Building the Beer Line in N Scale

[Dave Schneider]

Chris,

It WAS a nice place to watch trains. Now it is all condos and office buildings. In fact my sister worked in the C House once it was converted to office space after Schilitz closed in 1982. I'm glad you enjoy the Beer Line book. I have 4 copies, which increases the odds that I can find one of them at any given time. As for the other buildings, I will probably make them into some dioramas for taking photos outdoors.

Best wishes, Dave

[mcjaco]

Drove up to Milwaukee on Saturday to visit my Mom at one of her last conventions (she owns a craft rubber stamp company, and has decide to call it quits in January). 

I drove along 94 heading West (purposely - don't tell my wife, she prefers 894), looking into the valley trying to imagine all the Milwaukee trackage down there.....sigh.

[MichaelWinicki]

Thank you for the indepth description of Walnut St yard Dave.


Still amazes me how quickly (it seems) that all the industries dried up along that line.

What would be intersting to see would be a timeline of each industry.

[GaryHinshaw]

Dave,

Great to hear that wood is being cut!  (Hopefully the din of the saw will drown out the start of the NFL season*)  Are you planning to include the grades around the Walnut St yard?  That seems like an important signature.  Similarly, I hope you are amassing a sizable collection of era-appropriate vehicles.

One comment on the revised plan: that new stub track is awfully close to the edge of the layout and the opening side of the door.  Risky idea unless you protect it with, e.g. plexiglass or such, and/or don't store any cars there between sessions.

Go Seahawks,**
-Gary

*As a co-owner of the team, you might know the answer to this: if the Packers are named after a meat packing company, why are their fans cheese-heads and not meatheads?   

**Actually, I could care less about the Seahawks.  I don't even know what a Sea Hawk is, but it did lead me to research where the name Packers came from: the meat packing company that Curly Lambeau worked for in 1919, and seemed to only exist for 2 years.  I guess that name is an important part of their small-town lineage.  Now back to the Beer Line.

[Dave Schneider]

Gary,

Yes, I am planning on including the grades around Walnut St and the Roller Coaster track. They are a signature scene to be sure.
Here is where I am at currently, with 0 inches as my reference low elevation.  Not sure if I have enough relief yet, so some mock-ups will be needed to figure that out. My feeling is that I may need to increase the separation a bit more and see what kinds of grades will work.  I don't have any FM switchers to experiment with, but a couple of VO-1000s will give me something to test the grades. I have kept the grade between the Juneau Ave yard and Humboldt yard flat, which allows for better use of the three tracks on the right side from Humboldt through Holton Ave. There was a slight grade here on the Beer Line but that is hard to replicate in the model world.  The stub track is just roughed in right now. I should be able to adjust things accordingly.

*As a co-owner of the team, you might know the answer to this: if the Packers are named after a meat packing company, why are their fans cheese-heads and not meatheads?   

We've been called both at times, justifiably so I might add.

Best wishes, Dave

[Dave Schneider]

An update on the progress over the past week. I have started building benchwork, starting with the end of the line at Juneau Ave, along the wall to the left of the door. I have used birch plywood, ripped to 3 inch strips for the side and cross pieces, and 5 inch ends. The open frame is covered with 1/2 inch plywood and 1 1/2 inch foam. This allows for the track at the end of the sections to be glued to the plywood. I don't plan on taking this on the road anywhere, but the sectional approach will allow for some outdoor photography (perhaps), ease of working on the underside, and potential moving should this become necessary someday. The joints are all made using biscuits and a plate jointer. This may be overkill, so we'll see if I keep this up. Here is the first section, an 18 inch by 6 foot piece. Note the circuit panel in the background and the thermostat. I didn't deal with these very well in my original plan, so I had to figure out how to work around these obstacles.

 

Here is the track plan for this section, with the ends indicated by the dashed blue line, and an aerial shot from 1985 taken by my friend Leo Dorn. As you can see, I just added foam for the track area. This forces me/allows for some subtle elevation changes for the roads and buildings, as I wanted to avoid the table-top look. The main industries at this end are the Lincoln Warehouse (the large structure on the river, and the long Milwaukee Journal paper transload dock. The Lincoln Warehouse will be built as a flat, with tracks entering  a shadow-box arrangement that can be removed if access is needed to the circuit panel. I also relocated the thermostat about a foot lower as it conflicted with the layout. It will be accessed beneath the bench work.





Here is another view of the Lincoln Warehouse and MJ transload building from 1976. The tracks here were also used as a team track.


Just to the south of the Park East Freeway on the corner of 3rd St and Juneau Ave is a very cool building. It was built in 1876 by a local surgeon, and was the first brick commercial building in Milwaukee. In later years is was a hotel, a bank, and finally in the  early 1970s became the hub of counterculture in Milwaukee, when it was purchased by lawyer Sydney Eisenberg. It was renamed became the Sydney Hih building. Some say the name is related to the fact that Sydney smoked a lot a pot and was high a fair bit of the time, while others suggest that in Yiddish HiH means "in honor off". Maybe some of each? He repainted it in bizarre colors after a trip to San Francisco and its various rooms served as art studios, music studios, apartments, a head shop, an adult bookstore, a nightclub, etc.. Groups such as Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins and Soundgarten played here in their early years.

