Merry Christmas 2007!!!!

Gary Knapp

Rob Dennis

Brad Peterson Update On His D&H

View of the helix as seen from the stairs.
View of the beginnings of the helix as seen from the door to the garage.
Looking south over the Round Lake Paper Co. distribution warehouse at the end of the Round Lake Branch. Above is the benchwork for QS cabin(Crescent).
The tracks in the foreground are temporary for alonger lead in Mechanicville. This is the over view from the crew room side of the layout. The helix to the right will connect to Mechanicville then climb tothe upper level and come out at Crescent. The Round Lake Branch will be accessed by going around the helix and connecting with Mechanicville under the stairs.
Looking north on the Round Lake Branch, the Saratoga Container Corp is in the foreground.

Rich Eriksen's Mohawk Central

Rich Eriksen and I started working on his Mohawk Central late this summer. Most pics are of Dewitt Yard and of Admiral Abraham Yimitzki. Track still needs "lining and tamping" in places. We have the Digitrax installed and working well. Next step will be to install around 50 Tortoise switch machines. Also in store - laying track on the lower level which will loosely but functionally represent Selkirk Yard as well as a staging yard representing all points east and south of Selkirk and west of Dewitt.

Enjoy .......Chris RittnerMohawk Central Alco RS27'sMiddle of Dewitt Yard facing EastAbraham( Richie) surveys Guilderland Center

The "West End" of Dewitt Yard and "SJ Junction" - facing EastMiddle of Dewitt Yard - facing West towards the "Van Site"

Jim Lafayette's D&H

Most of you are familiar with the photo in the scan. It was taken at a couple of different angles, but the SVRR decided to take its own. Unfortunately engineer Tommy Lampkins was not available to lean out the cab window.

Jim

Bob Platel's D&H in N Scale

My layout is a 8 foot by 16 inches model of Cohoes, NY. The right end has the bridge over the Mohawk River, my first kit bash attempt. (What do you think?) I plan to add another eight foot section on the left end to include Mohawk Paper & Norlite. In the future I hope to use these sections in a larger layout that depicts the D&H from the Port of Albany to Mechanicville in the late 70's. I use Digitrax DCC for my control system. I will sent more pictures as I get structures and scenery added.

Local SC-32 waiting at Cohoes siding for south bound freight.

Southbound freight crossing Mohawk River at Cohoes, Rte 4 in the foreground.

SD-45s leading southbound across Mohawk River Bridge.

Looking north you see the local & a southbound at Cohoes.

Boxcars spotted at Cohoes freight house (white rectangle) for unloading.

Hoppers waiting to be unloaded at future site of Wertime Trestle.

Bob Chase and Bar Mills

Stanley Stove, by Bar Mills. Followed basic kit instructions. Changed some details such as roofing material. Decided at last minute to shingle the roof instead of the rolled tar paper roof supplied. Shingles are by Rusty Stumps.

Bracing Walls against future warp-age.

Sprayed everything with a coating of Dr. Bens new Driftwood Stain, Both sides of everything. Followed by a spray of Americana French Blue, cut with normal car windshield washer solvent.

Shows assembled basic structure.

Basic Structure on Gator Foam Board.

Nearly finished model with loading docks, signage. Beginning to add basic detail parts, not all included with the kit. Structure is finished until installed on layout were ground texture will be applied.
Notes: Main stumbling point with the kit would be the foundation. Although it has nice scribed field stones, the coroners and ends leave a lot to be desired. Foundation could be covered with brick or masonry paper to hide seems, Also it is impossible to keep both the structure and the foundation square enough so that they line up at completion. It would have been easier to construct the foundation to match the foundation, near completion of the kits. (comments concerning this were forwarded to Art Fahie)
Last photos the Fos Scale Models relief structure. Mine turned out to be The Boston Candy Co. Ltd. Basic Directions were followed, windows all received some kind of treatment such as shades, partially opened, Etc.
Again Americana Forrest Green was dry brushed over Dr. Bens Driftwood Stain.
My major "Rail Fanning Trip" is put on hold for this year, as I will be attending the "New" Craftsman Structure Show in Mansfield Mass on November 2nd & 3rd. I will be attending all of the clinics offered and as an early registrant will be participating in several of them hands on.
Being the first of this kind gathering, I look forward to learning various skills and techniques that I can come back and share with all of you.

Bob Chase

Summer Isn't Over Yet!

From John Camerota..... Ontario Central 418 and LAL 420 sun themselves in Lakeville, NY
LAL heavyweight observation car "Traveller" and LAL #420 in Lakeville, NY.

From Gary Knapp.........

