Beginning of the End, and a New Beginning.

Last train on the Thomas Sub crosses the Cumberland Narrows at Hinshaw.

Starting on Saturday, February 9, I began the process of dismantling the Western Maryland Western lines N scale layout.  I spent a few hours running two extras to clear all the rolling stock from the outer reaches of the railroad.  The first was a move up to Elkins Yard, where a couple of dozen hoppers were left.  These would be brought down the hill in two sections, with stops in Thomas and Luke to clear a few cars from those locations as well.

GP35 3580 ties up to a cut of hoppers in the first section of the last train from Elkins to Ridgeley.

The first section waits for a clear signal at Kerens.  Once clear, the train heads into the helix down to the main level.

First section arrives at Thomas, where another cut of cars will be added for the trip to Ridgeley.

Switching Thomas required venturing out on the high bridge.

Blocking together the last section at Thomas.

Heading down the mountain for the last time.

Across the high bridge then on to Shaw Siding

The view from Shaw looking west along the Thomas Sub toward the high bridge.

Arriving at the TO office at Shaw.  Once the train passes, the operator will pack up the paperwork and drive away for the last time.

Caboose clears Shaw.

Then Maryland Junction, after retrieving a flat car from the paper mill.

Crossing Wills Creek on the steel bridge, which will eventually be installed on a traveling module.

Arriving at Cumberland Station.

The concrete overpass at Greenwood.

And finally to the yard.

A short time later, the final train from Connellsville appeared on the "new" line along the Youghiougheny River.  Led by Laurel Valley locomotives 1803 and 1802.

Emerging from the east portal of Pinkerton Tunnel

Passing under the high bridge

At Thomas Road Bridge

The iconic bridge at Casselman Crossing, subject of at least one N Scale magazine article.

Casselman Crossing

Approaching Maryland Junction along the Potomac

Heading through Cumberland on the way to Ridgeley Yard

Arriving at Ridgeley.  All the rolling stock that remains is now in the yard.

The final work on Saturday was to remove the bridges, including Casselman Crossing, to pack them up for their new owner.

On Sunday, 2/10, the crew came down to Cambridge to help cut out the peninsula and move it to its new home in the Baltimore area.

Here's how it went down...  We got started around 10:30 a.m.  We dismantled North Junction to make room in the doorway, then the cutting began...

Before the move, Ed inspects the cuts, and verifies that all of the electrical connections were severed.

While I was hacking away at foam and sculptamold, Ed and Tim worked on boxing up the remaining rolling stock on the layout.  The last car to officially turn a wheel on the railroad was a B&O bay window caboose of no fixed prototype.

Work on detaching the several layers of track and wiring went on for about an hour.

Brian (Rock GP40) showed up around 11, then we went to lunch to power up before attempting to move the behemoth down the steps.  Plaza Tapatia was the weapon of choice, with ammunition provided by a couple of 32 oz Dos Equis Grandes.

There were no photos taken of the actual move.  It was all hands on deck.  We got it out of the room easily enough, and then turned it over to slide it down the steps, but the 64" wide bulbous end (Andy calls this the "Scrotum") simply wouldn't make it through the opening.  We had to heft it back up the steps twice to trim portions off.  Finally we removed the high bridge and the entire subroadbed that had supported the Shaw siding, and this allowed us to get Elvis out of the building.

We loaded the main section into my girlfriend's pick up, and all the remaining bits and pieces from the surgery into the cab, and headed across the great waters of the Chesapeake toward Eric's house near the airport.

Once at Eric's, we found the path to the basement to be relatively straight, but not without challenges.  We had to move the picnic table over to the steps from the car port so we could gain enough height to heft it over the railing and into the house.  We had to remove both the exterior door and basement door from their hinges to provide enough clearance.  Again, there wasn't a stray set of hands to work the camera, so you'll have to take the word of the witnesses.

With only inches to spare, it fit over the railing, under the carport ceiling, through the two doors, and down the steps.  Due to bad planning, Eric ended up at the bottom of the steps by himself as the full brunt of the peninsula went down the stairway.  Imagine standing out in center field by yourself trying to field a fly ball that happens to be as big as a submarine.

Anyway, we recovered, got it down the narrow aisle next to Sunnyside, and spun into position at rest on a temporary table.

