Retro

When I was in my teens, I scratchbuilt a lot of HO cars with cardboard and balsa, more or less along the lines of the MR Dollar Car series in the 1950s. Very few have survived -- they were too flimsy for serious operation on any kind of layout, and since they were brush painted with really horrible Walthers decals, they didn't deserve to. One of my late efforts, apparently done on a college vacation, was this PFE reefer, built following an article by John W Ascher in the April 1967 MR:

This is pretty beat-up and too flimsy to run, so it sits in a display case. However, in the early 1980s, I was looking back fondly on some of those early total scratchbuilding efforts. At the time, I had access to a table saw and found some scrap 2x4s at a construction site. The wheels started turning, and I began to mass-produce wood hopper car bodies. I finished something like eight or a dozen of these, and not long ago I ran across a stash of unfinished versions from this project.

My idea at the time was to build a unit train of PRR H39 hoppers like those I'd seen in the 1960s on the Northeast Corridor. Here is one of the finished ones I found, long packed away:

There were some good ideas there, but there were also some flaws in my thinking. The biggest one was that I could use dummy couplers, since it was a unit train. Nope -- more recently, companies like Walthers have had the same bad idea on coal gons and such. Dummy couplers are too fussy to mess with, even on a unit train. So I had to back off and replace them with Kadee 158s.

The other thing I found was that plastic and brass cars are engineered so they basically run when you put them on the track. With dimensional tolerances much greater in this project, I eventually discovered that things would happen like wheels scraping on the hopper bottoms. Here's where I had to carve out recesses so the car would actually run:

The partially finished bodies I found will give an idea of what I did. I started with a piece of scrap 2x4 and basically rough-cut away everything that didn't look like a PRR H39:

I think this one must have been a reject from the production line, since I can see a big discrepancy, but you get the idea. I would set up the saw for each set of cuts and run a whole bunch of wood blocks through, so this was true mass production.

Then I would finish the shapes of the hopper bottoms with a sanding disk in a Dremel, smooth out the sides, apply several coats of sanding sealer, and mark out the ribs. I also drilled holes in the top to take low-temperature alloy to bring the car to NMRA weight.

The center sill was brass square tubing, also filled with low-temp alloy. The bolsters were standard Northeastern wood, that you could still get at the hobby shop then:

Here you can see the process a little farther along, with wood shapes added for the ribs:

Although I did finish eight or a dozen of these, it looks like I stopped before I finished all of them. I'm not sure if you can even get the same wood shapes these days, but now that I look these over, I could probably finish them with styrene shapes. Hmm.

I should probably dig out some of the finished ones, for that matter, and put them into operation. The finished one here, with NMRA weight built in and upgraded with Kadees, is now in my operating fleet.

Gulash-izing My Scenery

I keep rewatching my whole Emery Gulash DVD collection. (I wore out my VHS Penn Central set, then wore out my first DVD Penn Cemtral set -- luckily, Green Frog ran a sale on the remastered PCs a few years ago.) One of the things that always inspires me is the foreground details he includes in his shots.

One frequent foreground anchor he uses is mounds of ballast and dirt. These are easy and inexpensive to include on layout scenery. Here's an example of some I recently spruced up, with other urban details:

The burned-out car is a cheapo Bachmann that's been worked over with a Dremel and some paint. I got the idea from Peter Feigenbaum.

He also often has shots of his railfan buddies, and he likes photos of railroad trucks and vans:

I always liked the shots he took of the Maumee River swing bridge in Toledo, especially the collection of relay cases, battery boxes, and so forth on one bank. Here's my version:

Here's a shot of the Maumee River relay cases I found on the web:

Here's a shot not directly inspired by Emery, but it shows where I'm "dirting in" the Bollinger Edgerly B&M-New Haven tower kit at Manhattan Transfer:

The Detroit Michigan Central Station

Along with my fellow bloggers John R and Ralph V, I'm a big fan of Emery Gulash DVDs, most of which are available from Green Frog, though he's done some for other producers. One of his very common locations was the Detroit Michigan Central station between the years 1955 to 1980 or so. I've never been to Detroit, almost never to Michigan, but it's worth pointing out that about 1960, Detroit was the fourth-largest city in the US. The Michigan Central station, completed in 1914, was in many ways comparable to New York's two great stations, with electrified operation and reached by underwater tunnels. Architecturally, it was in the same beaux-arts style. I didn't pay any attention to it until I began to watch Gulash DVDs.

