Inspiration for the Freight House Spur

Image shared with permission of Stark County Historical Society.

The image started my research into modeling the Freight House Spur in Canton, OH.

The Spur was originally Wheeling & Lake Erie trackage that was leased to the Nickel Plate Route in 1949. Close inspection of the picture will reveal 3 steam engines at work. Trackage in the foreground is mix of PRR and B&O. Also of note is the air route information painted on the Diebold factories roof.

Thanks for your interest!

Tim Moran

Overhead view - Freight House Spur

Imagery courtesy of earthexplorer.usgs.gov

This overhead view of the Spur shows the tightly packed industries between the PRR (top) and NKP (right). The freight house is a high source of traffic for the NKP in this timeframe. Also, the adjacent team tracks and heavy industries keep the Freight House switcher (morning and afternoon crews) and the yard switcher busy.

Thanks,

Tim Moran

Allen Ave. NKP - B&O interchange

Imagery courtesy of earthexplorer.usgs.gov

This image shows one of the 2 live interchanges that will be featured on the layout. There is a scrap yard served by the B&O to the left of the interchange trackage. Also note that the interchange traffic is cut in several locations to allow for the passage of vehicle traffic.

The interchange was pulled by the morning Freight House job on it's way to Canton yard and spotted by the afternoon Freight House job on it's way back to the main yard at Gambrinus, 3 miles away. Tombaugh Lumber nestles in the wedge between the 2 railroads and was served by the NKP. To the right of the diamond crossing is Barium Steel, maker of stainless steel materials. Barium Steel is also served by the NKP.

That's all for today. Thanks for your interest!

Tim Moran

Where's Waldo?

It took me a while to find 2 locomotives in that first picture but I still can't find the third!

Where's Waldo's (steam engine)

Good evening Rick,

I had to resize the image to get the 3rd engine to show. Sorry for the mystery!

Tim Moran

There's Waldo!

Thanks Tim! I feel better now that I don't have to go get a new prescription for more powerful glasses.

Funny thing is, at least on my Ipad, the other two locomotives are much harder to see now. Not that it matters 'cause I know they're there!

Found'em

Found all three engines, what do I win?

Good stuff Tim, that's a fantastic photo of the freight house. I can see how it inspired you to model the NKP in Canton.

Freight House Spur Canton, Ohio

Tim, wish you well on your project.

Wayne

More archival information

http://www.railsandtrails.com/Maps/Canton/index.htm

This page shows several links to detailed track diagrams of the area I'm interested in modeling. There is a W&LE Valuation Map link in the middle of this page that shows the Freight House Spur in great detail. The JPG version will likely need to be resized once downloaded for easier viewing.

All this information leads to a working track plan. It's posted here on MRH: http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/track-plan-database?page=7#comment-106776.

I started with the B&O trackage and interchange (right hand side of the room near yellow figure) because of it's simplicity and ease in getting something up and running. Who knew that 1 interchange, a runaround siding, a spur (not on diagram), and the mainline could result in 30 -45 minutes of enjoyable railroading?

Thanks for your comments and interest so far!

Tim Moran

Modeling the NKP?

Tim,

I'm a former NKP employee and I model the road. I believe I may know your mother or aunt if you are from the Cleveland area - contact me and let's exchange some info. Glad to be of help with your project if I can.

Should be an interesting switching layout.

Your Comments....

Thanks to those that have commented so far....

Chris - You "win" the opportunity to bring your son over to operate when it's far enough along for that to happen.

Wayne - Thanks for the comment. If my layout looks 1/2 as good as your Free-mo modules, I'll be happy with the results.

David - No relatives in Northeast Ohio so it must be another's family. Do you have any information on the Wheeling District after the NKP leased the property in 1949?

Since my room is odd shaped, a small operating crew ( or solo operations) will make things interesting while leaving room to maneuver.

Tim Moran

Industrial clusters

This is great stuff, Tim! Your images illustrate the ease of finding diverse industries that are clustered between rail corridors and served by more than one line. The freight house is a huge bonus as these places were pretty busy through the end of the steam era. I see a good number of box cars spotted at the freight house in the second image. For some reason, we have reduced the freight house on our model railroads to a shack with a two car spur, which may be fine for a small town but not a medium sized city. 

