Boston & Maine Eastern Route Progress

[jbvb]

5-Apr-2024: Yesterday I got tired and cold clearing snow as it was (mostly) raining. I'd seen what cut off grid power to my side of town; The tree was big and did a lot of damage, and our small town wasn't going to get priority. I lit the wood stove and looked for a project I could work on downstairs. I chose an incomplete styrene scratchbuild of a 2-story office building for Slovacek Fuels in Bexley. It has walls and a roof, the interior walls should go in before applying paint and paper textures.

I knew I'd worked out the interior walls on a paper drawing, but I couldn't find it in the attic. I didn't mention the office in this thread, it wasn't in my clinics list, what the hell? I searched my computer and found it as a Scratchbuilding In Styrene clinic given at the March 2023 NERx on-line event. So I added it to my list and here are a couple of pictures from the slide show:




It's only 40' x 15' 6" and was built early enough that the single stair will be supplemented by an escape ladder by a 2nd floor window.



Michael Hohn asked if it would be sheathed in brick. I replied: Insulbrick. I have three Clever textures for it, plus the January 2006 RMC article by Don Spiro. There had been a house sheathed with Insulbrick in Newton NH but I think it was renovated after 2005.

Dave Emery:

Insulbrick was popular in Pittsburgh when I was growing up. Even as a little kid, I thought it was Really Ugly. But it's definitely era-appropriate for you.

OK_Hogger (Andre):

"Insulbrick"...
In the Arklahoma region it was generally referred to as "Brickette".
Don't know if that was a brand name by some roofing/siding mfg'er, but that's what my Depression Era parents called it. Neither of my parents liked it. Probably because of the generally poor economic conditions their memories of same were steeped in. Mother's family was especially hard hit by the Depression. (It was tough for many in the smaller Ozark towns.) She went to bed hungry countless times. Her dad got shot at trying to grab a few corns on the cobb from a farmer's field to feed his family. Tough times

Around here, Insulbrick was fairly common in downscale neighborhoods,small non-retail commercial buildings and farm outbuildings into the 1960s. I recall most uses being to retrofit previous-era buildings whose shingles, clapboards etc. needed replacement and some insulation was better than none. I haven't heard the "Brickette" name before; current "pay for placement" internet search gives me 80% links to a bar in West Chester, PA.

Pete added:

Back to "Insulbrick" for a moment. IIRC, this stuff was commonly referred to as "gasoline shingles" by various firefighters in northeastern urban areas such as the one James is modeling. They had several colorful ways of describing the speed with which fire accelerated from "An odor of smoke in the area" to
"Working Fire" to "Strike fifth alarm," but this is a family site, so...

5-May-2024: Dave Emery asked how my HUB High Green operating sessions had gone.  I answered that I believed everyone had fun, but there was only one guest who'd operated the Eastern Route before, and a couple of others with more than 5 op sessions of experience. So trains got run, I spent this afternoon and evening working on a punch list. And I need to call MRC tech support to see if they have a software update for the Wi-Throttle/Train Engineer dongle. It mostly worked..

21-May-2024: Not much modeling in May, lots of other things needing attention. And I didn't get any pictures of the op session. Bruce Robinson took some, one appeared in the HUB Headlight.

9-Sep-2024: Now it was September, with almost no intervening layout work. I did show my Eastern Route to several groups of visitors over the summer but there's an electrical issue I need to budget a day for - merely working on it for an hour didn't successfully diagnose it. I sure hope we'll get some rainy days this fall, but currently the Internet predicts sun through the end of next week. And there are apples and pawpaws to harvest - I got some pears when we first came home, but they were only the end of one tree's fruit.

In July a HUB Division friend gave me an HO Bachmann "Sound Value" 2-6-0 lettered as B&M 1360, an early B-15 class loco scrapped in 1937. The model isn't accurate, most visibly the piston-valve cylinders but I found it ran OK. So I started on it with DecoderPro, then searching the net for information beyond the Quick Start sheet. Notch 1 or 28 speed steps was faster than I like, but DecoderPro offered no ways to set starting voltage, program speed tables or anything related. It starts slower on notch 1 of 128 speed steps, so I'll have to settle for that and manage throttles so it's operated with one programmed for this quirk. Adjustment of sound volume is also limited. I can't mute the air compressor or make it cycle less frequently. I could replace the decoder, but I also could just wire a resistor in series with the speaker....

