branchline, that continues to see regular service. In the late 1990s a local paper company constructed a new warehouse along the existing rail line and Contrail crews cut in a new switch and long siding to allow boxcars of paper to be unloaded. This greatly added to the traffic base with the addition of 50' boxcars from paper producing lines like the Maine Central, Central Vermont, Canadian National and Wisconsin Central.

This new customer generated a little more railfan interest in the line when the warehouse came on line. I visited many times when the local would be in the area most weekdays in the late afternoon.

I have always thought this line would make a great shelf switching layout. Staging could represent Pavonia yard. Some interesting bridges are crossed and some preserved stations exist. In addition to this warehouse in Mt. Laurel is an industrial park in Hainesport with a number of customers. The end of the line in Mt. Holly has a runaround siding. A great subject for a Lance Mindheim style project.

My 1997 VW Jetta was not the only railfan vehicle on this day. A few others are on hand to watch the crew swap boxcars at the warehouse. The locomotives are on the switch.

A freshly painted GP38-2 is on the head end now as the train has traversed the line to Mt. Holly and is on its way back to Camden and Pavonia yard. The Roosevelt Paper warehouse is seen in the background. The spur diverts here and is switched now with train heading back.

The Operation Lifesaver unit is heading backing down the spur to pull the cars off the siding.

A portion of the very large paper warehouse is seen here. At any time the siding has up to a dozen 50' boxcars spotted at various doors.

The other unit on this local is a CR GP15-1.

A MEC and CV boxcar carry paper for the warehouse. These older cars soldiered on in their original owner paint schemes even though both railroads had been transformed into new entities (Guilford and New England Central).

Another MEC boxcar, this one the same series as the above waffle-side boxcar, but having been repainted into the Guilford all white scheme in the mid 1980s, sits next to a Canadian Nation CNA plug door boxcar.

The line is still active as Contrail Shared Assets, and sees both NS and CSX motive power. The warehouse still sees 50' boxcars, but less of them are as varied and colorful as they were in the 1990s. Mostly they are just a much simpler paint scheme with a good deal of graffiti.

I know I have written about this branch a couple times in previous posts (Click the Railfan Label at the top right of this page to see 2 other posts with newer pictures). I've been going through my older non-digital pictures and scanning them, so perhaps I'll post more from this line in the future.

The Roosevelt Paper warehouse. You can see 12 boxcars spotted this day, with room for about 4 more or so. Route 537 (Marne Highway) parallels the branch almost entirely from Camden (to the left/east) to Mt. Holly (to the right/west). 

Wordless Wednesday #7

Facing point switching

We have a local Conrail (Shared Assets, so it is still Conrail, shared by CSX and NS) branch nearby that runs out of Camden's Pavonia yard towards Mt. Holly. It is former PRR and then Penn Central, and it used to go further east, and was called the Pemberton branch. It even featured passenger service including RDCs into the 1970s, and when the line went to Fort Dix, featured troop trains during WWII.

Back to the present day, the line sees trains pretty much every weekday. And as pointed out by Lance Mindheim in various articles and clinics, not every industry is switched every day. There are a couple of different industries that receive different car types, so sometimes it is easy to tell what will be switched just by looking at the manifest of the freight train.

One thing that is interesting is how I have seen the crew operate facing point sidings. Although there is a run around further down the line, the local does not always make it all the way there based on industries that need to be switched. One of these is a paper company that receives a number of boxcars from the northeast, Canada and the upper midwest. Sometimes the train is only switching this one industry in a day's work.

I have seen the train with 2 locomotives on the head end work a facing point siding by stopping short of the siding, separating the lead unit from the train and pulling it into the siding. Then the second unit with the train pulls past the siding. The lead unit backs out onto the main track and is able to work the train from the rear, pulling the cars in the siding and respotting cars as necessary. This includes putting some cars back that have not yet been unloaded, and spotting cars at specific delivery doors. All of this has been covered by Lance various times, and it is good info to use when designing, building and operating your layout. It takes a bit of time for the crew to switch a single siding. A lot of times on a model railroad, we simply pickup what is there and drop off what we have. On the prototype it is much more complicated and time consuming, but if you like to operate, a lot of fun.

Lately I have noticed that the crew has arrived with a locomotive on each end of the train. This eliminates the need to separate the locomotives once at the facing point siding. Here is a picture I took recently as the train stopped in Maple Shade across the street from a Wawa (a local convenience store in our area) to grab lunch before getting busy switching further down the line.

