Sprague Coal

I've always thought this would make a neat scene from Providence, RI. There's a lot of background and (potential) history here - essentially centered on the connection between the proposed Southern New England and the C&O. (Hint: There's a reason the book on the Southern New England has a jacket painting featuring a coal train). I could go into more detail on that at some future date if there is any interest. 

Southern New England Train

I was digging through the boxes of rolling stock the other day in an effort to fully populate the layout with cars. Just for the heck of it I posed an all Southern New England train and snapped some photos. 

Sharing them here:

The first two cars are from a special run of PS-1s Kadee did a few years ago. In both the older square herald scheme (above) and the maple leaf scheme (below). There was a LOT of debate on my old SNE Yahoo (now Groups.io) mailing list about which scheme was the most appropriate. Personally I prefer the square herald since it doesn't read like a CN car. But I sent the North Shore club (that actually commissioned and sold the cars) both sets of art work. Perhaps they couldn't decide and went with both?!!

The next three cars show how most of the SNE cars are decorated ("decorated" may be too fancy a term!) in accordance with Central Vermont practices. Cars are one color - CN Red #11, with plain white lettering. All three of these (Accurail) cars (the gondola, hopper, and single sheathed boxcar) are painted the same color. In fact I painted them at the same time. Guess I really need to weather that single sheathed boxcar!

Not in the train in the lead photo (it was already out on the layout!) is one of the SNE's 50-foot boxcars. Central Vermont didn't have any 50 footers until the early 1960s, but that's the magic of freelancing. This is either a Proto 2000 or Branchline 50 foot boxcar (I honestly don't remember which but suspect it's a Proto 2000) car. I got some feedback years ago (again, on the SNE Groups.io chat list) that I should have used the square herald. I didn't since I didn't have decals for that herald, so I went with the maple leaf. I also opted not to spell out the roadname to the left of the door since the spelled out Southern New England lettering looked a little small on vast expanse of car side! Note the embarrassing obvious decal film showing around the reporting marks....

Walthers did a Grand Trunk three window caboose that I quickly adopted as the SNE standard long caboose. To make it look a little more like a CV van I replaced the Walthers cupola with one from Funaro resin CV caboose kits (each kit included a couple of styles of cupola) 

As I said before some days I really miss the ole' SNE stuff.... they're not necessarily the best models I've ever built but it's like seeing old friends. 

Farewell to the "northern" SNE

I'll never understand some model railroaders and their myopic view of things. Jason and Pam had their layout open for the New England RPM meet, but had very few meet attendees who bothered to come look at the railroad. I suspect the fact that it's a freelanced railroad turned a lot of RPM attendees off? Their loss. With the exception of two visitors in this photo, these visitors are contractors who saw the layout during previous week and thought it was so neat they brought their parents, wives, and kids by to see the SNE! 

I've mentioned Jason Fontaine's excellent Southern New England in this blog before, most recently reviewing a visit to see Jason's layout back before Covid. I refer to Jason's railroad as the "northern SNE" since he's using the same basic fiction - that the "Titanic Railroad" was actually completed - as I do for my proto-freelanced line. We came up with this theme independently - and he (and his wife Pam!) tell me the fact that my SNE appeared in print before his was a bitter disappointment for him at the time. In the years since he's become one of those model railroaders who I consider a friend I don't get to visit with half as often as I'd like. 

Here's an overall view of one side of Jason's version of the SNE. 

Sadly, that pervious trip (see a report HERE) was also the last time we'd have a chance to visit with Dick Elwell and his amazing Hoosac Valley. 

Walking down the aisle and turning back toward the layout entrance Mt. Fenton dominants one end of the layout - and nicely screens the stairs and entry to the staging yard area. 

I was surprised when I heard from Jason a couple of weeks ago that he and Pam are moving to Florida and would be taking some, but not all, of his SNE RR with them. He was wondering if I might be interested in any rolling stock, structures, etc... 

