Boston & Maine Eastern Route Progress

[jbvb]

I had some modeling time in early June 2009 (we didn't get 3 days of clear weather to hay), and once I got the Rowley modules jobs mostly done, I started on some benchwork at the north end of the attic (Rowley is visible on the left):



I used L-girder to reduce the number of support points; a major theme of this layout's engineering is to keep the eaves accessible for storage. I also have to install and remove storm windows and screens under the layout, so there are two legs facing the modules and all other support is from the north wall. The backdrop is hardboard painted with two colors of blue latex, blended.

Only two sunny days in the next two weeks stalled haying, so more layout progress. And in 65F rain, the attic is quite comfortable compared to a normal midsummer evening. On 32-Jun-09 I ran the first train on the new track east of Rowley (there's a bit of Newbury before I get to Newburyport, MA off to the right):



The track/roadbed, backdrop and overpass were all originally built several years ago when I had Rowley in the SE corner of my attic, where Lynn is now, so getting them into place wasn't too much work. Next came hardboard fascia - I used a cardboard template.  But I didn't get that done before I packed Rowley for the Hartford National.

[jbvb]

With going to Hartford and cutting hay, I didn't get back to the layout till August. I had a bit of work in Bexley (SW corner of the attic) to show:



The cardboard was a stand-in for a model of a boxed pony truss bridge I needed to get the wood for. But when I could, I preferred to visit Northeastern in Methuen (and their hobby shop). Next up was finishing the carved styrene stonework, plus some ground cover and
finishing off the end of the flour mill spur.

August 2009 was nice, so my next post was mid-September: Most of what I'd done wasn't very photogenic, like working on switches, cleaning out the NW corner of the attic, building some L-girders and studying how to selectively compress the 700+ foot drawbridge
at Newburyport. But while I was waiting for ballast to dry I decided to build a Blair Line GE billboard.



The base timbers and the brace across the rear were cut from leftover plywood from the kit. My "finished" photo revealed it wasn't really finished yet (too many contact-cement spiderwebs). Sixteen years later I still haven't started mocking up the plant's buildings.

[jbvb]

Most of the last weekend in September 2009's progress was building switches in the West Lynn yard, but that didn't photograph well.  I was trying out my then-new Pentax iSTDL and with Aperture Priority at f/32:



I did a web order from KingMill for the backdrop. I was also waiting for the right light to shoot some buildings in Haverhill to mix in with the commercial offerings. I tried to support the LHS, but he'd only order from his regular distributors.  Closed not long after.

The ballast I used here is mostly Highball Products (limestone) HO cinders. However, I find they have too many white chunks, and they're a bit large for the clinkers I remember from my teen years. I sprinkle Woodland Scenics Fine Cinders on top to darken it before bonding, and then pick out visible white chunks till I like it. In time, dust will take the edge off the black, too (happened on my Rowley modules).
9/30 I managed to shoot this across the Merrimack in Haverhill, MA without shadows (it's prettier in the sun, though I waited an hour that day and the clouds never co-operated):



I did make it into a photo backdrop, but in retrospect it would look more realistic if I'd shot from the top of the bank behind me.

[jbvb]

This is the staging yard project as of 8-Oct-09. The chimney comes up in the center of the attic, and the house is supported by a frame of posts and braces around it. Not much to do there but stage:



The L-girders are visible; I'm simply screwing the cross-pieces to the flanges and then to the bottom of the plywood. Here work was interrupted by a trip to Colorado.  On Nov. 1 roadbed at the RR East end was complete and I was placing ties.



Where the ties stop is the beginning of the salvaged Code-100 staging yard. I hoped to get at least a couple of the tracks finished before Thanksgiving, as my wife and daughter were egging me on to complete the loop around the attic (about 20 feet of benchwork and roadbed to go). But fate interfered.

[jbvb]

Fundamentally, I'm a 'nail straightener'. Nothing on my RR shows that better than the test loop I built about a dozen years ago:



The Mianne benchwork was bought new, but the plywood roadbed was scabbed together from stuff a guy down the road threw out and the fiber-tie track came from my high-school era layout. This south-looking view also shows the layout of the attic: West Lynn is on the left, beyond the chimney and the house brace frame. My workbench is under the shelf across the south end. At any rate, 4-Nov-09 I finished   the final drawing for the main line through Newburyport. The depot is to my left, the drawbridge between me and the staging yard to the left of the posts. Thursday and Friday the loop came down much faster than it went up. Saturday I built L-girders, Monday I set them up.

