Cabins

The Pennsy called its cabooses "cabins". I haven't the faintest idea why.

Originally the PRSL had a number of 4 wheel wooden ND cabins. These were replaced with a total of 25 steel cabins from the Pennsylvania RR. 22 of them were of the N5 class all built between 1916 and 1925 and rebuilt for the PRSL in 1950. In March 1949, the PRSL had actually ordered 19 N8 cabins from the PRR but due to financial constraints this order was changed to rebuilt N5(s) in February, 1950. The last 3 cabins obtained by the PRSL in 1969 were the ugly N11e transfer cabins. Since this layout is to be in the 1950s, I can ignore them.

I have 6 Bowser N5(s) and 3 N5c(s) in my collection. Only two of the N5(s) are labeled for the PRSL so I'll have to get more, if I can find different numbers. My collection also contains Precision Craft N5, N5C, and N8 cabins, all labeled for the PRR.

PRSL Cabins 233 & 222

Doing PRR cabin research I came up with the information listed below from various sources.

The N5 was the most popular cabin in the Pennsylvania Railroad fleet and the first all-steel caboose used by any railroad. The Pennsylvania Railroad "Lines East" started building the N5 series in 1914. They originally had arch bar leaf spring trucks, the "K" brake system, brake levers on each end platform and no crash bars. They were later updated with Ajax brake wheels replacing the brake levers, the AB brake system, new end sills, and crash posts. While it was referred to as a center cupola, the N-5 cupola was actually 12.5 inches off center. The stove and chimney were moved from the end of the car closer to the cupola. There were a total of 616 cars built. Modifications of existing N5’s created the N5a, N5d, N5e and N5f cabin cars.

The 200 N5B cabin cars were built during 1941 by the PRR. While it was modernized version of the N-5 and included improved safety features. including collision posts, there were only minor exterior variations such as higher handrails on the end platforms and narrower window frames on the car body sides.

PRR's most distinctive caboose design was the N5c built in 1942. The style was similar to its N5 cousin, but it incorporated the streamlined elements that had become popular during the Great Depression. They featured a streamlined cupola on its roof and port hole windows on the body sides and ends. The cars were also built with heavy Crash Beams on both ends to ensure the safety of the crew. The 200 cars were numbered from 477820 -478019.

The last new caboose the Pennsylvania Railroad ordered was the N8. 200 were built (478020-478219) at the Altoona shops in 1950 and 1951. For the N8, the PRR went back to two rectangular windows on each side like on the earlier N5 class cabin cars but had the streamlined cupola introduced on the previous N5c class.  The N8 also had side extensions ("shields"/"fences") on the end platforms which were probably designed to keep workers from falling off the platforms. Like the previous classes many also had the handrail-like rooftop antenna for the train telephone.

PRR N5, N5c, N8

Signs ( & other details)

One nice thing about smaller shelf layouts is that since you are not spending the bulk of your time building tall mountains and foresting them with thousands of trees, you get to spend more time on details, such as signs. It's the details that make the scene. In this case I have had multiple Bachmann sign packs sitting around for decades. You can tell they are old because the stop signs are YELLOW, exactly the way they existed in the early 1950s. Stop signs had white backgrounds until 1924 when they were ordered to become black letters on yellow signs. After 1954 the rule was changed to white letters on a red background.  Since this layout is deemed to be representative of the 1950s, the yellow signs fit in perfectly. This week I got to install a bunch of signs, RR cross-bucks, and crossing gates. The details add a lot to the scenes.

The South Westville - North Woodbury module is moving along. Grass and roads are in. The tracks have been wired but not yet tested, so the track ballasting remains on the "To Do" list. The houses of North Woodbury have been placed but the lights have not yet been connected.

The Holloway lumber yard in North Woodbury has been installed and stand-ins for the DelMonte food distribution center (South Westville) and the John Hack Pipe Supply (or Cornell Steel Fabricators (final vote not in yet.)) have been placed. I have some oversized Micro-Machine trucks at Holloway Lumber that actually fit in quite well.

Westville - Population 13

If you count each car's driver: 31. Far short of the current (2009) town population of 4,466. But at least my town now has some people. (Even if the people are outnumbered by the 34 trees on site.)

I trimmed the stores to fit the room available. I still need to rename the one to Mary Jane's Florist and letter the water tower but progress is our most important product (or is that General Electric?) Barry Brothers coal dock is in. Need to make something to fill the spot for the Buzby Bros. cement plant. The Texaco Refinery is waaaaay down the road.

