Well, last night was yet another productive step towards next week's shakedown, when friend Ted DiIorio and new friend Jim Fawcett came over to help me set some Blue Point switch "machines" in place. A few curses, and a whole lotta holes drilled in the plywood and foam later, and we installed 9 BP's. While I have no photos to share of last night's work (pretty boring to look at if I did, anyway), I instead bring you a photo or two of last weekend's work on the big coal trestle.
This is the "temporarily permanent" John E. Dale coal trestle on The layout's Edgewater Branch. The foamcore mockup was drafted by friend Jay Held from a grainy aerial of the actual building, (see below) and of a nice 3/4 view of a similar building located in Irvington, NJ on the LV's Irvington Branch. The "givens and druthers" for the building were to hold enough 34ft hoppers to make it a viable industry (10 became the magic number), to not have the benchwork extension come out too far into the basement's "layout free" space (as seen in the top photo), and not to crowd out the tracks to the one side of it (as seen in the bottom photo). I think we got a nice stand-in, certainly better than nthing, like it has been for the last 8 years! It took about three work sessions, between bumping out the benchwork not once, not twice, but three times to provide adequate room, and to give Jay enough time to draft a decent drawing in CAD (he's a stickler for detail!).
We shall see how it goes - It gives me even more "play value" to an already busy industrial branch with seven medium to large industries, and now I can run an extra "coal train" just to deliver coal to the trestle and to local industries.
Before I log off, here's that aerial view I spoke of above...Sorry for the blurry view, but the website HistoricAerials.com doesn't allow for clear and/or non-watermarked shots.
Until next time,
Ralph
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