Notes on Designing, Building and Operating Model Railroads

 

It didn’t take long to realize the region around Cleveland, Ohio was crazy with railroad lines. The above image is just a portion of the picture. Here’s a larger version of this 1934 railroad map. At one time, Cleveland was an amazing hub of transportation and manufacturing. Make sure you click on the map when it opens in a new page as many browsers will show the enlarged image. Scrolling left and right, and up and down reveals dozens of yards and interchange points across the city. The busy Cuyahoga River valley was a teeming maze of steel rails from the docks at Lake Erie south about a mile. Six class one railroads converged on this industrial epicenter: New York Central, Erie, Pennsylvania, Nickel Plate, Baltimore & Ohio, and the Wheeling & Lake Erie. Four smaller railroads were also entwined among the industrial avenues and canyons. How can anyone find something bite-sized to model here?

 

At first, it was daunting to sift through all of those rail miles to find an appropriate segment of railroad to model in HO scale and fit into my 11×11 foot room. But I quickly spotted on a couple of candidates. Many of the major rail lines entering Cleveland have/had multiple tracks. I knew a multiple track railroad would not fit into the space, so these lines were quickly stricken from the list. This eliminated most of the New York Central, Pennsylvania, and Erie lines into the city. Years ago, I stumbled onto a 1920 period photo collection documenting a charismatic steel short line. Now living here and looking for local inspiration, I desired to include part of the Newburgh & South Shore in my new project. The photo collection is available on line through Cleveland State University.

Another railroad had caught my interest years ago in a different way, as it was a major coal hauling line with a very interesting Ohio operation. The Wheeling & Lake Erie’s Cleveland Division was originally built in the late 1800s. Over time, it became a major supplier of raw materials to the steel mills of the region. Reviewing the Cleveland rail map, it looked like there were two places where the N&SS and W&LE may have crossed, and/or interchanged. One spot was deep in the Cuyahoga valley, while the other was on the eastern fringe of Newburgh, near East 93rd Street. The images from the on-line N&SS photo collection note an interlocking tower to control an at-grade crossing of the N&SS, W&LE, and PRR near the latter location. I was getting hooked pretty quickly and sent out a question to some local model railroaders for suggestions on additional resources, which led to several links and another great map.

I downloaded that large Newburgh & South Shore map image, enlarged it using Photoshop and took a look around. It is similar to the other map, but this one is from 1963. The W&LE line is noted as Norfolk & Western/Nickel Plate. In 1949, the W&LE merged with the Nickel Plate Road, and in 1963/1964 the Nickel Plate system merged with the Norfolk & Western. In just a few more years, the giant systems of the New York Central and the Pennsylvania Railroads would merge to become the Penn Central. So this document preserves the Cleveland rail lines at their near-peak of operation. Later in the 1960s, many of the heavy industries would begin a long fade of mergers and closings that would extend through the 1970s and change the industrial landscape of this region. But that is beyond the time point I want to model, so let’s return to 1963 and this review.

Compared to the map leading this post, his document offers more local detail along the N&SS lines, especially around the Newburgh location that had attracted my attention. Here’s an edit and enlargement that shows the area between Harvard Avenue on the N&SS and the East 93rd Street Yard on the W&LE.

 

I see great modeling and operational possibilities at this N&SS-W&LE-PRR crossing. A close look reveals a few interchanges as the N&SS connects with the W&LE and the PRR. Just beyond the area, the N&SS interchanges with the ERIE. The W&LE and PRR interchange near this location. I’d imply that the W&LE East 93rd Street Yard is mainly for cars moving to and from the N&SS and PRR interchanges. Topping off the scene are two large steel operations on each side of the PRR right-of-way. US Steel’s American Steel & Wire division had their Newburgh Wire Works on the west side of the PRR, while Valley Mould and Iron had a plant on the east side of the PRR, wedged between the W&LE and ERIE lines. The N&SS tracklines on the map imply switching service at both of these plants. The information gained so far was a great start, but I needed more details to begin planning the model railroad. What other industries were served? How many cars were interchanged here? What were the inbound and outbound freight cars for these steel operations? Did the W&LE do any switching at these adjacent plants? So I found a great prototype location for modeling, now had more questions than answers. 

