A fistful of photos

Won some snapshot photos taken at Binghampton, NY on eBay recently of Erie diesels. No date given. I'm always amazed at what one can find out there.

Layout work has been suspended with the start of the semester. I am hoping after this week when everything gets in a groove, I can turn some attention to the Harlem Transfer yard.

No.431 EMD SW-7 blt.11-50

No. 411 EMD NW-2 blt.1-48

No.1202 EMD GP-7 blt. 10-50

No.1202 EMD GP-7 blt. 10-50

No.431 EMD SW-7 blt. 11-50

 

 

 

Domino stack

 

After converting the backdrop pieces to regular modules, I have a stack of bench work that is ready to be installed in the layout room. My earlier calculations about how many of these I could use were incorrect. It turns out that I can use each one, and that they take care of all of the main modules needed! I only have to make some add on pieces to take care of the ends of the aisles for a turnback loop and the Bethlehem Steel complex. That's pretty darn amazing.

I'll need to install a ledger and a beam for the modules on the long west wall, and then make a few extra legs for the rest. My original idea was to make a platform to put the island modules on that would allow removal of the modules and leave a large work surface that is easily broken down for conversion to a guest room. I'll have to design this or maybe just get some more legs to start with. Having a large work surface would really be nice.

As you can see, it took all of about half a day before I started using one of the modules for an assembly surface for a small house project today. You can never have too much workspace!

Gift horse

So I hear a knock on the door early Saturday morning and open it to find several benchwork modules standing at attention waiting for a military review. Actually not even close to what happened, but it is what it looked like after I drove to Bastrop Friday afternoon, loaded them with help from donor Mike Barrett and unloaded by myself early the next morning. They are now upstairs in the layout room awaiting the next step.

These are the nomadic modules originally from David Barrow's Cat Mountain & Santa Fe that have found a new home as part of the Port of New York Railroad after Mike decided he was going to need to construct specialty bench work for his layout. (Thanks David and Mike!)

They will be used to form quite a bit of the bench work for my Hoboken Shore. Some of them (the blue ones) will be converted from backdrops to modules to make up at least 3/4 of the entire layout baseboards. I'll remove one of the sides of Luan plywood and mount using 2x ledgers on the walls and some sort of leg assembly for the islands.

It should only take a few hours to install. I'm thinking that I'll get them assembled, but I am still wanting to proceed with another pocket terminal or two before tackling the HBS track work. 

Maps Monday

While trolling through my HBS folder this weekend, I found a couple of maps I hadn't looked at in awhile. The first one is from 1874 showing the Hoboken waterfront before the arrival of the Hoboken Railroad Warehouse and Steamship Company (later the Hoboken Manufacturers Railroad Company, and then finally the Hoboken Shore Railroad). Elyssian Fields is quite prominent overlooking the river after the first organized baseball game was played there. The New York Knickerbocker Club was using this as their home field when they hosted the New York Nine in 1846. Several clubs used the facilities in the area before the last professional game was played in 1873. Sybyl's Cave is the only thing on the future property of the Stevens Castle and later the Stevens Institute of Technology that was founded in 1870.

The next one is from 1891 showing more development along the Hoboken shore. More railroad tracks can be seen now in Jersey City and a little bit of Weehawken Yard and docks can be seen in the upper right corner. It is striking how much like islands these strips of land look like surrounded by marshland. Those marshes are only fit for the railroads.

Fast forward to 1956 in this hand drafted map in the collection of the Hoboken Historical Society. The Stevens Institute dominates the center of the HBS line with the yard and Erie interchange to the right and the Port Authority piers to the left.

And finally a map from the Historic American Engineering Record part of the HABS/HAER/HALS Collection of the Library of Congress. I've found many great images of the HBS and Erie among others gems in this collection - it is well worth a visit. This is a nicely accurate map from 1933 and will be useful when figuring out which buildings I can accommodate on the layout and how.

I easily get lost for hours looking at maps, so viewer beware!

Previous HBS Versions

A viewer wrote in this week about his own Hoboken Shore Railroad project, which thrilled me to no end. Always nice to have fellow travelers on a journey. I will be posting some maps and any other stuff I come across over the next few days that might help him in his track planning stages.

So, I thought I'd post probably the least helpful items first (sorry). These previous versions just happened to be the first things I ran across and are for a former house with an 11'-0 x 15'-0 office space that I was going to use for my railroad room. We moved before I could even start, but it was a good exercise.