Roadbed for Newburyport began before Thanksgiving - this area is Newburyport West, after the interlocking at the west end of double track 1959 - 1965 (the current passenger station and storage yard). The City RR and the Pond St. spur will diverge to the right here.



It isn't be exactly the prototype's track arrangement - I didn't have room after measuring just how big the Newburyport draw is earlier in 2009. I had to allow 54" for even 3 spans. I also need a crossover the prototype didn't have. When I started this layout, I wouldn't have thought to cut the ballast slopes and paint the homasote before installing it. Neither would I have added supports for the backdrop to the end of the joists. No doubt I've forgotten something else...

[elwoodblues]

James,

Nice to see you have gotten back to the layout building.  looking forward to seeing your progress.

[jbvb]

Ron, this is me reconstructing my thread from 2009.  I've got 90 more old pages to get back on-line in this thread.  My current modeling project is the scratchbuilt brass flat car; it only needs a few finishing touches.

By 8-Dec-09 I was laying out the West throat. Initially I planned to build the west throat of my staging as below. Alas, it didn't make the curve into the two farthest tracks:



This second arrangement worked, but cut a foot off the 3rd track from the back. I was reluctant to limit one of my commuter slots to only 3 full size cars and a loco (4 RDCs or ex-PRR 54-footers aren't so bad).



I could have handlaid the first arrangement, but I decided to try once more with commercial curved turnouts first. The 3-ways had already
enriched Mr. Walthers considerably. BTW, Having gotten a look at the underside of a "DCC-friendly" 3-way, I'm enlightened. I spent over an hour at Hartford trying to debug an installation for another participant, and I finally saw where they put their jumpers. Personally, I'd have traded these 3 for the older solid frogs and power routing, but progress marches on...

When cutting commercial turnouts I like to leave 4 ties to ensure the stock rails won't come loose while I'm assembling it.  After I took the photos above, I drew how it would go hand-laid and decided that I could make it work with the commercial #6 cut down a little more.

27-Jan-10 was the first time I looked in on RR-Line in about 6 weeks. Aside from the holidays, I made a business trip to Mexico and two to New Jersey, the company I've worked at since 1998 was sold, I've got a new job and I haven't gotten much railroading in. Tomorrow night was packing for the W. Springfield show, so I had to move the staging yard I was working on. The only thing standing in the way of wiring it was deciding whether to re-work the Walthers "DCC friendly" switches for power routing (cut/splice the under-tie jumpers) or just wire the frogs via contacts. My friend's problem was back-to-back shorts in the leftmost frog, between the running and guard rails, and I wanted to avoid pulling my 3-ways out after I got the wires and switch mechanisms installed.

[jbvb]

There wasn't much railroading in February 2010 - I hurt my knee, leaving me on crutches for several months. However, it did
keep me indoors despite the nice weather, and I made some progress on the staging yard.



I used old Earl Eshleman "turnout links", some from my HS layout, some from a White Elephant table at a show. I used twin-coil switch machines to allow diode-matrix routing, but my inventory was 3 short of the number needed for this throat. I have to say, I'd never before in my life installed & wired 5 switch machines in an afternoon. "Build out of place" was also a big win given my mobility problems ('hands and knees' was then 'hands,knee and toe').

In the middle of this, there was some 'stunt soldering' as I improved the 2009-version Walthers 'DCC friendly' 3-way switches I used. Comment if you want me to post, they could be long out of production now.

I asked my good friends at the Hub Division (NER, NMRA), and lo and behold, dozens of idle twin-coil machines come out of the woodwork. Problem solved. I picked them up at the HUB Spring Show in Peabody, MA mid-March 2010.

There was plenty to do, so the last bit of mainline benchwork for the Newburyport draw waited till I could carry heavy things up the stairs again.  If any of you think I'm a little off for hand-laying, wait till I start writing about the Newburyport draw (Fig. 10-47 in Mallery's bridge book). *If* I can make a decent model of it at all, it's going to take me quite a while..

I spent the afternoon of 14-Mar-10 installing the last three switch machines and wiring the frogs. After dinner, with help from my wife & daughter, I got the staging yard into position:



After an evening on the floor screwing it into place, I moved on to connecting the tracks and building the control panel.

