The "Essence" of the NYC

WM183 Jan 25, 2019

  1. WM183

    WM183 TrainBoard Member

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    Hi folks.

    Participate with me in a thought exercise, if you'd be so kind. Let's say you're just another Rust Belt kid who'd like to take a bit of the Rust Belt with them to their new home in the Netherlands, in the form of a NYC themed layout set in and around your hometown of Ashtabula, Ohio. Ashtabula was every bit a railroad town, and while the PRR, Nickel Plate, and AC&Y also had tracks there, NYC was the undisputed 1000 pound gorilla in and around 'bula.

    A few things which make Ashtabula such an amazing NYC setting, doubly so for a town of only about 38000 people in its heyday:

    Two NYC mainlines met in Ashtabula; The NYC's 4 track "Water Level Route" came right through the middle of town, across a stone arch bridge over the Ashtabula river that replaced the earlier wooden structure that collapsed in 1876, killing 92 people. Also the line south to Carson, and further on to Pittsburgh and Youngstown and the P&LE's tracks. H10 Mikados liked to explode on this line, oddly.

    A stately LS&MS style station and freight house greeted passengers, who could board local trains here, as well as the Empire State Express, and also which served for the NYC's famed Pacemaker LCL service point in the region.

    The NYC had a MASSIVE roundhouse in Ashtabula, which served as a service facility for locomotives going both east, west, and south, as well as for the hordes of 0-8-0's that worked the ore docks. If one roundhouse wasn't enough, the PRR had its own roundhouse literally across the street, but nowhere near as huge as NYC's.

    New York Central's iron ore dock in Ashtabula was the biggest on the Great Lakes, with 8 massive Hullet unloaders and staging for thousands and thousands of hoppers of ore and coal.

    Dozens and dozens of industries served by the NYC, from the CEI power station, to the Elkem Metals steel mill, to chemical plants, tool industries, forging shops, and even a shipyard!



    Let's say you wanted to capture the "Essence" of the NYC then on a portable layout, in much the same way Dave Vollmer captured the PRR on his wonderful door layout; perhaps 3x6 at most, and that would be modular. Would it be possible to model even ONE of these facets of the NYC in such a small space, let alone more than one?
     
  2. SF Chief

    SF Chief TrainBoard Member

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    Join an N-Trak club and build a series of modules. I don't mean to be flip, but it sounds like there is/was soooo much going on in Ashtabula, it's daunting. Another suggestion: put a lot of work into a really good backdrop would also help give the scene(s) depth, bringing out the extent of operations/activities that would not be modeled directly. Rick
     
  3. brokemoto

    brokemoto TrainBoard Member

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    A four track main on a small pike will present you with enough operating headaches as it is. In addition, the pike will be all track and no scenery. If you are trying to give an impression of Ashtabula, you will have a hard time doing so with track, only.

    I do not know how many tracks that the line to Youngstown had, but, if it was single track with passing sidings, you might try that part of it. There was a P&LE/NYC passenger train that ran through Youngstown to Chicago. It did run in the years immediately following the Second World War, but, likely NYCS dropped it in the early to mid-1950s. I do not know if it joined the Water Level Route at Ashtabula, but it would make sense that it did. At one point, that train ran all the way to Baltimore. WM ran it from Connellsville to Baltimore. I do not recall exactly when WM dropped its portion, but I suspect it was during the 1930s.

    You did see both NYC and P&LE power and cars on that train. P&LE passenger power ran on the NYC in the steam era. Currently, there is no P&LE passenger steam out there in N scale.

    Your H-10s and H-6s could run the hoppers full of iron ore and coal. P&LE used seventy ton hoppers both for coal and iron ore. You might see an occasional Penn ore jenny (someone sold those things at one point--keep in mind that the Minnesota ore jenny that Atlas, MP and Trix sell or sold would be QUITE the rarity in the East.) You could fudge the H-9s (USRA heavy), even though P&LE freight steam rarely ran on NYC rails past Youngstown.
    The A-2a s were an exception. NYC rented them after they had been sitting for at least two years at McKee's Rocks. They were a disappointment due to the lack of care for those years that they sat. When NYC finally returned them to P&LE in 1956, only two were running acceptably. Some of them did not make it back under their own power. No matter there, as no one sells an A2a, even in brass. You can get an H-9, the Kato. For your era, you would have to put a larger tender behind it, move the air pumps to the pilot deck and put shields in front of them.

