power on so we could monitor for po- tential short circuits. These could easi- ly be caused by connecting feeders to the wrong bus wire. When we were fin- ished, I had two large boxes full of scrap wire. Still, I have never looked back. I love it!
Milk runs and King Coal As mentioned above, I designed the NYW&B for operation, and it has lived up to
that goal. It supports way
freights, local passenger trains, inter- change via two staging yards as well as a car float operation, and the arrival and departure of long distance freight and passenger trains. For open houses, the layout also supports continuous running with a choice of eight different trains.
A relatively complex operating pat- tern centers on the dairy industry, which was still strongly rail-oriented in the Northeast in the mid-1950’s. A southbound local passenger train stops at several milk platforms along the right-of-way where dairy farmers leave cans of raw milk. There are three such platforms actually modeled on the lay- out, at Springfield Junction, North Cornwall, and South Cornwall. The cans are loaded into the train’s rail- way-owned milk reefer. At Putnam Hills, the milk reefer is dropped off at the Quaker Hills Creamery for pro- cessing. While there, it picks up a dairy-company milk reefer filled with yesterday’s bottles of pasteurized milk and cream for retail trade distributors in New York City and heads out. Later on, the northbound local stops
at the creamery, drops off an empty dairy-company reefer and picks up the railway-owned milk reefer, which by now is loaded with empty cans to take back to the milk platforms along the route.
The way freight always picks up
empty, freshly-iced reefers at Thomp- son Ice. One is spotted at the cream- ery for loading cheese and ice cream. Another reefer, loaded with whey, is picked up at the creamery and trun- dled off to the Federal Whey plant at the end of the South Cornwall branch. While there, one or two reefers loaded with whey-based products are picked up. In another cycle a single produce- laden reefer in a through freight from Boston can arrive at Troy Yard, be taken in a way freight to Ilzeb Wine & Produce at North Cornwall for off- loading, then taken to Thompson Ice for re-icing. Finally, it can be sent to the Quaker Hills Creamery at Putnam Hills for loading. If it is carrying dairy prod- ucts, it goes back to Troy in yet anoth- er way freight, where it is reassigned to a manifest freight to Boston, New Haven or New York City. If its load is whey, it goes to the Federal Whey plant for off-loading, where it remains until loaded with whey products. It then is taken back to Troy to be put on a train to its destination. As mentioned earlier, the NYW&B’s steamers all burn anthracite coal. The anthracite, from Pennsylvania, arrives on NYW&B property via hopper cars on the Port Hudson car float. These coal loads are moved to Troy Yard in
the twice-daily transfer freight where two are set aside for local delivery to retailers and the rest are coupled into through freights to be taken to coaling station sites along the routes. We run with a four-to-one fast clock, so operating sessions take around three real hours. During this time, crews will have run two local passen- ger trains in opposite directions, stop- ping at milk platforms and Quaker Hills Creamery in addition to the sta- tion stops. Meanwhile, the Port Hud- son box cab has off-loaded several cars from the car float into the float yard, assembled them into a transfer freight, delivered them to Troy, and picked up a half-dozen cars to take back to Port Hudson. Then there are the two trains that the way freight has encountered on its rounds, the Grand Isle Limited, with CNR, NYC, and New Haven equipment, speeding off to New Haven; and a through freight bound from Troy to New York City.
Conclusions Today’s S scale modeling situation is better than ever. Despite my eclectic motive power preferences and my good fortune to be at the right place and time to acquire what I wanted, there’s a large variety of currently-available ready-to-run plastic and brass equip- ment, track products, and structure kits that make it easy to do a lot in S. There’s also a lot of stuff in people’s shelves and drawers that they’ll never get to, so it pays to develop a network for trading, selling and buying purpos- es. Most of what I have is based on products that are currently produced or can still be found.
2012 National Narrow Gauge Con- vention My layout will be open as part of the tours for the 2012 National Narrow Gauge convention, which is being held in Bellevue, Washington, September 12- 15 at the Meydenbauer Convention Center. The convention features layout open houses (including several fine standard gauge railroads), a manufac- turers’ display and sales room, special museum train runs, and a full slate of presentations covering railroad history, modeling techniques useful for all scales and gauges, and other topics, along with the opportunity to get together with modelers from all over the globe. Bring something along for the display room, too. The “contests” at these conventions are by popular vote, but their main pur- pose is to provide one more place where we can share our work. The website,
www.seattle2012.com,
A forklift operator checks his work orders at the Quaker Hill Creamery in Putnam Hills. Here cans of raw milk from local farms are unloaded onto the platform for further processing.
RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN
has all the information you need. See you there.
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