+- (https://bigbluetrains.com)
+-- Forum: Mainline (https://bigbluetrains.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=17)
+--- Forum: HO Modeling (https://bigbluetrains.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=21)
+--- Thread: GEC's Layout Progress (/showthread.php?tid=108)
Re: GEC's Layout Progress - sailormatlac - 07-13-2012
Yes, exactly the HO Lionel/Athearn version. Not prototype, but still electric traction to me! But honestly, I think I prefer the NH version in orange/white/black bold theme.
Matt
Re: GEC's Layout Progress - sailormatlac - 07-13-2012
GEC, I did some searches on Outerbridge Crossing, the max. approach span is about 115 feet, which is roughly 16 inches. BTW, spans aren't equals, most of them are 85 ft only, with a few at 100 ft. Put in HO scale, it means about 5 tracks with 2.25 centerline. Well, I think you can easily tweak the real bridge dimensions to meet your needs without compromising the aspect. But I do agree, this project may be time consuming, even is made from commercially availble parts to save on assembly.
Matt
Re: GEC's Layout Progress - Green_Elite_Cab - 07-16-2012
sailormatlac Wrote:GEC, I did some searches on Outerbridge Crossing, the max. approach span is about 115 feet, which is roughly 16 inches. BTW, spans aren't equals, most of them are 85 ft only, with a few at 100 ft. Put in HO scale, it means about 5 tracks with 2.25 centerline. Well, I think you can easily tweak the real bridge dimensions to meet your needs without compromising the aspect. But I do agree, this project may be time consuming, even is made from commercially availble parts to save on assembly.
Matt
85 ' would do it i think! i'll have to take more pictures next weekend ( I work in the shadow of this bridge on the weekends on the Staten Island side).
Re: GEC's Layout Progress - Green_Elite_Cab - 07-28-2012
Well, somehow my super armored water-proof camera still managed to explode on the inside, so its probably going to have to be sent back to the manufacturer. Besides, the tripod mount also wore out some how.
fortuneately, I can still get photos off the camera.
I took a few photographs of the underside of the Outerbridge Crossing from Arthur Kill Road on the Staten Island side. I will post them soon, but actually, it doesn't seem likeit would be too difficult to do. I might be able to save time by fabricating casts of individual beams and then producing them in mass. I might even be able to use pieces of the Rix kits if I'm careful.
I'm also currently building a display shelf for some of my more modern locomotives. This will allow more space for my late 70s era equipment. Currently, I have several Arrow III MUs still in kit form, but as soon as they get built up, they will need somwhere to go. I'm also looking at an influx of other passenger equipment, and space is low.
I plan to make a second, longer display shelf for some of my Passenger trains, but I might hold off depending on what I think is necessary. Initially, I wanted to make one long enough to contain my entire Acela Express trainset without breaking up the train (the train consists of 6 85' passenger cars and two locomotives, essentially just under 8 feet).
The only problem is that I don't know where to put such display cases! They can probably stay in the basement for the time being, but should probably be moved up to my room so that they don't need to sit in that dusty environment of my basement.
Re: GEC's Layout Progress - jwb - 07-29-2012
GEC, have you seen the new Walthers PRR signal tower? Seems like there ought to be a place for it on your layout.
Re: GEC's Layout Progress - Green_Elite_Cab - 07-29-2012
jwb Wrote:GEC, have you seen the new Walthers PRR signal tower? Seems like there ought to be a place for it on your layout.
I have! It would be an exccelent fit. My girlfriend was looking for a model that we might do together, and that was the first one I thought of. Even if i can't find a place for it immeadiately on my layout, I definitely can't go wrong with at least one of those structures!
Its on my list for one of these days!
Re: GEC's Layout Progress - Green_Elite_Cab - 08-10-2012
Well, Now there is no doubt, I must have lost it somewhere.
Here is an all inclusive schedule of all trains running over the Northeast Corridor during July 1979. I might have left out some of the locals. N13, or Waverly-Morrisville, is only run as needed, and so I didn't include it in the schedule since it has no schedule.
This schedule covers the entire stretch of the Northeast Corridor in New Jersey. All Locations, except Lane, are Passenger stops
Jersey Avenue station is a stub track that branches off the corridor just south of New Brunswick. A large MU layover yard is Adjacent.
Lane, Linden, Metuchen, and Trenton all feature freight yards.
Lane is the entrance to Waverly Yard, the northern most electrified freight Terminal on the PRR. All Freight trains enter or leave the Northeast Corridor here. All Freights except MAIL trains leave the Northeast Corridor at Trenton.
Color Key-
Black= Amtrak
Dark Blue = Conrail
Light Blue = NJ DOT
Orange= *NJ DOT- New York & Long Branch (North Jersey Coastline) trains.*
*NY&LB trains split from the Northeast Corridor at Rahway, also known as Union Junction/Interlocking.*
The real trick now is to find the best time to model, which would cover one or two Conrail Freights, as well as some fancy Amtrak trains.
The "Orange" NY&LB trains will be the most difficult to model, since they may either run under Diesel Power from Newark Penn Station, or they may exchange an Electric locomotive at South Amboy. The schedule doesn't necessarily leave any clues.
First Up, Trains to New York (East Bound). Trains are sorted by their arrival in New York City /Newark NJ
![[Image: NortheastCorridorjuly1979eastbound.png]](http://i543.photobucket.com/albums/gg445/CAB_IV/Model%20Trains%202012/NortheastCorridorjuly1979eastbound.png)
Next, Trains Departing New York City / Newark NJ. They are sorted by their Departure times
![[Image: NortheastCorridorjuly1979westbound.png]](http://i543.photobucket.com/albums/gg445/CAB_IV/Model%20Trains%202012/NortheastCorridorjuly1979westbound.png)
Re: GEC's Layout Progress - Green_Elite_Cab - 08-15-2012
Oops, realized I'm missing a few Freight trains!
