Good afternoon, all......In the spirit of both Stein's Minneapolis Warehouse District layout, Tetters' CP Scarborough Branch Line layout, and cnw1961's NW58th St Miami layout, I though I'd grace these pages by sharing my HO-scale Lehigh Valley Harbor Terminal Railway layout, set in 1951 on the banks of the Hudson River in Jersey City, NJ.

I'm not sure how many if any of you are familiar with the locale or the railroad in question, so I will be brief in the "backstory", unless some of you guys wanna know more (so in other words, just ask!).
The railroad (actually railroads) I am modeling are the end terminals and industrial trackage of the Lehigh Valley (LVRR) and Central Railroad of New Jersey (CNJ). Now, without even knowing the "lay of the land" or the railroads in question, you are probably thinking that I must have a giant space in order to model a terminal operation, let alone one set in the New York City area. Well, as luck would have it, I chose a yard that was very skinny (only about 500 yards wide) and only two miles long, and I am only modeling about a mile of that total length. Before I go any further, let me share one particular map of the area in question. this is a Port Series Map of the area from the 1950's, and I have tried to circle the area I am focusing on on the layout -

I appologize for the sloppy circle around the map, but I want to show you that, no, I am not tyring to fill all the track in my basement! yes, it is still a lot of track, but as you read on, you hopefully get a better idea of how I have made it all fit.

My layout is different in the regards that it consists of only yard and industrial trackage, much like the more famous Kansas City Terminal RR layout of Jim Senese, and the Argentine Terminal layout of Chuck Hitchcock. There is no "main line running" like most of us are accustomed to in the traditional sense. My layout is approx 11 feet wide and about 26 feet long. I do not have a formal track plan (I prefer to let the photos do the talking), but I do have two basic line diagrams of it to share -




As for the layout itself, I am using NCE DCC, and I use a mix of Peco and Atlas turnouts (codes 100, 75 and 83), and Atlas and Micro Engineering track (code 83). I am into operation, so things are "scripted" to run like the real thing did. The cars arrive/depart at one end of the layout via carfloats, and the other end is a 4 track, double decked fiddle yard. I plan to have a max of 13 guys to run it (as of this writing, it is 85% finished enough to begin operating sessions). Well, I have teased you long enough, let me share a few pictures!

Here is the east, or Hudson River end of the layout. Four float bridges will be placed here (there were 6 in the real world). You can see a mock up of one in the lower righthand corner -


This yard was not a classification yard, but rather a holding/marshalling yard, so I do not need to model the pre-requisite roundhouse/engine service facilities (the real RR didn't really have much of anything like that here anyway) -


I like crossing diamonds, and this railroad has a lot of them (13) - Here's a few that really did exist at one time, crammed into a very small area -

This happens to be where the CNJ industrial branch crossed the LVRR mainline, and two legs of a wye.

Now before, I sign off for a while, I'll leave you with a couple more photos. Here's a small tram track yard that I actually salvaged from a friend's layout that had to be torn down -


And here's one of the LVRR industrial Edgewater Branch -


And one of the CNJ Henderson St. branch -


Plenty more to come later!

RAH, aka Car Floater

Accidentally on purpose? We'll see if pictures and/or video of this "accident" end up in their next Music Video...

From the Montreal Gazette: Swollen Members' bus crushed by train, no injuries

Vancouver hip-hop group Swollen Members have a new respect for airplanes today. Their tour bus, affectionately known as "The Black Pearl," was crushed by a train Tuesday in Colorado Springs, Col.

The bus got stuck on a railroad crossing just after midnight, and was unable to move when a train approached.

No one was injured in the crash, but the bus was completely destroyed. It took more than four hours for authorities to clear the scene.

The band members were not on board, as Madchild, Prevail, Trey Nyce and Rob The Viking had all flown home after the last leg of their tour, just days before the accident.

Their tour manager, BJ Smith, and three remaining crew members were driving the bus to California. They narrowly escaped from the oncoming train.

"Everyone is lucky to be alive," said Smith in a statement. "Everything happened so fast we didn't have time to do anything but get off the bus.

From the time the bus got stuck, to the second the train impacted it, was under three minutes."

The band, which had been touring behind its album Armed to the Teeth, is similarly shaken by the incident. "The spot where the train impacted was where we would have been sleeping if we had we been on the bus," said Prevail. "It's scary to think how fragile life can be when something like this happens."

© Copyright © Canwest News Service

After seeing all the great layouts in the various threads lately, I am anxious to get back to work on my layout. But as many of you know, I am moving the layout to a new building, which still needs to be built. Unfortunately, it seems to have been raining for the last month down here.

