NYC Hudson Valley Lines

[dougnelson]

Yeast, whiskey, gin, vodka and vinegar.

Must have smell great there.

[Brian M]

The first half of last week I wasn't feeling very motivated to get down in the basement.  I was actually feeling a little overwhelmed with the range of tasks and the number of tasks that I have to do.  By Thursday night, I decided that I'd go and do something just to get something done.  I decided to turn my attention back to a bit of scenery work, since it is something that I really enjoy doing.

The Hudson Highlands is a very dramatic and impressive stretch of the Hudson River Valley, where the river gets narrow and the mountains get tall (at least, by New York standards).  There wasn't a lot of room for a railroad in this area, so the right of way was blasted out of the hillsides that run right down to the river, resulting in plenty of rocky cuts and three short tunnels.  Other areas had rock fill added to create a roadbed.  Prior to the installation of CTC, this part of the railroad was also an operational bottleneck, as the four track main "shrank" down to two tracks between the towns of Peekskill and Garrison, a distance of about 10 miles.

Working north from Peekskill, the first tunnel encountered is called Flat Rock tunnel, and there is a cut through a hill just south of the tunnel.  Makes for a very model railroad-y scene.  I created the basic land forms for the cut and the tunnel at least 7 years ago, but hadn't glued them down.  So I set about working on the cut last Thursday, fitting together the various plaster rock walls that I've cast.  I glued the river-side hill in place over the weekend, and last night I worked on the hill on the east side of the tracks, adding another layer of foam to it to give it some more height to what I had originally created years ago.  I then glued these foam bits down.

Enough jabbering, here are the pictures.  First, looking to the north:


A higher elevation shot, also looking to the north:


And two overall shots:




Next steps will be to start gluing the plaster rocks in place and applying the first layer of Sculptamold.  After having looked at these loose bits of foam for so many years, it feels quite nice to be making the scene a bit more defined.

-Brian.

[Specter3]

I am really looking forward to this build. I am from Hopewell Jct and worked as a lifeguard at FDR in Yorktown. I spent lots of time hanging down on the river with friends including dragging a keg up to the top of the tunnel at Breakneck with the lifeguards and hanging out all night with the trains going under us.

[Brian M]

I am really looking forward to this build. I am from Hopewell Jct and worked as a lifeguard at FDR in Yorktown. I spent lots of time hanging down on the river with friends including dragging a keg up to the top of the tunnel at Breakneck with the lifeguards and hanging out all night with the trains going under us.

Nice.  My uncle that would take me and my cousins to the river to watch trains lives in Hopewell Jct.  That was also a time when Conrail would run a local over the Beacon line every couple of days, and they would often switch the lumber yard in Hopewell, which we would watch.  More than once we would be doing stuff in his yard and hear the train blowing for a grade crossing and jump in the car to go find him.  Good times....

-Brian.

[Brian M]

Additional progress has been made over the last couple of days in the form of gluing the plaster rocks onto the hill and the cut.  The larger spaces between rocks will get filled with Sculptamold to blend everything together, and I'll fill in the joints between adjacent rocks with more plaster.







-Brian.

[Brian M]

Lately I've been continuing work on my rock outcroppings, namely painting them.  Thankfully, the last time I painted a rock wall, I took notes as to what colors I used and whether I applied a wash, a drybrush, or a full coat of paint.  Capturing the correct coloring of the rocks in this particular part of New York is important to me, as there is so much rock it becomes an important scenic element.  Here are some progress pictures (I didn't load pictures from every painting step, so some a skipped here).  The last picture is where things currently stand, and I'm trying to decide if I'm satisfied with it or if I have more fussing to do.  But in general, I'm pretty happy with where this is at, and my next step will be to fill in the areas between the rocks with Sculptamold.









I also have a work session with my crew tomorrow, so some more backdrop painting and benchwork progress should be made.

-Brian.

[Brian M]

Huh...last update to this was back in March.  I suppose it's time for one.