[jbvb]

By 27-Mar-10, standing up to do trackwork was actually more comfortable than sitting at my desk using the computer, so I got quite a few hours in toward connecting the West Lynn area to staging that day:



I got the middle track operable earlier that week. I was fairly far along on the eastbound tracks - three frogs ready to solder, the fourth lacks one closure rail.  But I had to shift gears and cut gaps and wire, to get rid of the short I just created. And I didn't try to install any switch mechanisms with my knee as it was.

I got 30 degrees of movement in the brace early in April, so I could drive a stick again. I still couldn't mow the lawn (never in my life was
mowing needed before 4/15 up here, and the horse chestnuts were in full leaf two or 3 weeks early). So I used up 100 feet of 1/16 x 3/32 stock I got from Northeastern in Methuen, MA doing this:



I should have gotten at least 50% more, but I didn't mind making the trip again; Wayne G., who was running a hobby shop in their building, had a decent stock for the small space he's in. The only obstacle was getting there one of the three half-days he opened. My next step was sanding and staining.

[jbvb]

A drizzly, cool weekend produced a lot of progress. This isn't a very compelling photo, but it does represent two turnouts ready for mechanisms and benchwork complete through the foundation for the Newburyport depot area. The unballasted spur is turned around from the prototype, but will serve a post-war bakery whose building is still standing off US 1.



On 02-May-10, I had more progress to report:



Ballast was drying between the Newburyport depot and the current end-of-roadbed at the riverbank. I had been roughing in the roads in the area, because I had to finish at least part of the cut stone abutments before I can make the track across the Merrimac St. underpass permanent.  At that point I had a bit more than 2 meters of track to lay to complete the circuit of the attic. Alas, most of this would be on the Merrimac River bridge, (still) a big, complex modeling project which will probably take a year or more to execute well.

Clearly a Golden Spike wasn't imminent. I chose to cobble up some temporary track, hot-wire around two missing control panels and a number of turnouts lacking mechanisms and have a 'brass spike' ceremony with a 'Gansett (because champagne was clearly not in order).  I finished the panels and mechanisms soon after, but in 2025 I still haven't put my nose to the grindstone on the bridge.

[jbvb]

On 19-May-10, my recent progress was mostly tracklaying, so not very photogenic. That day we left for the Tracks & Tides convention in St. John, NB, so no layout work for a week.  However, I had been reading a layout article in RMC, and they included the traditional turnout count. I find this to be a decent way of comparing layout size, complexity and maintenance. So I counted mine:

31 (1 commercial, 10 came with the piece of the old MIT club layout) fully operational.
9 (5 commercial) with mechanisms, awaiting control (wiring or hand-throw).
15 (1 commercial) awaiting mechanisms.
8 at some stage of construction
17 not begun (9 go on benchwork I won't start till the main line is finished).
80 total.

Since I joined RR-Line in Dec. 2007, I'd completed 7 turnouts, gotten 9 ready for control and 14 ready for mechanisms.

On 31-May-10, track in Newburyport was in service as far as the turnout at the End of Double Track just before the bridge:



A tripod and some photofloods would have improved the depth of field, but I like the twilight effect in this shot. There was more work to be done on the cut stone retaining wall and the bridge. TODO: Recreate my Merrimack St. Overpass build thread. Paint was drying on the 'Draw' control panel.

People asked why the stone blocks are black: Prototype pictures of the bridge and retaining walls will appear in my Merrimac St. Overpass thread. In 2010, the stone looked to be granite, probably quarried on Cape Ann (20 mi. by ship, 40 mi. by rail). However, in the era I'm modeling RR stonework was uniformly black all across this part of New England. I can't imagine the RRs painting individual stones and skipping the mortar lines; I've always assumed that some combination of soot, engine oil and steam condensate acted like paint on granite, but wouldn't stick to the mortar.  I've been working on modeling it for years; I showed some photos of mortar lines cut into black-painted styrene earlier in this thread, but that surface is too smooth for walls of this vintage and technique. This picture of Dover Arch shows about what the bridge abutments looked like when I was a kid. It was taken 50 years after the end of steam, but it's 20 miles from the ocean and less exposed, so the soot is only starting to weather off.



A larger version of that and other examples of soot-colored granite stonework are on this page: Dover Arch, Dover NH, or search for images of the East Portal of Hoosac Tunnel.

I made this stonework by painting flat black latex on damp Wood Putty. Once it dried to the touch, I scribed the mortar lines with a stainless sculpting tool I got from a 'tool guy' at a show. I like it enough to use the technique again, but this example needs touch-up and some time applying washes before I'll call it done. Maybe a slightly browner black too.

