Farewell to yet another Waterbury landmark

Although the Waterbury Vermont station has been wonderfully restored the other buildings that once stood across the tracks haven't been so lucky. The first of these to disappear was the feed mill that was directly across the tracks from the station proper. Now, I understand from Bill Brigham and some of the other folks in Vermont that the former CV freight station is no more. The photo above was taken during a late winter safari with my friend Alan Irwin. Alan was a  dear friend - but he was a train chasing rail fan at heart and never really understood WHY I would stop and take pictures of buildings with nothing around them - especially in a dimly lit cold (and I mean cold) Sunday afternoon in early March. 

I'm glad I did. 

Here's a photo of the feed mill I took the same day. 

Of course, I plan to include these on the layout in the Waterbury scene, but at this point all that exists of the freight house is the footprint. (For the record, this is "full size" in HO scale):

Leveling Sand

Not much has been happening on the layout in the last few weeks, but I did spend some time in the basement today - the track laying crew are getting fired up again. I fully expect to be able to reach the end of track laying chores during the summer. 

In the meantime . . . 

On the Proto Layouts Yahoo Group this week one of the topics that came up was the use of Leveling sand to create a fast and easy ground base. Simply apply the leveling sand to the layout base, then glue in place with adhesive.  Ted Pamprin uses this material extensively on his C&O layout - and I've tried it as well and find it works great. Ted holds it in place with an additive use to make tile grout flexible. This stuff is available at any home improvement store (Home Depot, Lowe's etc  . .)

Here's the stuff Ted uses to cement the leveling sand in place:

A Two-Legged Wye?

Not sure if it's akin to a three-legged dog. The riddle: "When is a wye not  a wye?" The answer: "When you only model two legs of it."
Adding a wye to a model railroad is usually a source of frustration and trauma. Sure, a small wye - one that has nothing in the center, can be a fairly straightforward addition to a track plan. But what about those  times where the wye has "stuff" - buildings, sidings, and the like - inside?
The wye at Essex Junction was unusual since there was a cut off track (I’m not sure what it was called) that ran between two legs of the wye.  Along this cut off track were several industries.  Since I didn’t have the depth for the “outer legs” of the wye, I decided to focus my efforts on this cut off track.  In essence, I'm modeling two of the three legs of the wye and not connecting them together. (On the prototype, the "missing" leg formed the branch line to Burlington, about 8 miles west of Essex Junction.
Losing the wye is not a problem for me - and trying to include the complete wye was causing all types of track planning issues.
Besides, I’m more interested in the industrial switching possibilities than in modeling the several blocks of commercial and residential buildings that would be required if I wanted to model the complete wye.
In a previous post, I mentioned how I’d switched the position of the trainshed and wye.  I also found I had to flip the orientation of the wye itself – a mirror image of the wye.  Luckily these changes are almost “transparent to the user” – you have to be pretty familiar with Essex Junction to pick up on the differences between my now-developing layout scene and the actual prototype.  The main goal, in my mind, is to capture the overall look of the scene.

This old time photo of the wye area (I’m not sure when it was taken, but based on the locomotive I’d say this pre-dates 1920) shows a couple of key buildings that I wanted to include on the layout. The opening photo shows the area just to the right of the picture about. One of the neatest industries in Essex Junction was the Vermont Maple Sugar Co. (a signature industry for rural Vermont - sometimes you have to almost hit people over the head for them to get what you’re modeling – the sign is a step towards that goal) and the Baxter Brothers cannery.
I know both of those buildings were still there in the 1950s (they’re still there today), and I can get photos and enough information to model them.  The other industries that were on that connector track inside the wye are a little more problematic.  I hadn’t turned up any photos showing those buildings until I came across the UVM website that included aerial photos of Essex Junction in the 1930s. I do have footprints of the buildings from both the railroad drawings of Essex Junction and Sanborn Maps.  I also managed to locate the buildings, as they appear today, in Bing Maps overhead views of Essex Junction.
I’ve adjusted the position of some of the buildings to better fit the layout space, but I have already built mockups of the Vermont Maple building, the Baxter Brothers cannery, and several of the other industries have been mocked up by taping pieces of various kits together.