N Scale magazine - Musings on Writing a Magazine Article

Wow! Dreams can come true! Received a courtesy copy of the November/December issue of N Scale magazine. It contains my article "Smoke Along the River - 50 Years Later" which highlights my now defunct old model railroad layout, the Schuylkill Division of the Pennsylvania RR.

Years ago I had submitted a contest article to Model Railroader which was quickly returned without comment. Last year, I was trying to get hold of an old issue of N Scale magazine and while communicating with the editor, Pamela Clapp, I asked if they would be interested in an article on my old railroad. She looked at the photos I had on the "My Railroad Dream World" site (http://myrrlayout.com/R/Aspfiles/DetailPage.asp?Xfer_Code=20001280&Scale=N). When she indicated that she would be interested I began writing the article.

To get published I think the main ingredient is a good photographer. My photos with an 8 Megapixel Canon camera were just OK. My daughter, who is a professional photographer, had taken pictures of the layout but her specialty was people, kids in particular. Her shots did not have the depth of field and lighting necessary for model work. Fortunately I had a friend at work, Bob Manning, who was also a published photographer. After a little coaxing (actually a lot of coaxing) he agreed to help out. Practically every picture used in the article was from his work.

As you can tell from my blog. I tend to be wordy and include excess parenthetical expressions, so I kept trimming the word excesses until I was comfortable enough to submit it.

Working with Pam was a pleasure. She is an expert at declining your suggestions without making you feel like you have been told "No". The magazine ends its articles with a silhouette of a caboose. Since this was a Pennsylvania RR article, I asked for a silhouette of an N5c cabin car. They just ignored that suggestion! :-)

What I learned is that if you want a certain photo design layout, you had better make that clear up front. To me the most glaring mistake is that the pictures did not capture the theme of the article. What I would have done is take the top picture on page 28 and spread it across 2 pages with an inset of the November 1958 picture of Carl Apple's Norfolk & Ohio "Smoke Along the River" centerfold. After all, that was the theme of the article. I brought this up when I received a mock-up of my article, along with a request for captions. When I asked for that, I was told it was too late in the process. So make clear your requests/suggestions up front. I thought I had done that when I submitted the initial article highlighting those 2 pictures but I think that concept got lost when the graphic artist began his work. (And I still haven't figured out why the track plan river was converted from blue/black to purple. Also my 4' and 2' aisles became 4" and 2" (kind of skinny :-) respectively).

My only other objection was the lack of overall pictures. My personal preferences is to see an overall layout shot or two so that you can visualize where the close-up shots fit into the big picture. Again I was told my suggestion was too late in the process (and the magazine also has capacity issues).

So if you want to write an article, DO IT! All they can do is say no (and Pam can do that so politely you won't even realize it). But first, get a good photographer (I'll send you Bob Manning's number :-)).

What a Difference a Day Makes, 24 (55) Little Hours (Trees)

                               Trees

           I think that I shall never see

          A poem lovely as a tree.

          A tree whose hungry mouth is prest

          Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;

          A tree that looks at God all day,

          And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

          A tree that may in summer wear

          A nest of robins in her hair;

          Upon whose bosom snow has lain;

          Who intimately lives with rain.

          Poems are made by fools like me,

          But only God can make a tree.

                             Joyce Kilmer.   1886–1918

Trees, I love them!

I spent an evening planting 55 of them on the Westville and Timber Creek modules and am stunned with the difference they make. I can't afford the "Super Trees" but the Heki versions still do a presentable job.

 

I did overdo the pine trees in the second Brooklawn circle area. It makes it look like more like a forested area than the moderately dense suburbia that it is in real life. But on the other side of the ledger, it is a dead space that needs to both  be filled in and hide the wall transition.

The PRSL is a totally new challenge to me. My previous layout  represented the moderately mountainous region along the edge of the Appalachians north to Allentown, PA. This layout is condemned to the relatively flat southern New Jersey plains (i.e. I probably won't get to reuse 99% of the 2,500+ puff-ball trees used on the PRR Schuylkill Division).

Tree placement is an art form in itself. This is to be more of a switching layout than my previous railroad, so it is imperative to not put the fragile, easily knocked-over trees in locations around the manual turnouts. I've tried to follow the recommended "group them in 2s and 3s" routine and also use them to hide the transition of roads into the "wall". I understand that needs to be balanced by avoiding them casting shadows onto the wall. Just how you do both  in a slanted ceiling loft I haven't quite figured out yet.

