Boston & Maine Eastern Route Progress

[jbvb]

17-Feb-2018: I finished the track and power wiring. And of course, ran a test train to deliver the high priority load of meat so residents of Newburyport and vicinity could have their Saturday roast:



There was a little tune-up as I played with this area, but construction of Downtown Newburyport will now shift to roads, foundations and
landforms.

Earlier I mentioned that the layout-edge hand-throws for these switches would be different because the track is next to the future bed of the Merrimack River.  On RR-Line, that went into one of the general Track threads, but here I'll put it in-line:



The push/pull rod goes through the fascia lower right. The slide switch that locks point position and powers the frog is mounted to the river bed so the push-pull force is all in-line.  Yes, I had to thread several inches to keep it attached to the slide switch while reaching the acrylic connector block.  The block is taller than usual, the switch point rods (upper left) are longer than usual but all three switches work perfectly.

21-Feb-2018: It was going to be an 'electrical projects' day. The first one took much longer than I expected. However, it's in service:



Adding this RJ-45 'keystone jack' box lets operators with wired throttles reach any part of the north half of my layout. To preserve a 'clip up' plug orientation, I screwed what was designed as the cover of the box to the underside of the layout frame.

It took all day because 1) some parts I'd bought got 'put away', so I improvised with what I could find AND 2) I made a couple of punch-down errors AND 3) high-end Category 5 cable is stranded and you can't play 'double-punching' games with it. I couldn't get continuity on all pairs so I had to solder a splice.

23-Feb-2018: I'm one of those who remembers my inventory mostly by position. If it's not filed in a common location and out of sight for too long, I might as well have never have brought it home.

This afternoon, I learned a lesson: track is easy to lay on a prepared roadbed, not so much otherwise. I wonder if this is why I occasionally see an exquisitely crafted, detailed and lit diorama whose track is plastic-tie code 100 painted brown.

Section gangs and track cars vanished from most US railroads pretty quickly as Hy-Rail equipment became practical in the 1950s. I expect the track gang was how many railfans older than me got introduced to the subject. Employees living locally, most walking to work at the same section house every day and then putting away to noisy manual labor jobs up and down the line - summer entertainment before TV. But by 1965 they were gone from Newburyport, so my introduction to railroaders was via train crews.

I recall magazines articles of the 1960s and '70s featuring construction and equipping section houses, but it's been years. They weren't favorite photo subjects and their denizens were rarely social equals of the operating employees. But as I'm a spike pounder at Seashore, the Eastern Route must be properly equipped:



My Newburyport Section House had a track-car setoff for each door. I knew this was going to fall afoul of the Hytron turnout, but a building of those dimensions would only fit in one place in Newburyport. So I decided the existing section house had been moved to accommodate the turnout. And the rails and platform for the eastbound track were removed in favor of the crossover 100 yards west.

I do creosoted wood with stain, so it had to be wood, which has to be held down so it won't curl when I finish the scenery. I think I bent 25 spikes putting 32 into the plywood and wood putty 'subgrade'. Slow, and not a picture-perfect rendering of the B&M standard plan, but it's 24" from the audience.

[jbvb]

6-Mar-2018: Mostly structure work the past few days:



The B&M had a standard smokejack for smaller buildings - galvanized square 'chimney' through the roof, then a capped pipe extending a couple more feet.





I've built them for the Newburyport and West Lynn (Ipswich prototype) section houses. But in 2025 I'm still slowly creeping towards requesting a Structures AP evaluation.

26-Apr-2018: After a busy couple of weeks catching up and turning the debris from March storms into next winter's firewood, I had some time for the RR last night. Those of you who've operated here know the Draw staging's diode matrix didn't always throw turnouts completely on the first button press. I went after that.

The first problem was some 'tinned' bus wire I'd used, resulting in many cold solder joints:



Using magnification as I tried to re-do the bad ones, I realized the tinning was solder with a higher than normal melting point. But the diodes survived re-soldering with my 100W gun on the three old wires that remain on this side.



I replaced all four 'tinned' wires that had been on the diode side.

It works much better, but still takes multiple pushes for some turnouts. Next I'll look at my Miniatronics PDC-1 capacitive discharge unit - its 10,000 mFd capacitor should be plenty, but it could have been on the hobby shop's shelf long enough to date back to Nichicon's 2001-04 era of unreliable capacitors.