13-Oct-2024: October 13th, no model RR activity at all this month, very little work at Seashore Trolley Museum either. I became a member of a very American "club" I hoped never to join: my step-niece Katie was shot to death Sep. 23. The man who killed her then tried, unsuccessfully, to kill himself. Nothing in the news about charges yet.

I divided my October between taking care of my home & family, scanning slides for pictures of Katie and work on the upcoming election.

1-Dec-2024: Looking in as the volunteer track work season ends at Seashore: the ground is starting to freeze and once Christmas Prelude (a Kennebunkport event mostly focused on shopping) is over Dec. 15 very few wheels will turn until we inspect the Main Line in April. I do not envy the professionals who work all winter, particularly in Canada and Alaska. But we're aged volunteers and get to stay home till the days get a lot longer. I will have Flying Yankee Assoc. work this Winter, mostly the design and permitting phases of getting a roof over the train.

My Rowley modules won't be at the January 2025 Amherst Club (BigE) show but I will do two shifts at the FYA table.

Personally, my niece's dogs made it to NH without getting stuck too long in a shelter; I've walked them, they're indeed good dogs. And the punk did himself enough damage that there won't be a trial, so no mudslinging from his lawyer.

13-Dec-2024: I spent a few hours up with the layout today: I fixed a 3-sided background structure that had fallen when I took the storm windows off last Spring, and built a Rix 29 foot tank I bought for an oil dealer on Water St. in Newburyport. I also determined that a couple of free LEDs I brought home from NEMTE will light at 9V and don't burn up in the first minute at 12V (if limited to 0.1 amp). I"m glad I bought the fancy lab power supply a few years ago - it will adjust voltage and current by .01 independently.

I'm volunteering at the HUB Division's Boston Museum of Science layout tomorrow, then operating trolleys at Seashore Sunday. I'll try to get back to the layout as temperatures allow.

The owner of railroad-line.com shut it down Jan. 31, 2025. Having saved all my own content, now it's reappearing on modelersforum.com.

New 2025 content below.
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[deemery]

Wow, all caught up!!

dave

[jbvb]

Yes, now see if I can make some progress on a current project.

[ACL1504]

James,

Finally finished reading through the pages. Very nice layout and thanks for sharing it here also.

Tom 

[jbvb]

I'm making signs for Kanthima's North American Bent Chair build (page 15) using the free  Gnu Image Manipulation Program . The Caldwells distillery was founded in 1772 and made rum for 171 years . Their Old Newburyport Rum was well known in New England, to the point it was featured on B&M diner menus of the era. Their last Newburyport distillery was off Merrimac St. on the upstream side of the B&M main line between the station and the drawbridge. NABC isn't an exact match, but the only photo I've found isn't a good starting point for a scratchbuild:



My first try at fitting the NABC roof and an as yet unbuilt elevator house. The roof sign is 10" long, the billboard 1x2".



Track work at Seashore today, back to this tonight or tomorrow.

[jbvb]

My Broadway Limited B&M 2-8-4 arrived.  The wheel arrangement was called "Berkshire" on most US RRs, after the Boston & Albany became the first big customer for the wheel arrangement.  They were more commonly called "Lima" on the B&M, after the manufacturer, because the B&A directly competed for traffic between NYC points and eastern Massachusetts. Lima's "Super Power" concept enlarged the boiler and firebox compared to the 2-10-2s built around the end of WWI; both were drag freight power, but the 2-8-4s regularly ran up to 45 MPH.  But train crews were very cautious about backing trains; Lima mounted the prototype drawbar on the trailing truck, which would derail under too much buff force.



Both the engine and tender have power pickup, and it has a supercapacitor "keep alive" (I forget what BLI calls theirs).  Both engine & tender are quite heavy. The engine's drawbar attachment is two plastic prongs sticking down that catch a rectangular opening. There's also a multi-wire cable for power etc. which I haven't tried to detach.  The prongs look fragile (no Delrin shine) so I've been picking it up using my wood trough with cloth equipment holder.  Like I did with VIctor's PRR T-1 years ago, I put engine & tender in upside down, fiddled the drawbar to security, then turned it right side up onto the track.