The Brooklawn Circles

New Jersey once had a love affair with highway traffic circles - a devilish device designed to keep traffic moving quickly in multiple directions. Quickly, that is until you got a lot of traffic. At one time NJ had 101 traffic circles. Wikipedia still lists 64 of them, but 20 are marked as defunct, and 15 more as modified (traffic lights, etc.). By the mid-1950s the state no longer approved of their use. Part of the problem was: who had the right of way? It made sense that the car in the intersection should have the right of way or the circle would soon max out capacity. But what do you do when a major highway runs through the circle? I once asked the right of way question to a state trooper friend. His reply was that, in an accident, they would just give tickets to both drivers and let the courts figure out the blame.

New Jersey's first circle was built in 1925 in nearby Pennsauken. It was known as the "airport circle" since an airstrip adjoined it (until around 1960). How's that for an additional traffic distraction/hazard,  piper cubs buzzing your rooftop while zipping between cars trying to go in other directions?

Well when the two Westville roads cross the Timber Creek they are dumped into the twin Brooklawn circles, an odd affair separated by a short attached road section divided by the PRSL overpass (girder bridge). These circles have memories attached. I once hit one with my High School Driver Training car. (Not my fault, the instructor kept distracting me with his "watch out for that car" shouts.) Now who could possibly leave that out of their area modeling?

Anyway here's the early efforts for modeling the Brooklawn twin circles, greatly shrunken with a lot of work left to do. The overpasses need girder bridges (and the roadbed removed). The PRSL needs to have a trestle installed over Timber Creek, the Bachmann cars need to be replaced with CMWs and the Buzby Bros. cement plant needs to be built and installed. A Walthers Medusa kit will hold the fort for the short term. An N scale version of the Faller or IHC cement plants would be much better - if they existed.

The prototype track had to be bent to allow me to turn the room corner and prepare for the "Great River Crossing" of the twin loft windows.

The Missing Piece

Ever try to look at a scene you are creating and keep thinking something is missing?

I kept looking at my North Westville scene and having that feeling, something is missing!

Eureka, I have found it. The water tower!

It's construction was always on the back burner: it wasn't a perfect match, it's tedious to CA the metal bracing, it needs to be painted, the white paint doesn't look white enough, yada, yada, yada.

Well, I finally completed it and put it in the scene and it was the missing link.
It balanced the power house on the left. It is a signature Westville icon, and it just plain looks right.

Still need to cut the individual decal letters to spell out the town name on it (another signature detail) and possibly add an American flag decal, but it just plain fits.

Meanwhile the Timber creek module progress continues. I still struggle with roads. Tried the Patch N' Paint lightweight spackle recommended on Railwire and the first coat is still unsatisfactory. I patched it with regular spackle and am waiting for it to dry so that I can repaint it a concrete color. The highway circles are in.

Painted the rivers. They again dried darker than expected. I am now putting on a matte medium gloss coat.

Soon it will be ready for the garage to loft move. I fear the line-up to the Westville module may have been miscalculated so cross your fingers.

Meanwhile the "To Do" list continues to grow (add trees, cut down background buildings, etc).

'Till next time.  :-)

Timber Creek

The vote is in (see the end of the "Getting' There" blog chapter): Timber Creek wins!

Still haven't finished the North Westville module but I figured I'd get the benchwork done for the next module.

I had to depart from the straight prototype and bend the tracks to get around the corner to the window portion of the loft. The PRSL continues the embankment started on the Westville side to cross Timber Creek ("crick" to many of the locals). The line stays with the embankment to cross over the road connecting the dual highway circles (a New Jersey phenomenon) in Brooklawn. The circles are separated by the PRSL overpass. The circles will be greatly shrunk but still modeled.

The near edge will contain the Westville Buzby Bros. cement plant (see http://railroad.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=97&t=67377&p=945735&hilit=prsl#p945735 ). Again not an exact model but the closest kit I can find/afford. This will give North Westville 4 spurs (5 spots). South Westville/North Woodbury will contain another 3 sidings. (I need places to store my 853 freight cars.  :-) )

The Gateway Model Railroad Club

A friend decided to sign me up to the Facebook group “I Grew Up in Westville”. That has turned out to be a treasure trove of pictures for one of the towns I am modeling on my new PRSL layout. Someone there posted a picture of the Westville Methodist Church that I had attended through High School. While reminiscing on the great men of God and premier role models I had the privilege of being associated with (Rev, Wilber Hoffman and my favorite Sunday School teacher Ed Evans), the Gateway Model Railroad Club came up.

