The Car Shop

While I've been focused on building the railroad South from Kendall, I've been ignoring the North end of the yard.  The North end is where the engine terminal is located and other than roughing in the turntable, I haven't done much. The terminal also includes a roundhouse, coaling tower, water tower and a separate car shop building.  The Southport car shop building is a three-bay, wood sided structure with full clerestory roofs and large windows running the length of the building. Through selective compression, I reduced the building from a three-bay structure to two-bays, and chopped about one-third off its length. Even at that, it's a big building.

The photo shows the footprint of the structure with two RF-16s on the near track. The track is embedded through the building and I used gray mat board to represent a concrete floor.

I have only seen one photo of the car shop building, and a its a poorly lit B&W photo. I had no dimensions to work with and basically scaled what I could from the photos.  The original structure had vertical wood sheathing sort like a double sheathed box car.  I couldn't discern any colors from the old photo, but I actually know someone who worked as a hostler at Southport in the late '50s and was told that the buildings were either painted gray or had weathered to that color.

The photo shows the visible side wall and one of the end walls temporarily supported in place. I used Northeastern scribed siding for the walls and stained them with an India ink alcohol solution. I cut repetitive end marks on the siding boards to suggest a pattern of how the boards were nailed to the side of the building. This turned out rather well. The building wall is 24-ft tall and the no single siding board would be  that long.  While the stained wood siding looked good, it needed to be enhanced to look like faded paint on wood siding.  I recently read an article in the Short Line and Narrow Gauge Gazette that used pastels to represent the faded paint, so I thought I would give it a try.

The photo shown different shades of gray pastels coloring individual boards to represent faded wood siding where most of the paint was gone. I was pleased with the end result.

I applied different shades of pastel by starting at where the siding board ends and dragging the pastel along the board the logic being that individual boards will weather differently.

The structure is far from complete but it's off to a good start.

A Visitor Comes to the Elmira Branch

I recently installed a WOW sound decoder with Keep Alive in a friend’s South Wind Harriman 2-8-0. He purchased the engine second hand and the previous owner had modified it into a Rio Grande looking 2-8-0. The Rio grande never had anything that even remotely looked an SP 2-8-0 especially one with a Vanderbilt tender. Oh well! My friend wants it back in SP livery.

I installed the decoder, keep alive unit, and speaker in the smoke box and directed the sound up the stack. There was adequate room for the electronics without having to remove any of the boiler weight. It seemed to work out really well and except for the backup light no wires extend between the cab and tender.  I was thoroughly impressed with the WOW decoder and really liked the Keep Alive feature because it requires that you actually apply the brakes when you need to stop the engine.  The sound is really incredible as well.  A bass reflex speaker would make it even better, but I was limited to what would fit in the smokebox.

While I had the smoke box front removed, I put the headlight back to where it was on the SP version (centered on the smoke box front), and removed as much of the Rio Grande Lettering as I could.

I doubt that SP 2-8-0s ever ran on the Pennsy, but this little engine sure looked good hauling a cut of reefers across Seeley Creek. As for me, any future steamers running in the Elmira Branch will get the WOW sound decoders. I’m not sure that I’ll go that direction with diesels yet.  I’m rather firmly entrenched in the Tsunami camp right now.

More Layout Progress

With the drop leaf section complete and access to the layout room facilitated, I'm now focused on extending the benchwork and trackway around the room. In this view, the section of benchwork to the right of the access way will be the Town of Columbia Crossroads. A short passing siding will be located here along with sidings serving with an elevator and a feed mil. A frame combination station is also located here and that should provide some action for the local setting out and picking up cars.  In the era that I model, no passenger service will occur here.

After coming down the 1% grade from Kendall, the grade flattens out here and drops again between Columbia Crossroads and Troy where it will descend further much of the way beyond.

This view offers a panorama of this half of the layout room. To the left side of the room is the Seeley Creek Bridge and Kendall Tower with the entirety of Southport Yard extending to the far corner of the room. On the right is the benchwork for what will be “X-Roads” incorporating my new standard for construction using a 3/4” thick plywood base.  No more Homasote! I use cork for the trackway on top of the plywood and that seems to work well.

There are no electrical connections across the drop leaf bridge. Layout power is fed overhead above the suspended ceiling and dropped down to the layout’s benchwork using the chase behind the coves formed in each corner to eliminate the 90-degree corner bend. That way I didn’t have to cut any walls or fish wires between them.