NYC Hudson Valley Lines

[Brian M]

Time for an update.  Nothing too sexy, unless of course empty wood frames and chunks of foam do it for you. 

I recently finished off the frame for the blob end loop.  Kind of looks like it could be the start of a small Star Destroyer or something...  This is 49" wide in order to accommodate two mainline tracks of roughly 21" and 22.5", give or take a half inch.  Kind of depends on what I end up doing for the little strip of scenery between the edge of the layout and the outside track.  I want to be sure there's room to prevent equipment from taking a big dive off the layout should a derailment happen.




One night I had some company while working with the garage door open.  I tried to get him to help out, but he just twitched an antenna at me.


During the last work session I hosted, two of my friends helped get two sectional frames built, one straight forward rectangular one (24" by 60"), and one funky corner (in the foreground, that's kind of 24" wide by 40-ish inches long).


Finally, this past weekend I was able to build an "X" style frame.  This will minimize the length of the 2 foot wide isle width near the end loop, and let the isle expand back out to 3 feet.


And I started to get foam on the two module frames (I still need to fill in the gap along the right side where the modules meet).


-Brian.

[Brian M]

More end loop progress.

I cut the foam for the end loop with a handy compass made out of a piece of Masonite, and with my knife in one end, I was able to make multiple passes through the foam, pulling on the Masonite to drag the knife blade along.




Which gave me a nice finished edge in a perfect half circle:


And here it is once I glued the foam onto the wood frame and got it set up on the benchwork:


I've also been spending time this past weekend adding some shelves to the benchwork under the endloop so that I can store my magazines.  Which will give the added bonus of stabilizing the end of the peninsula with all the weight.

-Brian.

[Carolina Northern]

Nice solution to a common problem.

[Dave V]

I did the same for the peninsula for my RGS.

[Brian M]

I'm still in the process of getting the track plan created in XTrackCAD, and transferring what I have envisioned in my mind into a track plan that I can share with people.  But one thing that I have also worked on to help guide my thinking is creating a basic track plan via "line art" in good 'ole Powerpoint (the design tool most favored by engineers everywhere  ).  This process has helped me think about what tracks are important to consider for the various towns and industries.  I'm not taking the approach of trying to model this as a true 4 track mainline, since that would require more staging yard space than one could ever hope to have and more equipment than I could ever buy and just more work than it is worth.  This is more like a 2 track mainline with spots of 4 tracks where either there were actually 6 tracks (such as the area north of Spuyten Duyvil) or where the scene might look a little off with just 2 tracks (such as passing through Garrison where 2 tracks duck into a tunnel and 2 tracks pass around the outside of the tunnel).  Of course, the vast majority of the Hudson Division has been a 2 track mainline for so long that most people probably wouldn't flinch at seeing just 2 tracks pass through Garrison, but where it makes sense, I still want to project the image of late 40's mainline railroading along the New York Central.

So I thought I'd share the line art version of the track plan that I've developed so far.  There are spots where since I knew I wasn't going to model all 4 (or 6) mainline tracks, I didn't include them in my drawing.  Also, there were a lot more tracks within the Standard Brands complex, so I might add more to what I've got so far, depending on how the actual space limitations work out with that spot on the layout.

Working from north to south, we have Garrison:


Peekskill:


Standard Brands:


Croton-Harmon:


and Spuyten Duyvil:



Obviously Croton-Harmon is greatly reduced from the prototype, but that complex was so vast, I never intended on trying to model it to any level of detail.  Mostly I want to offer the operational interest of the freight yard and the mail and express cars coming on and off some of the passenger trains.  And finally, the big piece of what's currently missing from here is the main freight yard at what I'm calling "72nd St Yard".  I'll eventually get to it, but I've been having a difficult time trying to figure out how to design the yard on paper to include all the aspects I desire.  I think it will evolve over time as I play around with track arrangements in the part of the room that will contain the yard.

-Brian.

[Brian M]

Time for an update....

