PHOTOS BY PHIL MONAT
A leased Boston & Albany Berkshire 2-8-4 is living up to its rep- utation as it storms an eastbound freight past the depot at Ea- gle Bridge. These engines were the first of the Lima Superpower
Berkshires and were known for power and efficiency. Many of the backdrops on the Hoosac Valley layout are photos taken in the area during the fall when the hills explode with color.
50 Years of excellence: Dick Elwell’s Hoosac Valley
An HO scale layout that has stood the test of time/Tom Bartley, with photos by Phil Monat O
n the day Hurricane Irene hit New England, Dick Elwell was recalling the evening,
more
than a half century earlier when he stood outside a variety store in Pitts- field,
Massachusetts, his eye irre-
sistibly drawn to a Varney hopper car in the window. His memories return with that special clarity reserved for life’s transforming moments, when free choice and fateful decision intersect and put us, knowingly or not, on some lifetime path. Some junctures–a job of- fer, say, or marriage proposal–clearly carry the seeds of long-term life change. But, on that night in the 1950’s, as he eyed the Varney hopper, young Dick Elwell was already com- mitted to his lifetime employer, the New England Telephone Company and his mate for life, his wife Sandy. Like so many model railroaders who
have come to prominence for their ac- complishments in HO or N scale, Dick
42
enjoyed Lionel trains as a youngster. Unlike many of his brethren, he did not ride that early tinplate to a deep- seated passion for the hobby. Indeed, that Lionel rolling stock only occasion- ally traversed a bedroom layout in Dick’s high school years, when he was better known for exploits on the grid- iron, not the high iron of any scale. On that night, as he stood outside the Pittsfield store, his childhood memo- ries were already boxed up and out of sight in the small apartment they shared in a nearby town. But that hopper car, half the size of his boyhood trains, yet far more richly detailed, called to him with undeniable insistence. He bought the car, taking those irreversible first steps down the path to creating his world-class Hoosac Valley Railroad, which is now marking its golden anniversary as an iconic ex- ample of model railroading excellence. This version of the Hoosac Valley, of
course, is less than a decade old, the product of lovingly reassembled rem- nants of Dick’s original HVRR. Sal- vaged when the Elwells moved to their new home across town in 2002, the pieces from that 1961-vintage layout form the backbone of today’s incarna- tion, still efficiently supporting the railroad’s imagined narrative. A fic- tional bridge line, the HVRR traverses country its proprietor knows well: the rolling foothills of the Berkshire Moun- tains in western Massachusetts, a landscape of spectacular vistas and, in good times, industries large and small. Dick was born there, and he’s lived all his life amid the region’s ups and down, geographic as well as financial. Dick captures that world in HO and presents it to visitors even before they finish descending a wide stairway to his basement train room. Almost im- mediately, they see a world as vivid as any New England day in late fall, an
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