Here's a postcard view from the front, probably in the 1940s:

Researching the station, I discovered that the skyscraper section was never finished on the inside, with original plans for a hotel or office space never completed. The space was eventually used for railroad offices, but some floors were never occupied. The building is currently being restored by a developer, but it's likely it won't ever be fully occupied at any time.

Here's an overall view from the track side, showing the low Bush train sheds:

Lincoln Bush was an engineer who pioneered the use of reinforced concrete in railroad structures. As Chief Engineer of the Lackawanna, he developed a concrete train shed that had a trough over the tracks that would allow smoke from locomotives to pass out of the shed. The design was used for Lackawanna stations in Hoboken, Scranton, and Buffalo, as well as for the Jersey Central terminal in Jersey City, Chicago Union Station, and the Detroit Michigan Central station as shown here. There are probably others.

Here's a cropped enlargement from the postcard view above:

Here is a cross section drawing of a Bush train shed that I found on the web:

The station has other good focal points. Just east of the station is the 15th St Tower. This view from a postcard shows the tower behind one of the original electric locos that operated through the Detroit River Tunnels, which opened in connection with the new station:

There are some good shots in Gulash DVDs of trackage in the 15th St area. Here is part of a Sanborn map showing the viaduct from which Gulash sometimes shot:

East of the tower and viaduct was the entry to the Detroit River Tunnels. Before the tunnels were completed, the main line went further downtown to a station on the riverfront. Trackage was diverted to go around the tunnel portals, but over the years, it was gradually removed. The trackage to the left in the postcard view below seems to have lasted into the 1960s, and at least one Gulash shot shows trackage on the east side being removed from the area around the 15th St tower.

Here is a contemporary view of the Detroit River Tunnel portals. Pretty much all other trackage is now gone.

How I Operate

With two operations-related posts on blogs I follow (here and here), I thought I'd give my own variation on this theme. I use the JMRI computer-based switchlist generator. I don't use any other type of train order, since I operate solo, and I basically work a switchlist in as many sessions as I need to get it done.

Here is the JMRI switchlist for a typical job, the Manhattan Transfer station switcher:

Here is a view of the Manhattan Transfer station area. The whole Manhattan Transfer yard-station here is 10 tracks, 9 of which are yard or station tracks. They are numbered 1 to 9 starting from the one in the foreground:

For the purposes of building switchlists, the tracks are divided into two conceptual "stations". Tracks 1 and 2 (subdivided with A to designate particular locations) as well as the spurs for Railway Express and Forley Lithography are "Manhattan Transfer - 1". Tracks 4 through 9 are yard tracks and designated just "Manhattan Transfer". (Tracks 2 and 3 are kept clear and not used as car destinations.)

Most of the station switcher's work is moving baggage-express equipment from the destination spurs and designated platform locations to and from the yard. Here are some scenes from working the switchlist shown above:

I use the Kadee 308 under-the-track magnet. I use a yellow stripe on the rail to identify its location. These are maybe 80% reliable and need the couplers to be well adjusted. McHenrys and Accumates don't work well with them.

Restoration Job

One thing I keep my eye out for at swap meets is old Ambroid and Northeastern wood kits. Some of them were in the Ambroid 1 of 5000 series, although Northeastern eventually reissued many of these under its own brand. I'm not particular! I like to restore them and, as part of the restoration, bring them up to current operating standards, including Kadee couplers and NMRA weight.