1-May-2018: It appears that capacitor purchasers tightened up their specs and improved their testing in the fallout. At any rate, I had a 10,000 uFd cap, bought for this purpose, and I just piggybacked it onto the non-component side of the PDC-1. That gave considerably more oomph, but not enough to make all buttons '1-push' reliable. Next time I feel like crawling under the layout, I'll look closely at the mechanisms. It probably doesn't help that Draw's west throat uses three kinds of twin-coil switch machines.

[jbvb]

13-May-2018:  Blair M (who I don't think I've ever met) commented on the waterfront trackwork:



"This trackwork is really a nice junction, I like the look of the stained ties and dark ballast, it really does have the new england look. This particular photo really gets me witht the process and I am impressed how you move boldy forward through and beyond the turnout with the rail and then fill in the rest later; I know this is a traditional method, but it is still something to actually see it in progress.

This is really ancient stuff, goes back to the beginings of the hobby when you had to know how to do all of the handlaying if you wanted to be a modeler. I really like seeing how the ties precede the rails just as in old prototype. The warm color of the stained wood really sparks a feeling for me that is a mix of pure nostalgia from prototypes, old-fashioned modeling and memories of some of my early wood modeling in scale.

I love your photo of the turnout in the woods, that is the sort of railfanning I did as a kid, I grew up in Northeast PA where a lot of the duplicate routes were abandoned and you had to use imaginiation to see the railroad back in time past the trees.

Nice work."

20-May-2018: Thank you very much, Blair. I have a little feeling for your native corner of PA: I've seen a lot of old roadbeds off in the woods around Scranton and Reading, though I've never taken a hike on any.

Things have been busy with outdoor work, Hub Div. events, Seashore track work & operations etc. My modeling time last week was a break from structures: building and installing more Rapido switch stands for Newburyport.

Each sprue will build a Ramapo #17 (high, pre-1960), a Racor #17B (high, post-1960) and a Racor #20 (low) stand. I can use all of them, but I have to make B&M-pattern targets from brass. Also, the sprue only includes one lamp molding (I'm not complaining, these were manufactured incorrectly so Rapido gave them away at the 2018 BigE Amherst Club show).



I'd painted the lamp's roundels on an earlier sprue, but this time I looked through my stock of MV reflective lenses; the LS 220 (red) & 221 (green) were about the right size. I drilled a dimple in each roundel out to #50 and Goo'ed four MV lenses in place. Then I spent a while playing with pictures.

Verdict: The reflected light can be seen, but you have to look (left side, just past the signal). It's not conspicuous more than a foot from the audience. I will move this to a more visible location and glue it in place so it doesn't get vacuumed away. And I will build future switch stands like this batch, with a spike for a lamp.

5-Jun-2018: I'd been working on/around the layout, but nothing really photogenic:

1. Installed cellular blinds w/cords in the south-end windows. I chose a bluish color not too far from my backdrop's sky color. It is less noticeable, but also blocks more light than the plain white ones I've used elsewhere in the house. My goal is less heat transfer (either way) and less UV.

2. Cleaned up the whole attic floor, then vacuumed & cleaned the track for visitors from CA. They'd found me via the NMRA Layout Directory, which I would recommend to anyone else who likes the occasional visitor (if nothing else, the prospect of showing the layout is an incentive to get off my duff).

3. Got serious about my "What have I learned from contest judging" checklist for the Structures AP. The last burst of activity had been gas & electric meters, this time it's doorknobs and stink pipes. And detailing High St. across the bridge. Then I'll put together a folder on each structure (or maybe make an HTML page with links to plans, prototype photos, build photos etc.).

Apropos of that, has anyone ever seen an HO scale casting for a roof drain? In warmer clients, they connect downspouts to scuppers at the parapet, but in Northern New England it's more common to put a domed cast iron grating over a drainpipe that runs down inside the heated interior of the building. Usually 4" to 8" diameter on the bottom. [2025 I still need to explore where the 3d printers hawk their wares]

26-Aug-2018: Well, 2 1/2 months, time for an update. I went to Thailand and rode trains. I went to the Kansas City NMRA convention and rode trolleys on the way, in K.C and on the way back. In between, I harvested hay, wheat & rye, started learning to operate a Pettibone Speed Swing (12"/foot) and made a lot of progress on 5 Strong St. I also shot a photographic layout tour which I'm slowly uploading to Flickr. And tonight I started putting Rowley and Rowley River back in the layout. They got some touch-up for Rowley's 30th birthday in spring 2019. But prep for the NER Mahwah convention (erielimited.org) takes precedence - two clinics and one contest entry.

