So in my overzealous attempt to clean up things in my Admin view of the blog yesterday, if you're a regular, you might notice a missing "Web Wednesday" post from last week. Oops, my bad.......
Anywho, this week, I really haven't come across anything new and exciting to share, but I DID come across this on eBay yesterday, and wanted to share......
("then" view, circa 1933.......click for a larger view)
("now" view, circa 2013.......click for a larger view)
Ya know, there are some bloggers who'd post a photo like this and provide absolutely no explanation on a particular day of the week, but no, no, no, not me! So, what ARE we looking at?
Well first off, it's what I'm modeling (or at least trying to!), and a little more. To the immediate left, you see a ferryboat of the CNJ's terminal, with the station and train sheds directly above the ferry headhouse. Then, a boat slip and a building on a dock (both property of the CNJ), and then, everybody's favorite waterfront "element", the float bridges! The finger piers of the LV are clearly visible in the Big Basin (called "The Gap" by locals, Mill Creek on topo maps, and is NOT, as usually erroneously noted in many books or in historical presentations, the Morris Canal), and then downtown Jersey City, historically known as Paulus Hook, and primarily the domain of the PRR and the factory complex of Colgate. The large double smokestacked building is the American Sugar Refining company, and if you enlarge the photo, you'll see this was where the Morris Canal ended and entered the Hudson River.
So enough of the history lesson, let me use my crude photo editing skills to show you what I am selectively modeling. The "amorphous blob" that surrounds the area in the photo close up below is pretty much the main part of the layout, or should I maybe say its "raison d’être", the Jersey City Yard (as referenced in LVRR docs), though more commonly referred to by employees and fans alike as the "Washington Street Yard" (for the city street that, by law, had a right of way that bisected it in half) or simply as "Johnston Ave" (no "yard"), for the city street that ran along it lengthwise (today's Audrey Zapp Drive, the main access road into Liberty State Park).
(go ahead, click.....if you dare!)
Obviously, the "main attraction" are the float bridges (I'm going to model three of the six), and model four of the five piers shown in the photo (there were a total of eight located here). The pier at the bottom of the circled area is Pier B (or B Dock as the RR called it) and if I had a "favorite pier", this would be it....As you can see, there is a tower at the end of it, and that tower is actually a coal tower for the tugboats. Neat, huh? I think so......Later on in the mid 1950's, they also built a covered shed off the side facing us in the photo, to pneumatically unload cement into covered barges. More neat stuff! This pier shed also had the track along the bulkhead (as seen in the photo) and one that went inside as well (see below). I don't have the actual dimensions here to share at the moment, but my (clearly) foreshortened model is approximately one foot in width by two feet in length, which is just enough to give the impression of a substantial building, but not overwhelm the scene, and of course be a hindrance to the operators!
Of course, there's so much more to this photo AND of course to the layout, but I'm not going to bore you with all that errata, as I've probably already done it already many, many posts ago! Besides, you can always ask me more questions about things in the comment section if you want! (hint, hint!). My only wish is that this photo was clearer! Imagine the details one could make out if it wasn't so grainy, which is why I probably won't bid on it, but it's a good reference photo none the less.
So for now, enjoy, and we'll see what next week brings us!
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