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!

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.

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.

Careful trimming. 

Four built in less than 15 minutes. 

Not perfect, but much closer.

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.

Here is the lift out section after Saturday's work.

Here is the lead to the Worcester yard. 

I need to pick up one more turn out to be able
to get to all of the staging yard tracks.

The track is next to the engine house is part of the engine facility
 and used to move power around without having to use the main.
Coming towards the foreground is the main line, two A/D tracks
 and two stub end yard tracks tracks.

Starting to plan out the the north end of Worcester yard.

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.

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. 

Here is the engine house with an uncut section of roof.
The column for the sanding tower is also here

Here is the south end of the engine house. I accidently
broke off the center piece between the two doors 

The north end with the column for the sanding tower. I am
thinking of making the building more narrow by removing a
 portion of the one story annex. I also still need to add
openings for the windows and 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.