GEC's Layout Progress

[Green_Elite_Cab]

There's something really fascinating about your last picture. Those catenaries over a loooong deck bridge are simple, but so effective to carry the sense of a place... and not too hard to do! You've got yourself a great prototype (and I thought 70s were dul in terms of passenger traffic).

Thats the Raritan River bridge on the New York & Long Branch (later the North Jersey Coast Line). That would make an interesting model, and one could probably do it easily with available kits. You could probably kitbash the Walthers Double track Swing bridge to look pretty close to the prototype's center span.

Not only is the location interesting, it was also a good place to get variety for passenger trains. In the past, both the PRR and the CNJ jointly operated the line, and some fairly unique equipment was assigned to the line. Just south of the bridge, the Catenary ended in South amboy, and GG1s would swap with either Steam or in later years, diesels. For a while, the PRR assigned unusual 6 axle Baldwin "sharks" to passenger runs. The CNJ also ran equally unusual Fairbanks-Morse Trainmasters on passenger runs to the beaches on the way to Bay Head, NJ, the southern terminus of the line.

In these photos, you can see the very end of the electrification until 1983, when the wires were extended to Long Branch by NJ transit.

A PRR Shark and CNJ Trainmaster. These were the only 6 axle shark locomotives. The CNJ trains did not change with electric trains, and ran direct across the line.

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A GG1 and a K4 exchange a train at south amboy. The exchange between GG1s and Diesels at South Amboy wouldn't end until NJ transit retired the GG1s in 1983. In fact, the "new" electrification to Long Branch was completed in 1983, in time for the final run of the GG1s. The farewell trip was the only trip of a GG1 on this tackage.

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I'm just curious, are you planning, after getting ajob, to rework/enlarge the actual layout?

That is the current plan. Right now, I'm just trying to get as much of the unusual rolling stock as possible, since I know that the rather specific prototypes that run on the line are not always the easiest to get a hold of.

In particular, I'm going to still need to find a GP40P, but I'll worry about that later. Hopefully, I will have a functional roster ready for whenever I get the space I need to build a proper model of the Northeast Corridor.