RESOURCES

My local model railroad contacts sent along more links to explore, which brought more detail to light. Many details are maintained by the Nickel Plate Road Historical & Technical Society, Inc. (NKPHTS), as the W&LE merged with the NKP in 1949. A special instructions page from a 1962 employee timetable noted the interchange and the type of signals along the W&LE line at East 93rd Street (noted as Harvard Ave). I dug deeper and found more of this 1962 employee timetable. There are nuggets of info on many Special Instructions pages that may enhance operating sessions. The timetable from this 1962 book also indicates eastbound W&LE/NKP movements on N&SS trackage. Another link arrived that offers detail on interchanged freight cars along the W&LE/NKP Cleveland Division, but I can’t assume the numbers here are only from the W&LE East 93rd Street Yard. These numbers may reflect interchange points on NKP and W&LE connections around Cleveland. More to investigate. This interchange info comes from just one page from a NKP book documenting “Physical Data and Other Information of Interest” along the W&LE district. The pages covering the Cleveland District (pages 41 to 47) offered more grist for the layout design.Another site that has offered many maps and details is Rails and Trails. This place offers a wealth of transportation detail covering northeast Ohio. Included in the scanned maps and publications are track diagram books, including the Nickel Plate, W&LE District, Cleveland Division 1963 book. Many of the large files on this site use the DjVu file format, but a free viewer is available through the links there. These track diagram books are real jaw-droppers. Not only are the railroad tracks clearly drawn, but the next page includes customer details, track names, and track length. These W&LE details were enough to start the rough sketch phase of layout design.

Finding similar on line N&SS details has not been as fruitful. Since this railroad seemed to be the primary service at the two steel operations, I concentrated my search in that direction. A Google search for Valley Mould and Iron brought up quite a few court cases but also to a HABS/HAER survey of a Cleveland steel operation. This survey documents a steel operation that eventually became part of the USS American Steel & Wire operation. A number of items were found in the survey details, such as when the Newburgh wire plant closed (1978). Deep into the files, there is notation of hot metal cars moving from these furnaces along the Cuyahoga River to the Valley Mould & Iron plant in Newburgh, six miles away. This nugget adds a twist to the N&SS operations.

As a point of information, HABS/HAER is the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) and the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER). These surveys have documented countless industrial areas that are now gone. The details are a part of the Library of Congress and many are available on line. As model railroaders, we model an ever changing industrial landscape. These HABS/HAER documents are windows into a past that is growing more distant each year. The variety of structures and operations that have been documented is stunning. Cleveland has 72 places documented. Use this site to find detail on specific industries from around the country.

I have also joined a couple of YahooGroup lists dedicated to the NKP and W&LE railroads. I’ve trolled some of their archives, but have not asked any questions yet. There is an amazing amount of info shared on these groups.

DEFINING THE SCOPE

Well, this is covering quite a bit of ground today. I’m certain many of you rare wondering how this can come together in an 11×11 foot room. Let’s take a quick look at what we have done here. At the beginning of the post the focus was on the Cleveland region. From that, we have travelled through a funnel that has narrowed the focus onto a specific place in the Cleveland Region. There is still much to do, but I am now looking at the N&SS from Harvard Avenue through the W&LE and PRR crossings and into the Valley Mould & Iron plant. Additionally, I want to include the W&LE from the American Steel & Wire plant through the N&SS and PRR crossing and into the East 93rd Street Yard. The PRR lines will be modeled, but these will not be operational. This three-way crossing is a signature scene, but the limited space means limiting which railroads to model. Here’s a quick schematic of the core of this model railroad. Click on it for a larger view.

 

There are more puzzle pieces to find and I need to make a scale drawing to be certain that this fits into my space. If anything, I feel more energized about this prototype location each time I find another detail. Please leave a comment, especially if you can point me to another resource! Follow the directions below to leave a comment. There are a couple of steps in order to thwart the insidious spam robots.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 18:51 and is filed under prototype, designing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.