The primary focus during the last couple of work sessions has been to get the backdrops for both sides of the peninsula built.  Nothing too groundbreaking, but hanging about 15 feet worth of hardboard does feel like a nice accomplishment.  Although this is only one side.  Still need to get the opposite side hung and painted.  I'll be adding in hills leading up to the backdrop, so any gaps between the layout and the backdrop that you might see will eventually get covered up.  Here are a couple of pictures from before I painted the sky blue:





And after the first coat went on:


I also have been playing with the mainline track alignments for the area that will contain the Standard Brands industrial complex and the mainline leading into Peekskill.  My goal is to have a slight curve around the industrial complex to give the mainline a nice big, flowing S curve through the whole group of layout sections leading into the 180 degree end loop at the end of the peninsula.  I still have some adjustments that I'll probably make to the tracks, but here are some shots of my initial cut at it:







-Brian.

[Brian M]

The latest issue of the NYCentral Modeler, an online magazine published by the NYC Historical Society, is online, and includes an article I wrote about doing the scenery work as a result of the pipe leak.  So basically it is a rehash of the early posts of this build thread, with a lot of the same pictures.  But it is fun to have the layout featured in a different format and venue.  Here's a direct link to the issue, with my article starting on page 86:
https://nycshs.files.wordpress.com/2018/12/nycentralmodeler_2019_1q.pfd_.pdf

-Brian.

[Cajonpassfan]

Nice. And a very nice magazine, thanks for the link!
Otto K.

[wmcbride]

I just discovered your thread. What a great layout -- and great modeling and construction!

[Brian M]

Thanks for the compliments, guys.

-Brian.

[Brian M]

Update time....

A few weeks ago, my wife said that she thought the door going down to the basement should have a New York Central sign on it, and wondered if I had one that would be appropriate.  Well, of course I did, so I added it to the door with her encouragement.  I know some wives frown on (and might even ban) anything railroad related making its way out of the dedicated train room and into the rest of the house.  Thankfully, I don't have that issue.  Usually it is the opposite, I have to come up with some rail related item to fit a decorating theme that my wife might have an idea for.



In layout news, I hosted a work session yesterday, which always makes for some nice progress.  First off, we got the backdrop painted.  Since this side of the layout is approaching the City, I wanted to incorporate a fade from blue sky up above to a smoggy gray down low.  Since this was just the first coat, it will need some touching up, but I'm quite happy with how it came out.







The other thing that was accomplished is we cut and added the plywood tops to the layout sections in these pictures.

On the other side of the central peninsula, I've been roughing in the track and playing around with how I might lay out the large industrial area that was the Standard Brands factory.  The company took up quite a large amount of land, so there's no way I can model it completely in just a 2 foot wide section of layout.  It was large enough to warrant a dedicated switcher.  This is a great aerial picture of the plant from 1951 that is my main reference for thinking about how to model this (the mainline cuts diagonally across the image, from the top left corner):


So I'm going to do my best to capture of feel of it and the bit that was closest to the mainline.  The buildings are all just stand-ins and belong to a club module I built, but they give me an idea of what's possible in the dedicated space.  The mainline tracks are the two to the right in these pictures, with a couple of interchange tracks next to the mainline where the NYC would set out and pickup cars for the plant.  I think even in my very compressed and truncated version, this will offer a nice amount of switching and could keep an operator busy for a little while.






-Brian.

[dougnelson]

I looked this area up on Google Earth.  It has been pretty much wiped clean of all the factory buildings and what looks like company housing.  What did they make at these plants?

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Down here in Baltimore there was a vinegar plant that was known as Standard Brands.

[Point353]

What did they make at these plants?

Yeast, whiskey, gin, vodka and vinegar.

[Brian M]

Yeah, most of these buildings are gone.  As far as I can tell (using Street View), there are 3 still standing, which I've marked with red arrows.



According to Wiki, Standard Brands was formed in 1929 when JP Morgan merged a handful of food product companies.  The location in Peekskill was one of Fleischmann's yeast plants, and one of the buildings in the picture still has a Fleischmann's sign on its roof (the original picture is much higher resolution, so I can zoom way in to see various details).  I've also spotted a silver vinegar car in this picture, as well as seeing a vinegar car sitting on a siding in Peekskill in a different picture.  I looked on ebay and found that Micro-Trains and E-R Models have made such cars in the past, some even lettered for Standard Brands.  So I'll obviously need to pick up some of those at some point...

-Brian.