After rebuilding and painting refurbished GN. observation Johan Carlson hits the high iron, In the 2nd photo she's number 4 in the consist.
No.1897 was named after my wife's late Grandfather a wonderful old gentleman who arrived in the U.S in the early 19th century as a child.
from Sweden.
The car number signifies the year of his birth.
Now a privately owned car she roams the rails all over the western United States providing wonderful old world accommodations for her new owner's....

Has anyone bought from hiawatha hobbies. I need some locos for my UP coal train and want some katos GE C44-9W. They havfe a good price and wanted to know if anyone has delt with hiawatha hobbies.


Thanks Roger

Hi All,

After seeing the Buda/Hayes type SF wheelstops in MR (March P37) where can i purchase them in HO scale as i have searched for some without success ......... they would be ideal in the shop for the cars while being repaired.

Here's an industry that no longer exists, but if you model the period between 1900 and 1960, there may be a place for it on your layout.
Back in the days before mechanical refrigeration, and even after it was introduced, ice was used to preserve food, both during shipping and during storage, and the railroad played a big part in this. Many of you may have seen some of the various ice houses on my layout, and for those of you that haven't, I'll try to explain their various functions.
The long, white structure in the background (I never seem to have a photo of only the item that I want to show) is the origin of the ice used in the towns and cities on my layout, at least as far as the railroad is concerned. While this ice house supposedly sits on or near the shore of Lake Erie, the true origin of the ice blocks that it ships is unspecified.

   

   

   

This facility supplies ice to all of the other icehouses on my railroad, and can also ship it to other nearby railroads, when required. In the second photo, those refrigerator cars are being loaded with blocks of ice (as cargo, through the side doors, not through the ice hatches, which have been sealed). From here, ice will be distributed to other ice houses along the route, either smaller ones that supply residential and commercial concerns, or larger ones that use large quantities of ice, but are not equipped to produce or harvest it themselves. The cars shown are in designated service as ice cars and are not used for any other purpose. Ice was also moved in regular reefers and also in boxcars, particularily in colder weather.
In the second photo, you can also see a reefer spotted at the platform for icing. This is a feature of most modelled icehouses, but the one here is only for icing the occasional car that passes through and requires icing. At the platform, ice is usually only added through the ice hatches, to replenish the bunkers. Crushed ice can also be added to cargo that requires "top icing", but that is seldom required here. Many main ice houses have no provision for icing cars: their sole function is to provide ice for other icehouses. This facility, however, also supplies ice to many local customers, by truck or wagon. Most homes and businesses have iceboxes, even though refrigerators are in use in other areas, so home delivery of ice is an important business. The main commercial customer for ice in this area is Finlay Fresh Fish, which ships carload-lots of fresh fish requiring "top icing".

   


Hoffentoth Bros. deliver block ice daily, by truck, to Finlay's, where it is used in storage coolers and also crushed for distributing directlly over the open-top crates of fish after they are loaded into the reefer.

When a carload of ice leaves the main storage facility in Lowbanks, it can be destined for any town on the layout, as all have some type of ice facility. Most are small structures that supply ice for domestic use, and have no car icing platform.
Here's the icehouse in Elfrida, built to the common design used in all towns requiring this type of service.

   

   

This simple structure is 12'x24', with a door and platform at trackside, and another door and platform on the other side for loading the delivery trucks or wagons. Depending on demand, the entire carload may be transferred to this ice house, or the car may be left spotted here to allow transfer as the icehouse requires replenishment. Another option is for part of the ice to be unloaded from the car here, then the next train through town will pick up the car and take it to the next icehouse that needs ice.

The largest icehouse currently on the line (there'll be another once the northern part of the railroad gets built), other than the storage facility in Lowbanks, is this structure in Dunnville.

   

Here's an view from the south....

   

...and another from the north:

   

...and an aerial view, courtesy of Secord Air Services:

   


This is the Walthers kit, with some add-on platforms. It is the main car-icing site on the layout, and does pre-icing for most cars destined to be loaded on-line. It also re-ices loads from other railroads, as required, that are headed to on-line destinations or that are passing through, in interchange, to other roads. In addition, this is the main distribution facility for residential and commercial use in Dunnville, with ice being delivered by truck. An icehouse this size and this busy requires a constant supply of fresh ice, so at least one carload of it is delivered here daily.

You don't need to model all of the different types of ice houses that I've shown, but the addition of any, along with an "ice-service only" reefer, can add operational interest to any layout of the era. If you don't have room for the main storage and shipping facility, simply bring in a carload of ice from a staging yard, or spot it on an interchange track, where a connecting line has left it for pick-up.

Wayne

...industry to add to your layout, team tracks were used from the beginning of rail transport, right up to the present day. If you have room for a siding and at least part of a roadway or parking lot alongside of it, you have room for a team track. The name is derived from the teams of horses that pulled the wagons that were used to bring the cargo to or from the team track. A team track can both ship and receive loads, so it can generate a lot of traffic, if you so desire.
In its simplest form, the wagon or truck pulled up alongside of the freight car, and the load was transferred.

   

Hopper cars could also be handled at a team track, using simple conveyors and elevators to transfer the material from freight car to truck, or vice versa. Here, coal is being unloaded from a hopper...

   

and transferred to a truck.

