Wordless Wednesday #26

Wordless Wednesday #25

Photo by Glenn Salvatore, October 1978

Front End Friday #1

On some Facebook groups I have noticed that members will post pictures on Fridays of prototype or model locomotives to specifically show the cab and front end. These usually get a hashtag of #FEF, or Front End Friday.

I figured I needed to post the picture below as it truly captures the intent of this effort. I did not take this picture but it is in my saved collection of images found across the internet for modeling information.

All four of the Lamoille Valley RS-3s lined up at the Morrisville shops. Pretty cool!

Hmmm, couldn't have switched up 7803 and 7804 to put them in sequence? :-)

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

Working on Whitefield

I've spent a few sessions continuing to work on the scenery in Whitefield, starting from the area where I added trees up to the diamond crossing. I ballasted the B&M and MEC tracks and added dirt and grass between. The MEC track is straight Arizona Rock ballast, NS/CSX blend. The B&M is a mixture that includes Northern Pacific gray along with sone various other ballasts I have on hand to create a dirty blend to represent older ballast. The MEC in my time period was regularly ballasting the Mountain Division and I wanted the clean look that is evident in many pictures.

The other areas include various Scenic Express blends of dirt and turf. I added static grass with a Noch Grassmaster, and also some sections of Heki wild grass fibers. I still plan to add more, and then fill in more trees as well.

It is nice to see the structures in a sceniced area. It is a lot of fun to bring the scene to life with some added details I've had for quite a while. Included is a casting for the B&M call box. Plenty of more details will be added, especially around the MEC section house. But for now it is a good start.

An overall view of area. In the back is a dark brown patch where I will add a structure for Whitefield Plastics.

A lower level view of the ball signal with a B&M and MEC train staged. 

Looking back towards the ball signal, this grade crossing links to the section house parking lot. Additional weeds and treatment to the gravel will be done here.

The siding for Whitefield Plastics is in place, but I need to build a structure and some tanks for the covered hoppers to unload. I like the way the the gravel road came out, which has a number of different materials added and final dusting of granite dust.

A close-up of the section house. Pretty cool Dodge pickup model that will look good in this prominent location. Just need to add the NH license plate decals.

Scenery Work

I have not posted in December, but I have been doing some work on the layout. As in previous posts, I continued work on the Johnson Rt. 15 scene. A cleaned up some scenery areas that were missed in the initial round. I also added a paid of bicycle riders and road signs, along with highway guardrail. Next up will be putting the concrete walls on the highway overpass. That will finish up the majority of the background scenery items. Moving forward I plan to add a gas station to the gravel lot area, finish track detailing and ballasting, add some more trees to the hillside, and finally address the talc mill buildings needed.

A couple of bike rides take a break going up hill. A wash out of the road next to the guard rail is posted with safety cones. The new Pass With Care road sign is installed.

The gravel area to the left will have a small gas station added in the future. And next to the truck will be the concrete sides of the VT Route 15 overpass that crosses the Lamoille Valley track below.

I jumped over to Groveton NH and finished up track ballasting that was not initially completed. It is amazing that if you stop work on something just how long it can sit in a certain state until it gets addressed again! I had roughed in scenery and the paper mill buildings, plus the wood chip pile, but the scene was still not really finished. It looks better now with the ballast, but I need to push forward and add the wood chip unloading conveyor, sone vehicles and people, and some weeds and other details to better finish the scene. I also need to paint the water tower. But at least the ballast is in, the track cleaned up and a new coat of CRC 2-26 on top of the rails to ensure good operation.

The other half of the Groveton scene now has ballast on the track along with rust chalk to the rail sides.It looks a lot better, but I still have more I want to do here.

With the ballast out I figured it makes sense to continue that work and ballast the trackage through Whitefield. I've operated enough to know I am not going to change any track at this point, ad ballasted and rusting up the track will go a long way towards making the scene look complete.

I will also focus on the tree line along the backdrop, to extend from where to stops at Crawfords and continuing all along the Whitefield area. To get that started, I decided o address the harder part of getting the spot where the B&M and MEC tracks leave Whitefield and go through the wall. No actual tunnel here on the prototype so some trees are needed to hide the departing tracks. I got a good start on them and the view is decidedly better from most angles now. Once some more trees go in, plus the Whitefield Plastics building, the entrance to the hidden trackage should be less obvious.

I did the ballast first and let that fully dry. Doing the scenery and trees can be messy, so there will be some vacuum work to clean up things, like the spilled red ground foam on the turnout. The B&M track in the back is pretty well hidden now. The MEC track to the front still can see the hole in the wall, but it is less obvious. There will be more trees added, but the view from this area makes it tough to fully hide.

Looking from the edge of the wall shows the start of the trees to hide the track. The spot here will house a somewhat newer building for Whitefield Plastics, which will receive a covered hopper of plastic pellets on the track to the front. I think in front of the track and around the end will be paved or gravel (or a combination).

I have to identify the building for Whitefield Plastics. I have a number of DPM brick kits and parts, but somehow a brick building here does not seem appropriate. The real building arrived after the MEC stopped running here, and never had rail service despite being nearby the tracks. I am thinking a metal sheathed building is more appropriate.

Next up will be continuing the ballasting through Whitefield and extending the tree line the rest of the way along the backdrop. I think these tasks will do a lot to make the layout look more complete, which is something I want to address for the coming year as the layout approaches 15 years since it was first started.

Wordless Wednesday #23

Simple Brake Holding CP Train RS-1 on Grade

For Canadian Pacific train RS-1, a local that leaves Newport (staging), it's first assignment is to switch cars at Lyndonville, which is an industrial park with a trailing point siding leading to a few industry spurs. I have a couple of temporary tracks in Lyndonville now, but want to add some more soon.