There was one manufacturing defect: The RH marker light had a big light leak along the joint between the top and the side lens plate. It was so bright I didn't even notice the smokebox front assembly out of place when I was taking this picture. I applied some black artists acrylic paint to cover the opening.  The sound was VERY LOUD out of the box.  I reduced the main volume from 128 to 6 before it wouldn't be obnoxious at an op session. Then I bumped up the whistle and bell so they could do their job.  I have never liked how sound-equipped locos accelerate, coast and decelerate, but I use both whistle & bell per prototype (I'm qualified on 1:1 streetcars and a GE 25 ton loco at Seashore).



BLI on the left, to right is a Westside 2-8-4 imported in the 1980s. I've heard people criticize the Westside model as having details the ATSF applied after buying several in 1945, but all I see is the cab sunshade: B&M clearances were so tight they warned crews to fold the windscreens ahead of the window before entering several tight places.  It wouldn't surprise me if the BLI pulled more than the Westside, but the older 2-8-4 can get a 29 car maximum length freight around the layout handily.  So 4012 is getting a rest in my display box.

[jbvb]

A disappointment: The retouched photo of Caldwell's distillery above?  I found a reproduction of the original, and at least in 1936 there was no signage atop the building facing US 1.   Maybe I'll still use the signs I made, as the Bent Chair kit is made for a sign below the parapet.

Sunday my wife and I got the photos she needed to finish 109 State St. by visiting and asking the homeowners. They were quite surprised to find people modeling their house, but they did know it had once been Newburyport's only hobby shop.

A photo and a question:



Suggestions on the best starting point for 149 State St. in Newburyport?  It's a simple brick building that once was The Clothes Line laundry and dry cleaning.  Tax records suggest it was a milk plant once (they were this small into the 1950s).  I'm looking for photos showing the original sign, which was on a portico over the front door in the center bay.

I have many DPM modular wall parts, but nothing has this kind of window opening. Also Walthers was charging $9 a panel last time I looked.  I have quite a few Walthers out-of-production modular wall pieces, but none I can easily turn into this window/door layout.  Anyone have a better idea than getting out the brick sheet and turning a lot of it into styrene scraps & dust?

[Larry C]

My only suggestion would be to use thin foam core for the build, of course it would
have to be reinforced with wood, and brick paper for the internet. Probably the brick sheet
may be your better option for what you're trying to accomplish.

[deemery]

That would be an easy styrene snap-and-reassemble build.  

dave

[jbvb]

Looks like I'll need to read through the library's scans of Newburyport News for the 1960s in hopes of a photo of The Clothesline's front canopy and sign.  Meanwhile I've got op sessions coming up May 2 and 3. Yesterday and today I worked on some balky commercial turnouts in my staging yard.  Enough progress to get through the operating sessions, but not enough to hope I won't have to come back to it.

Then I got out #1360, the Sound Value 2-6-0 I was unhappy with last July.  The overall volume is CV 128, which my older Decoder Pro doesn't know about.  But programming it on the main worked. Originally 192, I like it much better at 20.  And the bell & whistle became reasonable too.  Probably should see what I can do about the speed range, as it sounds pretty frantic at speed step 60.  B&M Class B-15 had 63" drivers and the same tonnage rating as the 73" driver 4-6-2s. I can't imagine the 2-6-0 could run as fast as the longer-legged 4-6-2, but there's nothing formal in the Employee Timetables; I guess it was left to the engineer.  The main line speed limit in that era was 70 MPH in stone ballast territory, 65 elsewhere (like the Eastern Route), but only the two newest steam classes had speed recorders.

[jbvb]

Yesterday I cleaned up after the HUB Division High Green operating sessions. Taking advantage of the neatness and the new BLI 2-8-4's sound, I made a new "cab ride" video westbound. Alas, the video editing tools on my laptop suffered from bit-rot during 3 years of idleness   Feel free to skip the first and last 10 seconds:

B&M T-1a pushes camera car Westbound

[friscomike]

Howdy James,

Thanks for the video tour.  You have an excellent layout that promises to be fun to operate.  Congrats!

Have fun,
mike

[Orionvp17]

Very nicely done, James!  I need a stop at the Clam Box!!  🤣

Pete
in Michigan

[Zephyrus52246]

Nice looking layout.  

Jeff