Boston & Maine Eastern Route Progress

[deemery]

Is there a particular town on the map that Bexley represents?

dave

[jbvb]

From a RR point of view, Bexley is a substitute for Salem, MA.  But I'm not trying to do the old part of Salem or its waterfront; the only antique is the Richie-Gilbert House..  The buildings I've chosen to model to date look more like Lynn; 3-decker residential, mostly masonry in the commercial areas. Some commercial buildings newer than WWII but most 1900-1929. Thinking about it a bit, you see Bexley-like construction in the real Salem on the land side of the tracks parallel to Bridge St. and the road to Peabody Sq.  Also around the Castle Hill yard.

[Mr. Critter]

I fully realize that this thread is a preservational re-post of an epic from another forum, but reading it here's been like watching someone thoughtfully build a large model railroad and its impedimenta in the space of a couple of months.  Love it.  Fond of your historical, contextual tidbits, especially, having a love for the New England states and their architectural styles.

I'm glad you've taken the time and trouble to migrate your words and pictures here, I applaud you for doing so, and I hope to see more.  I'll be tuned to this channel.

[jbvb]

Thanks for your interest, Mr. Critter.  I have fond memories of Montreal in years past: Labatt's Porter, the elevated track south of Gare Central and the ground-level industrial district and canals near it.  Having my old threads around is good for me personally: I have to go through them once in a while to refresh the context of the work to date and review/update my priorities.  But also, my old posts are often effective answers to questions elsewhere, particularly when "a picture is worth a thousand words".  And doing that publicizes Modelersforum.

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11-Jan-2020: The Perplexing Puzzles Plus 'Hardware Store' now has window glazing and basic roof details; I have ideas for signage but need to work out details of a possible animation. So it'll sit till I'm sure <may happen in 2025>:



This is my first try at this angle. It will improve when a real produce terminal and the Depot Square flats appear in the background.
Parts are on order to complete the large portion of the Colonial Georgian House, and I have most of the windows in the kitbashed RDA Ashford Tower. I know what I need to do for the CTC machine and lighting, I still <in 2025> need to figure out the order boards and their control levers.

12-Jan-2020: Today was so warm (68F/20C, likely a record) I switched to jobs which are less pleasant in cold weather: choosing and cutting lumber in my unheated barn/shop.



First I worked out a plan for a glacial kettle hole pond in Newburyport by the City RR tracks (the prototype pond is on the other side). The bed is leftover Homasote. Screen wire and ground goop will probably follow this week.

While glue was drying I started work on the US 1 overpass. I cut 1/8" hardboard roadbed (left top running from the backdrop over the main line) and a support. Then I got ambitious and sketched out the traffic circle were US 1 meets State St. (and Parker St. in the prototype, which I've no room for). That's the bright white cardboard political sign starfish in the center. The levels were never going to be prototypical, but it looks like it will work and even look passable by a tractor and 32-foot trailer. I'm sooooo glad I don't have to build roads for 53 footers...

16-Jan-2020: NH is pretty good for getting rid of political signs a day or two after the election. But I do have a stock of both the coated cardboard and corrugated plastic material.



Taking advantage of relatively warm weather, I've continued to work on roads, foundations and landforms. I have a footprint for Georgetown Sand & Gravel, the spur just behind the RH abutment. And I'm now far enough along that I can start designing, then building the US 1 overpass. The bright red boxcar is a souvenir from the Amherst Club, out to check clearances for AAR Plate C. Because of its 1930s construction Route 1 was high enough that it didn't need telltales, so I tried a LP on the roof.

But they forecast cold, so I'll probably go back to structures until it's time to pack the Rowley modules for the Big E show a week from tomorrow. I just got the windows I need to finish the Georgian Colonial in the far upper right. If I'm feeling ambitious I'll make a couple of prototype window assemblies for GE Bldg. 41 (also in this Tichy shipment).

In between everything else, I've done some checking and tweaking track. I've signed up for the RailRun operations event in late March and I should probably invite my crew over for a warm-up before that - it's been almost a year since I've gotten out the timetables. <forward looking statements rapidly became obsolete>

17-Jan-2020: When possible, I devote as little real-estate to public highways as possible. But here, US 1 was very conspicuous,. The overpass was  built for 4 tracks and I couldn't avoid presenting it in profile. I had thought about doing the rotary as a simple intersection, but the circle is the thing most Newburyporters remember about this not-really-a-neighborhood-because-nobody-lives here. If you look at the site today, Google's satellite shows the mostly-abandoned roadbeds of the lines I'm modeling. I can even spot hints of the one-time trolley overpass I'm not modeling...