Backdrop tweaks

My first attempt at including a backdrop in what I call the "Essex Junction alcove"  (You can see the approximate position of the Essex Junction shed with the mockup on the left) utilized a curved piece of Masonite attached to the wall and forming a constant radius curve in front of the support post and joining the peninsula backdrop.
I didn’t like the way the curved section of backdrop looked – besides it would have made an awkward scene with the wye trackage.  I also (for once) wisely decided to do something about it before laying track in this area.  It would have been difficult to do this work with track in place – and virtually impossible with scenery!
So I removed the last backdrop section, cut a panel of Masonite to fit between the end of the existing backdrop and the support post, and blended the joint smooth. I’ll paint the post sky blue so it will look like part of the backdrop.
Removing the backdrop section meant the backside of another section of backdrop was visible. I framed up some supports and used some Masonite to fill the area between the support post and the wall. When this is all painted sky blue I think it will fade away from view – something that all backdrops should do!
As an aside, I'm really, really pleased with the fascia color!

An addition to the roster

I've been so consumed with benchwork, track, and wiring over the last couple of years that I haven't added any new cars to the layout - although the pile of "to be built" kits certainly hasn't shrunk - in fact, it's grown. 
So I was doubly thrilled to find a box from Elgin Car Shops arrived in today's mail - although I have to admit I was expecting it. A couple of weeks ago Elgin proprietor Pierre Oliver sent me a email asking for my home address, since he had something he wanted to send me. Imagine my surprise when I opened the box to find a Sunshine Models kit for a New York Central 1-1/2 door boxcar. That was great - but the best part was the fact that car was finished - on a railroad with precious few "Finished" cars anything "Done" is worthy of a blog post - and a sincere thank you. 
Actually, this past week I've contracted with Pierre to build a couple of other cars. Having seen his work in person I highly recommend.  

For details on Elgin Car Shops check out his website. 

And  as requested Pierre, now I can say "Pierre Oliver built that car for me . . ."

A home for orphans . . .

Paul Dolkos spent almost two decades building and detailing his beautiful Boston & Maine White Mountain Division. In addition to the layout itself, he created a roster of cars appropriate for his northern New England railroad. But, when he switched from modeling the B&M to the Baltimore Harbor District some of the New England cars seemed a little hard to justify.  . . . he also needed some Micro-Engineering track components to finish his latest addition to the new layout. The dealers were out of M-E turnouts, but I wasn't. And, while Paul found it hard to justify more than ONE Rutland car on his new layout, I can justify a couple on my layout. So, we made a swap. On Sunday I went over to Paul's to inspect progress on his railroad, and pick up the cars. I ended up with four of Paul's former freight cars - they are already performing yeoman service on the Winooski Sub. 

Paul didn't build all these cars - back in the early days of Paul's layout a mutual friend, Tom Underwood, built a number of cars for Paul. They are easy to identify by their "builders plates" that Tom added to the underside of the cars. This is the one from the Rutland flat car. In this case, this Rutland flat (detailed Athearn) was the 44th car Tom built, and he completed it in September 1993. 

Note Tom also included information on the lettering (in this case, CDS dry transfers). I think the builder's plates are kind of a neat idea, and I may incorporate them on cars I build in the future. 

Historic Photos of Vermont

I ran across a tremendous resource at the University of Vermont web site. A collection of historic photo graphs of Vermont, many of which show scenes familiar to railroad modelers of the state. I found two of them of particular interest:

The first was this view of Essex Junction that shows the industries located in the around the wye - this shot dates from 1930 (the dates on some of the captions have been questioned, but the presence of the Burlington & Lamoille RR trackage in the middle of the wye makes me believe the 1939 date.

Another neat find was this photo showing a close up of the Demeritt Company in Waterbury.