Since I just received my Medicare card and have officially joined the “I remember when…” age, I figured I’d devote this blog to the club’s creation and my early modeling years.

My Sunday School teacher learned that I had an interest in model trains and did such thoughtful things like taking the boys in his class on field trips to see some basement sized layouts in the area. Then he made the mistake of showing up in class with a beautiful 5 stripe Pennsy diesel (remember those rubber-band powered Athearn engines.) That did it! I began to unmercifully pester him to start a model railroad club. Being the nice man that he was, he finally caved in and said he would seek another adult, or 2, to act as advisors and try to get a club together for his pestering “kids”. The church nucleus included Mr. Evans, me, and my friend Bruce Genter. Mr. Evans recruited Larry Patterson who later added 2 boys he knew from Gloucester: Matt Wycoviak (?) and a kid named Eddie. Bruce’s father also wanted to become involved and he went out and bought a Tenshodo Great Northern 4-8-4 which we all drooled over. The early weeks were spent building models in the Church basement. By now I had graduated to Mantua Metals and Ulrich kits.

That was the club nucleus. Another of my role models joined later. He was a Pennsylvania Dutchman, named Wayne Ziggler, who worked at the Navy Yard doing electrical work on submarines. (I was modeling at his house the night the U.S. nuclear sub Thresher was lost.)

He was a man with a lot of great stories. The workers at the Navy Yard would often volunteer to go on shakedown cruises (extra money in the paycheck) of the vessels they worked on. The U.S. Navy would test their repaired/upgraded submarines by taking them out in the ocean, diving to 100’, checking for leaks, and then surfacing. Then they would repeat the process and dive to 200’ and so on until they reached the sub’s maximum rated diving depth. (I think it was in the 400-600’ range).

Well a decade after WWII ended, the U.S. Navy was upgrading its submarine fleet with nuclear submarines and it decided to sell off some of its older diesel subs to its NATO allies such as Turkey. Wayne decided to volunteer for a sea trial on one of these subs with the Turkish crew. The Captain motors the sub out to sea and immediately orders a dive, to the sub’s maximum depth. The Americans on board immediately voiced their protests. The Turkish captain, through his interpreter, just replies “you told me the ship was fully repaired, don’t you trust your work?”

To their horror, he then commences the dive. Meanwhile pipes are leaking and prayers are being offered up at an ever accelerating rate. Well, obviously the ship held together and they returned home safely, with Wayne vowing to never go to sea again with a foreign skipper.

Anyway, I digress. Mr. Patterson found a location to build a model railroad. It was in a basement, under a store, in Gloucester. The catch was we had to clean out the basement, and paint the walls and floor before we could begin building. To begin the scene, picture a basement from your favorite horror movie. Opening the street Bilco doors, you clamored down the creaky wooden steps and then transversed the first part of the basement in a hunched over position until you got to the room we were to use. Many weeks of trash removals later, we were finally ready to begin.

Then a track plan contest was held (no prizes). Two entrances (opposite ends of the same wall) added to the design fun. I was always sketching track plans back then. Matt, me, and I believe at least one of the adults produced submissions. My submission won. (I ran across the tattered remains of that plan when I moved last year.) It was not one of my more practical designs. For visitors to see the layout they had to transverse s duck-under to get into the room and a duck-under to escape.

Mr. Evans was only there part of the time and it was soon evident the adults had taken over, so my interest in the club began to wane. Bruce had reached the age where girls held much more interest to him than trains and I was tiring of the arrangement and travel. Mr. Ziggler was picking me up and returning me home. I mentioned to him that I was probably going to drop out and he said that he also was not satisfied with some of the decisions taking place. So we decided to both leave and started modeling together in my basement. We had an 8’x12’ L shape railroad (Tru-Scale track) well under way. (I believe the layout benchwork was constructed from Wayne’s old picket fence.) Wayne taught me a lot about carpentry (doing it right, counter-sinking the screw holes, etc.).