Hopefully, this will allow me to pick a good "time of day" to sample everything.
This raw data will allow me to determine which trains are passing at approximately which time, by using easy Excel graph functions. That way, I can approximately model a small area of the NEC and have trains that would pass eachother mapped out.
I also have a GP40P in my sites, which is a pretty rare brass locomotive. It is within reach of my budget this month, but its not definite yet. If I get it, I plan to paint it as a CNJ-patched Conrail/NJ DOT unit
Re: GEC's Layout Progress - jwb - 08-15-2012
I was wondering about that, because you mention trains leaving the NEC at Trenton/Morrisville, but there were lots of freights to and from Potomac Yard, Baltimore, Wilmington, and Philadelphia that I believe were still on the NEC until 1981 or so.
Re: GEC's Layout Progress - Green_Elite_Cab - 08-15-2012
jwb Wrote:I was wondering about that, because you mention trains leaving the NEC at Trenton/Morrisville, but there were lots of freights to and from Potomac Yard, Baltimore, Wilmington, and Philadelphia that I believe were still on the NEC until 1981 or so.
Yup, I left a handful of them out, like WACR. I'm not at my home computer right now so I can't upload them.
To be fair though, there weren't many trains running to Potomac yard under wire. WASE and WACR were (Potomac to Selkirk and Croxton, respectively) were ones I accidentally left out. That really about covers it. While there definitely were more trains running from New Jersey to those southern points, It was about this time that Conrail was shifting all its freight over to the former Lehigh Valley and Reading lines in order to get off the NEC where possible.
There were also a lot of electric freights coming from potomac, but most went up the Columbia and Port Deposit branch, and only the ones on the list above (SEWA, CRWA, and a few others) made the trip north. There seemed to be more freights moving west towards Conway and Chicago than up and down the coast.
Re: GEC's Layout Progress - jwb - 08-15-2012
Wasn't there a Chrysler plant in Newark, DE? Where did its traffic come from?
Re: GEC's Layout Progress - Green_Elite_Cab - 08-15-2012
jwb Wrote:Wasn't there a Chrysler plant in Newark, DE? Where did its traffic come from?
I think so, And i'm pretty sure there is an automobile factory still down there, But I'm not sure how much of that traffic would have travelled north by train (more likely, trucks woulds take them to distribution centers in New Jersey and New York).
That said, I'm not sure where its traffic came from for that particular plant, since i've been focusing on New Jersey related research. I've seen many trains on the Corridor carrying automobile frames or their components (if not fully complete automobiles), so there is definitely a lot of automobile related trains.
In the region I want to model, the Ford Plant is in Edison/Metuchen, and the GMC truck and Bus plant is in Linden, so there was no shortage of automobile related freight on the corridor.
Re: GEC's Layout Progress - jwb - 08-15-2012
And the high-priority auto parts trains to Linden and Edison I believe bypassed Enola on the Harrisburg station freight bypass tracks, so I believe you'd be looking for destinations other than EN. My memory -- and in fact the Pentrex NEC cab ride videos from the 1980s -- show the Newark Chrysler yard quite full of auto parts cars.
Re: GEC's Layout Progress - Green_Elite_Cab - 08-15-2012
jwb Wrote:And the high-priority auto parts trains to Linden and Edison I believe bypassed Enola on the Harrisburg station freight bypass tracks, so I believe you'd be looking for destinations other than EN. My memory -- and in fact the Pentrex NEC cab ride videos from the 1980s -- show the Newark Chrysler yard quite full of auto parts cars.
Well, that opens some questions. If they bypassed Enola, did they ever exchange diesels for electrics on their way to New Jersey? Do you know the train symbols?
I was told that towards the end, and certainly during 1979, an increasing number of Northeast Corridor trains that normally ran with electric locomotive began operating in all diesel consists. This is reflected to some extent on the photos I've seen online, but its difficult to guess from online photos, since they are subject to bias of the photographer, since people seem more interested in photographing the unusual than the mundane.
I was told trains like SEEN (which was VE-1 on the Penn Central) normally ran straight through with diesels. Right now, I've been trying to match trains up with their photos. Some are easy, since they say what train they are right on the photo, but others have me trying to guess the time of day in the photograph, and then cross my fingers the train is not an unusually late train running near the same time as a "normal" scheduled freight.
Re: GEC's Layout Progress - jwb - 08-15-2012
I believe all TV trains and other priority freights like auto parts went over the freight bypass at Harrisburg station. Diesels were exchanged for electrics and vice versa west of the station itself -- and far enough west that, in my memory, eastbound auto parts trains with E44s were moving pretty fast when they reached the station. This exchange was the reason you saw a lot of light electric power crossing the Susquehanna south of the city over the PRR bridge.
Another train from Potomac Yard was the Tropicana train, which was after my time for the NEC, but the Wikipedia entry says it ran twice a week northbound by about 1975. We're starting to get into the reasons the NEC always struck me as a tantalizing prototype, but modeling actual operations is extremely involved.
Another New Jersey issue is the Amboy Secondary, which certainly in PC days was a route for coal to South Amboy. The trains left and entered the main at Monmouth. How much of that was still active by the late 70s I don't know, but it's a reminder that whatever you do, you would need to be working in a lot of coal extras, going either to South Amboy or Greenville.