   

Some teamtracks had a ramp for loading or unloading vehicles or farm machinery. In this example, crates of vegetables will simply be handled across the platform and into a waiting truck.

   

....or bagged product from a truck to this boxcar:

   

Here's the ramp in Elfrida, awaiting the next load of new farm machinery.

   

Elfrida also has a storage shed, made from a wreck-damaged boxcar, that's used to store goods after unloading, useful for minimizing per diem charges, as the freight car that brought the load can be emptied and returned to its owner-road quickly. This is especially true for LCL (less than carload) shipments, where there are shipments in the same car which need to be moved to the next town along the line

   

Dunnville, where most of these pictures were taken, also boasts an overhead crane, for unloading heavy or bulky cargo. (The model is by Kibri, I think)

   

   

In smaller towns, where traffic to the teamtrack may not be as frequent, the agent works out of the local station. However, in Dunnville, an office is right on-site. It also provides a lunchroom when the crane operator is on duty.

   

Modern team tracks also can be set up with equipment to handle covered hoppers and tankcars, and probably just about any other type of car that you'd care to run, making this an almost universal industry.

Wayne

… along with West Virginia, Kentucky, Illinois, and any other place where part of the real estate is made-up of coal.
In the time frame that many of us model, up to the late 1950's, commercial coal dealers were found in all large cities and most small towns, as most homes and businesses were heated by coal furnaces. Movement of this commodity was an important source of revenue for the railroads, and as such, can be an important source of traffic for our model railroads.
A coal dealer can be an operation as simple as a gas-powered elevator on a teamtrack, or as elaborate as banks of concrete siloes, either one using wagons or trucks to deliver the coal. While businesses and factories might buy their fuel by the ton or by the truckload, many home deliveries consisted of a few 100 pound bags at a time.
Here are a few photos that may give you some ideas for a way to include this common industry on your layout.

Hoffentoth Bros. Coal & Ice has an outlet in every town and city on my layout, even though not all are modelled. Because coal was in large part a seasonal commodity, most coal dealers supplemented their income by offering other products in the off-season. Ice, for home iceboxes, or even commercial uses, was a common choice, as were sand and gravel, or lumber and building supplies. Many of Hoffentoth's locations also included ice houses.

   

   

   


Both the coal bins and the icehouses were usually built to a common plan for small towns, while larger towns and cities would have a design appropriate to the location. In Elfrida, both are located on the same siding. In the summer, ice would arrive in ice service reefers, shipped from a central storage facility, and be transferred to the local icehouse. From here it would be delivered to customers around town by truck or horse-drawn wagon. In the winter, most of the rail traffic on this siding would be hoppers full of either Anthracite or soft coal, which would be dumped into a pit under the track. Here, the pit is covered by steel plates which are lifted out of the way before the hopper doors are opened. The coal drops into the pit, then is lifted into the storage bins by an elevator inside the bin building.

   

   


Inside the storage area are several pockets where the various types and sizes of coal are kept separate. Here's a view of the Lowbanks branch. The icehouse here is in a different part of town, as it's the main storage facility that ships ice to all of the smaller towns on the layout. The small building is the office, and the overhanging roof on the side away from the tracks is above the chutes used for loading the trucks.

   

The yards are fenced to keep the area secure and to prevent pilferage:

   

This view of the South Cayuga yard shows the truck-loading side of the building, with the chutes beneath the canopy:

   

And a truck leaving to make some deliveries:

   

Hoffentoth Bros. don't have a monopoly on the coal business around here, though. Hoffentoth's yard in Dunnville is not modelled, but that of their competitor, Creechan’s Fine Fuels, is. Here's their head office, on Liberty Street:

   

And a view through their main gate, into the yard:

   

This shot shows a couple of hoppers being spotted on the dump track, elevated and rebuilt extensively when the Grand Valley's then-parent NYC completed a grade-separation project through downtown Dunnville in the mid-20's:

   

A peek inside the dumpshed:

   

Here's an aerial view of the yard, courtesy of Barney Secord's Crop Dusting and Aerial Photography Services. The driver of the truck on the left is in the scalehouse, centre, getting his paperwork. The truck on the right is being loaded with gravel by a crew with shovels and a gas-powered elevator:

   



A truck, ready to take out a delivery:

   

And a final look:

   

I hope that these views of some coal dealerships on my layout will encourage you to include your own version of this interesting industry on your layout.

Wayne

Here is the growing collectiomn of vintage transformers.

I'm not sure how well known this site is, so I thought I would share it:

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://historical.mytopo.com/">http://historical.mytopo.com/</a><!-- m -->

As the site name implies, it indexes a wealth of topo maps. For any given area, I've found that there are generally two maps: a 1910's and 1940's era. Either show main roads, railroads, canals, etc. The older maps I find especially interesting as many railroads hadn't been absorbed into larger systems yet, so you see a lot of names that are no longer around. The site is addictive....

Matt

Saw this roundhouse and coaling tower in Hellertown PA. just north of I 78. I think it's Readings but not sure. Any else know.

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I have read many posts dealing with adding weight to rolling stock to improve performance.
My layout is small,only 2'x8' without any real curves so given that would it be necessary to add weight? This is a switching layout and I won't be running at warp speed either.Your thoughts. Bob