30-Aug-2018: Reminded by an old post with a turnout count, which can be a rough estimate of layout complexity. In February 2018, when I finished the Downtown Newburyport track, the Eastern Route's turnouts were:

74 fully operational (9 commercial, 56 hand laid, 9 came with the piece of the old MIT club layout),

2 hand laid awaiting mechanisms (inside GE River Works),

10 not begun (5 in GE River Works, 5 on the future Oil Spur peninsula),

86 total.

In May 2010, I had 31 working of an expected total of 80. GE and Downtown Newburyport both got more complicated as I finalized their designs.

21-Sep-2018: I'm [still in 2025] looking for is color photos of Lynn, Malden, Medford, Somerville from before maybe 1975 (when many
started getting re-sided with aluminum or vinyl). I need them for my backdrop in the urban part of the layout.

After I got home from Mahwah, I sat down to fix a problem with Bexley Yard that bedeviled some of my operators:



I'd built Bexley with a block boundary in the middle (purple line across the body of the yard above), so switching could be done from both ends simultaneously. When I installed power districts, the way I did it made this gap a district boundary too. But operators didn't have a reflex for their loco stopping in the middle, particularly when it made the PSX-1s at each end of the yard feep simultaneously.



I added new gaps at the fouling points and independent feeders to each body track. Locos can now run the whole length of each track, and only get feeped at by one PSX when a turnout hasn't been lined.

And finally, I had an arty inspiration. "Jakes" was a  bar & pool hall on Merrimack St. in Newburyport. Gentrification didn't get it till around the turn of the century:



I stopped at Jake's on my way home from second shift at Towle Silversmiths, but I didn't stay long. When I got to Strong St. the 'Theater Train' was sitting in the station. I set my camera on the roof of a parked car and tried a few time exposures - this one came out OK.

The home signal was 'three red', but there was nothing inbound from Portsmouth at this hour of the night. I asked around the next day and found out the draw was stuck.

22-Sep-2018: Replying to comments, The same shot in 'daylight' isn't pretty - unfinished scenery, the ceiling looming over, fluorescent tubes in the background, so I'm pleased with my inspiration. And at that hour of the night, most of the 'not so outstanding citizens' in that neighborhood were either in Jake's, or the Flying Yankee next to the station (24 Winter St., 3rd or 4th down on the scratchbuilding list).

[jbvb]

3-Oct-2018: Newburyport in that era was pretty safe: bar fights but gunshots only in hunting season, an occasional B&E but no muggings. Some domestics got reported, most didn't.

21-Nov-2018: This summer I finished a structure I'd begun 16 years ago. Just now someone asked me for a picture to clarify a detail on the prototype, and I realized I hadn't taken any. Here's the subject of my first "Scratchbuilding in Styrene" clinic with everything except finish and detailing:







Here it is now, though looking at the photos I need to make the yellow more 'creamy' and bleached for a realistic look. This will also ease the somewhat overdone 'mud splash' on the lower walls.





23-Nov-2018:

Bulletin Order #53, Effective 12:01 AM Friday November 23, 2018.

Newburyport: Spring switch in service at end of double track, MP 37.4 Eastern Route.
Normal direction is for movements from single track to Westward Main Track. Movements on Eastward Main Track between Merrimack St. (MP 37.37) and Merrimack Drawbridge must not exceed 20 MPH.

Talking with John Parsons of Azatrax at the K.C. national convention, I commented that the D2T I/R turnout controller was almost what I needed to model a Spring Switch. We exchanged a few emails and he sent me a prototype. I've still got some wiring to rearrange for manual control, but not with Tour de Chooch looming. John gave me permission to post about it last month, but I don't see it on azatrax.com yet.

If you don't know what a 'spring switch' does on the prototype, or why I've wanted one since 1970, I can explain after the Tour.