They are iterations of the same ideas that eventually carried over into the current, larger version. Those ideas are about modeling as much of the entire railroad as possible while trying to follow the geographic twists and turns in general ways. Much of this is accomplished pretty well even in this smaller size, which is a good lesson (something about size not mattering that much?). Another interesting realization gleaned from re-examining these, is that the form factor doesn't matter that much in terms of being able to fit a track plan into this regular shape or my current room configuration.

The constraints are going to occur at the same places - the corners and turnback loops. Straight track on straight bench work is a no-brainer, but working out where the corners fall in a track arrangement is something to really consider. There is probably an article in there about strategies for using corners and turnback loops cleverly. Let me know if anyone writes it before I get around to it...

An interesting note is that the viewer will be using a vertical staging device to replace Weehawken Yard similar to my planning to use one to stand in for Croxton Yard before it gets built out. Great minds, I guess. I'll dig up my vertical staging article from the LDJ at some point as well.

Anyway, more useful items to follow under 'separate cover.'

Opportunity strikes (and confuses things!)

It seems I will be acquiring some pre-built bench work modules and backdrops from the old Cat Mountain and Santa Fe via Mike Barrett of Black Bear Construction Co. that he won't be able to use for his own layout. I've got a bench work plan, and the modules I will receive account for about half of the modules needed. That is significant. There may even be some legs involved.

So, I scanned and pieced together a hand drawn (and latest) version of the Erie/Hoboken Shore portion of the PoNY from 2010. The HBS is the original impetus for being interested in the New York Harbor area, and it may be moved up a bit in the build schedule. I have been putting off because of possible moves and the largeness of the project, but the module jump start may change things.

The plan (click on for a larger view) does a couple of nice things that I enjoy very much. First, the track for the HBS is a very faithful representation of the prototype almost to scale. Every industry, spur, switch, spot, etc. appears. (I just noticed the Continental Baking label is out of place - it should be opposite of the Propeller Co.) This is the attraction to shortline railroads - the fact that you can model the whole thing. This is the same attraction the pocket terminals have to me as they are essentially the shortest of all shortlines in a sense. I'm a big picture, systems type of guy, so having the entirety of something allows me to see how all of the parts work together. 

The other nice bit of faithful reproduction this affords is that the twists and turns of the bench work follow the actual turns of the prototype track arrangements pretty well. The HBS Yard was positioned around a corner and there is a sweeping curve around Stevens Institute where the East Asiatic Co was located. Bethlehem Steel works out pretty slick, too, being that its track arrangement can be featured at the end of an aisle pretty close to how it was, too. The only sticky parts are the piers and how to accommodate them without cutting off the aisles.

Operating would entail from 1-8ish people when fully built. Croxton would keep 2 Erie yard goats and a yard master busy, 1 Erie yard master at Weehawken, 1 Erie transfer and main line engineer, then up to 3 HBS employees: 1 in the yard and two engineers.That is about as large a crew that is easily manageable anyway, and is another positive aspect of the plan.

I would also like to make the two aisles moveable for work or guest purposes. Casters may be enough, or maybe some of the modules will come apart for storage under the rest of the layout. Things get complicated quickly when they have to move.

I need to render the plan in a computer track planning application to assure it will actually work, but I am fairly confident that it is just a matter of nudging things one way or the other at this point to get it to work as I envision it at this point.

So what does this bit of fortune do for the PoNY build schedule? It may, indeed push up the HBS on the list. I would start with the Weehawken Yard and then do the HBS before getting to Croxton Yard maybe much later. There are some details to be worked out all over with the track placements, but it is for the most part ready to start. At the very least, I should install the acquired modules instead of just stacking them in a corner. (I could always use the extra work surface.)

Outside factors will probably determine if this or another pocket terminal sees the most attention in the near future. I've got some real world projects that may or may not allow me some good working time the rest of the summer.

Table Top Terminal

Author's collection

I found this at a local used book store several years ago pre-dating (and maybe piquing?) my interest in the railroad action around New York Harbor. Interesting notes include explanation of the cut in the middle to keep the car floats from sticking out into the river too far and that its motive power, Harlem Transfer Alco-GE-IR boxcab #2, operated there in 1959.

The plan appears to be the same one in the December 22, 1898 issue of Engineering News found on Phil M Golden's Harlem Transfer page on his excellent web site with the same North arrow mistake (it is pointing South).

So why do I post this now? Well, it might be the next pocket terminal I construct. I'm leaning towards doing it rather than the Erie 28th mainly because other people have already done the 28th St yard (David Ramos and Vince Lee). The 28th is still in the running, though. It may come down to a coin flip, or there may be a dark horse that sneaks in at the last minute surprising me and everyone.

Author's collection