TBT - Kadee Ad 1980

I was going through the October 1980 issue of RMC to get an article for someone, and while paging through I cam across this ad from Kadee. It really took me back to my earliest days in model railroading with the simple fascination of a working coupler like this. A huge leap from the X2f couplers I had on all my equipment.

Also interesting to note the style of the ad. Look at all that text! You never see anything like that today. A lot of information and salesmanship going on there, but times sure have changed in advertising!

Interesting to note this is the days before the Kadee patent ran out and no one but Kadee made these couplers. A point they mention. The interesting thing is that I (and many others) still feel they make the best version despite new competition. I think that only helped drive them into new products, lie the scale head coupler.

I like the line that you should use Kadee couplers because your friends are!

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.

TBT - 1980's Detail Parts

I was doing some cleaning up around the workbench and came across 2 items purchased a while ago to help with freight car detailing and modeling in the 1980's. Back then of course we did not have as many options with prototype specific freight cars and modifying existing kits was necessary to push towards more accurate models.

The first item addressed a need to duplicate what the real railroads have been doing over the past decade of the 1970's - removing roof walks from boxcars. Many older 40 and 50 foot boxcars had their ladders lowered and roof walks removed, so it was natural to model that as well if you were a "current" era modeler, which I was at the time.

But removing the roof walk of an Athearn boxcar left you with 4 rather large holes to fill in. Hence the introduction of "Roofwalk Plugs" by I believe CM Shops.

These 4 plugs fit nicely into the Athearn roof, and have a matching rib detail to help blend the roof.

Not a lot of use for these now as more accurate "modernized" 40' boxcars can be purchased in model form already without the roofwalk. Even some older models with roof walks have such small holes that plugging them is not a big deal. Not sure if you can even find this product any more, except buried deep in an older hobby shop perhaps.

Next up was a cool add on for hopper cars. It seems the capacity of some older cars with flat sides were increased with the addition of side panel extensions that protruded between the ribs, as shown here on this D&H model:

An older issue of Model Railroading had a cool picture of a Central Vermont hopper car with some of these panel extensions added, but not completely on every panel. It was a cool effect, and I know I wanted to model that.

To model that appearance, a company (maybe Tichy?) produced styrene panels that you could glue to the sides of existing Athearn rib side coal hoppers. Here a look at some of them I came across:

These parts fit in specific locations between the ribs of the coal hopper to duplicate the look of the D&H car shown above.

It was pretty neat coming across these older parts which really helped you create unique models that were otherwise unavailable. I doubt I'll be using these parts, although I believe in a box somewhere is the CV hopper replicating the look of the car that did not have all the panels. That would explain why I only came across some of the panels from the original detail part. So maybe I'll dig that out and finish it one day.

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). 

TBT - Free-mo module

Getting the module together for the trip up to Springfield got me thinking about when I started to build it and everywhere it has been. It has also led to new friendships and good times with modelers and folks I otherwise would not have met. I am certainly glad I embarked on this project. So here is a Throwback Thursday look at my Woodstown Junction Free-mo module.

It started with an issue of Railroad Model Craftsman in 2008 where Free-mo was explained and demonstrated, including construction ideas. This looked like a great way to do modular railroading, something I had participated with in the past with traditional style modules in the 1980s. Back then, an HO version of what N-trak was doing was all the rage. That group fell apart after a few years and modules built by me and some friends were disassembled.

I certainly did not need a new model railroad project as I was fully involved with my home layout. But this looked like something that could augment that and allow me to participate in other events besides home layout tours and open houses. I've always enjoyed the idea of modular layouts coming together at shows and events, and this new (to me) style had a lot going for it with a more prototypical look to things, and no difficult backdrop to deal with.

So I embarked on a design inspired by a prototype scene in Calais, Maine, the end of a Maine Central branch, I am not sure how I came upon that idea exactly, but it probably was from studying some pictures and seeing a view much like the picture below. The arrangement of track seemed like it would fit nicely into the parameters of a module, and offer operating potential even without other modules attached.

This early picture shows construction progress in early 2009, shortly after I started building. Here the track is in with basic wiring. It was just about ready for it's debut at an NMRA Division Meet, demonstrating Free-mo to a group who had never seen it before.

Initially I completed just 2 sections of the module set before starting on the shorter bridge scene section.

That the module was something that could provide operations when set up by itself was important as I was the lone pioneer in the New Jersey area with Free-mo. It would be a few years before more modules came on-line in our area, so it was great to have what was essentially a self contained portable layout. It certainly would have been easier (and maybe wiser!) to start with the traditional 2x4 module with maybe a single siding, but luckily things worked out well construction-wise and the module has performed well.

Since that debut in May of 2009, the module has been to 23 events, traveling nearly 5000 miles and getting looked at by thousands of people. Pretty cool when you step back and think about it!

When the modules were 2 years old they had their first chance to connect to other Free-mo modules, traveling down to Timonium to integrate into the Capitol Free-mo group's layout. This was certainly a moment of truth to see just how well a Free-mo module built in a vacuum might hook up with other modules from other builders. Luckily there were no issues and the module performed well. A testament to the Free-mo standard that I could build this and have it work so well right away.

The modules have attended multiple NMRA Regional conventions, public train shows such as Timonium and Springfield, numerous NMRA Division Meets and a few public displays. The modules have also participated in numerous formal operating sessions. 

My module is somewhere around 80% complete. I still have a little more scenery work I'd like to do and finalize some structures. Certainly if I did not also have a home layout I would have completed these things long ago. But the fact that the module is operationally sound and relatively complete looking has not let these things deter from my enjoyment. I look forward to many more adventures with these modules!

The bridge section, getting an initial scenery base in 2011. This bridge has survived a complete collapse when the module fell over and flattened out the bridge. I was able to rebuild it, but it is a reminder that dealing with modules requires extra care. This is often why I turn down assistance from those who want to help me carry the modules in and out from events. I would love their help, but it is easy to damage things and I don't want anyone to feel awful if something goes wrong! 

To get a full look back at all my posts that included Free-mo, click on the 'Free-mo' link at the right under Labels to filter just for those posts.