The next challenge for Eric and the crew is to work out the elevation changes of the peninsula and marry them to the existing shelf layout along the wall in the background.

I appreciate the hard work and ingenuity that went into this move, and I'm now anxious to get the rest of the layout moved along to be stored or incorporated into another layout or three.  I also appreciate Eric generously offering to make a home for this favorite piece of work.  I'm looking forward to helping to tie in the scenery, and to running some Laurel Valley power up the Yough Valley once again.

Lee

Update: In transition.

Presently there are two Laurel Valley GP20's holding fort on the layout.  All of the other locomotives have been boxed up or sold.  The staging yards have been cleared out, the engine terminal is officially closed, and the lift bridge across the aisle has been permanently removed.  There's probably still about 200 freight cars scattered around the layout.  At some point I'll go down there and do a clean up detail to box up what's left.

I've started pulling some of the structures, some for re-use, some for sale.  At present, I believe I'll be using the Cumberland Station as the focal point of a OneTrak module following the BanTrak standards, and some of the other signature structures will be boxed up for further consideration.  Various scenic elements will also be salvaged as completely as possible, pending arrangements for reasonable storage.

Offers for various parts of the layout, assuming they can be salvaged intact, will be entertained.  It is possible to pull the yard in its entirety as a single unit, assuming it can be maneuvered down the stairs and out the door.  (It's 14' and change long x about 30")

The sections that can't be salvaged will be stripped of track and other valuable components, which will be set aside for future use or sold as needed.

The good news is that like my relationships with my kids and other people in my life, all of this is an opportunity for renewal. 

As has been previously discussed, there were many shortcomings that I discovered as construction and operations progressed, and I'm hoping some lessons learned should I ever feel compelled to take on such a large project again.

The biggest problem was my desire to fit 10 pounds of layout into a 5 pound room.  It would have been far more prudent, and probably in the end more satisfactory to acknowledge the limitations of the space available, and design something that was more manageable.  That would include time and budget, as well as construction and ops.

Anyway, I expect that by Spring 2013, the layout will be fully dismantled and dispensed with.  Going forward, I expect to continue to enjoy the hobby by helping out with the basement empires of a couple of close friends, possibly getting more active with the local N trak tribe, and at the very least, building dioramas to keep my fingers in the pie.

I'll also continue to write my N Scale Approach column for N Scale magazine, and I'll look forward to hearing from you about your model railroading projects.

End of the Line

It's been several months since I last posted progress on the Western Maryland Western Lines layout, and simply put, there hasn't been much to post.

Sadly, I've reached a point in my life where I have to put the toys away, and re-think my overall approach to life.  In the last few months, my marriage of 27+ years has unraveled, mostly by my own efforts, but the details of that aren't important.

What is important is the realization that all of the time and effort that went into building the layout was spent at the expense of my family.  I had always prided myself that since I was a kid, I've always had something to run a train on.  I bought our house with an eye specifically on that grand attic room that held so many possibilities.  Mostly, it turns out, it became a place for me to hide from the grim reality that there were some major holes in my personal life.

I'm still very proud of the work that went into it, and all the recognition I've gained through my years of posting progress on the various internet forums, and my writings here and in print in N Scale Magazine.  In recent months, though, I was becoming more and more aware of the down side of having such a complex design.  Time spent on maintenance began to outstrip time spent enjoying the layout, parts of it that I really enjoyed building had become a bit dusty and tired, and it got to be harder to find the energy to commit to renewing things and putting right the things I knew were wrong.  Quite frankly, I was thinking seriously about giving up on it for some time, and seeking out something a little simpler and more satisfying.

There's a life metaphor in there somewhere.

As of this writing, the layout still stands, fully populated with numerous trains.  Thousands of dollars of rolling stock, locomotives, structures and details, all sitting dormant in a dark room in a house I no longer live in.  My son doesn't want me to remove it, at least not yet.  He doesn't show much interest in operating it anymore, but I suppose it gives him a reminder of the time he and I spent in there.  He's now 16, so he'll only be around for a short time longer.

Maybe there will be an opportunity to have the guys over one more time to run a few trains, but I have a feeling the next time the crew comes down to Cambridge, they will be wielding sawsalls and wire nippers; storage tubs and bubble wrap.