But college was approaching and my time was becoming more and more consumed by the lovely daughter of the Westville Baptist church minister (another excellent Preacher). By then, Wayne had acquired an Atlas N Scale PRR passenger train that totally enthralled me. It seemed to hold the track much better than my HO models. Soon I sold off my HO gauge equipment, disassembled the layout and started a 50 year collection of N Scale equipment which eventually culminated in my old 18’x19’ basement layout (http://www.allscalelayouts.com/R/Aspfiles/DetailPage.asp?Xfer_Code=20001280&Scale=N). Anything I have achieved in modeling is a result of the men who shaped my modeling future, particularly Ed Evans and Wayne Ziggler.

The Gateway Model Railroad club went on to greater things. 50 years and several moves later they (http://www.gatewaymodelrr.org/) have a great layout on Browning Road in Brooklawn, NJ. Ed Evans remained involved for the rest of his life and Larry Patterson is still with them. (Larry has produced some excellent models including a replica of the Tabernacle.)
There, that should be a blog worthy of my rambling Medicare status!  J  Happy modeling!

Getting’ There

We’re getting there slowly.


Ballasting is also not one of my favorite jobs. You don’t have the wiring contortions you just have the repetitive applications, waiting for drying, vacuuming, re-applying cycles.

A particular problem on the PRSL is how do you handle ballasting the center section between the 2 remaining mainlines. Following removal of the center track, the weeds begin to grow,  the old ballast discolors, and so forth. Remember I am still color (blind) challenged so it is a crap shoot for me. Over time I am sure folks will make suggestions and there can possibly be upgrades.

At least the first pass is done.

Still need to cut down the stores to fit against the backdrop, finish the Westville water tower, add trees and then decide whether to start on the Timber Creek module (north) or South Westville.

I have a Walthers 1950s city water tower under construction but it is not a good match. Anyone know of a model more closely resembling the one below?

Agh Wiring!

I have nothing against wiring per se. Conception-wise I can deal with wiring planning. It’s the actual grunt work, body contorting, excruciating exercise of wiring that I disdain. My old 18’x19’ layout was in a basement, on a concrete floor. An old back-less office chair made scooting around under the bench work tolerable (but not easy, band aid consumption soared). Well, the new shelf layout, over trapped shelving (see earlier blog) made this a nightmare.

I initially, and foolishly thought I could just mount terminal strips behind the support lumber and do the wiring there. That effort was short and painful. So off to plan B, drop the terminal strips and wire (mirror image) from the front and then mount the terminal strips away out of sight. That worked.

When I built the bench work, I hammered in very large, heavy metal staples to the unseen side of the front boards to serve as wire channeling. As you can see below, the channels quickly reached capacity. (Note to self, use 2 rows of staples when we get to the crowded Woodbury module.)

Two tools that proved invaluable were a split-bladed (to hold the screws) screwdriver and an old Black and Decker foldable snake flashlight. I would never have gotten done without them when working under the bench work.

The last project decision was the control switches. The ideal is a painted panel (see below) and DPDT center-off micro-toggles (the layout is DC and I doubt if this section will see more than 2 trains in a section). To do that requires taping, painting, and drilling. That is still the long-range goal. BUT I am determined to get things running as quickly as possible (I did reach Medicare age this month!) so the short-term solution is a trio of Atlas Selectors.

Barry Bros.

In the 50s, the PRSL was loaded with coal and lumber traffic. Each town seemed to have 1 or 2 local coal (and lumber) dealers since most of the existing houses had those big octopus-like coal heaters in their dirt-floored, low-ceiling basements. I can remember my father and uncles going down and feeding their furnaces with shovel fulls of coal each winter day. The delivery trucks would pull up to your driveway and aim their chutes through an open basement window to keep the basement coal bin full.

I distinctly remember the coal trestle at Barry Bros. in Westville with a 2 hopper B&O hopper car perched high on top of it, to gravity feed the yard below. So the past few weeks have been spent filling the open hole set apart for the Barry Brothers fuel dealership. (They later added an oil tank for fuel oil but, like most of the other small dealers along the line, soon ceased to exist.)

Now all I need to find is a model of the movable coal shute used to move the coal around the yard and fill the delivery trucks. Bueller? Anyone?

Woodbury Track Plan

Here's the first pass at the Woodbury track plan:

It will not run straight but will go down to the right so that the Millville main can curve to the left as in the prototype. The yard tracks will also have a mild curve to the left. The icing track referenced in the Eddie Fell diagrams will also be there even though it has been gone for a long, long time.

