Canton, Highlandtown and Fells Point - Compact layout

[conrailthomas519]

since were on the subject, I got one.....Debbie Does Doughnuts! This doughnut shop at one time was located in Ft. Collins, Co.   Their gimmick was doughnuts & coffee served by topless waitresses.

[basementcalling]

I heard Hyman's got busted.   

But only that one time. 

So there is a prototype for this figure 8 mini layout? Do tell where.

[wm3798]

East Baltimore.
Canton, Highlandtown and Fell's Point are adjoining neighborhoods, bordered more or less by Eastern Avenue on the north, Ponca Street to the east, President Street to the west and the harbor on the south.

It was long a "mixed use" neighborhood, with thousands of rowhouses occupied by the people who worked the wharves, warehouses, can factories, and breweries that were scattered between the taverns and Catholic churches.  (I'll need to figure out where to work in a model of St. Casimir's!)

I worked in Highlandtown for the local advertising rag right out of college, probably about 5 years after the National Brewing Company closed its brewery at O'Donnell and Conkling streets. (Now the offending mini storage topped by the one-eyed trademark of the no longer local beer).  I would spend my lunch hours roaming the streets looking for old loading docks, street trackage and the few remaining vestiges of the industrial nature of the neighborhoods.









Those shots are from about 1987, and are of the last train to operate on Boston Street.  You younger people may recognize the Can Company.  At one time, there were hundreds of good paying jobs there.  Now there are hundreds of surly hipsters running cash registers.

The nexus of the railroading was a few blocks to the north at Bayview Yards, one operated by the PRR/PC/CR/NS, the other by the B&O/Chessie/CSX.  The Canton Railroad was an industrial line that did a lot of the local switching, but both PRR and B&O had an extensive network of street trackage that served all kinds of industry throughout the area around the harbor.

Street trackage in Fells Point.  Most of this has been pulled up to prevent drunks from Towson from twisting their ankles as they stagger to their taxis.



At one time the PRR's line down Aliceanna Street was the main line into Baltimore.  President Lincoln passed through this way after his inauguration in 1861 on his way to Washington.  President Street Station still stands, but is now surrounded by high rise kitsch, and hard to recognize as a railroad terminal.  This was the site of the first bloodshed of the Civil War, predating Ft. Sumter by a few days.  When I was growing up, PC still used this as downtown freight station, and it had a huge train shed behind it that extended several blocks.  Armco Steel's chromium plant was just south of here, and I recall watching tank cars being switched in and out of there from the roof of the Candler Building, where I worked when I was in high school.



Another highlight of the area is Penn Mary yard, which used be the marshaling yard for the big GM plant in Baltimore.  The Canton RR is now based there, and receives its interchange from CSX and NS here.  Still a very busy yard.  The B&O line to Sparrows Point runs through here, and in the 1970s was the route of the WM's stone trains from Bittinger Quarry near Hanover to the Bethlehem Steel mill at the point.


I caught these beauties in the summer of 1986 at Penn Mary.

Canton RR back in the day.

And more recently.  The line is now run by the State DOT, and sports the flashy state flag graphics. 


This is the bridge that Ed mentioned in his post early on in this thread, with the grand old Crown Cork and Seal plant (abandoned) in the background.  Eastern Avenue passes just in front of that in an underpass beneath both of the rail lines in the picture.  I really dig this "close quarters" style of scenery, which lends itself well to the smaller layouts we've been seeing in these pages lately.

So yeah, that's the basis of what I'm doing.

Lee

[mu26aeh]

The B&O line to Sparrows Point runs through here, and in the 1970s was the route of the WM's stone trains from Bittinger Quarry near Hanover to the Bethlehem Steel mill at the point.

So where do the stone trains run now ?  I am planning on loosely modelling the CSX Hanover Sub and am figuring on having Bittinger represented on one end of the layout.

[Leggy]

That's awesome!

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Crown Cork and Seal isn't entirely abandoned. There are a bunch of smaller firms in there using it for, actually, I don't know what.

I shot this across the street and talked to one of the security guards for a bit.


http://railfanning.kapuscinski.net/2012/06/a-great-saturday-morning-in-east-baltimore/

That construction you see in the foreground are a bunch of, you guessed it... townhouses. They've now blocked that shot, so I'm glad I got it when I did.

[basementcalling]

Baltimore definitely has more than a fair share of model friendly areas to focus on. Based on that bridge picture I don't feel like my quick sketched suggestion plan was too far off. In fact it didn't have ENOUGH tracks under the bridge.   

[wm3798]

So where do the stone trains run now ?  I am planning on loosely modelling the CSX Hanover Sub and am figuring on having Bittinger represented on one end of the layout.

Well, if it's current era, I think there's still a train the brings stone down to Hanover Jct. on the B&O near Jessup.  There's no longer a need for limestone for steel making at Sparrows Point, since after several mergers and takeovers, Bethlehem Steel is no more... the mill is being cut up for scrap and the property being considered for some sort of redevelopment.   At this point, the stone train may be the only scheduled train that still uses the old WM.  All the locals and turns dried up along with the industrial base of the corridor.

The stone train was a neat operation.  Originally stone hoppers were ferried across the harbor from Port Covington.  By the early 1960s, WM trains operated over the PRR/PC via Fulton Jct to Bayview, then to Sparrows Point.  When Chessie the Knife ruined everything, the trains moved over to the B&O Belt Line via Howard Street Tunnel to B&O Bayview, then on down.

Lee

[jpec]

Nothing says professional operator like a sharp pin stripe suit 

It's like the man, when asked why he showed up for his vasectomy in a tuxedo, replied "well, if I'm gonna be impotent,  I wanted to look impotent"...

[tom mann]

It's like the man, when asked why he showed up for his vasectomy in a tuxedo, replied "well, if I'm gonna be impotent,  I wanted to look impotent"...

Talk about a misunderstanding of what a vasectomy is/does!

[DKS]

Talk about a misunderstanding of what a vasectomy is/does!

Seriously! I didn't think people still harbored that old misconception...

[Dave V]

I had my pipes cut back in 2006, and I'm plenty potent! 

[DKS]

I had my pipes cut back in 2006, and I'm plenty potent! 

1979. Yep, that long ago. No problems, no regrets!

[wm3798]

... and no trail... 

Okay... so today I put the risers down for the figure 8 up and over, and skim coated it with some Sculptamold to get it ready for cork.

I'll put some pictures up tomorrow.  Y'all go discuss your plumbing elsewhere...

Lee

[Rich_S]

Looking forward to the pictures, of the trackwork that is, not the plumbing