The Little Railroad That Did


Presenta- tion Part of my overall pre- sentation of the layout was the completion of the entire room. Dark colors were chosen for the fascia, carpet, and ceiling valance. This creates a shadowbox ap- pearance for the layout.


CRAFTSMAN/Paul Lally, photographs by the author In 1902, the small interurban


trolley line Youngstown & South- ern Railway served Ohio passen- gers from Youngstown to New Gal- ilee. By 1933, it had grown into a steam/electric railroad of epic “David” proportions. For a brief moment in history, it managed to slay Pennsylvania Railroad, Bal- timore & Ohio, and Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad “Goliaths” by outsmarting them in the art of hauling coal. This magical com- bination of luck, grit, determina-


tion, and greed appealed to me, especially since I had just fin- ished tearing down my basement- filling HO empire and was ready for something more modest and larger scale. That’s why I chose to model this tiny but ambitious railroad. Because of basement restric-


tions (21x13), I had to decide which time period to model. Since I’m all thumbs when it comes to stringing trolley wires, I reluc- tantly abandoned Y&S’s 1930s salad days when Baldwin Class B Steeple Cabs, interurban trolleys, and chesty 2-8-2 locomotives pol- ished the rails. Instead, I chose the mid-1950s, when the gild was still on Y&S’s lily, but polished by General Motors diesel switchers instead. As for the locations to model, I limited myself to three: Youngstown Yards: Accepting


inbound coal from Smith’s Ferry and interchanging local industries with a through connection to the Erie Railroad. Boardman, Ohio: Featuring a


small oil company, a hardware store, and feed company.


46 RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN Smith’s Ferry Coal Facility:


Loading hopper cars for their trip north to Youngstown.


The Room Ten years prior, I had created


my “man-cave-train-room” in half of my dark and gloomy basement to build my HO “New Hampshire Northern RR” empire. Back then, with the help of friend Jim Lewis, we put up 2x4 stud walls, hung drywall, and painted it sky blue. We laid one-inch Bluecore rigid insulation over the concrete, in- stalled a ½-inch ply floor over that, and then covered it with dark gray industrial carpeting. After 20 years of steadfast service, the floor creaks here and there, but it’s sur- prisingly comfortable to walk on. For the ceiling, I used a trick


I learned from museums: an air- less paint sprayer to paint rafters, tie-ins, floorboards, you name it, flat black — and let me tell you, that ceiling “disappeared.” A big fan of coved corners, I


bent ⅛-inch hardboard into a 36- inch radius and feathered it into my drywall with spackling.


YOUNGSTOWN & SOUTHERN


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