[jbvb]

9-Jan-2019: Responding to a request for pictures: The Spring Switch Controller circuit board is of limited interest by itself, and Azatrax hadn't updated their website to show it [publicized in 2019 IIRC]. The pretty photos came when I added the prototypic "SPRING SWITCH" sign beside the track and on the fascia.

Meanwhile, people who know me and my layout well might want to sit down before clicking through to this picture:

The rest of the story: My son's regular job had a slow week, so he asked if I needed anything done. And I decided to deal with the part of the attic floor that should have had shimming or underlayment before the original linoleum installation (note open cracks lower left). The floor should look a lot different Friday.

This is the first time my work table had been moved in at least 10 years. Alas, picking through the pile of swept-up debris didn't reveal any useful lost parts, just a #72 drill and my first attempt at an HO adjustable window screen (didn't fit).

4-Feb-2019: The repair got finished promptly, but then a whole lot of things happened which didn't leave much time for modeling. But today I spent a while working on the visible side of the spring switch:



Here's a B&M spring switch at the end of a siding just west of the Petersburg Jct. NY diamond with the Rutland's recently abandoned line to Chatham NY. The section crew will be making their life a little simpler today. Note the big box supporting a fairly routine high switch stand.



Later that day, the spring switch mechanism is about to be wrestled into the weeds and replaced with a normal Ramapo #17.



I built the box from .020 & .040 styrene sheet, adding a Rapido switchstand casting and a bit of half-round styrene for the ?hydraulic? damper. Handle is .025 phosphor bronze, staff is .020 music wire.

[jbvb]

5-Feb-2019: Frank Palmer asked what they (section gangs) did in the winter? Pete suggested "freeze", which happens when you're standing around waiting for a train to pass or some other gang members to finish their part of the job.

I replied:  Been there, done that: January 1978 at South Station, Boston (day labor for the Mass Bay Transportation Authority)

There's no ballast between the ties under the points. So in a nearby storage building, there are a bunch of sheet metal objects looking vaguely like Bigfoot's house slippers, with a round stack coming out of one end with a wick. When the Super makes the call, the Section Gang will fill 'em up with kerosene, light 'em and stick one between each pair of ties under the points. Then trudge around the interlocking till the snow stops drifting, refilling as necessary and re-lighting when a passing train dumps enough snow to extinguish one. Then pick 'em all up and put 'em away till the next storm.

Then and 9-Mar-2025, image search for "kerosene railroad switch heater" shows what I'm talking about as the 1st pic

Pete replied "This tactic, BTW, was all over the news media last week as Chicago "burned the railroad!!!" Lots of photos from all sorts of angles, high buildings, etc. showing the switch point heaters in use during the really cold snap...."

When the South Station kerosene lamps were retired during the 1984 reconstruction (along with Tower 1 and the underground baggage ramps and reverse loop), I think that was the last use in New England. I can't imagine anything so labor intensive remaining in today's RR operating environment. I have seen a couple in museums in recent years.

I believe what the newsies were twittering about in both Boston and Chicago was LP or mains natural gas. Most gas installations are easy to spot in fair weather too.

7-Feb-2019: Spring Switch project is complete: Signage on fascia, trackside and on the control panel. The prettiest is shown here:



Next focus was to be stalled projects and revising the operating plan to include Downtown Newburyport.

8-Mar-2019: One of Rapido's RDC-2s arrived last week. I sent it out on the main for break-in. The baggage-end ('F' mark) truck didn't track very well. Per the instructions, I tried bending the baggage steps out a bit, but no joy. After a number of derailments I investigated:



I could feel something catch as I moved the truck around: the red power feed wire shown above was bent upwards so it would catch on the underframe at certain angles. I used the back of a hobby knife to bend it back within the confines of the truck frame. All happy now.

Most of my recent hobby time was prep for my Railrun op session that March.

30-Mar-2019: A busy three weeks - the Town Meeting, then the Hub Division's Spring Training event, then lots of paperwork and house cleaning getting ready for Kanthima and me getting married on the 31st. But some railroad work did get done:



I decided the Market Sq. waterfront terminal of the City RR branch needed a guard to protect teamsters from careless elbows. I used 5 mm acrylic scraps from the hardware store, so it took a while to get the angles right.