    P&LE freight diesel power and yard power did operate on the NYC (as did the passenger diesels). I knew a guy who worked for NYC at Gateway. He told me that they used to try to trade three for two. NYC would try to trade P&LE three F-7s for two GP-7s or three FAs or RS-3s for two P&LE RS-3s. The P&LE took care of its power while parent NYC practiced deferred maintenance. Of course, once the parent's decrepit power made it to Pittsburgh, P&LE would send it to McKee's Rocks for repair. If you wanted to run Atlas' Pacemaker Green lightning striped RS-3s, you could.

    On the door layout, you might want to put the outside loop as close to the edge as you can, if you want to run any passenger equipment. MT is supposed to issue a single window coach based on a NYCS prototype, and, is supposed to issue it with both six and four wheel trucks. Most NYCS HWs had four wheel trucks, but there were some early orders that had six. Many of those wound up on the Boston and Albany. The MT cars operate best on curves of fifteen inch radius (thirty eight centimeters) or greater.

    If freight is all that you are going to run, you will get away with much sharper curves. Despite that, the H-10s, especially since they are brass, still would prefer a curve of at least thirteen inches (thirty-three centimeters). My Kato Mikados will take a nine and three quarter curve (twenty-five centimeters), but will not like it. They do allright on eleven inch (twenty-eight centimeters) curves, but, seem to perform best on curves of thirteen inches or greater. The H-10 was only slightly larger than the H-9. Kato's construction is a little more tolerant than is the construction of the brass manufacturers.
     
  4. WM183

    WM183 TrainBoard Member

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    Thank you guys so much! Modules are a great idea; I know there are Ntrak ISH clubs here, and I should seek one out. That would be a great way to model some scenes just as they are/were, such as the LS&MS depot.

    Regarding the Carson - Youngstown line, I believe most of that was in fact single tracked. That might be a fun line to model, even though the area that line runs is about 98% forests and swamps. A layout depicting the NYC / P&LE interchange in Youngstown might be much more achievable, and I wouldn't need any Hudsons or Niagaras. I love RS3s too, so any excuse to run them would make my day.

    I had debated a sort of "stage" centered on the depot, where trains could come on the layout, run by (or stop) and then run "off stage" as is popular in the UK. As the wye and junction where the Water Level line and the Carson line met is only a few hundred feet from the depot, and quite visible from it, that's perhaps another way to go. The roundhouse was just the other side of the wye also,!

    You folks are amazing!

    Edit: I will not go below 13 inch radius curves no matter what! I have a Kato track set with 13 inch radius and my brass mikes run just fine on that. I'd not want to press my luck and go smaller!
     
    Onizukachan and mtntrainman like this.
  5. Mike Kmetz

    Mike Kmetz TrainBoard Member

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    You are getting some good suggestions. You really need to minimize. For example, a turntable and roundhouse would take most of your available space. Why not just represent their presence in a backdrop (like behind the station, which seems to be an important focal point in your planning). I seem to recall that the NYCS Historical Society was planning to have a replica of the LS&MS station (like the one in Ashtabula) produced, but don't remember if it was N scale. There are plenty of drawings available - maybe you could scratchbuild it.
     
  6. brokemoto

    brokemoto TrainBoard Member

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    Since you are modelling steam, you would not need to worry about Gateway Yard, although I do wonder when NYCS began to clear the land and build the hump. You would, however, need Hudsons, as by the late 1940s, they were working reguallarly on the P&LE. P&LE never had any Hudsons, they had K-5b then K-6. By your era, they would have been K-6 s (ex-B&A). P&LE and NYC did run each other's passenger steam, but rarely each other's freight steam.

    P&LE also had either two or three H-9s equipped with steam lines and signalling devices. According to Jack Polaritz (and if there is anything to be known about the P&LE, he knows it), McKee's Rocks did this to allow them to pull crew shuttles. I do suspect that they pulled more than one passenger train when a Hudson, Pacific or ten-wheeler was not available. These H-9s are in addition to the vestibule cab H-10s that P&LE acquired in the very early 1950s, all of which at one point had steam lines and signalling devices, although only three of them ever had their steam lines' working once they arrived on the P&LE.