The most recent progress that has been made is that my work crew came over last weekend and we built up the section of layout that will contain Spuyten Duyvil, along with the benchwork to support it.  This weekend I glued the foam on it:


And started to get an idea of the track arrangement:


(Sorry for the poor lighting, need to get some additional light in this part of the room)



The track at the lower left will be the freight line that crosses onto the northern end of Manhattan, and the two tracks in the upper right will be the line the passenger trains take to head to GCT.  Considering that building this part of the railroad has been high on my wish list for quite some time, it is very satisfying to be getting to do so.  I still have plenty of additional work to do to finalize the track alignments, but this at least shows the concept will work.  And, yes, the curve through the wye was very tight on the prototype, so I've gone with a roughly 16" radius curve.  No passenger cars allowed on that track!

-Brian.

[Brian M]

Thanks to my 5 year old daughter pushing me to work on some scenery, I've been making some progress recently on a section of the Hudson Highlands scene.  My daughter really likes to paint, and has been asking me to show her how to paint the river, so I've been giving her a paint brush to have at it.  The vast majority of 5 year olds probably could not be trusted to paint in such a careful manner, but with her, I'm never worried that she'll end up painting the wrong color in the wrong spot or just glob paint all over the place.  She actually helps me make progress, which is pretty sweet.  I do go in and touch up and blend things after she's finished an area.  Once we get done with one primary task, she asks what comes next, so in order to keep ahead of her, I've been working on adding Sculptamold to areas that have needed it to get all of the land-forms blended together. 



And last night after dinner, she helped me get the banks of the river painted.  She's also been asking me to do some grass, so we'll have to keep pushing on the various layers before we're there, but at least she has a good idea of what the end result will be.






This is a test shot of a scene that I'm really looking forward to photographing with a train heading up the river.  Still lots of work to get there, but I really like how things are coming along in this area.



-Brian.

[Cajonpassfan]

How wonderful! And the layout is cool, too
Otto K.

[wm3798]

Really nice work.

[Brian M]

Thank you both, I appreciate the compliments.

-Brian.

[Brian M]

Gee, if I wait another 11 days, I could make it exactly two years since I last posted anything to this thread.  I wonder what's been happening in the last two years?   

I have been quite envious of the modelers out there that have used the last couple of years to really make big advances on their layouts.  I've had a little bit of the opposite experience.  Between switching to working from home (a completely different way of work for me), hosting various learning "pods" with our daughter and some of her friends, etc, etc, there were long stretches of time where I never had the energy to make it into the basement to work on the layout.  I also didn't help my efforts on the Hudson Valley Lines by deciding to work on a small switching layout, which was satisfying in that it has given me a way to actually run some trains over the last couple of years while operating sessions have been put on hold.  Finally, my Hudson Valley Lines progress has been slowed by my decision to use Fast Tracks #8 turnouts on the main and my push to build 6 turnouts for one interlocking.  While I had built #6 turnouts in the past, with the longer geometry of the #8's, I've been spending a lot of time fine tuning the frog points to minimize "wheel drop", where the fine tread wheels will tend to fall down into the gap just in front of the frog point.  So admittingly, my modeling time and efforts have been a little scattered.

Well this is all changing since Christmas day, when I received an invitation to make a presentation at the next New York Central Historical Society's annual convention, which is being held in Albany in May (hopefully the covid situation will be under much better control and won't force the convention to get cancelled).  I offered that I could do an overview of my layout, what I'm building, why, etc., which was readily accepted by the gentleman charged with organizing the presentations.  He said he thought it would be great to have a presentation that is very much unlike any of the other presentations lined up.  So in order to have something worth showing in photographs, I'm giving myself a goal of getting basic scenery done, trackwork done, and adding at least mockups of buildings covering 20' worth of the layout.  This area stretches from the southern end of the Hudson Highlands up to the small town of Garrison, which is the northern end of my modeling territory before the tracks duck into staging.

Here are some current status pictures of the area to help document where things stand as of the beginning of the year.  We'll see how this area looks in a little under 5 months, but hopefully much more interesting than the current state!  Pictures work from south to north:











Thanks for reading,
Brian.

[Specter3]

Love that stretch!

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[Cajonpassfan]

Great to see you back, Brian!
Nothing like a little upcoming convention commitment to get "inspired"!
Can't wait to see your progress; I love proto-based scenes done well. Good luck,
Otto

[bbussey]

Commitments to presentations or open houses are great motivators to getting layout work done.