I don't know if I'll ever attempt to undertake such a fully operational model railroad again.  Sharing a small house with a roommate means it certainly won't be happening in the near future, and a desire to get out and live life more fully means that time for such an effort will be limited.  Fortunately I have several good friends who have been able to balance life with their layouts, so I'm sure I can always find time to grab a throttle and a handful of car cards.  I'll also be glad to lend a hand to install a few switch machines or some scenery.

But I need to streamline my own life, scale it back, and make sure that I'm working as hard at making my life, and the lives of those I love, as satisfying as my experience with the layout was.

So if anyone wants to own a chunk of the Western Maryland, let me know.  I could probably use the money.

More than I can chew?

It's been a little over a month since I really spent much time working on the layout.  Yes, it's spring, and many of life's distractions tend to crop up this time of year.  Things like peeling paint on the house, yard work, and given my occupation in the building materials business, work work.

But I'm starting to feel a little overwhelmed again when it comes to this little project that I've been working on for lo these many years.  Sure, I'm making gradual progress building scenery, and there's always a twinge of excitement when I add a new piece of rolling stock, but right now, there's just something missing.

I suppose one of the shadows cast over the layout right now is a feeling that it will simply never be done.  Not in the sense that there is always going to be a little project here or there to tinker with or update...  But the whole thing will just never be in a state of completion.  There's a growing list of wiring issues, there's the whole urban landscape in Cumberland to engineer and install...  After close to 7 years, some of the earlier installations of track are starting to show their age.

The design is still satisfactory, the operation scheme is sound (although I'm still waiting to feel "ready" for a full on ops session - I built the yard going on 3 years ago, and the guy that's supposed to be my yard master has yet to see it in person), and I'm generally happy with the results of what I've done so far scenically.  But man.  All those trees I need to do!  All that track that needs cleaning after laying dormant for months at a time!  All those locomotive wheels that need burnishing!

It's enough to make one's head spin.

Perhaps it would be easier to deal with if I lived a little closer to the core group of guys that I operate with.  As noted previously, I'm a good two hours away from just about everyone in my crew.  I understand the challenge of getting down here, because it's a challenge for me to make the sessions that take place in Baltimore.  We've all got other things to do.  This compounds my frustration, because I feel like if they're going to make the trek down here, I have to have everything in tip top shape, adding pressure to get those electrical ghosts busted, or that odd piece of fascia cut and installed.

So I close the door, crack a beer, and turn on the ball game.

I've got a small group scheduled to visit on Sunday afternoon, and I'm in no way ready to run a full schedule of trains, but it will still be nice to have them over, maybe have some help getting a few things done, and otherwise pal around for a few hours to get the train room feeling a little more like an escape instead of a mandatory chore.

Or maybe we'll discuss how the damn thing can be dismantled and sold for parts.  Nah.  Before I know it, fall will be back and I'll have the itch again.  As much work as the layout can be, at least it doesn't have any hard and fast deadlines.

Farewell to the Atlas Forum

 

With the announcement that Atlas Model Railroad Co. will be shutting down its widely popular internet forums, I can't help but reflect on what an impact that particular discussion group had on my participation in the hobby.

The first project I posted on the Atlas Forum at any length about was the Chaffee Branch, which was supposed to become a part of my final layout design.  The forum challenged me to build better models, take better photos, and put a lot more thought into what I was doing.

As work on renovating the train room commenced, I switched my focus to the "Temporary Rig" layout, a simple 3' x 8' test bed that kept me entertained for a couple of years.  Looking back at that work, I can see how much my work needed improving.

Concurrent with that, I began constructing the Maryland Junction section of what would become the current permanent layout out in the garage.

After boring you all to tears with the glacial progress, I finally had the train room done, and was ready to move the work upstairs...



Gradually, from this chunk of foam and lumber, the layout grew into a functional model railroad, although a lot of it was still temporary construction, due to the fact that my son shared the room with me for a few years...

Note the twin bed and the tasteful Ravens banner over the yard lead...

Still, it was fun to have a few guys over to run trains and drink beer, most of whom were encountered here on the Atlas board.

Ultimately, the boy moved into other quarters, allowing me to finally build out the footprint that I had designed almost 7 years earlier...a task which has kept me occupied for almost three years now.