    You will not find the Pacifics, but, you might get away with H-9s' and H-10s' working passenger trains, if you do not want the Hudsons.

    When the diesels displaced the Hudsons and Niagaras, the Hudsons did go to secondary passenger trains and mail trains. They did fine on the mail trains, but were not well suited to secondary or local passenger trains.

    Jack Polaritz once told me that he never was sure if he saw a Niagara on the P&LE, although he did say that he once saw a steam locomotive larger than anything that he had seen up to that time and that the tracks shook as it proceeded. He thought that it might have been a Niagara. From what he told me, I gathered that Niagaras did not run with regularity on the P&LE. The A-2a s did turn on the Erie wye in Youngstown, as the turntable there was too small for them. P&LE would wait until at least three piled up in Youngstown, then turn them as a single train on the Erie wye. This saved it some money. There was only one turntable that could accommodate the A-2a s when they showed up in 1948: McKee's Rocks. P&LE did rehabilitate some of its bridges south of Pittsburgh and did enlarge the turntable in Connelsville to accommodate the A-2a s, but, it was still rare that they ran south of Pittsburgh. The whole thing turned out to be a waste of money, as P&LE parked the A-2a s in 1953 or 1954 until parent NYC wanted them to relieve a power shortage in the Big Four.

    The GP-7s came 1950-53; the RS-3s, 1951-53. (There were also some GP-7s bought used from C&O in 1956). The RS-2s came to the NYC 1948-1950, but I am not sure when they appeared west of Pittsburgh. They ran on the B&A and even in New York. Sometimes the DRSP-2s would run on the Buffalo-Pittsburgh train. Kato's came with DRSP-2 numbers, but were painted grey. That caused quite a debate among N scale NYCS modellers. Never have I seen a photograph of a grey RS-2, even a passenger RS-2. NYC's RS-2s did have the angled escape stack against the cab, unlike the majority of its passenger RS-3s, which had the "stovepipe" escape stack toward the end of the short hood. The general rule for RS-configured power in the NYCS "lightning stripe" era was black for freight, grey for passenger, but there were exceptions. P&E's passenger GP-7s were black, but did leave LaGrange with silver trucks.
     
  7. Point353

    Point353 TrainBoard Member

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    Could you select two of those scenes to model?
    See the following video of a layout that features two distinct scenes, one on either side of a backdrop, built on a hollow core door with dimensions comparable to what you expect to have available.

     
  8. Mike Kmetz

    Mike Kmetz TrainBoard Member

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    The LS&MS station kit is in development now, but it is HO scale. There is hope, though, because the developer is N Scale Architect. Maybe they can be persuaded to do it in N scale if the HO version does well.
     
  9. Hardcoaler

    Hardcoaler TrainBoard Member

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    The smaller details will reflect a road's identity as much as the larger things. I'm not an NYC expert, but NYC had unique signals that would be an immediate indicator of your road's heritage. Many roads also had instantly-identifiable mileposts, whistleposts, pole line hardware, structure colors, station signs, and depot and interlocking tower architecture. You may have to scratchbuild a number of these, but on a small model railroad the task wouldn't be insurmountable and the research would be fun.
     
    mtntrainman likes this.
  10. fitz

    fitz TrainBoard Member

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    I was hoping to find a map of the trackage in Ashtabula in my NY Central pile of stuff, but didn't. In a 1943 system map it does show Ashtabula on the Erie Division, after the LS & MS was absorbed into the main NYC System. I wish you the best in your venture.
     
  11. Rich_S

    Rich_S TrainBoard Member

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    Hi Amanda, I too would suggest modeling the Carson Youngstown line on a hollow core door. Pick out two key features and maybe place one on each side of the HCD much like Dave did with his N scale Juniata Division layout. Being a fan of the P&LE I look forward to following your new layout build thread.

    DSCN1790.JPG

    Here is a web site that maybe of some help in your quest.
    https://www.historicaerials.com/viewer
     

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