Friday, July 18, 2025
Wednesday, April 2, 2025
Making Progress
Sorry for the long absence. I have been busy with lots of things, including trains. I have laid most of the track for the Worcester Yard and engine facility. I still need to do the caboose and industrial tracks. I also need to clean out more stuff from the basement. Here are a couple of shots of my progress.
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Here is a badly angled photo of the yard and engine facility. |
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Here is a drone shot of the engine house |
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A more realistic angle. |
I will be going to the New England Prototype meet Thursday May 29-Sunday June 1 and doing a presentation on Why the Norwich and Worcester. Here is a link to the meet:
https://www.nerpm.org/index.phpFriday, November 22, 2024
Windows
I have moved back to working on the engine house as I wait
for turnouts to be delivered. I am using the Walthers Rolling Mill as the base
for the structure, but I needed to get some widows to match the ones in the
real engine house. I found some from Ticey that are a nice match for the ones
down the side and I thought I found some that matches well for over the main
doors from Grandt Line. I laid out the side windows and they look very good
compared to the prototype.
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The side windows. |
I am not sure what happened to the ones over the doors, I received 3x2 pains not 4x2. I don’t know if I ordered the wrong ones or received the wrong ones, but they are incorrect. I figure I would try kitbashing the windows. I simply used a #17 chisel blade, making sure to keep the flat side towards the portion of the part I wanted to save. A little extra trimming to make sure the windows were square I glued them together. Quicker and cheaper than looking and buying a more correct part and simpler than going through the process of 3D printing.
Monday, November 18, 2024
Making lemonade out of lemons
My friend Brian J. and I were heading down to participate in an operations session at Chris Adams's Valley Local on Saturday. Unfortunately, the session was cancelled at the last minute, so Brian and I decided to work on my layout for a bit. We were able to lay most of the track on the lift out section. On Sunday, I finished up the lift out section and have been able to plan out the track layout for Worchester yard. The yard has two arrival/departure tracks and two tub end tracks. There is a main line running between the yard and engine facility. There is also a track running behind the engine facility leading to the fright house. The photos below will show the layout much better.
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Here is the lift out section after Saturday's work. |
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Here is the lead to the Worcester yard. |
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I need to pick up one more turn out to be able to get to all of the staging yard tracks. |
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Starting to plan out the the north end of Worcester yard. |
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Another view of the yard. |
I am hoping Chris is able to rescheduled the operations. I was looking forward to seeing all the changes on his layout, I have not been down in a couple of years.
Monday, November 4, 2024
Worcester Engine House Part 1
In 1953 the New Haven Railroad constructed a new diesel engine house, while eliminating the roundhouse and turntable in Worchester. Because the NH and the Boston and Maine shared the engine facility, the NH loaned the B&M RS-3's to cover some of there trains to completely eliminate steam using the facility. The new engingene house has two through stalls and a shorter annex on one side for various workshops and such. It was located on the Providence and Worcester leg of the yard, which is triangular shape. The building itself is a steel frames building covered with corrugated metal for the siding and roof. On the north end of the building, a new sanding tower was constructed to service two tracks.
I am using the Walthers rolling mill from there steel mill series. The kit is a very large structure and will leave me lots of material left over for other kitbasing projects. The sanding tower is also from Walthers. It is a very close match to the one the NH installed. The prototype is mounted on 4 to 6 foot tall concrete piers.
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Here is the engine house with an uncut section of roof. The column for the sanding tower is also here |
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Here is the south end of the engine house. I accidently broke off the center piece between the two doors |
I had built a cardboard mock up, but I wanted to at least get the building started to see if I could determine exactly the space it will take up and plan out the rest of the yard.
Wednesday, October 30, 2024
Monday, October 28, 2024
Thinking outside the Box(es)
Boxes, boxes, everywhere! Amazon boxes might be the most common—used to deliver items from Amazon, and then many of us reuse them for sending things to friends or selling on eBay to clear out things we once "had to have." But the boxes I really want to talk about are those that hold all our model trains. When I started model railroading, boxes were mostly the standard Athearn blue boxes (or yellow for those who go way back). The only "fancy" boxes came from brass manufacturers.
As models grew more detailed and traveled longer distances, protecting them became crucial. Life-Like, with their Proto 2000 line, introduced some clever packaging. They separated the body shell from the chassis to protect delicate details from rough handling. However, these boxes took up much more room—often as much as two or three older Athearn boxes! Today, most manufacturers pack their locomotives in boxes similar to the old brass models, but instead of simple plastic wrapping, they use a series of plastic sleeves and shells. This trend spread to passenger cars, with molded plastic shells inside cardboard boxes, and then to freight cars, and even some Ready-To-Run (RTR) structures in clamshell packaging.
All this led me to wonder: what should I do with all these boxes? I faced a dilemma—should I keep boxes to store models when they’re not on the layout? Should I toss them, or maybe use them for craft projects? The older Athearn boxes are handy for storage or as project boxes, a place to keep parts for in-progress builds. The newer boxes, though, aren’t as versatile, and storing them empty eats up space. Some might say, "Keep them for resale value!" And that’s true—models with their boxes do resell better. But I don’t resell much, especially finished models.
My friend Brian J. came by to help with my layout and pointed out my rather messy basement. With his encouragement, I finally made a decision:
Here’s what I’m keeping:
- Locomotive boxes, except for Proto 2000 and yellow Atlas boxes. Those can be hard to work with, and Atlas models can be tricky to remove from their molded Styrofoam.
- Brass boxes. I don’t own much brass, and it feels wrong to toss those.
- Boxes for unstarted models. These are for projects not yet ready for the layout or models that need modifications or weathering.
The rest are going. I make an effort to recycle plastic and cardboard, and I save any instructions, spare parts, or decals. This decision fits me well since my wife and I don’t plan to move, and I’m not looking to sell off the collection. I know this wouldn’t work for everyone—collectors or those who move frequently might cringe! But for me, it’s been freeing to clear out all those empty boxes.