It's June 15, 2006 and I've spent the night here at LaPocatierre, Quebec aspiring towards night photos of trains passing the classic station. Very quiet at night, a couple trains passed by, enough to keep me happy. The white school bus marked with the red CN noodle appearred around 03:00, pulling up and stopping behind the station to deliver members of a section gang to their nearby machines. Various autos arrived shortly therafter, filling up the small parking lot around the station with more section gang members. It was quiet no longer. While most of the track machines were on the passing siding west of town, a pair of tie handlers and tampers were on the short siding immediately to my left. Once their machines were up and running, it did'nt take long before the men came over to talk. I explained I was waiting for VIA #15, and they inquired of a foreman, who told me 308 had to go by first, then the VIA would come west after meeting 308. So we relaxed and tried to maintain conversations, me not speaking french, and many of them speaking broken English at best. 308 came and went. The men explained the gang numbered fifty operators, (Wow! I thought, the track work this gang can do in a day..........) with most members west of town in the passing siding waiting with the rest of us, fo the VIA. Twenty, thirty min. pass by, I'm concerned as the sky starts to lighten behind the station. A couple of gang members ask me if I'm a "spy" for CN, I laugh.....nobody else does. I explain to them I am retired, "no more work" as the sky continues to lighten, I break out my AARP cards which seems to satisfy them. More cigarettes are lit up and more joking in french........it was then that I turned around and saw this! A bonafide sunrise! I check the scanner, still no VIA! Jeez, I thought, you gotta be kidding me, they gonna be late for this! You DO NOT "chase" a VIA train into a sunrise like this, you just have to be in the right place at the right time. I show the sectionmen the image of the station and sunrise on the camera lcd monitor and ask, where is the VIA? They shrug their shoulders, don't know? Then a new voice is added to the talk, I look around and spot the foreman in the white hard hat, below us across the tracks waving at me. VIA he yells, VIA, and points north. I smile and wave a thank you, and drink in the scene before me, as the sectionmen head across the mainline to their machines. The long awaited message comes from the detector a mile and half north of me, in french, but I get the idea, lol! I'm all smiles! I do a quick look around, the gang members, some on the ground next to their machines, some in the cab, watching intently. The flash units are all working. What a backdrop! Then the headlight appears, slowly swinging around the sweeping curve north of the station, and down the straightaway comes the head end of VIA 15. Now I'm thinking he's doing maybe thirty or forty mph, with a fifty man track gang trackside in front of them, and I'm watching thru the viewfinder trying to judge his speed, as the head end comes up past the station, when it dawns on me, holy cow! He's doing track speed! "Click" I "attempt" a wave as the cab of 6413 blows past in a blur, going "real fast", lol! That's all I could think was "real fast"! I wore a smile back to Rivierre-du-Loup and to sleep. The implication of speed is in this photo, in the ballast dust enveloping the rennaisance cars and the exhaust from three F40's flattened down over the train.
Saturday night was very quiet on the D&H "North End", somewhat typical for Saturday nights lately. So, with the work train and rail gang tied up for the weekend, and sunny skies forecast, I was hopeful for a late running southbound to shoot here along Lake Champlains' Willsboro Bay. CP 930 followed 252 out of Canada, arriving Rouses Point around 01:30ish, and I was all ears as the Canadian Crew requested a change to the lead unit on the TGBO.......to the CN 5560! Thus removing one of two big hurdles to overcome in getting a shot at M.P. 144.6, getting a "photogenic" leader and sunny skies. I listened from the compound in Hinesburg as 252 continued south, running through with a D&H crew after passing it's customs check. Then silence after 930 pulled through customs after 01:45 or so. At 03:00 I left the compound and drove ovah to New York, arriving in Willsboro at 05:10 or so. With sunrise due at 06:40, I stopped at the convenience store for a "health food pick me up" in the Doritos' rack, parking trackside in hopes of hearing something on the scanner of 930 coming south. Nothing by just after 06:00, so I started the hike in, knowing I had those two big hurdles out of the way, what the heck! 930 is bound to run this morning sometime. Watching my step walking up the tracks, (there are spots here, right off the ballast, where it's a long drop straight down onto rocks) every now and then I would hear this "whoosh" sound nearby, (like when you close an in-house vacuum outlet), I would stop and look around and see nothing unusual. Then it dawned on me, I was hearing Peregrine Falcons who live here in the cliffs, diving past me hunting for breakfast! At 06:40 I'm finishing the short climb up to my perch here from trackside, not a cloud in the sky and I hear a whistle! From the north, it's gotta be 930! Amazed that my scanner picked up no warning from the two detectors north of me. I look across at the Green Mountains, and the sun is not up yet! What do yah mean 06:40 for sunrise! LOL! It will be 07:00 before the sun has cleared the Greens, as I happily keep an eye on the ever improving light, fingers crossed. Hmmm, maybe the weather service meant 06:40 on the EAST side of VT. Six minutes after sunrise, CN 5560 pokes it's freshly painted nose out of the Willsboro Tunnel Portal, and I'm all smiles! I give the crew a wave as they pull towards me and look through the viewfinder to........"click", and the head end is by me, pulling hard on this southbound grade. Well done guys......Thank You! Shot on Sept. 23, 2007 at 07:07 with the 5D, (ISO 200 & 1/500th) and Leicas' 21-35 zoom set at 23mm and f3.5. Please notice the fisherman in his boat down in front of us here, for an "appreciation" of our postion above him......... please enjoy!