20-Jan-2020: I braved the cold and opened the window for airbrushing the Colonial Georgian House's windows.



I waited to look at it in daylight before final installation of the doors; They have to wait if it needs more spraying.



Then I made the telegraph key swivel extension for Bexley Tower. .025 wire and an enclosure bent out of .005 shim brass and soldered. I'm almost ready to paint this and apply a paper track diagram with controls.

[jbvb]

22-Jan-2020: Good progress: The Bexley Tower CTC machine is just about finished, but I need a better picture to post. And I shingled about 3/4 of the Colonial Georgian House:



The tower needs a couple of 'candlestick' style phones without dials. Seems there are parts from Alexander (back order at Walthers) and SS Ltd. But the image of SS 2247 on scales-tructures.com is <still, in 2025> awful: a scan of a scan of a long-ago half-tone. Can anyone comment on the casting quality?

30-Jan-2020: It's pretty much done, with my real center-chimney colonial in the background.



I got stalled on the BEST house when I couldn't find Tichy's glazing for one package of 4024 windows. I'm sure I had it, but a young person borrowed my workbench for a project and it couldn't be found thereafter. So today I made two dozen new panes: I locked my caliper to the height, then used its points to mark out enough strips. Then I set my old-style 'Chopper' to the width. Cutting and assembly actually took less time than I'd spent hunting for the missing laser-cut glazing - I didn't have to file off the little stubs left from cutting the laser-cut panes free.

Now it was complete enough to start on scenery around it.

2-Feb-2020: Much closer to finishing the three structures I started in December:



Bexley Tower now has its signs and the Train Director's workplace is illuminated. It needed a wall calendar (UP 1953 calendar found online & printed) and a desk chair. Then deal with the train order signal. And then weather the roof, at least. That big roof overhang would have kept the windows and walls relatively clean.

A personal site describing how to make your own calendar for any year. A fair amount of work, but if you want to avoid compromise:

 http://virginian.mdodd.com/calendar.html

9-Feb-2020: I'd been thinking about how to light the Bexley platform shed for a while. The platform itself is removable and I wanted the shed to be removable from the platform. A little matter of not having installed station signs yet was foremost.

Friday I sorted through materials on hand and decided I knew enough to start:



The 3/32" square brass (K&S) shoe on the RH canopy support is the positive connection. I wired the 5 WeHonest 'R60GR Hanging lamp with gray shade' LED assemblies in series. I used styrene (mostly .060 C channel) to retain the wire. Now that it works, I will glue/paint it (one step if I can make it work) to the styrene canopy and 3D-printed supports.

I had a few tense moments doing the wiring: the very fine stranded wire is impossible to splice mechanically, so I soldered by smashing a hot blob of solder on the iron down on my fireproof sheet. Then after starting on the 3rd lamp, found out the 2nd was bad (an excellent reason not to paint the connections as I went).

I went back to it Saturday and got all the lamps working individually. But my variable power supply is decades out of date, so I couldn't measure both voltage and current. It took a tense half hour to discover that WeHonest's LEDs start to light at about 2.5 VDC. My signal LEDs gave first light at about 1.7 volts.

Then some crawling around to confirm there was a power supply good for 15 VDC. I decided to check the resistor with the variable power supply, which led to me using a 1.5K where the calculated value would have been 220 ohms.



The 1/8" hardboard platform lifts out, then the foam 'Depot Square' module can be removed and worked on out of place. Canopy supports fit into the 1/8" square brass sockets. All except the end sockets are crimped at the bottom so the supports don't fall through. The end sockets are wired as positive/negative feeds. More work, but maintaining a strict 'finish the back before starting the front' discipline would have stalled the layout completely a decade ago.



Night lighting hides all manner of sins, but Kanthima noticed the unpainted wire before I did. I still like this photo. When the scene is complete there will be lit structures and street lighting in the background, so this simple composition will require extra switch controls to replicate.