If I can squeeze it in there was also a fuel supply (coal) siding on the opposite side of the yard (and a cement plant on the yard side).

It is also tempting to cheat on the other side of the station and put in Col. Green's miracle medicines (turn of the century) factory. It later became a piano company and finally a trunk company. Today it has been turned into apartments. It's building was unique.

RDCs

When the predecessors to the PRSL began operating in the mid-1800s they planned to be primarily passenger lines transporting folks to the Jersey Shore for recreational purposes. South Jersey was largely undeveloped except for farming communities and small businesses. Passenger service was a boom business for them until the 1930s when automobiles started eating into ridership. It was no longer profitable for both the Reading and Pennsy to be fighting for ridership. Basically the state forced a merger and the PRSL took over the dwindling passenger business. By post World War II, passenger business was a big cost drain to the railroad. They sought, with great difficulty, to get approval to abandon many branches.

In the area I’m modeling, Baldwin road switchers would usually handle 1-2 P70 coaches for commuter service (longer race track specials were also handled on other portions of the line).

Budd came out with their innovative RDCs (Rail Diesel Cars) to more cost effectively handle declining passenger service and the PRSL quickly snatched up 6 units in 1950 and another 6 in 1951. They certainly were a shiny, flashy replacement for the well-worn P70s. Budd built a total of 398 RDCs in 5 configurations. The PRSL ordered all RDC-1s.

I have 2 ConCor PRR RDCs and 2 Kato Budd demo RDCs (1 more than Budd had) available. Now I just have to get them re-lettered (when I figure out how).

BAD DAY / GOOD WEEK

Destroying my old layout in preparation for our move was sad but not as bad as I expected. I saved the original 4’x8’ section, but the only remnants salvaged from the 5’x19’ addition were the hidden storage yards and the main Schuylkill Island Yard.

Well I am at the point where I need more switches for the new layout and the other 2 sections were taking up too much precious storage space in the house. So I decided to scrap them for the turnouts. The hidden Mystic Storage Yard was un-ballasted and yielded 8 switches and 14 pieces of reusable straight flex track.

Now for the sad part, it came time to deconstruct the Schuylkill Island yard. This was the signature portion of the old layout. It was 10’ long, 4+' wide, double ended, held more than 100 cars and was the focal point of the layout. (see http://www.allscalelayouts.com/R/Aspfiles/DetailPage.asp?Xfer_Code=20001280 ).

Taking this apart was heartbreaking, but I had no room for it in the new loft layout or storage space to keep it. I removed the river portions, scenery, and triple track mainline. In the end I decided to keep a 6’ (x3') single ended portion of it, to possibly be squeezed in as the yard on the new layout. It was still emotionally draining to chop up this portion.

On a higher note, this week’s activities also included a trip to the Camden County Courthouse for adoption proceedings. God had placed in my eldest son and his wife’s heart a yearning to show His love for other children (James 1:27) and they sought to possibly adopt 2 children with ages similar to those of their own 2 children. Consequently he and his wife became foster parents and showed patience and love for several groups of kids who had faced unbearable terror and hard times during their early childhood. Then one Christmas Child Services asked them to take in 3 kids just days before Christmas on an emergency basis. This they gladly did. The children became so engrained within their (and our) family and that they requested to adopt them (a 2 year process). The children also had an older sibling living in another foster home and not wanting to split the family apart they requested that he also join them. This week, they and 30-40 family and friends had the joy of traveling to the courthouse to finalize the adoption process. So the “B” Bunch family now includes our 4 kids, their spouses, and 12 grandchildren.

So my 1 sad day is swallowed up and overwhelmed into a great week!

Praise God for His love and continual blessings!

LAYOUT PLAN

Track Planning

The good news is that if you choose a prototypical source, you know that the operation will flow well.

That’s why the real railroad laid it out that way in the first place,

Here’s the design for the first 3 modules ((2) 16”x6’ & (1) 2’x4’):

LET THE WORK BEGIN - North Westville

ONWARD & UPWARD
Taking the first 6’ section for Westville, I painted the plywood my fascia color so bare plywood would not show through once the grasses were applied. I used a circular saw to cut the edges along where the tracks would rise to go over Timber creek. I also cut out where the Barry Brothers fuel supply would have the raised trestle since I will have to drop the table level somewhat to accommodate the plastic coal trestle I have. This was all done in the garage and driveway to keep the construction mess out of the loft. (I am sure the new neighbors think they have a resident nut on their hands.)