Along the way, I got to share the experience with some truly gifted modelers, and some genuinely awesome people.  Many of whom I'm proud to call friends...

with Randy Gustafson (Randgust) and Brian Carhart (RockGP40).

with Dr. Dave Vollmer

with Bernie Kempinski

with Max Magliaro and Jerry Britton

with David K. Smith, Dave Foxx, Phil Hoffman (KCSphil) and Tim Alder (sizemore).

with Dave Vollmer, Eric White (eric220), Ed Kapuscinski, Bob Bufkin, and Carl Tweedale...

I could go on...

The friendships I've developed starting from the Atlas board and on to the other lists I hang around on, have been extremely valuable to me both as a model railroader, as well as personally.

There have been some mighty good seeds sewn in the fertile soil Atlas provided. I think we'll see the quality of work, both by the manufacturers and by us, continue to improve and increase thanks to the community that was fostered on the A-Board.

 Atlas spawned most of the other on-line groups by being so open to the discussion of so many things.  The very notion that we could critique any manufacturer's goods, including their own, with such abandon was astounding.

For a long time, before we all started to migrate to our own modeling strata, Atlas was the go-to place for straight talk about the hits and misses of pretty much every product imaginable. 

Would Atlas be doing add on parts and lower ride heights without the forum?  Would ESM, Fox Valley or Exactrail be hitting the markets they're now hitting without the threads on Atlas that pushed the envelope?

While it's true we had our Skip, Fran AND Fun on Atlas, we also had Max Magliaro and Randy Gustafson, both of whom are outstanding modelers and problem solvers.  It will be interesting to see how the groupings work out as people look for other opportunities to share genuinely useful information and techniques.

I haven't spent much time on there in the last year or so, but there's no way I'd be doing the level of work I try to do now were it not for the Atlas Forum.  Godspeed, and I hope to see some of you out there in the ether somewhere.

Rome Revisited

Back in November I posted about the long journey that has been subjected to my model of the Cumberland, Maryland WM depot, which had languished for more than half a decade while I sputtered along doing other things.

Well, I'm happy to report, it's getting very near completion.  If you've been following along at home on the Railwire, or any of the other on-line street corners I hang out on, I apologize for the repetition.  But here's a brief history of the project.

First off, in 2000, I traded in all my dreams of a 1970s era Conrail layout for an Atlas Western Maryland SD35.  As validation of that decision, in January of that year, Model Railroader Magazine published plans for the WM's Cumberland depot, and in N scale, no less.  Immediately I began doodling a track plan that would require the services of this venerable old stack of bricks.

In 2003, I bravely filled a cart with brick sheet from Plastruct, and photocopied the plans several times to create cutting templates.  I busily scribed and snapped out dozens of window openings, then brick pilasters, and finally, glued together a stack of Evergreen Styrene strip to piece together the distinctive cornices of the building.  In addition to the MR drawings, I had a couple of old photos I had taken while in The Queen City back in 1989.  A few evenings and several #11 blades later, I had come up with this:

I had the exterior walls assembled, built a dormer and a chimney, and even the nifty vestibule from the waiting room to the platform.  I shot it all with a color that I thought was pretty good, then put it all aside to work on other projects on the layout.

Long story short, I went to retrieve it from the storage box I'd put it in, since I was now getting to the point where I was going to be ready to install the station on the layout.  As discussed in November, the windows were a big hang up.  After a couple of conversations on-line, and couple of files sent back and forth via email, the problem was solved by Rob Madson (a.k.a Lord Zox on the 'wire) who was just then tinkering with a Silhouette SD digital cutter.  He created beautiful windows from cover stock, in full color, no less, and self-adhesive!  It was a brilliantly simple solution to a problem that had dogged me for years.

I quickly had the exterior walls finished with the windows, then turned my attention to installing some interiors and LED lighting, which ended up taking a couple of weeks.  The interiors ended up being pretty elaborate, made necessary by the large windows.  The station would occupy a prominent location, highly visible from the aisle, so all that glass demanded to be fed with interior details.  Using some scrap styrene vertical window blinds, I whipped up a series of partitions based on the floor plans from the MR drawings, aided by a digital copy of the building's original blueprints.

In addition to wanting to show off something through the windows, I needed to repair some pretty serious warpage that had taken place while in storage.  The full wall to wall floors helped pull the walls back under control.  With the interior partitions situated, I made with the soldering pencil, and started adding lighting.