I recently found an Ambroid ACL Hopper Bottom Phosphate Car. The announcement ad from the October 1960 MR is at left. The price in 1960 was $5.25, trucks included (but not couplers). These were premium kits and, at $5.25, not cheap. An inflation calculator I found on the web said that an item that cost $5.25 in 1960 would be $42.10 today -- which is actually about the current cost of a premium freight car, though there's really no comparison in what's now available. We've come a long way.

Naturally, I wasn't going to get anything like a $5.25 car kit from my allowance. I was 12 in 1960, and my carbuilding skills weren't anything up to building it anyhow. Still, I could aspire! Restoring items like this helps me stay in touch with my 12-year-old self. I recently subscribed to the MR Digital Archive (which is where I got the Ambroid ad), and reading the old issues of MR from those days reminds me, among other things, of how big a struggle I had with my parents when they wanted me to drop the hobby. Luckily, the trains won, worse distractions lost out. Good outcome, but my parents would never have agreed.

Here's the phosphate car as I found it at the most recent Simi Valley swap meet. I think the guy wanted 50 cents for it.

It had been competently assembled, though pretty beat-up. No decals were with it. Most important, it hadn't been weighted. It took me until my early 20s to realize that if you build a wood craftsman kit, you had to add enough weight for it to track well.

Just for fun, I ran it up and down behind an RS-3 -- couldn't wait to get back to age 12!

The car was way too light, and the couplers drooped. Someone had replaced what was there originally with some McHenrys, but in addition, although the Ambroid plastic coupler pocket looked sort of like Kadee, it really didn't work the same, so the boxes and McHenrys both had to go. The whole thing was the typical coupler-kludge you find on cars like these:

I was able to pry off one of the lower sides and get some weights out of my junk box to bring it up to something more like NMRA weight. When I pried the side off, some of the channel pieces went south, and I meant to replace them with styrene shapes anyhow, so I cleaned off the whole lower side. I got rid of the original coupler pockets and replaced them with old-style Kadee boxes.

All that's mostly left will be replacing a ladder and some wire parts and paint.

Good Youtube For PC-Early Conrail Fans

I found this on Youtube the other day, an hour on the PC-early Conrail Columbus & Newark Division, which is joint PC-B&O track. Well worth a look for PC-Conrail fans.

Atlas Yellowbox

Ralph V has an excellent post on how he tracked down an Atlas yellowbox RS-3. This site has a thorough explanation and history of Atlas-Kato yellowbox locos.

I picked up a couple of undecorated RS-3s about 1985 (more than 30 years ago now!) when they first came out. If the list price at the time was $47.00, I probably got them at discount. Oddly, I still have them in my stash and haven't gotten to them. I did also get a couple of undecorated RSD-4/5s, which I promptly did as Santa Fe zebra stripe units -- these are in the line for DCC conversion.

Looking at the photos on the HO Scale Trains Resource site, I can see that the paint on the decorated models wasn't even up to Athearn standards of the time, which is probably why I got undecorated models only. We've sure made progress.

I seem to have been more enthusiastic about the RS-11s, which came out the same year as the RS-3s. Here's the undecorated unit that I painted and detailed for New Haven:

The only available decals were Champ, which had a too-small NH logo. I did three units in the c 1960 N&W scheme. (The original Atlas rendition of the N&W Pevler blue didn't float my boat.) So far, I've been able to dig out two from what I'd packed over two moves. These have been DCC-ed:

I pulled out an undecorated unit from my stash just a couple of months ago. I'd originally intended to do it as PRR, but Atlas has done both 1950s and 1960s versions of this as later Atlas Classic units, which I have, so I did this one as PC. It is waiting for a Leslie horn and couplers:

The Atlas factory paint improved on the 1989 runs. Here's a New Haven, now with DCC:

The Atlas yellowbox locos are some of the best hobby items we've ever had. Installing DCC is a less than $20 upgrade that makes them even better. Here is an NCE DA-SR drop-in board on a yellowbox GP7:

I didn't install lights in this one, because I redid the headlights with Detail Associates Gyralite detail. This will probably always operate as a mid-consist loco.

