Don Janes’ White River Jct.
though I would have loved to model the passenger station area as well I just didn’t have the room to do that. The freight yard could serve as a visible staging yard and the engine terminal would be a great spot to display some of my Central Vermont and Canadian National locomotives. I had built a roundhouse/turntable scene on a 3′×4′ module a few years earlier and decided that I would build the entire yard and engine terminal around that. With the help of my good friend, George Dutka, we placed the module in many different locations un- til we came up with a spot that we de- cided would work best and the yard and engine servicing structures could be laid out to closely match the prototype. I used drawings and photos of White Riv- er Jct. from the 1950’s to get a general layout of the yard and engine terminal, then set about to lay the track and place the structures where they would best tie into the roundhouse module. I am not exactly a prototype modeler, but I try to add structures and scenic elements to each major scene to make it recognizable. In this case I designed the trackplan to closely represent the prototype, although selectively com- pressed, and added some structures that closely represent those that stood in a specific location in the scene.
The engine terminal The entire scene was built around the roundhouse/turntable module.
The roundhouse was built several years ago using South River Model Works components, and the turntable was built from a Custom Model Rail- roads kit. Even though the round- house is not an exact replica of the Central Vermont’s White River Junc- tion structure I felt it would serve the scene well. It has interior lighting and details inside that can be seen from the open doors. I built a machine shop on the rear instead of the side and an office was added to the side where crews could report to work.
Central Vermont No. 8093, an Alco S-2, is being serviced between shifts (above). In the background are a pair of new GP9’s that have just arrived from New London. A pair of CNR FA-1 units rest under the concrete coal dock at White River Junction (below).With the dieselization of the CV almost complete, the coal dock sees little use.
The prototype roundhouse had eight stalls and mine only had six so I added two more outside tracks at one end of the building. All the tracks leading to the turntable were laid out from the photos and diagrams I had and match the prototype plan quite closely. The biggest bonus for the entire scene was when Alkem Scale Models came out with their beautiful replica of the Cen- tral Vermont concrete coal tower that was based on the prototype that once stood there. It matches the prototype perfectly right down to the “Central
Fascia trackplan O
n my original layout in the adja- cent room I built three panels to control specific areas of the lay-
out. These worked fine but I had to keep coming back to them to line turnouts when a train was at the other end of the layout. This was not too bad for main- line trains but inconvenient when switching an industry that was not close to the panel. I decided that in the new section I would place the switch ma- chine and block toggles on local control panels built into the fascia at the loca- tion where the turnouts were located. This way I am always close to the train I am operating and I can see the actual track layout on the track layout diagram on the fascia. It also helps visiting oper- ators to locate the various tracks and turnouts. It is very simple and clean. I used white auto pin striping for all main- line track and yellow for all other tracks. The fascia was painted Canadian Na- tional Olive Green (to match the loco- motives of the era) and give a “CV look.” To date I am very pleased with this decision.–DON JANES
48 OCTOBER 2012
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