New York, Vermont & Northern Rwy. Birth of a layout

[Bernd]

Onward to the quarry. I take my inspiration for the quarry from a prototype on the east side of the village of Leroy, NY. It used to be called General Crushed Stone. The best I can gather is that at one time it had a narrow gauge line that ran throughout the quarry.

The first map view is of the quarry as a whole. When I first discovered this area a majority of the quarrying came from the old quarry. From the roads viewable on the map it looks like the Lehigh Valley used the narrow gauge line to reach the quarry. The B & O is at the bottom and the LV is at the top.



It seems from the lines, which could have been the narrow gauge turned roadway after the line was taken up, that the line ran over to what I marked as the old quarry. A one time friend supposedly had drawings of buildings located at the LV tracks. From what's left from this view is seems like it was quite a large area for loading railroad cars. I can only speculate since I have found no information on this operation.



This where the B & O (BR&P) their loaded hopper cars. The loading bins were large, probably close to 10 feet in diameter concrete silos. There were 6, three in a row by two wide and covered two loading tracks. As of this date the silos have crumpled and only the concrete support structure still stands. I was going to us the silos on the layout but could not figure out how I would be able to animate those loading cars.



An aerial view of a piece of historic interest.



This is one of my pictures back in the late 70's early 80's. The little steamer and quarry car were still there. The engine was moved to Central Square, New York and as cosmetically restored. I have have more. Once I find them I'll post them. The steam shovel is a Marion 91. Rumor has it that it was one of the original steam shovels that dug the Panama Canal. It was disassembled and brought here after the canal was finished. It worked the quarry from 1906 to 1949. It been sitting here for 72 years. I think at one time a group had planned on restoring it to operating condition, but apparently it was to expensive because it been quite a few years since I read about that.



Time to get into the building of this part of the layout. This will be the third try at building the quarry or a portion of. Originally I was going to build an On30 line. I got a start on it and got interested in TT scale. It's the next size up from N scale. After a long dormant time in modeling I came to the decision if I wanted to get a layout built I needed to concentrate on one scale, not three. So since HO dominated my kits and rolling stock that's what was chosen.

Now I needed an idea for a track plan. I always like Chuck Yungkurth's Gum Stump & Snowshoe Railroad.





The layout of the tracks didn't quite fir what I needed in the space I was putting it. I used a photo editing program to clean up the writing and to flip the layout lengthwise. Much better.



But before I could start on the quarry line I needed to disassemble the On30 portion of the layout.







I still can't come up with a good reason why I tore off the Styrofoam.



A quick sanding with the belt sander to smooth things out.



Ok, everything is nince and smooth, now what?



A bit of time on the computer with a CAD program and I think I've got something I can work with.



I wound up with an area of 2' X 8'. The last 2' are to be used for a hill and where the stone crusher building is going to go. The upper portion has been installed. I'm using paper templates to get a feelof where to lay the track. As you can see from the time stamp this was eight years ago.







This was where the storage bins where supposed to go.





I moved the portion that was against the back wall to the front. I hadn't figure how I was going to run the track to the standard gauge exchange point or where the exchange point would be.



And nine years later this is as far as I have gotten. Pretty sad I'd say.



In the next post I try to get the build caught up to what the last picture shows.
Until then.
Bernd

[deemery]

I drank a lot of Molsons in college     

dave

[PRR Modeler]

Great progress.

[Bernd]

I drank a lot of Molsons in college     

dave

I switched to Yuengling Traditional Lager after Molson started tasting like skunk. What's a skunk taste like? I really don't know. 

Bernd

[Bernd]

Great progress.

Thanks Curt. What your seeing has taken twenty years to get there. It'll slow down as soon as I get further into the quarry line.

Bern

[nycjeff]

Hello Bernd, you sure have a lot of layout space to fill up. Can't wait to see what happens. I enjoyed the additional historical photos very much.    Jeff

[Bernd]

Hello Bernd, you sure have a lot of layout space to fill up. Can't wait to see what happens. I enjoyed the additional historical photos very much.    Jeff

You're welcome Jeff. It's going to be slow going getting all that space filled up. I'm still working on house projects 20 years later. Have tons of stuff that need to be gotten rid of in the basement. I've finally decided I need to throw stuff out that hasn't been used or thought it might be needed/used.

I'll post as along as there some railroad progress. It may just not be as fast as others here on the forum.

Bernd

[Judge]

Bernd - The Gumstump and Snowshoe has always been one of my favorites.  Once upon a time, I had a house with a nine-foot bar that allowed guests to sit on either side.  I thought putting a glass top on the bar and adding the Gumstump inside would be fun.  Unfortunately, I never got around to it.  Thanks for bringing it back. 

[ACL1504]

Bernd,

One of the fun things I enjoyed most was the planning stages of the Atlantic and Southern RR. Like the Judge, I've often thought of building the small switching layout.

Great progress among all the other 1:1 projects you have going.

Tom

[Bernd]

Bernd - The Gumstump and Snowshoe has always been one of my favorites.  Once upon a time, I had a house with a nine-foot bar that allowed guests to sit on either side.  I thought putting a glass top on the bar and adding the Gumstump inside would be fun.  Unfortunately, I never got around to it.  Thanks for bringing it back.

You're welcome Judge. Ya it dates back quite a bit. I originally almost had it built when I was in TT scale. I was going to do a few modules in that scale to take to train shows and help in trying to bring back that scale. It's a great scale for the modeler that is getting older and their eye sight starts to fail more and for the guy that doesn't have the room for HO but wants something bigger than N scale.

Here are some pictures.

Thanks for stopping by.

Bernd

An TT SW1200 between two HOn3 steam engines.



A resin casting of a GP38-2 shell. The development stopped because nobody could come up with a power chassis. The one behind the TT is an HO scale GP38-2.



The top picture is of a TT RS3 made in Germany. A resin casting. The bottom is an HO scale Atlas RS3.



From left to right - the SW1200, Docksider and the HO scale Docksider.



As I said before I needed to par down my modeling scales and concentrate on one scale. So far so good.

[Bernd]

Bernd,

One of the fun things I enjoyed most was the planning stages of the Atlantic and Southern RR. Like the Judge, I've often thought of building the small switching layout.

Great progress among all the other 1:1 projects you have going.

Tom

Thanks for stopping by. I just wish I could get one thing done so I can run some trains. I'd be real happy. My problem is I get distracted to fast by new things. Kind of like going for the shiny objects. 

I hope I get to finish those 1:1 before going to that roundhouse in the sky. 

Getting the next posting ready for the quarry line. Getting more into the modeling aspect now.

Bernd

[postalkarl]

Hey Bernd:

Looks like you are having fun. I shall be following along.

Karl

[Bernd]

Hey Bernd:

Looks like you are having fun. I shall be following along.

Karl

Yup, lots of fun. Sometimes to much. 

Thanks for joining in and following a long. Don't follow to fast now because I don't move so fast. 

Bernd

[tom.boyd.125]

Bernd,
Neat history photos of the NY state area you will model...looks interesting...like that Alco power...
keep the photos coming...
Tommy

[Bernd]

Bernd,
Neat history photos of the NY state area you will model...looks interesting...like that Alco power...
keep the photos coming...
Tommy

Thanks for stopping by Tom, much appreciated for the comments.

I'm kind of surprising myself with all the history I've collected over the years. Never quite put it all together. Kind of makes me glad I joined. It's forcing me to finally do a write up of what I'd like to build with some history behind it, even if it's part fictional. Lots more pictures coming. Like I said I'm to lazy to write how it's done. I like taking picture with a short description. The you can ask questions which I'll try to explain.

Bernd