Planning the Essex Junction Trainshed

I managed to mess up my back during the weekend so I have not been able to work on the layout – I simply can’t stand for very long or hunch over anything. Luckily, today it feels better than it did yesterday and far better than on Saturday.

Since I can’t really work on finishing up the track work in Waterbury, and daytime television isn’t worth anything I decided to round up some photos of the Essex Junction trainshed. I have a lot of information on Essex Junction, but it’s scattered in numerous binders, books, and file folders. It was time to put it together in one “Essex Junction” reference binder. Included with this post are a few pictures of the shed.

When it was built (sometime just before the Civil War) the shed looked like three tunnel portals, side by side. 

Over time as engines and cars got larger the shed portals were too small, so they were removed by the late 1880s and replaced by a wood gable ends that spanned all three tracks (when the B&L line was abandoned in the late 1930s, the third track – actually Track One – was removed leaving two tracks that ran through the shed. Here’s the way I’m going to model it (top photo is looking north, bottom photo is looking south):

This is going to be one of those signature projects on the layout – it has to be done “right” since it’s such a critical element of the scene.

You can see lots of details on Essex Junction in my article that appeared in Model Railroad Planning 1998. I also wrote another article on Essex Junction, this one including plans of the station and trainshed drawn by my good friend Laz Scangus, in the February 1993 Mainline Modeler.

I’ve built an N scale model of the trainshed before (it appears in the MRP 1998 article). But for this HO scale model I want to take it a step further and include the ceiling truss work as well as some interior lighting. Mostly, I want to be able to recreate some of the photos shown here, taken inside the shed.

There is also the practical aspect of coupling and uncoupling cars inside the trainshed. Do I make the entire roof removable (for operating sessions we’d take the roof off) or add an opening in the roof – similar to what Jack Burgess did with his model of the Yosemite Valley’s El Portal station?

Perhaps what I need to do is leave one side wall removable, perhaps held in place with magnets. That way, if I want to shoot a picture from inside the shed I can take that sidewall off and get the camera lens “inside” the building.

I plan to build the shed almost exclusively from styrene. Once I figure out how the roof trusses were constructed I’ll draw them up and we’ll see if they can be cut on Bernie Kempinski’s laser.

Lay of the Lost Traveler

Essex Junction is the location where a short branch to Burlington connects to the Central Vermont’s mainline. Until the late 1930s, that branch didn’t end at the CV main, it actually crossed itt as the Burlington & Lamoille branch of the CV (named after the original B&L RR).

As one of the key scenes on my layout I've done a lot of research on Essex Junction over the years. One of the most interesting things to turn up in my research is the following poem. (I'm not particularly into poetry . . . oh heck, I can't stand it and never read it after I finished school and didn't have to . . .) But the following goes to show just how classy this blog is - not just poetry but 19th century poetry no less.

A number of railroad towns have been immortalized in poetry and song over the years, and Essex Junction is no exception. The poem, “Lay of the Lost Traveler” is said to have been inspired when the author, the Honorable Edward J. Phelps, left Burlington on the so-called “shuttle train” for Boston via Essex Junction.  He stepped off this train in Essex and waited for the arrival of the mainline train. The usual shifting of trains took place and Mr. Phelps, without inquiring, got on board the train he anticipated would take him to Boston. In fact, he had reboarded the “shuttle” train which promptly deposited Mr. Phelps back in Burlington, his starting point. There, on his arrival, he penned the following:

The Lay of the Lost Traveler

With saddened eye and battered hat

And eye that told of black despair,

On wooden bench the traveler sat,

Cursing the fate that brought him there.

“Nine hours,” he cried, “we’ve lingered here

With thought intent on distant homes,

Waiting for that delusive train

That, always coming, never comes,

Till weary, worn

Distressed, forlorn

And paralyzed in every function!

I hope in hell

His soul my dwell

Who first invented Essex Junction!

“Here Boston waits for Ogdensburg

And Ogdensburg for Montreal,

And late New York tarrieth

And Saratoga hindereth all!

From far Atlantic’ wave-swept bays

To Mississippi’s turbid tide

All accidents, mishaps, delays,

Are gathered here and multiplied!

Oh, fellow man avoid this spot

As you would plague or Peter Funk shun!

And I hope in hell

His soul may dwell

Who first invented Essex Junction!

“And long and late conductors tell

Of trains delayed or late or slow,

Till the e’en the very engine’s bell

Takes up the cry, 'No go! No go!'

Oh! Let me from this hole depart,

By any route so’t be a lone one,”

He cried, with madness in his heart,

And jumped aboard a train – the wrong one.

And as he vanished in the smoke

He shouted with redoubled unction,

“I hope in hell

His soul may dwell

Who first invented Essex Junction!”

From deconstruction to Construction

I've managed to round a corner of sorts. By the end of last week I'd finished all the "tear out" work and actually started to put things back together. Although I originally planned tosave a lot of existing trackwork, in the end it made more sense to simply scrape the track up and put it aside to reuse later.

Here are a few views showing how things looked in the layout room before Thanksgiving, and how they look today.

The peninsula lobe has been removed, and the peninsula benchwork now connects to the around the wall benchwork.

This had been the location of the Williams Creek bridge crossing scene - located on

the upper deck. The bridge, piers, and abutments will be reused, but the scene itself didn't make it:

As of today, here's what the view down the aisle is - the upper deck is gone, and the lower level track will be raised about 5" (when I install the new subroadbed):

The helix, at the "front door" to the layout area is gone, replaced by the framework for a new, wider peninsula (with aisles on both sides).

The benchwork that looks like it's "floating in air along the far wall is the former upper level staging yard. It's still there since frankly, it keeps it out of the way. The plan is to remove it, spin it 180-degrees, and reuse it as the new south end staging yard. It will end up along the same wall it is now, only about 20" lower and slightly to the right of its current position.

Once the staging yard is moved, I'm going to install new backdrops down the center peninsula.

Track plan

After some real frustration with my under construction Southern New England Railway layout, I decided to make some significant changes to not only the theme of the layout and the layout itself. For a little more detail on some of those changes see my Southern New England Railway blog post, here.

Currently, the basement looks like a bomb hit it - demo and/or reconstruction of model railroads is never pretty to look at, but I'm hopeful that like a Phoenix the new railroad will arise from the ashes "new and improved."

Seems appropriate to kick off this new blog with a look at the design for the revised layout. The footprint is similar in some ways to the existing layout, although there's no helix, and the peninsula connects to the around the wall portion of the layout at the opposite end of the room, relative to the former arrangement.

Here's a track plan showing the planned new layout arrangement. Note: This plan doesn't show all the details of every structure, siding, etc . . . and, I've deliberately left some "Towns" undetermined since I need to do some more research to narrow down the field.

First posting

Initial test posting to my new blog covering my HO scale layout inspired by the Central Vermont Railway