Due to the grade of the mainline coming out of Newport and progressing all the way to St. Johnsbury, Lyndonville has the main line on a grade, while the industrial park itself is flat. What this means is that CP RS-1 passes the switch for Lyndonville park and then backs its whole train into the siding and the park. It cannot leave any part of the train on the main line due to the grade.

This has worked OK as the operator can use the whole train to switch the training sidings, and work around keeping his caboose in the right spot. I thought about adding an extra unused siding where the caboose could be dropped. But it has always bothered me that the operator switches with the whole train, even with it being a short train.

I've seen various articles and pictures of different methods to hold a train on a grade, using ground throws, levers, Tortoise machines, etc. However I did not want to invest a lot of effort into something that would be used once per op session.

While doing some switching and using a wooden skewer to separate cars at the Kadee couplers, I thought that it would be easy enough to "assign" a skewer as a brake to hold the caboose and through cars on the main, and allow the train to pull forward, back into the park to do its work and then return back out to the main to pick up the waiting through cars and caboose.

It only took 5 minutes to implement the solution and the pictures are pretty self explanatory. I doubt I am the first to think of this specific idea, and sticking something like a pin into the track is something I have seen, but I like the ease and visibility of the "Hill Brake" skewer.

The caboose for RS-1 and the 1 through car wait on the main as the locomotive and Lyndonville cars will back down to the track in front to serve the local industries.
(Eventually there will be scenery and trees between the CP mainline and the MEC mainline above and behind. The CV/LVRC track is part of hidden staging)

Looking upgrade - the skewer nicely holds the train using the the Kadee coupler of the caboose. I put a little flag on the skewer so it would be more obvious what it's purpose is!

A close up of the Hill Brake skewer. It sits off to the side of the roadbed, easily accessed. Silver Sharpie marks the location of the holding hole as well as the spot to keep the skewer.

Open House November 18th

I forgot to post that this November's Open House tour includes my layout on Saturday November 18th, from 12 noon to 5pm.

To see all of the open layouts Saturday as well as the rest of November, check out the site below:

http://themodelrailroadopenhouse.com

Click on the "Visitors" menu and choose Event List.

Hope to see you!

Wordless Wednesday #22

Making Trees

As I have been re-staging the layout and getting things situated for another Op session as well as an upcoming open house, I have tried to identify some things I could work on to move the layout along, visually. This mostly involves scenery work, although I did put a couple electrical items on the list I would like to tackle before the next session.

(Electrical: basically adding some on/off switches for staging tracks, something I should have done when I was doing the wiring on these tracks initially. There are a few easy to convert tracks I have identified to get the process started)

No doubt one of the biggest things I believe make a positive visual impact is adding some trees, particularly along the backdrops. Even without some foreground scenery in place, the train running past a completed tree line really looks nice. I have a couple areas where the backdrop is in and some basic ground cover exists between the tracks or other scenery, and all I really need are some trees.

I have a supply of Super Tree material waiting to be turned into individual trees. I did find that before summer started I had spent some time separating the material and doing some straightening prior to painting them up in preparation of adding ground foam and/or foliage leaf material. So these will be worked on soon, as I usually do that part outdoors. I thought I would share pictures of the straightening process as it utilizes a soldering iron, which sounds crazy but is very effective.

Here we see a pretty good tree armature, but it has a pretty severe bend!

Using a soldering iron, I can quickly touch the main stem to soften it and bend it back to straight. It only take a few seconds and works good if you apply pressure with the tip in such a way as to bend it back to straight. Often this can be done by doing it in a few key spots.

And just like that the tree is looking much better, straight and ready for a quick painting and then flocking.

About 20 years ago, when Super Trees were not really too well known or in use, I was at the Timonium train show and came across a lady selling tree kits. I believe her name was Jane. I'm pretty sure the product, Forests in a Flash, is not available anymore, but it is not a bad alternative for trees. It does not have the density of branches per stem like Super Trees, but can be combined to make a nice looking tree.

She would take the plant material and dye it to specific colors, and then bag it as kits. This process also kept the material quite flexible. She demonstrated how to combine multiple pieces into a single tree and ways to build up the trunk effectively.

In my stash, I still have material from the kits I bought way back then. At the time my wife used the material to create some birch trees, combining the yellow and green material to create a blended look.

Grabbing the material I set to work up in the family room as we got caught up on some TV watching that does not require intense focus (!). After cleaning up each stem piece to remove leaves, I painted the stems and some of the branches with white paint to represent white paper birch trees. I then combined multiple stems to make individual trees. I wrapped the trunk end with some white wire and trimmed the excess stem material below. I set each tree into holes in some scrap foam and then used white acrylic caulk to cover the wire and build out a truck base.

Later I will do some touch ups and add some black marks to better represent the birch trees.

The material comes packaged in single colors and includes some basic directions.

After painting the stems white I combined individual pieces together and then wrapped the bottom "trunk" with white cloth covered wire to hold them together, I placed each tree into scrap foam with holes punched in specifically for holding trees.

Here is a batch of trees ready for the next step of adding white acrylic caulk to build out the trucks. Each tree combines the yellow and green, which individually looks a little odd, but when placed together to represent multiple trees, the effect is nice and looks similar to birch trees that are yellowing out at different rates.

I used up about half the material I had, so another session will be in order create additional trees. I'll mix these in with the Super Trees and then set about filling in space along the backdrops to create a more finished look.

I'll post some pictures the completed trees in place once I get them planted!

Wordless Wednesday #21

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 #20

Wordless Wednesday #19