Here are a couple of photos sort of before and after.

1950s looking west on Juneau Ave. The Pabst brewery can be seen on the horizon. They received grain on the Beer Line, hauled it up the hill on trucks, and then hauled beer back down to load into rail cars in the Commerce St yard. More on that at a later date.
 

West Side Bank in the late 1960s.


Sidney Hih in the 1970s.


This place has had more lives than a bag full of cats, but the end has finally arrived. A three alarm fire in July of this year burnt through a fair portion of the building and it was demolished. It is quite a famous building and it even has a Facebook page! http://www.facebook.com/SydneyHih/photos_stream And it still exists in Google Streetview at present. It will be fun to build a little bit of this building so I can have a place to park those Wiking VW bugs and buses.

Best wishes, Dave

[GaryHinshaw]

Sweet!!  Don't you love the smell of fresh-cut wood?  Very nice workmanship, and it looks appropriately Modutrack-ish too.

I'm loving your vast photo collection...  keep those coming.

-gfh

[wazzou]

Dave -
Do you think that you could get away with just the foam w/o the sheet of plywood beneath it?  What is the reasoning behind the plywood?  Strength?

[C855B]

Yeah, I'm curious, too. There's been some discussion about foam sagging under some conditions, and even just a luaun sheet underneath helps. But the question is how much (or how little) of a span can 2" foam tolerate without the issue. On top of that, of blue foam (Lowes) vs. pink foam (HD), apparently blue foam is more prone to sagging.

I have a 2x4 module/test layout under construction that's 2" blue foam with no wood support on the long sides - a 4' span, in other words. I noticed a slight bit of sagging, so it has 2"x3" foam bolsters laminated on each side. Very stiff now. On the other hand, what I learned from this experience is 2" foam supported every 24" isn't going anywhere.

EDIT: another thought... attaching accessories such as switch machines to bare foam is a PITA. Thin plywood makes a much better base for things that require mechanical attachment.

[Dave Schneider]

Dave -
Do you think that you could get away with just the foam w/o the sheet of plywood beneath it?  What is the reasoning behind the plywood?  Strength?

1) Poor self-esteem. I can't bear the thought of you guys making fun of flimsy bench work.
2) It's better able to withstand horizontally polarized shear waves (http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/glossary/?term=Love%20wave) produced by earthquakes.
3) Following the time-honored tradition of overbuilding benchwork. Who am I to disregard tradition.
4) Easier to mount switch machines (I'm using Bluepoint machines). Pretty much the main reason.

Please feel free to comment whenever you see me messing something up. This is the largest layout project I have ever undertaken and none of us is as smart as all of us!

Best wishes, Dave

[GaryHinshaw]

I'm just betraying my age here, but I really don't get this trend - at all - towards seeing how little benchwork one can get away with.  I love my 3/4" ply sub-roadbed: that 10 scale feet of solid Mother Earth under-rail gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling.

[Zox]

I'm just betraying my age here, but I really don't get this trend - at all - towards seeing how little benchwork one can get away with.  I love my 3/4" ply sub-roadbed: that 10 scale feet of solid Mother Earth under-rail gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling.

I think it's born of experience with modules, where every extra pound you schlep into the building on Friday afternoon is another pound you have to schlep back out on Sunday evening. The fact that some people in apartments/condos have limitations on the use of power tools probably contributes as well.

[Dave Schneider]

I added some furring strips to the wall, to which the backdrop will be attached. I made them extra long, and they are currently tacked to the wall with brads, so I can take them down easily to trim to the correct dimensions. The "legs" are temporary while I evaluate the height. Currently rail height it is at 56 inches, which works pretty well for me.  The reach for this section is minimal so I will need to see if it works for deeper scenes.



I also experimented with an upper lighting valance using from scrap wood. I mounted an 18 inch shelf bracket upside down and used that to hang the valance. It is pretty sturdy an offers a vertical scene window of 14 inches.



I am just about ready to start laying some track. I have some switches that I purchased previously, and never thought that I of all people would be affected by the Atlas production problems. It is a nice issue to have, compared to the alternative of arch chair modeling.

Best wishes, Dave

[chuck geiger]

Great to see Dave, I'm stalled nothing yet, would love to work
on your crew, let me know if you need some help.

[Dave Schneider]

Thanks for the offer Chuck. My work crew is yours truly, and would love to benefit from your experience building great looking layouts. I typically work for a couple of hours in the evening after work and sometimes on the weekends. Send me a PM if you plan on being in Anchorage at some point and maybe we can get together.

Best wishes, Dave