Another aspect becomes apparent with these images. While the buildings take up lots of real estate, the tracks were only located in certain places. It is easier to adapt this area to focus on just the rail served interfaces than to attempt a recreation of a few city blocks. There are parts here that are urban canyons, which offer great railroad modeling opportunities.

Eric 

Speaking of freight houses

Imagery courtesy of earthexplorer.usgs.gov

Eric,

Thanks for your comments!

The original posting of the freight house spur was an overview of the area. A little refocusing of the imagery shows how closely the 3 railroads in town established their freight houses; B&O in the lower left corner, PRR in the upper right corner and the NKP (ex- Wheeling) lower center. (For anyone familiar with Canton, Ohio, the street running from top to bottom is Cherry Ave. It's now 4 lanes wide and elevated over the railroads.)

Not only were the freight house tracks full. The numerous team tracks that fanned out between the house and the next industry seem to be well used.

The urban canyons between the buildings you mentioned are one of the reasons the freight house spur is built on a peninsula. Easy reach from either side and some interesting photo opportunities ( if I can get that part right!).

Regards from Akron,

Tim Moran

Some modeling on the Freight House layout

Been spending the past week or so painting track on part of the layout.

I've been trying the method Lance Mindheim showed in Model Railroader's special issue: How To Build Realistic Reliable Track.

First, an over spray of light grey.

Next, a wash of burnt umber oil paint.

As an experiment, I tried toning down the foreground track with another wash. This time with India Ink and isopropyl alcohol.

Finally, some ballast to see how it all comes together. The lighter ballast is Arizona Rock & Mineral "B&O" HO scale material. The darker ballast is Smith and Sons CB (custom blend) #40 (N scale). My preference is for the N scale sized ballast at this point in time.

There's only a few tablespoons worth of ballast shown here. I'll vacuum it up to paint the rails and try some details.

Thanks for taking a look!

Tim Moran

Looks Great!

Tim,

That final wash of india ink did the trick toning things down perfectly. The end result looks great.

The N scale Smith and Sons Ballast looks awesome compared to the HO scale stuff, a little dark maybe? But perhaps just right given the industrial trackage you are modeling. I don't know the area as well as you do of course.

This blog isn't dead......

I haven't abandoned this blog, despite the 1 year without an update. The picture above show some progress in testing out my "terraforming" skills. The sub-terrain is ceiling tiles ( Thanks, Chris!) on top of 2 inch pink foam.

The tiles were carved with a razor knife and smoothed by wetting it with soapy water. The cinders are black sand from Hobby Lobby and the ballast is N scale white limestone from Smith and Sons. Note that there isn't any ballast in between the rails at this time. The ballast was put in by "painting" the sides of the cork roadbed with Elmers glue and the ballast was sprinkled on and allowed to dry. After vacuuming up the loose ballast, the same method was done for the cinder bed. The ground is actual local dirt sprinkled on wet brown paint and allowed to dry.

This right of way looks like it had a very shallow profile while in service. The terrain was only a few feet above the height of the right of way at this location, so it will be "fun" to get this to look correct.

Thanks for looking (and waiting?)

Tim Moran Akron, OH

Excellent!

Tim, good to see you back and looking forward to following your progress.

Eyes of the beholder

Hello again!

I was experimenting with forced perspective to see if  I could realistically depict a neighborhood using photos as others have done. Below is my first attempt......

Although there aren't enough pieces shown to give a great perspective, the results were encouraging. A "photo safari" will be launched in a couple of weeks to bring more photographs into the mix. Getting building pictures of a neighborhood that underwent "urban development" 50 years ago will be interesting.

A friend asked me if the house on the right was simply a photo and the other building was 3-D. I told him he was correct, however, the 3-D building was actually just a piece of paper folded so that it would stand on it's own. The picture below shows the same set up as the top picture with the perspective changed.

