royhoffman's blog

A few years ago I was taking my wife to a crafts shop in Marion, PA when I came upon the perfect trackside structure. It was a grain feed depot alongside a railroad spur. I made it a point to return someday and take some photos. However, I procrastinated and when I recently returned, motivated by the purchase of an ERTL 1:64 scale Grain Feed Set, the business had transferred to a pellet dealership. The plan was to marry the ERTL set with a scratchbuilt structure that was inspired by the structure in Marion.

It's time to bring out the M-1 gas-electric. It's usually run once a year on Fall Spectacular weekend.

The M-1 pulls up to Orbisonia Depot.

We're heading out past some hoppers.

It's not hard to have a love affair with a narrow gauge railroad. The 3 foot gauge was often necessary to handle the tight curves and steep inclines associated with mountain railroading. Such prototypical settings lend themselves to some great modeling possibilities. Such a railroad was the East Broad Top located in the mountains of South-Central  Pennsylvania. The EBT was a 32 mile line connecting mines that extracted good quality bituminous coal from Broad Top Mountain to an interchange with the PRR at Mt. Union, PA.

The last article for the standard gauge portion of the Penn Western is based in the Harrisburg area. I recently completed a major reworking of the 7' X 12' section so that I could add a Conrail interchange and expand the Sn3 East Broad Top. There's a lot of "open land" for new structures to be modeled. The background scenery contains the Susquehanna River as well as the state capitol building.   

This time we'll leave Philadelphia and head west to Harrisburg. The trip will take us through Reading and the Anthracite coal region.

We continue to roll through the Allentown area as we approach the station there. There has been a lot of interest in the use of foamcore for structures. There are other uses for it as I'll be pointing out. I don't know as yet how to go about doing an article on the subject. Anyway, let's continue our trip around the PWRR.

After leaving NJ, the Eastern end of the Penn Western, we cross back over the Delaware as we head to our next destination. The PW has two main lines, one northward to Allentown and one westward to Harrisburg via the Anthracite Coal Region. Some industries represent certain towns in PA that aren't geographically correct like Gettysburg, Shippensburg, Jim Thorpe and Mifflinburg, but the structures themself exist to keep the flavor of modeling PA. We'll next be heading to Allentown. The Allentown section occupies an 8' X 17' pod with 2 liftout sections for access.

Before we leave Philadelphia and begin our run through Eastern PA, let's take some time to visit the other side of the Delaware River. Southern NJ was largely served by the Pennsylvania/Reading Seashore Line. I model the first two cities heading east after the river; Camden and Collingswood. My parents moved to Collingswood from West Philly so I spent much of my youth there.

I commuted to my job at Conrail in Philly on the PATCO High Speed Line, one of the best run rail lines in the country. That's where I observed some of the industries that I modeled.

Obviousy, the most important thing about modeling a large city is to make it look like a large city. To create a small town atmosphere with the structures and call it Chicago is stretching it a bit. I'll describe some of the techniques I used to attempt to capture the look and feel of Philadelphia.