Well, the weatherman is predicting NO RAIN for the next four days. So, my plan is to spend Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday getting in as much progress as I can. I want to have the walls up and roof tar-papered before it starts raining again.

I think I have all the lumber I need for the framing. Will have to get around 70 sheets of plywood for the wall sheathing and roof decking though. That's 3 trips to the HD right there.

Anyway, wish me luck!

Oh... anyone on here live in Houston? Wanna come help?

EDIT: Added some photos of the slab installation. This work wasdone in November 2009.

Well, here we are, celebrating Big Blue being a year old already!!

Yes, it’s been a year,,, Today. December 17, 2009, Big Blue, the latest version of “The Gauge” is One Year old…

Why do we have Big Blue in the first place? You may ask. Well, a lot of us remember what the original Gauge forums were like, lots a blue, lots of friendly conversations, lots of good stuff to learn from and lots of pictures to see what other people were doing. There were not ads to contend with, just lots of good advice and lots of friends hanging out with other friends who had a common passion for railroading. Well, over the past two years, that situation slowly eroded so that we could not take it anymore, we missed our old Gauge and we wanted it back. Both of us, Don (ezdays) and Mikey (ngauger) knew what we wanted but didn't have the technical expertise to put it together in a timely manner, so we were able to convince Pat (Path) to join us and do the dirty work.

We were able to resurrect the old blue and we even found a copy of the old Gauge and a color sample so that Pat could make our new forums closely resemble what we once had.After we had the format and colors down, we then needed to build a staff, so we invited all our old moderators to join us. Just about every one of them did including some that left us over these two years because of the changes that were being implemented at our old place. We then asked some members to join us. We looked to the people that we knew and felt comfortable around and knew how to contact, without causing chaos at the old place. We didn't want to ignore anyone, but we couldn't ask everyone since it was a tedious task getting in touch with so many people. Not to worry, the word got around and we were amazed at how quickly the membership rolls grew.We expected maybe 50 members the first day, we got almost 150. We figured 25 to 50 posts to start with, we consistently got 100 and then some. Big Blue was a success from the start because it's what you all wanted, and we plan on keeping it that way.

We designed Big Blue to be a fall back and tribute to the Bulletin Board, that we all enjoyed in 2002 when we could all come in and chat, spend time looking at pictures, drop a post or 2 in the coffee pot (now the Hobo’s Camp) and just trade stories, help out on another member’s problems or just read posts and relax and escape the tedium’s of everyday life.

We further decided on opening day; December 17th, 2008 since it was when the first members joined the original board in 2000. We both remember that day, it was amazing and we were nonstop on our computer the entire day. In the past year, we have had many contests and we also have our first “Big Blue E-mag online. Thanks again to all who contributed!!!

Well, now we have a great amount of pictures, comments, member’s thoughts and weather reports in a fun place to spend some time without too much bother.

We encourage all members to stop in to the chat room most every night around 11:00 Eastern time 8:00 Pacific and say hello. Also, visit the Shutterbug section as well as the hobo’s camp. There are lots of great things to be found all around the forum.

We’d like to thank all members and our Moderators, for making Big Blue a fun place to visit every day!!! It’s a tribute to all members and the way they conduct themselves here that make it all worth while!

Happy 1st birthday!!!

The Akron, Ohio division of GERN Industries, Ltd. is a Flux milling and refining facility. Through their patented and closely-guarded manufacturing process, powdered Flux is triple sifted, double-puffed, soft roasted, and polished. The end result is GERN Flux Pellets, used in a variety of products, including Fluxolium. Unrefined Flux enters the facility via boxcar or covered hopper and is stored in silos before processing. The finished product leaves the plant in much the same manner, by rail in either bulk form to other GERN locations, or is shipped in boxes directly to the end user.

The kit, I'm sure you all recognize as the Walther's Red Wing Mill. My facility won't be nearly as large as Wayne's (and rightly so, his is the main HQ after all!), but there will be some other industrial structures added besides this one. In this first post I have the kit nearing completion, with a few details remaining. The fire escape, loading docks and steps all need to be added yet. I will also be adding ballast to the roof and probably another round of india ink weathering on the building itself in addition to some more sanding and finish work.

At the bottom of the picture here is a potential sign for the building. I've been testing various fonts and designs.

If it's GERN, it's good!

[Edit: Please pardon the overexposed picture!]