And my stepson has been asking for projects. I started him out on an Accurail 3-bay 70 ton hopper kit. He had lots of questions about the instructions, as an exploded view needs familiarity with the end result to work as instructions. But he did a good job and asked for more. So I gave him a P2K 50' end-door automobile car kit someone else had built the underframe for. Again, lots of questions, and a few lost and broken parts I got out the magnifier to remedy. But a sound result. Here he is with his test train.

1-Apr-2019: Late yesterday, after the wedding crowd had departed, my stepson asked for another project. I gave him a second P2K 50' auto box, which he finished before bed. I need to teach him a little more about applying solvent cement, but a good job throughout.



Next I gave him a Tichy flatcar kit. Slightly different style and it needed painting. Which fitted in with weathering the rest of his fleet.

[jbvb]

12-May-2019: In what has become a theme the past 5 years: Aside from yesterday's op session, not much has changed on the Eastern route since April - school vacation included a multi-day visit to relatives and since then I've spent a lot of time on Seashore Trolley Museum's track and equipment. That will taper off when the Museum opens 7 days/week on Memorial Day. And I've bought a bunch of lighting and signaling parts which I plan to post about.

20-May-2019: In the late 2000s I started the Franklin St. area in Bexley. I needed clearance underneath for Bexley Yard's switch controls and the track through Bexley Tunnel, so I used 1/8" hardboard to support buildings and street. I left the rough side up so scenery and road materials would adhere better as the hardboard (probably) flexed.

Later, I'd used commercial plastic cobblestone on Railroad St. and, looking at Franklin Street's rough texture, I had an idea: It wasn't great cobblestone, but in the '50s many New England cities had covered the traffic parts of busy cobblestone streets with asphalt, leaving strips of stones in the gutters. I applied some "Cape Cod Gray" stain to the hardboard and liked the 'feel'. But I dithered over whether I should add a trolley track, and what paving scheme would avoid cracking.

Saturday, my lighting project motivated me to finally repave Franklin St. I masked off strips along the curb, then painted a test section with black satin finish latex, and sprinkled it with 'Part C' colored sand from Spectralock's StainProof Grout system. After it dried and I brushed away everything that didn't stick, Natural Gray (left) came out too light, but Raven looked good



I went ahead and did the rest of the street. I clearly didn't burnish the tape down into the texture perfectly, but as I recall that kind of repaving job, they didn't always get picky with full-size sand for perfect coverage of the edges of the asphalt pour. If it bothers me later, I can weather the black down easily while detailing the gutters.



Next, three WeHonest street lamps should give decent coverage, and then some attention to Gorin Machine's truck dock area.

Pete (Orionvp17) suggested:

Good start, James!
Trash, streetlights, maybe a mail box and a Gamewell Box (fire alarm call box) on the light pole, some peeps going to or from work and you'll have it.
Streetcar is optional, but since you're in the streetcar business anyway, well....
Apropos of nothing whatsoever, Bowser has some New Orleans cars with DCC and sound that look a lot like the Type Five cars in Boston, so there is that....
And when the cracks appear, simply fill them with very dark grey paint, a couple of shovel-sized and not-very-well-done "hot top" patches, and perhaps even let the cobblestones sneak up through a couple of places where the plows have destroyed the asphalt and the Highway Department crews decided that the holes weren't worth taking another shovel-full of patch off the truck.
I'm sure you get the idea!

23-May-2019: Thanks, Pete. So far I've drawn in some drain gratings, but this led the small fry to criticize my 'cheating'. This afternoon brought me to 'first light', which led to a test photo after sunset:



The sidewalk needs adjusting, the mill's doors need steps, I need a permanent Colonial Inn structure, No Parking signs, meters etc, etc. But I am astonished how well my Pentax Kr's automation handled this 15 sec. f/32 exposure. All it needs is dialing down the Exposure Compensation for the reshoot.

28-May-2019: More progress on Franklin St. in Bexley: my stepson practicing styrene & solvent technique on window glazing for a DPM building I hadn't gotten to in 10+ years:



Then we got out some Hi Tech Details parking meters. This time he did break the point off a #65 drill, because he got distracted:



The Downtown Deco "Addams Ave. Part I" I built before I started this thread on RR-Line looks more than a little 'high water' at this angle'; I'm thinking sandpaper before I add steps to the styrene sidewalk.