I laid out the tracks putting them on an angle to the front edge. (Laying tracks parallel to the platform edge seems to make the trains look more toy-like.) I used cork roadbed and Atlas code 80 flex track. For cost avoidance purposes, I soldered leads to the rail joiners myself to provide power. Since I use old DC wiring, I put in appropriate rail gaps to prevent shorts (Peco Electrofrog turnouts) and sectionalize the wiring. I then took the construction to the back yard, covered most areas with newspapers and sprayed the tracks roof brown (wiping off the rail tops).

Back to the garage to drill holes for the track leads and put in the highway overpass. I used corrugated cardboard web strips glue-gunned together to create forms for the highway overpass and hill (to separate from the blue backdrop). Not having any grocery store paper shopping bags (they use those dumb plastic bags now), I grabbed some of the heavier envelops salvaged from the paper trash to cover the cardboard web (yet another mistake!). Traditionally I have used hydrocal dipped paper towels for my scenery base. They are messy and difficult to color with tints. So I tried Sculptamold for the first time. It doesn’t seem to have the strength that hydrocal gives but is much easier to color. I poured in a ¼ cup of earth colored latex paint, ¾ cup of water and a cup of sculptamold. It seems to have worked well.

Working in the garage on a pair of sawhorses I managed to yank off 2 wire leads which then had to be re-soldered.

Next I used the old Woodland Scenics road system learning kit. I liked the foam road forms but had difficulty getting the roads leveled and unpitted.

I then put the WS blended grass down using their scenic cement and then painted the roads with a concrete color. I started putting concrete separators in using a small black Sharpie but it was too thick so I shifted to a black pen. I need to get a white paint pen to do the lane separating lines.

Then the 6’ section was lifted and unfastened grass knocked to the floor to prepare for the journey through the living room and upstairs to the loft. The section was then screwed down to the bench work. When the bench work was constructed, I hammered in large staples to channel the wiring. The next step will be install terminal strips and attach the track leads to them. Then I can work out any problems with the track before the ballasting begins.

In the meantime I have loosely placed some buildings and cars on the layout to get a feel for what I must do with the scenery

SPECS & CONSTRUCTION (Blunders)

Name: PRSL
Scale: N 1:160
Dimensions: 12' x 17' loft
Prototype: Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines in Westville, & Woodbury, NJ
Era: 1950s
Style: Shelf around the wall
Min Radius: 19" mainline
Control: DC
Track: Atlas Code 80

Construction (i.e. Construction Blunders)

My wife had major back surgery which meant we had to leave our large Colonial 2 story to go to a home with a single floor living area. Few houses we looked at had basements but we found one with a loft that I could annex for modeling purposes. It is in a 55 and older community in which we are the “new kids” in town. Unfortunately the community seems to have no model railroaders that I can locate. (There was one up the street but he has since been moved to a nursing home. J)

My “new” loft presents some different challenges from my old basement (how I miss it!).

To get a sky background, the old basement walls were painted with a standard light blue waterproofing paint. I figured I’d try to get a better color match for the loft walls. I had a picture of our new house that I had taken on an absolutely stunningly beautiful day. I was using it for my computer background picture. So I figured I would try to match it. Now this is an adventure since I am partially color blind. In my world, light greens look white and I can’t distinguish between certain shades of green/brown and blue/purple. Naturally my favorite color is dark green (which I can’t always distinguish from black under certain light). So this was an adventure waiting to happen. Being somewhat sensible I recruited my wife (that is why we get married, isn’t it). Off to Home Depot for color cards. Ever try to match color cards to a picture on the computer screen? They just do not match! So we picked the closest paint we could get.

Speaking of colors, I figured the fascia on my old layout should be a dark green. I picked a ping-pong table top green (remember the color-blindness) and everyone in the family hated it. So my analytical noggin decided to blend it in with the Woodland Scenics colors on the layout. I picked their standard dark green. I coated a 3x5 index card with scenic cement and covered it with WS dark green grass and went off to Home Depot again. I ordered a can of their cheapest flat paint to match the green. Ha! They couldn’t match it with their cheapest paint and had to take a step up to the Behr paint line and even then they said they had to max out the paint pigments to get a match. Nothing is ever simple in life.