The Intermountain Railway Company announced about 2 months ago that they would be releasing the ES44AC locomotive 1st quarter next year in March/April. There were some rumors that they got the tooling from Athearn which they got from Tower 55 Models when they closed shop. I can assure you that was just a rumor, These are going to be made with 100% IM Tooling. I literally was so exited when I found out they were doing this locomotive because as it stand now, there the only one doing them in plastic at a fairly affordable price without going Brass. Yeah some T55 units are still out there, but they often sell for BIG bucks DCC/Sound equipped. IM is doing a DCC and DCC/SOUND model, non-SOUND models will have a DCC Decoder that can operate on both DC and DCC, really a win win for all of us. Sound models will have a factory installed SoundTraxx Tsunami DCC decoder.

I went a little over board when pre-ordering these units for myself, and this was ontop of the pre-orders i had gotten from others, but I ordered the following for my own personal roster

ALL 4 Union Pacific Flag Units (#'s 5358, 5477, 5441, 5516) - DCC/SOUND models
ALL 4 BNSF New Image Units (#'s 5749, 5764, 5757, 5778) - DCC/SOUND models
GE Demonstrator #2005 - DCC/SOUND model

The AC's are being done in UP (Flag), Kansas City Southern de Mexico, CP, Ferromex, BNSF (New Image), and GE Demonstrator paint schemes.


Now I just see that IM is announcing the ES44DC locomotives for release in July/August 2010! They are really stepping it up here and going big, these are 2 BIG locomotives and I have a feeling there going to fly right out the door because all of us modern modelers will be buying at least one of these beautiful models to add to the roster The DC's are being done in BNSF (H2), BNSF (New Image) CSX (YN3), CN, NS, GE Demonstrator paint schemes. Im afraid im going to have to add the following DC's to my list above for my roster, i just cant pass them up!

ALL 4 BNSF (H2) Units (#'s 7661, 7682, 7724, 7737) - DCC/SOUND Models
BNSF (New Image) Unit #7695 - DCC/SOUND Model
2 of the CSX (YN3) Units (#'s 5207 and 5398) - DCC/SOUND Models
GE Demonstrator Unit #2011 - DCC/SOUND Model


Its looking like i wont be buying much trains for a little while here while saving up for my bill of locomotives LOL. But I just cant pass these things up, and i know there going to sell out quickly with the way IM does there runs on their products (VERY LIMITED and based strictly on pre-orders, which I personally think is so stupid, but its what alot of the companies are doing now adays ) and i dont want to miss my chance at getting the ones i want.

Does anyone know of a manufacturer that makes non-powered (dummy) lamps for the exterior of structures?
In the style of those in this pic:
http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/171-122

All I have managed to find are some brass lampshades.......I looked at Tichy, Grandtline, Walthers, and others without luck :cry:

Thanks

I just happened across this website that deals with decals for trucks in a wide variety of scales:

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.modeltruckin.com/">http://www.modeltruckin.com/</a><!-- m -->

Hi Folks,

Been quite a while since I've posted here. Lot's has happened since my last post in August, but to sum it up both my wife and I lost our jobs in Houston, so we decided to move back home to New Orleans (which we did Oct. 31). I luckily managed to get a new job after 2 weeks, and then we were able to lease a new home shortly after wards where the wife offered me full use of the tiny, single-car garage.

So fast forward a few weeks and here I am! New city, new job, new house, and now a new layout.

So here I'll be posting progress on this new layout that is based on the Model Railroad project layout, The Salt Lake Route shown in the Jan 2010 issue.

I've already posted a few things to my blog, so the first couple posts will be "catch-up" posts.

Also, here's a look at the removal of the Elmwood Subdivision layout from my Texas home: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://vimeo.com/6346558">http://vimeo.com/6346558</a><!-- m -->

Glad to be back!

Originally Posted December 1, 2009.
----------------------------------------

Last night I started doodling around with a track plan for the new layout. I discovered that I can take my existing benchwork modules and arrange them to fit this exact plan. So another "Yippie!" for this plan. I mainly started working on trying determine the needed radius on the track. I have most everything situated excepted for the right section, and the upper industry spur (near the orange car shop). But so far it's coming along nicely I think.

I've also been thinking about the layout's location. I do like the valley side with the tunnels, but would like it to be a little more green. I couldn't really move it to a real southern location because it's pretty flat here with no tunnels, and keeping the tunnels might be a requirement as they act as a good scene divider on that side of the layout. The same goes for the industry side; something a little more urban/just-outside-of-town scene, rather than a rocky desert scene.

So I'm going to toss on my Freelance hat and call the layout the Union Pacific Elmwood Route and use some of the old layout info for it's background.
Here's a look at what the plan looks like so far: