NYC Hudson Valley Lines

[Brian M]

Whoa. Very cool!!!

There's been some great coverage of the area recently in the PC Post and the R&LHS: http://rlhs.org/Publications/History/

I grew up in a P Company household, but have to admit it's some cool railroad (although I maintain that NYC's steam power was ugh-lee!).

@Ed Kapuscinski, thanks for the link, I'll have to check that out.

And, ignoring your comment on NYC steam, which is not a fight I'm going to get into right now  , I think this might be a little easier for you to digest...


I grew up watching Conrail and FL-9's hauling Metro-North and Amtrak along the Hudson, so I can't resist the temptation of collecting equipment from the 80's to imagine my younger self watching trains with my uncle and cousin again.

[Brian M]

That would commonly be called a spit in coastal waters.  Normally formed behind some sort of structure (like that dock) that changes water flow speed and causes sediment to fall out of suspension.  Could also be an eroding headland - in which case the natural feature is eroding away from the dock.  hard to tell with just one image.

@Philip H, thanks for answering my question.  There are a lot of these along the river, so it is handy knowing what to call them.

Nice scene and I love the water - looks dead on correct.

I've always loved NYC's steam locos. Just tough looking and unique.  Hopefully Kato does a 20th Century Limited set next. While we won't get a Niagara one could only hope.

Thanks!  I appreciate that you guys feel like I'm capturing the look, since that's one of the highest forms of complements in the model world.

Agree, especially when they hung feedwater heaters above the headlights on the Mohawks...they really take on a burly look.  Yeah, I hope that Kato does a Century next, too.  Would be great to get a new Hudson model...

[Ed Kapuscinski]

@Ed Kapuscinski, thanks for the link, I'll have to check that out.

And, ignoring your comment on NYC steam, which is not a fight I'm going to get into right now  , I think this might be a little easier for you to digest...


I grew up watching Conrail and FL-9's hauling Metro-North and Amtrak along the Hudson, so I can't resist the temptation of collecting equipment from the 80's to imagine my younger self watching trains with my uncle and cousin again.

Haha. Oh my yes.

That reminds me, have you seen the videos of "1990s Railfan" on Youtube?
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmfb7x5sg9xNhbXmG63l6Ig

You'll love em.

[Brian M]

Ed,
You're right, those are some great videos (other than the random shots from inside his car and a tripod would have been nice...).  But still, brings back some good memories.  Luckily for my wallet, no body has made the appropriate Bombardier coaches for Metro-North, which saved me from buying more FL-9's than I did...

Thanks for the link.

-Brian.

[Brian M]

Made some more progress; painted a base coat for the ground and smoothed out most of the river base.  There's still a little more smoothing I'd like to do to it before I start painting the water.  I also have more coloring of the rock outcroppings, as well as removing some of the sculptamold bits that got on the rocks when I set them and made the small rise.  Next up will be a layer of sifted dirt and ground foam on the land behind the tracks.

[Brian M]

Scenery work has progressed some more; I've added the first layer of ground cover to most of the land areas, and got the water base painted.





I also sifted and crushed some rock from the Hudson that my Dad had sent me years ago.  In looking at pictures, it seems like most of the time, the spits and other various landforms don't get the same rip-rap rock treatment as the spots where there isn't much other land between the track and the water.  Which makes sense, as the railroad wouldn't go through the effort to put down rip-rap in places that don't need protection.  So to create that look, my plan is to transition from rip-rap to the sifted rock mix around the shores of the spit.  Felt a little bit like I was practicing a type of Japanese rock garden meditation as I pulled small bits of dried vegetation and rocks that were too big out of the container with a pair of tweezers.  Good thing I'm patient....



Next up will be gluing down the rip-rap and some of this sifted rock to start building up the shoreline before working on the water.  I decided to buy some of the new-ish Woodland Scenics water tint colors and a bottle of their Realistic Water to try these out, versus the many layers of gloss coat that I used on my first round of water years ago.  I was never fully satisfied with how the rock/water interface came out with using mushy sculptamold and gloss gel along the causeway, so I'm curious to see if I can get a better result with a pour of the Realistic Water, where my hope is that the rocks will look much more like they're submerged.

[Brian M]

The first layer of rip-rap has been glued down, along with the smaller rock mix for the shore of the spit.  After I have all of the rocks fully glued down, I'll apply some weathering to blend the colors a little and also give the rocks shades of brown/gray closest to the water line.


Since I was a bit of a pausing point for the above layout section, and I'm still waiting on the insurance company and the restoration company to get their numbers worked out to repair the basement wall and ceiling, I decided to pull the next section of layout off and start doing scenery work on it.  This one is just a transition to the causeway, so there isn't much to it.

A couple nights ago I put down the sculptamold base, and last night I added a layer of lightweight spackle to the river bed areas to smooth that out before I sand it and paint it:


Then I had to put the two sections next to each other to see how well the overall scene will flow:


By the time the basement is finally fixed, I figure I'll end up with another 4 feet worth of scenery mostly done, which will basically double the amount of scenery I've had on the layout for the last 6 or so years.  Progress is a wonderful thing...

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Yeah man!

[Brian M]

Ed,
I recently came across the videos of Jack Kuiphoff on YouTube.  Have you seen his videos?  He has a ton of good stuff on his page.  Plenty of PC and early Conrail in various parts of the Northeast.  Here's a link to a great set of shots of early Conrail freights along the Hudson Division, including a piggy back train, something I have never seen pictures or video of running on the eastern shore of the river.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_Aqm33nqMo

One can get stuck there for a while, but at least most of his videos are short....