Putting the right amount of 3-D items with "flat" items should get the results I want. I've seen others attain great depth in shallow spaces. Now, this concept seems within reach.

Respectfully,

Tim Moran - Akron, OH

Proto photo safari

This past weekend, my friend John and I went south to Canton, OH to capture some pictures of "days gone by".

Among the "neat" things we found were 2 very different elevated grade crossing signals. The first one was on the former B&O ( Cleveland Terminal and Valley) line.

This "badge" was attached to the opposite side of the pole.

The second grade crossing signal has protected both the original and the new Wheeling and Lake Erie railroads.

I will be making a "best effort" to copy the W&LE  grade crossing signal since this actual location is planned for my layout.

Thanks for stopping by!

Tim Moran Akron, OH

Thansk for sharing

Tim,

Glad you took the field trip, those are some very interesting signals and will be very neat to see on your layout.

Layout design

Normally, a layout design is posted earlier in a blog about a layout. So much for "normal" .

Most of my efforts have been concentrated on the B&O main to this point. The reason for this was simple; if I didn't like the results, I would only have a small part of the layout to rebuild.

The scenery and terraforming shown in previous postings have shown acceptable results and my confidence has grown to continue with the rest of the layout.

Respectfully,

Tim Moran Akron, OH

I think...

... that this will be great!

I am eager to see more developments of this layout.

Take care.

Terraforming with ceiling tiles

I must be perfectly clear that I "borrowed" this idea from Jim Six ( and others).

The land in the area of my layout is predominantly flat. Small rises and falls in terrain ( less than 8 scale feet) would generalize this locale. Filling in large area with Sculptamold / "ground goop" has been used on my Free-mo modules. This was a chance to try something new (to me). The first picture shows a single layer of ceiling tiles glued to 2 inch pink foam. I used Elmer's glue (not the "school" glue version). The facia was fitted to the front of the layout and then profiled for the highways and rises along the right of way.  

Next was the adding of a second layer of ceiling tiles. Again, Elmer's glue was used to bond the 2 layers. I "borrowed" the weights from the cupboard.....don't tell my wife!

I gave the glue a few days to fully set before starting to profile the edges of the tiles.

A sharp bladed utility knife gave me the initial profiles I was looking for with minimum amount of mess. The shop vac took away any of the random bits and pieces.

To smooth out some of the rougher edges, a mixture of dish soap and water was sprayed over the edge of the tiles and allowed to sink in. This  wetting solution softened the tile material enough to allow me to rub the edges with the tips of my fingers and round off some of the sharper (less natural looking) profiles. The scenery was left to dry overnight. A quick coat of "dirt colored" paint shows the results. You'll also note the starting layer of craft foam to be used for a local highway.

A second coating of brown paint was applied and real dirt was sifted over the area and left to dry. Once dry, the area was vacuumed.

Now that the right of way was defined by shape, it was time to ballast the shoulders of the roadbed and the subroadbed (cinders). The cork roadbed was painted by brush with Elmer's, ballast sprinkled over the glue, and given time to dry. The cinders were applied in the same way. All excess materials were vacuumed up afterwards.

Finally, it was time for some "greening". Static grass was applied along with some "tuft" material for variation. More cinders were added to blend the highway levels into the surrounding scene. I'm planning on adding a little more dirt to cover the additional cinders since the height difference between right of way and terrain isn't that great. This isn't a "finished" scene.....more like a "work in progress".

Thanks for looking! I'll gladly answer any questions about the methods used here.

Tim Moran Akron, OH

Some more work completed in Canton

Good morning all,

A little more work has been done on the layout since the last update. Several grade crossings have been added along with my first scratchbuilt building. There will be more structures added along the backdrop, however, they will be only partial or skewed to fit the space. I've been studying the local housing styles and now feel comfortable to attempt these structures.

I found a gentleman's blog and his detailed descriptions on how he scratchbuilt a couple of houses here:

http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-first-scratch-built-building.html

http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html

His descriptions will aid my housing "boom" in the near future!

Thanks for looking!

Tim Moran Akron, OH