Happy Independence Day

 

Travel

My wife and were fortunate to be able to spend 10 day in Budapest Hungry, Vienna and Salzburg Austria. While trains were not a focus of the trip we did travel by train between each city and used local transit with in each city. The line we took from Budapest to Vienna, about a 2.5 hour ride, was a double track electrified line. The train had a very basic cafe car, but was clean and comfortable. I must have seen a minimum of 6 fright trains traveling in the opposite direction during the trip. The trip from Vienna to Salzburg was about the same length and very similar, except the passenger cars were bilevels. Lots of trailers in well cars and tank cars, covered hoppers and  lot of pulpwood loads. 

What I found intriguing was each small city or large town had a very, what I would call traditional small yard. Often with a diesel unit stationed there. Very much what most of model in the transition era of the late 1940s into the 1950s. If I were doing a European layout I t could b a neat mixture of modern equipment , but a more traditional track layout.

The following photos are all from Budapest, the last is a photo I found in a shop of the original station at the location. 

The next one is from Salzburg

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New England Rail Proto Meet Posted

I have posted my Clinic on MOVING SPUDS STEEL REEFERS USED IN THE 1950’S BY THE BANGOR AND AROOSTOOK TO MOVE POTATOES. Click on the page labeled as that to see the presentation.

Projects and the New England Prototype Meet

Sorry for the long gap since my last post. I have been doing some modeling, but I have not posted about it. I am finishing up some projects for a presentation I will be doing at eh New England Prototype Meet in Springfield, MA May 29 and 30. https://www.nerpm.org/  I will be showing how to model some steel reefers used in the movement of Maine potatoes in the 1950's and 1960's. 

The above is the partially complete 8000 series BAR reefer. I will also be doing the 7000 series BAR reefer and at least 3 classes of MDT reefers.

I have some other project that I plan on displaying as well:

These are Rapido 35 foot trailers, the one on the right has been modified as an open top with a tarp over it. I still need to make tiedowns for the tarp. I had custom decals made for the NH as it is shorter than the closed top trailers. I used the the name plates above and below from the Rapido trailers. They are sitting on a Walthers G-85 TOFC flat. It would be wonderful to have Clejan flat for these. Maybe someday.

These are Eastern State Farmers Exchange insulated box cars. They are basically bunkerless reefers without roof hatches, The prototypes were built in 1953 by Dispatch Shops and originally did not have the large logos. The large logo was added in the late 1950's, Eastern Farmers Exchange became part of Agway in the late 1960's, 

Brian Johnson and I have actually done 6 podcasts, and it has been a lot of fun. Always looking for people you would like to talk model railroading to be on the podcast. https://tfmrr.com/

Happy Halloween!

Here are a couple of RDCs in Lincoln, NH dressed as ghosts!

 

Episode #3 of the Frugal Model Railroaders

We just dropped our third episode of the Frugal Model Railroaders, check us out where ever you get your podcasts!

Refining Plainfield (or going down the rabbit hole!)

Trying to model an era that is nearly 70 years ago can be difficult at times. I posted several photos over the last week and have figured out they are not all helpful. In the photo below is a fire that wiped out the original grain and feed store located just east of the station. 

It was later rebuilt as a shorter building with fewer windows and sliding freight doors as seen below.

This is much different than the original structure seen below along with the original freight house.

Going back to the photo of the "new" grain dealer, here are some details I have picked out.

The first shows a window and an edge of a door frame that I am assuming is a normal door to enter the office. There is also a platform and I again am assuming has a set of trair to get to the door. I would think this is the office or retail store section of the structure. 

This next photo shows the freight doors the the very short platforms just under each door. It also shows the very small windows along the top of the wall.

Here is an aerial view that shows that shows the number of platforms along the left (west) side of the building. It appears to have 5 platforms plus 1 on the east side. The photo is from 1965.

The portion on the bottom of the image is a separate building and is Modi's appliance and furniture store. I posted the only photo I can find of it on Wednesday. 

I am going to make some assumptions that there are at least four or five freight doors on each side of the building and basically make a the long walls a mirror image of each other. I am also assuming that the fright doors on the east side do not have platforms and truck wood just back up the building. I will just build mock ups in the short term to determine what size I should make the building. Using the measuring device on the Historical Aerials web site the building measures roughly 243' by 67'.  I will need to compress it's size to have it fit the room I have.  If anyone has any photos of this structure or the area in general I would love to see them.  