Think about this: when I seriously started in the hobby in the 1960s, 30-year old items were pretty much not usable -- with the exception of a few Varney car kits, you didn't get to products that you could use on a 1960s layout until you reached the post-WWII period and Athearn metal, but even locos from the late 1940s were basically unusable. Now, 30-year old items like Atlas yellowbox are perfectly acceptable and can easily be upgraded to current standards.

Track Cleaning Extra At Tennessee Pass

My efforts to vacuum the layout, clean things up, align and level the roadbed, and clean the track have reached Tennesee Pass, the summit of the layout. Here is an Athearn U50 with my Revell track cleaning car and an A-Line slider:

The whole outfit is two Kato locos with the Athearn U50. They all have DCC and work very well together. The sight reminds me a little of pushing a snowplow in the age of steam:

The track here is at eye level. Here is the Tennessee Pass station, a Builders in Scale kit from 25 years ago:

The scenery needs rework. Next step will be to shim up a dip in the track at East Portal, which is the other end of the tunnel here:

Mail And Express Service And Main Line Upgrades

Still working toward getting a regular mail and express train into operation, here is how I'm looking to bring it up. For reference, here is the track plan:

I basically have three destinations for mail and express cars. The biggest is the Railway Express Agency building in Manhattan Transfer:

This is a DPM Cuttings Scissor factory with some tweaks and a Bar Mills sign. Baggage-express cars can also be spotted on the platforms 1 and 2 in the Manhattan Transfer station:

The other destination is the Railway Express building in Zenith (actually East Zenith on the trackplan):

This is a Thomas Yorke G Street Warehouse kit with a Bar Mills sign.

What I intend to do for the next step in mail and express operation is to run a full M&E train from Manhattan Transfer to Zenith. I would expect this to have about 20 cars. It would run over the upper tier of the main via Tennessee Pass, East Portal, and Woollett to Zenith, where it would drop one or two cars for the REA depot and possibly the Zenith passenger station platform. Then it would reverse and run back to Manhattan Transfer via the same route, where it would be at least partly reassembled.

We had a lot of heating and plumbing work in the basement in 2015, and I'm still cleaning up the layout from this. In addition, with the layout now 20 years old, cork roadbed has dried out, warped, etc, and this causes problems with track that's code 70 on much of the upper tier. (On top of that, I didn't pay as much attention to leveling and alignment as I should have when I built the layout.) So part of the effort in getting things going will be to red-do some of the ballast and alignment:

You can see where I've raised and shimmed the track in the foreground to eliminate a low spot. The ballast is Arizona Rock & Mineral D&RGW red cinders.

Yet More Holiday Mail And Express

One thing I like about sharing interests with fellow modelers is the inspiration it gives me to make progress on my own layout! Blogger John R has kept me going on mail and express. As I mentioned in my last post, I've been gathering mail and express equipment and have started some switching operation of this equipment in my passenger terminal, but I still have to bite the bullet and get a full train in operation from Manhattan Transfer to Zenith. But at least I can post about the equipment I have and in fact push toward my goal in the process!

Here are some more baggage and express cars. First, a couple of Walthers steel REX reefers. These had collapsible ice bunkers and ran in dry service as well as produce.

The Brekina PRR van somehow screams Emery Gulash!

A couple of Rock Island cars:

A Roundhouse Burlington BX. I had to do quite a bit to "housebreak" this one, but it now works well with the rest of my equipment:

Another Roundhouse, this one a special run from the Illinois Central historical group. I had to do the same with this as the Burlington car.

I've posted before on my JC Models PRR cars, many of which are head-end. I've also done some Red Ball cars. In the 1960s, JC, Red Ball, and Walthers were pretty much all you could find. The express reefer has been upgraded with new paint and details a couple of times:

Although I rode the PRR NEC a lot in the 1960s going back and forth to school, these were very rare by then. I did weather this one to reflect what I often saw.