The 4 man crew has exited the train to pick up lunch before continuing work further down the line.

A quick look at the boxcars on this train, and the fact that the train is 6 cars in length, confirmed that they only needed to switch the facing point paper company siding this day.

I find this interesting as I have been looking at how to operate 2 locations on my layout that have facing point turnouts in regards to the locals that will switch them. Lyndonville along the CP and Johnson, the talc mill along the LVRC, both not only have facing point sidings, and are also complicated by coming off the mainline which is on a grade.

This earlier work in progress photo shows the siding at Johnson. The yellow LVRC loco is downgrade. Operationally, this siding would be getting cars out of Morrisville, upgrade and along the track at the bottom left of the photo. A local would therefore approach this siding head on, a facing point switch to be worked.

A model railroad solution would be to add a run around off the main, or as part of the siding itself. Sometimes that is prototypical, but usually not. It is interesting that when the paper company located along this CR branch in the 1990s, the railroad built the siding but did not build anything extra such as a run around track to make switching easier. They knew there were ways to accomplish the task without building more track.

Another solution is the out and back turn local train that only works trailing point switches on the way out, and then trailing point on the way back (which were previously facing point). Sometimes that is how Conrail switches this siding, just going right past it on the way out, and then switching it on the way back towards Camden. That doesn't work for me for perfectly as I do not model the portion of the line where the Canadian Pacific turn around would occur.

For example on the CP, the local originates out of Newport, which is staging on my layout, runs to Wells River, also staging on my layout, then turns back for the return trip. I could get around this by first operating the return train coming back from Wells River before modeling a different local train in staging that would then switch Lyndonville as a trailing point siding. It would work, and best represents what the prototype did. The oddity would be modeling 2 different versions of the local.

Another way around this might be to do some active staging during the session to put the locomotives and caboose on opposites ends while in staging, and then have the train operated later in the session. This would preserve the locomotives and cars of the original local turn, and I could drop and add some cars within staging representing work done off the visible layout before returning. However this would require someone to actually do this during a session.

But another option is to look at what the Conrail local is doing and use 2 locomotives operating independently on my local. Either of the 2 methods would work well, and with DCC it is easy to duplicate. In my era, it would have been more likely to split the locomotives at the siding instead of having one at each end of the train.

Another advantage is that this method eliminates problems with the mainline on the grade. For example, if it is switched as a trailing point siding, I cannot leave anything on the main without some sort of braking system for the cars left on the main. Even the caboose would have to be switched into the siding complex, which does not seem too prototypical (outside of needing to clear the mainline for through freights). By having the locomotive proceed past the switch (and go downgrade), the locomotive will provide the necessary "anchor" to hold cars on the main while the switching work is done.

I can't say I have decided yet on how I think it will be best to operate these 2 locations. All these methods will work, and I can certainly try each of them out to see how it goes with the operators. The key thing is that by looking at the prototype, I found another solution that could be employed.

One last picture of a car in this train, a Maine Central boxcar, albeit in Pan Am paint. Somewhere under there is the Harvest Gold and green pine tree. Occasionally I have seen some older paint schemes on boxcars for the paper company, but that is getting more scarce nowadays.

MEC 31786, FMC 5272cf XP boxcar, series 31750-31899, built 1978.

Conway Scenic

We were up camping in New Hampshire's White Mountains last week. Driving along Rt. 302 I was able to hear and then see the Notch train, led by the ex-MEC GP38. Unfortunately I was not in a position to grab any pics.

But continuing on, we were in Bartlett at Bear Notch Road just when the Valley train was arriving and doing it's run around before heading back to North Conway. Here are some pictures I was able too grab.

The train led by one ex-MEC GP7 arrives, looking real good in the old maroon and gold paint. Not sure if it was repainted or just kept in good condition, this unit has been on the roster for almost 20 years now, and I have pictures just as old in this same scheme. 573 is the original MEC number and has led quite a life (see MEC In Color books for more info)

The head brakeman jumps off to cut the passenger cars from the locomotive.

The old MEC signals still stand in a scene that is not really changed at all through the decades. 

After resetting the switch on the siding back to normal, the head brakeman walks back to the train. In the distance you can see the White Mountains that the Maine Central had to get over on its journey to St. Johnsbury.

Meanwhile the locomotive has run around the train and is ready to couple back onto the passenger cars. Here you can see the state of the MEC jointed track, slightly exaggerated by the telephoto lens. Nowadays with so much welded rail, you don't see this too often. Slow speeds are of course the rule, not just for the scenery but for the track!