Charlton is at the end of a branch. Jason tells me that Dick Elwell always enjoyed switching this area whenever he visited. The structures here (and across the entire layout) are extremely nicely built, painted and weathered craftsman kits. 

Luckily the timing actually worked for once and I was already planning to be in his neck of the woods for the New England RPM meet. 

Although I didn't have a chance to obtain any of Dick Elwell's models from the  Hoosac Valley I'll spill the beans a bit and mention that I have made arrangements to obtain this mill complex from Jason. Dick was involved in constructing this model. 

Long story short, I came home from the RPM meet with a nicely lettered and weathered SNE passenger train. We've also made arrangements for me to salvage some other elements once Jason begins the painful process (and I know how painful it is to take a sledgehammer to a model railroad having done it plenty of times!) of dismantling his version of the SNE. 

I've already given the SNE passenger train a couple of test laps around my layout - I think it looks great rounding the big curve between Williams Creek and the Junction. 

I'll hold off on describing what elements of the layout I'm planning to take off Jason's hands until we (1) work through some of the logistics and (2) actually get things out of his house and into mine in one piece. 

At that point I may offer some thoughts on saving pieces of other layouts, incorporating them into our own layouts, and whether the whole process is worth the time and effort. 

Some old Slides - and good memories!

 First of all, Happy Easter to everyone!

Work was absolutely crazy for the last six weeks or so. Not only have I been busy with testing of a system I'm working on, the main contract for my company came up for re-compete, and as the proposal manager I really had to ignore everything else until the proposal was completed! 

All that means I got way behind on a bunch of hobby related stuff! My Model Railroad Hobbyist Getting Real column barely made it in on time, and even our Federal and State income tax  returns were filed using the same "just in time" approach. 

I have two things remaining on my hobby "must do" list. The first is an article for the NMRA British Region magazine. I've got the thing written, I just need to take a few additional photos! 

But before I do that I need to finish my keynote address for the Railway Modellers Meet in British Columbia. That meet will be combined virtual and in-person this year, and my presentation will be virtual - you can find out more about the meet HERE. 

One thing I needed to do was dig out a couple of photos of the original Southern New England layout to illustrate a couple of points for my talk. That meant diving into the slide boxes. 

Two things caught my attention and I thought it would be fun to share them here:

The first were these two maps of the SNE. 

The first shows what we eventually called "The Greater SNE". As I recall, Iain Rice, Matt Gaundynski and a few others figured the SNE won control of the Central New England instead of the New Haven, which gave the SNE a line through northwestern corner of Connecticut and across the Hudson deep into New York. It also shifted the modeled portion of the line away from the proposed actual SNE route and into Connecticut. 

After some discussions with Iain, Matt, Jack Ozanich and a couple of others I narrowed the scope of the SNE to reflect the railroad that was actually proposed and started in the first two decades of the 20th century. The map above shows that version. I was struggling with trying to design paint schemes and logos when Jim Hediger suggested I simply adopt the CN family "look."  This map shows the first use of my Southern New England tilted wafer logo that I can recall. 

The second pair of images show a couple of Iain's sketches for the "large New England mill town" on the original SNE layout. I don't think I've ever published these, but if you're familiar with some of Iain's layout design books you've seen variations on this particular layout segment. 

The town was loosely (very!) inspired by Willimantic, Conn., and ignoring the annoying various crossing New Haven lines allowed us to focus on the CV station area and have a fighting chance of fitting it into the space. Iain called it "Okehampton" at but I never took to that name - on the actual layout it was called Mohassuck Springs (see Model Railroad Planning 2000 for that layout, and to compare the track as we laid it with Iain's initial sketch!). 

Unfortunately the mill town only got as far as the track stage. But these sketches were kind of fun to stumble across. I had a lot of fun developing the concept behind the SNE and most days I kind of miss it. 

But in the meantime I need to get back to these other projects...