[jbvb]

13-Jun-10: No really photogenic progress since last time, but the back of my Draw control panel photographed better than the switch mechanisms and wiring under the layout:



The rotary switches had to be re-done, as I hadn't remembered how I'd wired my first panel with rotaries until I opened it up to check my bus connections To the DCC converts who say "but he's doing all this work to run the power, not the train", I don't really disagree. I've been designing this to make the block switches and panels less important during operation. What I'm working on right now is a
swing block, where a piece of track that would normally have a block selector gets its power selected by turnout position instead. Linn Wescott called them "X sections".  Is this old hat to everyone or should I write it up in another thread?

29-Jun-10: I'd been a model railroad ascetic recently: Only a couple of inches of track remain for the Brass Spike, but I worked on the wiring instead.  I got all the blocks and some of the switches wired. I had decided to order Miniatronics' capacitor discharge device rather than build one, but no joy: Walthers backordered it and when I called a week ago they didn't have an arrival date. I though about buying some PCB terminal strips from Digikey to build the diode matrix; I could have ordered some capacitors too and canceled with Walthers.

But the next day: LHS for the WIN!!! Things were slow around lunch time, so I biked the mile and a half to Charles Ro (still in business in Malden MA). Lo and behold, up on a shelf behind the counter they had a Miniatronics PDC-1, for $26 (2010 list $35). So I canceled with Walthers and installed it that evening. Too bad it sat on Charles Ro's shelf for probably 5 years, but they finally got their money and I'm certainly happy!

4-Jul-10: Finished the "Draw" control panel I did the lettering by applying 1/2" vinyl self-stick letters before the blue coat, then peeling them off and cleaning up with Goo Gone. After I took the photo, I painted the block boundaries.



It controls Newburyport, staging, the Saugus branch (two long staging tracks) and the crossovers at River Works. Calling it "Draw" lets me think of it as either the Merrimack River or the Saugus River, depending on which end of staging is active. I couldn't wire the west (left) end's diode matrix till a Digi-Key order arrived, but the rest was all live.

About half my modeling time that day got eaten up by testing and adjusting track that just became operational. That would been more fun if the 40-year-old phenolic board insulating the frog contacts on a Tenshodo twin-coil machine hadn't broken The rest was mass-producing a dozen brackets for slide-switch turnout contacts. But that's the next post.

[friscomike]

Howdy James, 

Thanks for the stroll down memory lane.  Good luck with the reconstruction of your Boston & Maine Eastern Route thread.

Have fun,
mike

[Bernd]

James,

Following along down memory lane like Mike said. I remember seeing a brick chimney picture like above.

Bernd

[jbvb]

11-Jul-10: Progress last week was mainly bulk-fabricating parts for hand-throw switch mechanisms (lots of drilling & tapping) and installing several of them:



This was the first time I did a slide-switch mechanism with a layout-edge rod to actuate it. The rod I used is 1/16" brass, which has been rigid enough.  For knobs, these got brass balls made to go on the end of 1/8" or 3/16" rod, soldered.  Later I switched to brass acorn nuts. Here I'd finished enough of the switch backlog to resume work on closing the mainline loop. But I didn't complete it until the diode
matrix for the west end of staging was installed.

How I build "heel thrown switchpoints" will get added in due time.  Meanwhile:  The points are silver-soldered to the tops of the 3/32" brass rods that go through the roadbed. They run in the 1/8" brass tubes that the feeder wires are soldered to, and are threaded 3-48 on the bottom.

Over the weekend, I ballasted the commercial turnouts at the west end of my staging. I'd never done that before, and the trouble I had keeping ballast out of the throwbar and points really made me think about all the hand-laid turnouts I've done recently: With hand-laid, once I get the mechanism right and control set up, it works. But ballasting commercial track gives you another opportunity to screw up what you just got working...

But ballast, particularly cinders, is not photogenic. What is photogenic, maybe, is how I built my diode matrix: I needed to map 9 pushbuttons onto 8 twin-coil machines. I worked it out on a spreadsheet some time back and the last of the parts arrived a week earlier. The natural layout on this perfboard worked out to be 2 1/8" x 3 1/8".



The PCB connectors I got from Digi-Key have pins on .156 centers. Alas, all the prototype board I had around expected .100 centers. I broke the last of my 'resharpened' carbide drills trying to make them fit, so I finally used sprue nipping pliers and a hobby knife to slot out between pairs of holes. I stuck the connectors in place with contact cement, but they get held with solder in the next step.

(seems  I can only post 2 photos at a time here)