Having only a 12’x17’ space and needing room for other things, I decided that to maximize the space, I would line the room with my 3’ wide by 3’ high metal (simulated wood grain) shelving units. I could thereby store my books, DVDs and train stuff (40 years of collecting) under the layout and go around the room with a shelf layout. Phil Duba had told me his proposed layout would use shelving brackets and that seemed like a great idea. Until I investigated and saw how much they cost. Back to the drawing board.

I figured I could create wood benchwork that would straddle the bookshelves so I again went off to home depot and purchased 2x4s for legs, 1x3s for longitudinal support and a 4’x8’ sheet of plywood. I had them cut the plywood into (3) 16”x6’ sections with a 2’x4’ leftover piece. That began a series of design blunders.

I purchased ¾” plywood. (Way to heavy and inflexible.) The tracks going over timber creek have to rise to the bridge and the coal trestle has a sharp incline. To get the wood to be more flexible I used a router on the underside to cut groves in those sections so the plywood would bend. Keep in mind that I had already installed track and used Sculptamold for the highway overpass! Dumb! Dumb!

The wood benchwork design also showed lack of foresight. The bookshelves to be covered were 12” deep so a 16” shelf railroad should easily straddle it, right? Wrong! The legs (2x4) go inside the 1x3 frame (16” – ((3/4” + 1½”) x 2) = 12½”. Press fit!!! (And the book case corners stick out even further.) To get the bookcases out, I will have to disconnect the 6’ layout pieces and tilt everything to the floor and pull the bookcase from between the legs. (I have a Bachelor of Science degree in Commerce & Engineering, a Masters of Divinity degree and a PhD in stupidity!) Oh well, it is what it is. If it ever becomes necessary to get the bookshelves out I can at least reach the screws for the front legs and the cross-bar supports and free the bookcases (carefully) that way.

WESTVILLE

WESTVILLE

Westville’s nickname was the “Gateway to South Jersey” because a lot of highway bridges (and the PRSL) came together there to get over Timber Creek. From there the roads (and trains) fanned out in multiple directions to serve southern N.J. The other side of Timber Creek led to Camden and the Delaware River ferries (before construction of the Walt Whitman Bridge to Philadelphia).

When the PRSL downsized from 3 tracks to 2, they removed the center track but put an extended crossover between them around the Texaco refinery. All the sidings in town were trailing point so there was no need for a local cross-over. Most southbound pickup could be dropped up the road in the Woodbury yard for pickup by a northbound train. In the 1950s the Texaco refinery was very busy (talk of it closing down now after being sold several times). I assume the lengthened crossover would allow the northbound loaded tankers to be on their way to Philly much quicker without being transferred in Woodbury. I often saw strings of tank cars on it while driving up Gateway Blvd.

Westville also had a cement plant called Buzby Brothers. I have seen photos of about 6 covered hoppers being set-out there. A brakeman would stop traffic on the heavily trafficed road. Always an annoyance!  The power plant had been closed as long as I can remember, but its remaining siding seemed to function as a team track for the town’s other business customers. Another spur went to Barry Brothers Fuel Company. (The “Reading Modeler’s” website contains the 1954 PRSL freight shippers list.) I was always fascinated by hoppers being unloaded on its elevated trestle. When the mass conversion from coal to oil for home heating took place the business dwindled. Apartments now stand at that location.

Just past Olive Street in South Westville there were 3 sidings (the last one was probably considered North Woodbury). The first 2 were lumber companies and the last was another coal & oil supplier. The first spur changed hands later to a food distributer with Del Monte logos on the building. I will replace the lumber companies with that industry (since I will model a lumber company in North Woodbury). The second fuel dealership will be replaced by the same steel fabricator that eventually succeeded it.

Here’s the early construction photos of the Westville portion:

For roads I used a Woodland Scenics road system. I was unhappy with the results since I couldn’t get the roads leveled and unpitted. This may be because the “kit” was sitting in my basement unused for a decade. The Asphalt paint was totally solidified. I will use a concrete color since that is what the roads in town were constructed from. The elevated coal trestle will be modeled in the cutout portion of the plywood. The 2 tracks past the power house will elevate so that the timber creek bridge can clear small boat traffic.

The elevated road portion is where the northbound road rose and passed over the southbound lanes. A Rix 1950 overpass should closely resembles the existing highway bridge.