Northern Branch in NJ Erie/EL/CR/CSX

[Rscott417]

While a new basement is just on the horizon and after building my previous New York & Atlantic inspired ISL I realized how much I wanted to model the Northern Railroad of NJ's Northern Branch in Bergen County NJ from the 1950s to the present day. This will include Erie railroad era mid 1950's, Erie Lackawanna era mid 1970's, Conrail era mid 1990's and CSX era 2005+. I'd like to attempt a multi era layout just for locomotive variety. I have a very crude track plan that I drew without measurements just to get an idea of the layout (a more detailed version will be made soon). I realize I can't quite replicate this branch line so extreme compression and influence from model railroaders Huron Terminal will be factored in with customers of the northern.

If you can read my rough draft The planned industries will include...(following photos shown were all taken on the northern)

WR Grace in North Bergen (chemicals)



JJ Demarest building supplies (lumber) and Weyerhaeuser (corrugated paper rolls) in Closter




Supreme Oil in Englewood (vegetable oils and plastics)




Colorite Polymers in Ridgefield (plastics)






Cove Industries in Northvale (corrugated paper rolls)




There's also 4 passenger station still left standing and would like to include one on the layout and maybe even a town of Tenafly based business district scene.



And to round it all up there's plenty of rent-a-wrecks, switching on the fly and shoving platform operations to keep it all interesting

[faraway]

A new basement means a new house on top too? There is plenty of works at the horizon.
The layout draft looks promising. It will be interesting to see how you fix the buildings to fit in 1950 and 2010. Did the modern "shoeboxes" (e.g. Cove industry) already exist 1950? As you are planning it that way you may plan with different plug in buildings for a given spot.

ps. Nice detail to use an Audi as a shoving platform

[Rscott417]

A new basement means a new house on top too? There is plenty of works at the horizon.
The layout draft looks promising. It will be interesting to see how you fix the buildings to fit in 1950 and 2010. Did the modern "shoeboxes" (e.g. Cove industry) already exist 1950? As you are planning it that way you may plan with different plug in buildings for a given spot.

ps. Nice detail to use an Audi as a shoving platform

Yes Reinhard, new house above as well. Cove, Colorite, Weyerhaeuser and I think WR Grace were not built until the early to mid 60s. I'm not going to worry about a 60s style building fitting into a 50s era too much. I could exclude the mid 50s idea all together but I like the Erie gp7s with the wing paint scheme. There is one exception though. I'd like to make the peninsula that Colorite will be on to be removable so I will take the opportunity to change out Colorite entirely for a customer that was right down the street from Colorite called Best Foods. Here's a satellite image of Best Foods before it was demolished. The following 2 pictures are EL switching Best Foods and Colorite. Best Foods will be present on the 50s and 70s era layout and Colorite will be present for the 90s+ era layout.




In the 50s, 60s and 70s, Erie and EL had 3 switching crews on the branch at one time switching customers on the approximately 30 mile branch (Jersey City NJ to the NY border and into Rockland County) all in between the last morning commuter rush and first evening commuter rush passenger trains. Now all that's left is 4 customers WR Grace, Colorite, Delta Corrugated and Supreme Oil. The current track is a wreck and trains are limited to 10 or 15 miles an hour and derailments are common and about 10 years ago stopped using sd40-2s and bigger which seemed to cause more problems with derailments and accidents.

I'm thinking that since JJ Demarest and Weyerhaeuser are in the same town of Closter, I might switch the locations of JJ and WR on my rough sketch.
Each era will also have different customers. For instance Cove industries will be the customer served for 90s and present but will be Melnick Millwork for the 50s (even though they weren't established until the 60s) and 70s era.
JJ Demarest was actually in business since at least the 50s and probably earlier until they sold to Dykes Lumber within the last 10 years maybe less.
Supreme Oil moved to their location in Englewood in the 80s from I think Queens NY and utilize 2 buildings with 2 Spurs. One spur receives tank cars of vegetable oil and the other spur recieves covered hoppers of plastic pellets because they make their own plastic containers. In addition to those 2 tracks they use half of the original run around track for car unloading and car storage. So supreme oil will be on the 90s to present day layout. The short tank car spur in the 50s and 70s will Bauer & Black, I'm still trying to find out more about them all I know is they recieved boxcars. The plastic pellet track for supreme oil in the 50s will either be Magic Mix Co ( again if I can find out more about them) or Wilds Baking co that received covered hoppers of flour. That same spur in the 70s will be Celloplast Plastics. I like the idea of having only covered hoppers spotted on that spur in every era so that there's not a lot of elements that need to be changed according to railcar types.
WR Grace wasn't built in the 50s but they will make an appearance on the layout in the 50s anyway.

As far as including a passenger station I'm leaning towards a Micro Scale station kit I bought because it's small and to me sort of resembles the Demarest train station minus the big steeple.



Well, I hope I'm not jumping the gun starting this thread so early but that's about all I got at the moment...to be continued.

[Rscott417]

Messing around with the old fashioned pencil and ruler, planning out a rough sketch for the permanent peninsula. It will more or less be the town of Closter since moving JJ Demarest next to Weyerhaeuser instead of WR Grace. I changed the direction of the initial turnout and I hope I can squeeze a curved turnout between the street and main line for the lead to these 2 industries.

[Rscott417]

I know everyone is going to get tired (if not already) of hand drawn diagrams as much as me but I finally got to take some measurements, one more drawing and some changes...

Since Colorite will be a fairly large customer on the layout, making it a removable peninsula didn't make much if any sense. Moving them to a permanent peninsula makes things a little more geographically accurate but unfortunately also eliminates the plan of a small town scene. I added Weyerhaeuser to a smaller removable extension which will be easier to handle and same goes for Cove along the far doors for the furnace and hot water heater area. The right side that looks like it has some crisscrossing lines is the grade crossing for 83rd street in North Bergen and what is essentially the CSX West Shore Line passing over head.
I'm also not going to get too in depth with the Erie and EL eras like I was and just run some appropriate equipment from time to time.
I think this plan will work out and hopefully soon I can start building.