-Brian.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Ed,
I recently came across the videos of Jack Kuiphoff on YouTube.  Have you seen his videos?  He has a ton of good stuff on his page.  Plenty of PC and early Conrail in various parts of the Northeast.  Here's a link to a great set of shots of early Conrail freights along the Hudson Division, including a piggy back train, something I have never seen pictures or video of running on the eastern shore of the river.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_Aqm33nqMo

One can get stuck there for a while, but at least most of his videos are short....

-Brian.

Oh yeah. I love hist stuff.

[Brian M]

About time for an update....

The basement reconstruction finally got done about 7 weeks ago.  The reconstruction company guys were freaked out about trying to repaint the sky blue on the wall, worried they wouldn't be able to match it, even though I had the exact can of paint.  Whatever, I told them not to worry about it, I had painted the whole basement myself, so a little 2.5 foot wide patch didn't bother me.

I did get a bunch of work done on the section of causeway that, as of my last update, was just foam and sculptamold:


Part way through putting down rip-rap on this one, I ran out of rock.  So I spent time crushing a bunch more out of my Hudson River rock supply (more mindful rock work...crush, crush, crush, collect pieces, repeat):


When I got around to actually putting the layout back together, these two sections had a big enough gap in the back that I figured I probably wouldn't be able to just ignore it and be happy:


After debating it for a while, I decided that I'd add plywood ends between these sections and the adjoining sections that I'll be moving on to with scenery work.  I'm following the FreeMo approach, hoping that the end plates will let me get the sections really tight.  So then any cracks in the scenery are much smaller and easier to hide with ground cover.  If I knew 100% that I wouldn't need to take the layout apart again for a long time, I'd just run the scenery right over the gaps, but it seems like there's always a reason I need to take a piece or two out.  I also decided that I wanted to square off the edges of the section with the spit on it, something I did on the causeway section and then wished I had done on the spit section.  So, that's why the lightweight spackle is on the river.  Since I'm adding the plywood end plates, I'll have to move some of the layout crossmembers that support the ends of each section, so it is a bit of two steps back and one step forward.  But I'll end up with an end product that I'm happier with.


Next up will be covering the end plates with scenery, blending my various scenery patches in with the stuff I've already done, and weathering the rip-rap along the shore line.  Oh, and getting the sections to actually fit back in the layout.  And finally, as if all of that wasn't enough, I am starting to think about expanding the layout and what I want to build.  Right now, I am heavily leaning towards a very compressed geography of going from Peekskill, to Croton, to Spuyten Duyvil, and then to a West Side freight line yard in Manhattan, like 60th St.  So I started to play with putting down tape, basic track shapes, and a train to see what might fit for a very small version of Croton Yard, which would be on the right side of this peninsula:


-Brian.

[Brian M]

Made a big step towards expansion last night when I moved the return loop section of my staging yard into a closet.  When I added the blob for the return loop onto the staging yard back in the fall, I hadn't intentionally built it to fit into the closet, so I was quite happy that it fit in the opening with a quarter inch to spare before it would hit the pillar.  I just had to pull off the right most support riser on the benchwork in order to slide the yard section into the closet from the right hand side, then up over the benchwork, and down onto the other risers.  The trick will be remembering how I got it in there and doing the reverse to take it out if we ever move....

Leading up to the move last night, I had pulled out some shelving and repainted the whole closet, it had previously been painted in a bright yellow by the prior owner of the house.

These shots show the end loop in its new location:





And here's an overall view of this corner of the basement.  I have another 4 feet worth of staging yard to put into the closet that will fill the opening on the right hand side, and then the idea is to put a pass through hole in the wall (the closet goes all the way back to the right), where the tracks will get out into the main room and run along the wall with the window on it to connect to the existing part of the layout.  This will give me another 10 feet worth of mainline, and enough space to add the town of Garrison.


What's helpful about Garrison is that there is a short tunnel just north of the train station, where (up until the late 50's or early 60's when the NYC installed CTC) two tracks used to go through the tunnel and two tracks used to pass through a cut to the east side of the tunnel.  So this will give me a good scenic element to help hide the tracks going into the wall.  Here's a picture of this area I took in 2011 (mid-day Metro North heading to Poughkeepsie):


-Brian.

[Kuchler10]

What is the height of your benchwork, Brian? It looks like a great viewing angle, but I don't envy you trying to reach the track against the wall on that balloon loop and the yard tracks closest to it.

[Brian M]

The track height is 51" above the floor.  I don't envy me, either.  I can reach those back tracks on a step ladder, which isn't ideal, but it works.  But, in theory, I won't have to get to them very often, mostly just for cleaning the track.  Thankfully, I'm still young-ish and flexible.  If we're still in this same house when those two characteristics don't apply, then I'll have to do something different for that balloon track, like put it on a drop down leaf.

-Brian.

[Brian M]

What better day to host the first "official" layout building work session than Father's Day?  And, with the much needed rain that we had most of the day yesterday, we didn't have to feel guilty about not doing yard work or some other such house work chore.  With the help of three of my model railroader friends, we were able to go from this:


to this:


Isn't much to look at, but this is the structure that will support the one peninsula in my track plan.  There will be a lower level for staging (passenger trains to and from Manhattan), and the upper level of the peninsula will contain a very condensed Croton-Harmon on one side and loop around to an area just south of Peekskill on the opposite side.  Next up is tying this in with the existing layout section and adding the cross members that the layout modules will sit on.

-Brian.