While I'll never win any awards for neatness, I was pretty happy with the results.  By poking the LEDs for the first floor through the ceiling, I had the anodes and cathodes sticking up far enough above the second floor ceiling that all the wiring could be confined in the attc, keeping that colorful rat's nest out of the view shed of the interior.  When I had it all rigged up, I dimmed the lights to see what I had...

At this point, I felt like I was on to something.  Gradually I added the last few major details, including the roof...

And the platform:

Then I got stuck again.  Dormers.  There are a dozen dormers on the roof of this thing.  Years ago, recall that I had build up a dormer, well, the face of the dormer anyway, and then set it aside.  It wasn't a bad little dormer, in fact, it looked mighty good!  But the idea of building a dozen of them from scratch was indeed a daunting consideration.

There are no fewer than 25 separate pieces used to construct this dormer.  Scratching them all out was out of the question.

Resin casting seemed like a logical thing to try.  I had bought a resin casting kit some years ago in anticipation of this very project.  But alas, time had taken its toll on the kit, and all of the resins and mold making material had long since turned to rock.  Once again, one of my colleagues on the Railwire, David K. Smith, provided the solution.  I sent the master dormer I had built up to NZT Products' world headquarters, and a few days later, I received a package in the mail that contained 12 perfectly identical dormers, sloped at just the right angle to give the roof its signature appearance.

 Now I was in the home stretch.  I painted up the dormers, finished the chimneys, and built up the shed roof over the platform, and finalized the installation of the interior exterior lighting..

Finally, I positioned it on the layout, and popped a couple of pictures.

Now I'm freed up to work on the details around the station, including the dramatic flood control channel of Wills Creek directly in front of the station.

So anyway, I'm happy to report to you that I've finally finished a project!

Living in the Modular Age...

So I picked up some of Walthers' N scale modular bits and pieces that were being clearanced out at $2.99 a pack.  These have been out for a while, so I'm sure more accomplished modelers than I have already commented on these kits, but having recently completed a structure using them, I feel the need to publish a couple of observations.

First, I should clarify that over the years that I've built a number of structures using Design Preservation Models' modular wall system, and despite the limited variety that's offered, I've had a lot of fun working with it.  Here's a couple of modest examples:

The commissary at the west end of Ridgeley Yard

The Westvaco Paper Warehouse at Luke

The Department of Public Works at Ridgeley

Hudson Motors Assembly Plant office, Delmarva Model Railroad Club

...among others.

Generally, the parts need a little work to put them together, but they're certainly "vanilla" enough be adapted into a variety of situations.

I think the size of the panels, the brick pilasters used to join them, and the variety of window/door arrangements are at the very least adequate.  The main feature I've come to appreciate, though, is the spacing of the loading dock doors.  Run in a simple alternating pattern, you can line up 40' boxcars and align them to the loading doors without uncoupling the cars.

So let's take a look at the Walthers' Modular system.
Again, there's a reasonable variety of doors and windows, but I can't help but wonder if they didn't design these things to be used by HO modelers.  The windows are modeled as double hung (top and bottom sashes that slide up and down in tracks along the side) but they're enormous.  The doorway openings are excessively tall, and even with the transoms, the doors appear much taller than they need to be.

While it's not unusual for a brick industrial building to have larger windows, they're not typically going to be double hung windows.  You'd be more likely to find large steel framed fixed windows, perhaps with a smaller section that's hinged so it can provide ventilation. This would be a more typical arrangement, shot in Columbia, Pa:

These are clearly double hung windows, but they measure approximately 3 feet wide by 6 feet tall, compared to the Walthers' windows, which tip the scales at a whopping four feet wide by 9 feet high.  Now, back in the day, I worked in a huge loft industrial building in Baltimore, which sported large banks of 4' x 8' double hung windows, three windows across.

The Candler Building in Baltimore

... But there were a LOT of them...and the building was HUGE and constructed in poured concrete with a "curtain wall" exterior, in other words, the outside wall isn't a load bearing wall (other than bearing its own weight).  The design used by Walthers', as well as by DPM, features individual windows with large expanses of brick and pilasters, which is more indicative of a load bearing wall, where the exterior wall is carrying the weight of the floor systems, roof system plus whatever's sitting on them.  From an engineering standpoint, this type of architecture is limited in how high it can be built, so I always gasp when I see model building stacked to 15 or 20 stories, because it just doesn't look right.