Happy Modeling!

Wordless Wednesday

 

Working on Plainfield

Now that I have torn out all of Norwich, I need to start building Plainfield. One note is I plan on having three staging tracks on the back of the benchwork to serve as the northern end staging. The staging will be hidden by a short (around one foot high) removable back drop. Below you can see the interlocking diagram of the small yard and station area of Plainfield.

The N&W line run from the south on the lower left hand side and goes up to the upper right. The photo blow is a shot of the are looking north. It is from near the end of the NH in the late 1960's.  The original wood fright station burned down and was replaced by a smaller cinder block station seen below. 

The next shot is much older, shows The grain and feed store, I believe it will become an Eastern States Farmers Exchange dealer and then and Agway. It is the structure to the right of the station in the photo above.

Below is my layout of the area. The white paper structure is the cinder block fright house and the grey structure will be the grain and feed dealer. It is Edison Lab budling that is a reasonable stand in for the structure.

This is the other end of the small yard. There was an engine stationed here during my 1958 modeling period, typically an RS-1. It would handle the local switching as well as the line heading west toward Willimantic, CT.

Moving further north, the topography is a bit more hilly, I am using a bridge to divide the scenes a bit.

Here is the American Standard plant located north of Plainfield. In reality it is situated 90 degrees from how I have it, but there is no room to lay it out that way. This was a new customer to the New Haven in the late 1950s. The Magic Pans Bakery kit from Walthers is the basis if the kitbash.

Here is the actual plant in recent years, it is now a Staples warehouse.

The photo below shows the siding leading to the building, it split in to two tracks near the building. The track is at 90 degree angle from the main line.

I plan on laying out the 3 staging tracks on some thing plywood, then laying on the track of the benchwork. This will be keeping busy for a while.

PODCAST

My friend Brian Johnson and myself have decide to produce a podcast, the Frugal Model Railroaders. So far we have dropped two episodes with a goal of one per month.  

The website is: The Frugal Model Railroaders where we will post when we drop new episodes and photos and notes related to the podcast. I have listed the site on the blog list to on the right hand side of my site.

Redo

I have made changes to my layout plan and moved the modeled portion of the Norwich and Worcester north. Instead of Norwich being the southern end of the layout, I am now making Plainfield CT the southern point of the layout. One of the main reasons I have done this is my version of Norwich was highly freelanced. By moving it to Plainfield, I am able to create a much more accurate model of the area. Here are some photos of my now removed Norwich:

https://norwichandworcester.blogspot.com/2017/02/norwich.html

Here are some shots of the changes.

Here is all the track, roadbed and structured removed. 

Another Shot of the bare foam

I took off the foam as well.

Another shot, please ignore the messy work bench.

Here is some plywood laid down. The portion to
the left will be trimmed down to blend in with
the more narrow section over my work bench.

I was able to save most of the track and turnouts as well as structures. The road bed and and foam was destroyed in the process of removing. I will go into more detail in the near future on the new plans.

North Shore Model Railroad Club Open House

Rapido H16-44

After placing my order 4 years ago, Rapido has finally delivered the H16-44 units. These units truly were worth the wait, the look good, sound great and run well. I purchased 3 units, two with DCC and sound and one straight DC. I have since added a non-sound chip to that unit and all three look great together. In the mid to late 1950's, these units where used a lot in service over the Norwich and Worcester line, passenger and fright. As time went on, the other 1956 road switchers (GP-9 and RS-11) locomotives would be typically mixed in as well. All lasted into Penn Central and were shipped out to Chicago area until scrapped. 

Three new H16-44 units from Fairbanks Morse on
 the Norwich and Worcester. 

Engineer's side

 

Cooling fans and exhaust stacks

Front end of the NH's class unit

Fireman's Side

Four screws around the fuel tank.

On both ends of the using the steam tine for passenger
service goes right over the coupler screws. You can
carefully bend it out of the way, but be very careful.
I did end up breaking one in the end.

The fuel tank screw are very long. 

Here is the mechanism. I replaced the DC board with the 21 pin board recommended by Rapido. This unit will not have sound. 

I do recommend these locomotives. They seem to be a the lower end of cost of the most recent Rapido locomotives, but they are top of the line in detail and operations. 

 

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. 

Here is a badly angled photo of the yard and engine facility. 

Here is a drone shot of the engine house

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.php

Hope to see you there!