Dick Elwell’s Hoosac Valley
also pooled their skills, imagination and signature handiwork to reinforce the enduring success and mutual en- joyment of their respective railroads. Not surprisingly, their layouts reflect a level of craftsmanship consistent with these modelers’ outsized reputations. For its part, the Hoosac Valley Rail- road itself has immeasurably benefit- ted from the ministrations of many tal- ented craftsmen. Dick credits each of them
for contributions that have
A Berkshire-powered freight is making track speed as it races across the skewed truss bridge over the Sawmill River, passing the Martin Machine Co. Meanwhile, the Branchville local is about to spot a flat car at Martin as it drifts past a depot on the branch (above). The leased B&A Berkshire (below) gets a green signal and starts past the tower at Essex Junc- tion as some new F3’s in a new HV paint scheme head west. Essex Junction is the western end of the Hoosac Valley, functioning as a staging yard. Dick went ahead and fully scenicked it, however, since it is one of the first things you see as you enter the layout room.
Telephones mounted below the fascia throughout the layout keep road crews in touch with the dispatcher.
Very few folks, of course, show up simply to operate. Over the years, these model railroading veterans have
helped establish the Hoosac Valley’s reputation. In turn, they insist Dick has the requisite skills to accomplish the layout’s renowned level of excel- lence entirely on his own. “It’s all him,” Bert Sacco says of the HVRR we see to- day. “It’s not the work of 14 other guys.” Still, Dick maintains few modelers– and he does not count himself among them–possess the kind of all-round skills a truly extraordinary layout de- mands. Most get by with a little help from their friends, bringing others into a world that once existed as one man’s vision. For Dick, that onetime vision sits framed in a shadow box on the wall be- side the basement stairs. A single, im- mobile piece of storied rolling stock, a Varney hopper, greets every visitor to the famous Hoosac Valley Railroad, silently symbolizing five decades of model railroad excellence.
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JANUARY 2012
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