The dimensions between the floors of the modular kit are also a bit suspect.  While the first floor of a brick industrial structure will typically be 14 to 18' to accommodate trucks backing into the loading docks, and 20' to account for freight cars on an interior siding, the upper floors drop back to a lower height, perhaps 10 to 12 feet.  Walther's maintains the same floor heights all the way up, making the building more massive than might be realistic.  This is due to the interchangeability of the wall panels to serve as any floor's exterior.  DPM solved this problem quite simply, but it plum evades Uncle Wally.

I don't like the way the wall segments are broken down.  There are double wide sections offering dual windows on either side of a cast in brick pilaster, but no arrangements that are two stories tall.  Therefore, when you combine sections to make a two story (or more) building, you're going to have a lot of horizontal seams that you have to deal with.  (DPM provides 2-story upper walls, eliminating this problem, and the single story sections designed for your first floor feature some brick trim across the top to justify the break in the brick work.)

While the pilasters provided are cleverly designed to help lock the wall sections together, like the wall sections themselves, these parts only rise one story tall.  This leaves the modeler with even more horizontal joints in the brickwork that are a little trickier to line up and disguise than they need to be.  A trim set providing two story pilasters would allow for faster assembly, and also would strengthen the overall construction by spanning the joints in the walls.

I'm not crazy about the two cornices that are offered, either.  The peaked one just doesn't look right to my eye, and ends up creating a building that screams out "I built this with the Walthers' Modular System" more than it says, "Yeah, that's a plausible big industry".  I also don't like the angled brickwork that runs up the gables.  I'm sure this condition exists somewhere in nature, but I feel like a stepped parapet, or some other "false front" treatment would be more generic when it comes to masking a pitched roof.  The straight sections are nice, but there aren't enough of them in the kit if you're going for a large building, especially one that's not a background flat.  Same goes for the single story pilasters.  I used the system to build a flat behind my station, and came up two pilasters short.  DPM gives you an abundance of joinery in their offering, which again adds flexibility in terms of how you "cut up" your facades.

The unpainted structure behind the Cumberland Station is (obviously) whipped up from Walthers' Modulars.

The big killer, though, is the loading doors.  Since the architecture featured has the appearance of an early to mid 20th century building, you'd expect the doors to be logically spaced to receive 40' boxcars.  No dice.  If you put the loading doors, which are single wall sections, side by side, they're way too close together, and if you hop scotch them with brick blanks, they're too far apart.  They're too far apart for 50 footers, too, so pretty much anything you roll up to the loading docks is going to have to be uncoupled and spotted at the doors.  Not too big an inconvenience, I suppose, just one more thing on the stack of other small things that I regard as shortcomings of this system.

Now, just to prove that I can be a little bit fair minded, I'll say I really like the brick detail in the walls, the interlocking pilasters are a neat trick (although I'd like it better if they had some 2-story pilasters), and the system can work well for a large industrial complex, which Walthers has shown through the various industry kits they offer that utilize the system.  I also like that the system is cast in a reasonably opaque material, since I like to install interior lighting.  Although, all the joints and seams that result from the assembly design create a little more work when chasing down light leaks...  It should also be noted that the roof detail kit offered in this line is outstanding, with a variety of vents, tanks and equipment that really enhances the typical "top down" view most of us have when operating our trains.

I guess the biggest beef I have with the Walthers' system is that for all its various parts, it lacks the flexibility that is offered by the less extensive line provided by DPM.  With its giant windows, multiple small parts, odd door spacing and tall upper floors, you don't want to crowd too many of these together.  The parts also don't lend themselves to other types of buildings, such as offices near the factory, or structures you might find in a downtown area.  Also, lacking compatibility with other kits make the parts harder to kitbash into other configurations such as I've enjoyed doing with DPM parts.

I'm sure I can find other things to make with this system, but I'm afraid the attempt to make it too interchangeable makes it less flexible for multiple uses on a single layout.  The proportions seem to lend themselves to larger industries, but using the tiny sections to create a massive building would be time consuming and potentially maddening, and without using some additional bracing, it would end up getting wavy due to all the joints in the walls.