Notes on Designing, Building and Operating Model Railroads

An offshoot of model railroading that has given me much enjoyment is researching different aspects of the prototype. As you can see in the previous post, I get a little excited when some historical details combine to offer an interesting modeling opportunity. What I failed to note at that time are a few related resources that many people may have considered earlier in the game. I had actually consulted a few of these resources, but forgot to note them.

John B. Corns has published two books on the Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway. These volumes offer fine historical overviews of Ohio’s Iron Cross line. Motive power, depots and facilities, and rolling stock are featured. Combined, both books offer a significant understanding of the W&LE and ar recommended. Titles are simply The Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway (copyright 1991 by TLC Publishing, Inc.), and The Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway Volume 2 (copyright 2002 by TLC Publishing, Inc.). Only two images of the East 93rd Street Yard area are featured, but the locomotive details and freight car images are very useful.

 

It has been a couple of decades since I last paged through The Nickel Plate Story, by John A. Rehor (originally published in 1965 by Kalmbach). As the W&LE became part of the NKP system in 1949, there may be some nuggets of info to mine from these pages. For my previous layout project, I created a spreadsheet to pull together notes from different resources. This helped me understand the many related details and their fit into the line of time. The notes came from newspapers, various books, railroad data, and conversations. The spreadsheet then became a sort of historical document of the railroad and local area it served.

Additional books produced by Morning Sun will need to be checked for some data. Two shadows looming in the scene just behind the W&LE and N&SS lines are the industrial complexes of the US Steel Newburgh Wire Works (American Wire & Steel) and Valley Mould & Iron. A few photographs of the south end of either plant would be fine assets to the project. Finding detailed drawings describing the interior processes and relationship to the rail spurs that served these plants would be gravy. I suspect this search will be the most difficult.

While trolling for images at the Cleveland Memory site, I stumbled into some links to Cuyahoga County plat maps from the turn of the 20th century. These volumes have been scanned to view online. The details of these documents are astounding. Several Cleveland area maps can be seen through links here. The Cleveland Public Library also has an extensive map collection to review, but many are not yet digitized.

I should have noted these resources earlier but I was unable to find the pages covering Newburgh. After an exhausting search through the three volumes that cover years in the early 1920s, I surmised that another volume was missing. I found maps that are adjacent to the area with reference to another volume and plate number. A visit to the main Cleveland Public Library may unearth the missing details. Here is a tantalizing portion of a 1922 map of an area on the west side of the Cuyahoga River, just upstream from Lake Erie. You can better explore the full map at the Cleveland Public Library site using the tools with the map.

I had viewed similar maps covering the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania through the University of Pittsburgh Library website. These real estate plat maps are a part of the Hopkins Maps Collection. I do not know how common these are across the country. I suspect there may be many volumes covering many urban areas, but more rural counties may not have much coverage. Anyone modeling an urban location should investigate the possibilities of these documents for your research efforts.

One last resource to note at this time, the Official Railway Equipment Register (ORER), was published once or twice a year through most of the 20th Century. Each ORER captures information on the freight car fleets of railways across North America. If you intend to model a specific point in time, the ORER published just before the intended modeling date is crucial for your efforts. Several decades of the W&LE entries are available to view at the Alphabet Route website. These on line entries illuminate details on the W&LE freight car fleet over time, but most freight cars roamed the country delivering a load then captured to carry another. In a few cases, the W&LE had some cars in captive service on their system. John Corns notes in his W&LE Volume 2 book that 500 hoppers came on line in 1904 specifically to shuttle coal on the W&LE from Massilon, Ohio mines to the docks at Huron, Ohio. Another set of 300 hoppers were bought used from the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western and apparently only used for on line company service to supply locomotive facilities and other operations. I created my own spreadsheet on the W&LE that combines the 1926 ORER details with notes on image locations and available models. On the far right are notes regarding references to images and available models. Click on this thumbnail image for the larger file.

The ORER tomes are just as important to use in understanding the freight cars that other railroads were using at a specific period. As an example, the 36-foot box car is commonly associated by model railroaders with railroading before 1915. However, some details in the 1948 ORER show significant numbers of shorter box cars. Granted, many of these older cars were on the way out to pasture as US railroads were updating their freight car fleets with all steel 40 and 50-foot cars. But having one as part of your model fleet should not be out of the question if you model a point before 1948. If you model an earlier point, several shorter box cars should be roaming your model rails. The details found in the ORER can help you determine what kinds of cars to model for the period. Westerfield offers many ORER volumes on CD. The NMRA has also reprinted ORERs from 1943 and 1953. These may be available from that organization.

At this point, many people may say, “Wow. That’s a lot of stuff.” Yes it is, but I find this ’stuff’ helps me to better create a miniature version of a railroad and a location. All of this ’stuff’ helps me understand the relationships between railroads, industries and the community. A friend once elaborated his own ideas to build a coal hauling railroad in a specific month and year. After his extensive description, I meekly mentioned that there was a coal mine strike in the first half of that year and no coal moved on his railroad during his modeled moment. He had not known of this information, but went right out the next day to check local papers of that period to find out more. It was about that moment when I realized how different events can be related to the ebb and flow of the industrial complex.

Once I can begin to operate this layout I’m sure several details from the research trail will enhance the enjoyment of replicating prototype train movements. It is a long, winding road that goes on forever, but my journey will be filled with discovery and excitement.

The major task this week is to sand the layout room floor and apply a finish. I was hoping to do this with some sort of solution, but it needs the touch of fine sandpaper to remove old paint specs and the dirt of the ages. Room preparation is a key step in building a comfortable environment, so I’ll bite the bullet and rent a sander this week to get the job done right. Benchwork and final plans are on the horizon.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 21st, 2009 at 14:21 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.