From John"Cully"Cullinan.......

D&H 7303 interchanging with the Battenkill RR in Eagle Bridge, NY.

D&H SCR heading west over the Hudson River Bridge in Mechanicville returning from Eagle Bridge.

D&H Train 414 heading towards Albany over the Erie Canal in Waterford.

Deano's Summer Vacation!

Dean J. Splittgerber, Jr. .........

Dad Sponsored the Doobie Bros. Alethea and I got to meet them. I got to loose some weight for the Doobie Brothers....Deano Cool tractor trailer at http://www.spitzies.com/

Old Switcher for Railex in Rotterdam.
New switcher for Railex in Rotterdam.
Produce Train. Only time this unit has been on this train. Westbound at Tribes Hill. Lehigh Valley tugboat...restored...Port of Albany during the Tugboat Round-Up. There are only two LV Tugs left. It has and EMD Prime MoverFinally, the new basement for the model railroad. Someday Lincoln Logs will bring the house, LOL!

Update Summer Vacation Series

From John Camerota..... NS 9034 in the lead of a westbound empty coal train, Alleghany Yard in Olean, NY

From Brad Peterson...

The crossing with my whole train in tow. Once I had some ties in place, I loaded the flat car with supplies and was able to use it as a seat for spiking/gauging. I'm using exterior drywall screws with a washer added to secure the rail to PT 2X4's. This will work great until the extension cords run short. Just kidding, I have a cordless that works fine. Looking east with the deck in the background.

From Tony Bucca.....
Work is progressing on the caboose at King's Station. At our work party last night , we unloaded the 1/4 inch steel gutters we had made up to weld to the edges of the roof. I took a trip all the way down to exit 11 of the northway to measure some things on the 35702-the ex-D&H caboose that's an ice-cream stand. It has v-groove bead-board siding, and we'll be able to match the dimensions very closely. We have been scrapping the roof of the aluminum
coating, and we should be able to get the gutters welded in place this week. Then we'll peel the first layer of plywood to determine if the primary layer is going to be OK as a substrate for the bead-board. Landscaping is ongoing, and I hope to bring in some ballast for around the ties. As always,photo documentation is ongoing. We are very lucky to have a number of non-rail citizens involved in the project, just for the historical side of it. But that's part of the Bridge Line Historical Society! Thanks to C.R.O.C.K.S. (Citizens Restoring Our Caboose at King Station,) progress has been made on our work on the caboose. We went before the town of Greenfield board with our work and schedule plans, and they not only approved our estimated budget, but increased it by about 25%. Our town supervisor, Al Janik wants to make sure things are done the right way. We've had a couple of work sesions, initially to clear overgrown shrubbery, and pull up buried brick pavers, in anticipation of engraved pavers we hope to sell for between the depot and the caboose. Work on the caboose began in earnest with a good cleaning of the inside. On a subsequent work-day we drilled out the screws securing the roof-walks so we could have a clear shot at re-doing the gutters and roofing. The caboose has TWO layers of plywood sheathing, the second extending past the edge of the roof-line, allowing for water infiltration. We, as a comittee have decided to strip both layers down to the frame-work, and re-do the siding in a more aesthetic bead-board as early cabooses had. While I was in Cass,WV, I was able to get some detail shots of some of their wood-side cabeese. The general good shape of the metal roof will allow us to divert monies ear-marked for roofing to the slightly more expensive bead-board. We plan on doing a side at a time,but not till after we have welded on new gutters. Thanks to BLHS historian Brad Peterson for keeping an eye on the caboose as he passes by each day, and to Bill Bibby who also wants to get involved from North Creek. I will be presenting a Power-point presentation at the BLHS convention in October, so I have been keeping a photographic record of progress to date.