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...

Sanborn Maps - Richford Feed Mill and CV Yard

Most of the last month has been taken up with travel to visit family and friends, but I have gotten started on roadbed and track. One reference I'm using to lay out not only the track, but the various scenic elements such as roads, waterways, buildings, and the like are Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps. 

The Library of Congress has been making considerable progress posting scans of the full color original maps and posting them on the LOC website (www.loc.gov). 

Here are the maps showing the Richford, Vt. feedmill (top) and the Central Vermont Railway yard. (Click the links or images below to go to the map on the LOC web site).  

https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3754rm.g089411920/?sp=1

https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3754rm.g089411920/?sp=4&r=-0.618,-0.119,2.237,1.318,0

Richford Branch Maps 4 - Enosburg Falls

Another Richford Branch town map, this time for Enosburg Falls. The CV List of Industries page for Enosburg Falls is shown in the second image. 

Station Stop - Richford, Vermont

The newest station stop map I've developed shows the end point of the Central Vermont's Richford Branch. The overall map shows the route the CV line took into town, including it's connection with the Canadian Pacific Ry. 
The close up map shows the trackage in the station area proper. (Click on the map to enlarge it). 

Palmer, Mass. Yard diagram

Southern New England Railway Maps

A few years ago at one of the CVRHS conventions (in Palmer, if I recall correctly) Jim Murphy displayed a series of original, color Southern New England plat maps. Jim (and another volunteer) were kind enough to hold them up and let me photograph the series of maps. I had them on my old computer back up hard drive and ran across them a couple of weeks ago. Thought it would fun to share them here. 
These are one of the few sets of originals we know about - and are more than 100 years old. 
Obviously there's some overlap between the photos of the maps - these things were big! 

Prototype Map - Randolph (First Draft)

To offer some context to the scene that will be replacing the paper mill scene I offer this very preliminary sketch of the prototype track arrangement and some of the other key elements in the Randolph scene from the time period I'm modeling. I'm drawing this in Adobe Illustrator using scans of track diagrams and the like from a variety of sources.
I place the "source" material in layers in Illustrator, resize them until they are in scale relative to one another, and then trace the outlines in Illustrator.This isn't precision work - the diagram shown here is actually sourced from four different railroad track maps and two Sanborn Maps. Getting them perfectly aligned with one another is difficult at best. Luckily, it's not really necessary to do so.
Of course I don't have the length available to exactly duplicate this in HO scale on my layout. So why bother with the prototype map at all? (I've done them for all the other towns on the layout).
Eventually the "notes" layer, not shown here, will be filled with everything from thumbnail photos of the prototype buildings to various notes and comments on types of siding, years it was built and/or altered, interesting notes on who lived where....even a location of a particular tree if it somehow "makes" a prototype scene! In short, these maps centralize much of what I know about the scene in one place. That way, when it comes time to build the models I have an idea of where to look - or at the very least a place to start!
Once I get this information together, the next step will be to develop a track arrangement that will actually fit in place on the layout - most of that layout planning is not done on paper but instead is done full size with flextrack and paper cutouts of the various buildings I've deemed essential to capturing the look of the prototype.

White River Junction from the air, 1953

A few months ago I found a neat UVM web site that featured vintage images of Vermont - including some aerial views of Essex Junction and even a close up a industry at Waterbury. While these images were extremely helpful, the White River Junction selection was pretty slim pickings. In fact all that came up in a search of "White River Junction" was a bunch of photos showing the interstate highway being built through the Green Mountains in the late 1950s. While somewhat interesting, it hardly was useful for my layout research. 
That was a few months ago, and the internet is always changing. I've had some time during my lunch to wander around the internet over the last couple of days. Just for fun I went to the UVM site and entered "White River Junction" in the search window, fully expecting to find those same photos of interstate highway construction. Wow, those folks at UVM have been busy. There are dozens of photos of White River Junction - including this one dating from 1953 that at long last shows exactly how the turnouts between the station and the CV yard were arranged. If you go to the link you'll be able to use the "Zoomify" function to get some real close up views.

Planning Essex Junction

I have been spending an hour or so a night for the last couple of weeks planning, and re-planning, the Essex Junction scene. 
I’m happy to report these efforts are starting to pay off. 
This scene and I go way back. The first layout I started building as an adult (when I determined the CV in the steam era was right for me) featured the Essex Junction scene. That one never got past the benchwork stage.  The second time I modeled it was in N scale on a small layout I built in a rented townhome when I was on the MR staff. That scene led to an article on Essex Junction that appeared in Model Railroad Planning. 
It's finally time to do this scene again - this go 'round will be HO scale. 
Essex Junction is, in reality, two different “scenes.”  The first, and most recognizable, is the area around the trainshed itself.  Here’s a familiar view of the trainshed. 

 The second, much less familiar scene was area around the wye, just a couple of blocks south of the trainshed.  It was rarely, if ever photographed – at least in its entirety.  One photo showing the wye is this very early image: 
Using CV engineering department drawings and Sanborn Maps this map shows the track and most of the industries in, and around, Essex Junction in the early 1950s. 

On the layout, I’m taking the approach of making whatever compromises I need to make to have the trainshed look as much like the pictures as possible, even if it means I have to “tweak” the wye scene slightly.  Perhaps the biggest compromise I made was to flip the location of the wye and trainshed, relative to the other modeled towns on the layout.  Coming north from Waterbury (on the layout, around the bend on the peninsula) a train should go through the wye and then past the shed on its way north to St. Albans.  On my layout the train will go through the shed and then the wye.  If I maintained the prototype elements in their correct orientation, the track would curve in the “wrong” direction relative to the most commonly photographed view of the scene.  I felt it was important to capture this angle for the trainshed scene to look right, even if it meant flipping the relative location of the shed and wye.  Besides, when I mocked up the scene with the elements in the “right” place there was little room for the wye trackage. The shape of the basement dictated the placement I’m using. 
Due to the configuration of the layout and the basement, I can also add a live third leg of the wye to serve as a live interchange track representing the Burlington branch.  This same track will also permit me to reverse trains between sessions by backing them over from the north end staging yard. 
I suppose there are some who would be bothered to no end by the compromises I’ve made on this scene.  I think the finished scene will look like Essex Junction, even if the individual elements are not arranged exactly like the prototype.