Unfortunately, no real progress to report. The summer has been quite busy, with my real job continuing almost as usual, plus visits to family despite the Chicom-flu. We enlarged the garden this year as well, and we canned a couple dozen pints of pickles, relish, and salsa with 30 gallons of Romas yet to be rendered into sauce.

The model S&NY has also been in a state of suspended animation for the better part of a month as well, due to replacement of the kitchen floor tile. Luckily, I had the foresight to cover the layout with plastic sheet, and a good thing, too. The remodel project generated huge quantities of dust through out the house. Thus the layout has been “under glass” the whole time:

The project finally finished up last week, so the next task will be to break the railroad out of hibernation, and try to remember where I left off on the scenery project…

I won’t insult anyone’s intelligence with maudlin nonsense about recent events, except to say I’ve been working more or less as usual, but concomitant changes in various plans such as the cancellation of the PRRT&HS and NMRA MCR conventions has left me with some extra time to make progress on the model S&NY.

A major project I had been putting off is a re-work of the short PRR section of the layout, including a bridge over Lycoming Creek. I had several goals for this corner of the railroad:

• Differentiate PRR from S&NY scenically
• Wanted a more impressive bridge for this location on the RR
• Be a focal point/LDE

There were also several obstacles to be overcome:

• Space too small for Central Valley-style truss
• Easemented curve at one end and turnout at the other end of the bridge
• BIG area of mountainside
• Transition to Marsh Hill Jct. area
• Leave space for Bergan tower

This section was one of the very first on place when I began the layout, and the bridge carried the mainline. Pulling out the bridge would prevent any op sessions until the project was essentially complete. With op sessions off the table for the foreseeable future, I figured this was as good a time as any to bite the bullet and begin.

This was the prototype scene. S&NY Marsh Hill station in the background with the junction track curving off to the right from the PRR Elmira Branch into the S&NY Marsh Hill yard:

Photo Courtesy Jim Anderson

A through truss bridge was not going to fit in this area. A Central Valley through truss is 21 inches long. Not only would that not fit, it would overwhelm the scene. Instead, I decided to go with Walthers deck girder bridges. They are bigger in depth than the Micro Engineering bridges elsewhere on the layout, and I hoped that would be enough of a difference to set off the PRR bridges from the S&NY ones. The cut-stone abutments and pier would also show a bit of a difference. With that in mind, I got started.

This was the only photo of the area showing how it looked originally that I could find in my files:

Photo by John Webster

Next was puzzling out what would fit. The problem was the very end of an easemented curve at one end of the bridge, and the turnout into Marsh Hill yard at the other.

Original gap with new plywood streambed.

I traced the track alignment to match the easement.

Lots of puzzling and head scratching to get everything to line up.

Always paint your track!

After sealing and painting the new streambed, I got the abutments and pier in place. These were also painted to look like Pennsy-style cut stone.

Then, cardboard lattice and plaster gauze for the scenery base.

The white plaster was painted flat black where the trees would go, and the rest got a layer of “ground goop”.

Then, several acres of puffball trees.

It’s a BIG mountainside…

I added a rock cut in the “valley” in case anyone looked in there. I thought it would add some interest for any potential photos as well:

Also added material to form the stream banks while this was going on:

And that’s about where it stands right now. Green trees suck up a LOT of light, and I ended up hanging another 2′ LED fixture in this corner. It was just too dark without it.

To be continued…

Ran the 23rd operating session on the model S&NY back in June. been quite busy with family travel this summer, so I’m behind in posting new stuff to the site. Anyway, for a little variety I put out slow orders over the bridges on the railroad until they could be inspected by a work extra “On account high water”. This added a little challenge for the dispatcher, who had to get the work train out, and route the regular trains around it. The slow orders were just an added complication!

Here, dispatcher B.A. White furiously writes out orders and clearances to get trains on the road:

The work extra pauses at Masten:

Fred L. sorts out his orders before leaving Marsh Hill yard:

All-in-all a successful session. As the bridges were “inspected” and the slow orders rescinded, things calmed down and trains were pretty much on-time as the session wound down. One lesson learned is that I will probably have orders for any special movements pre-written prior to the session. That will make the dispatcher’s job less chaotic at the start of the evening. Until next time…

A little more fun with Photoshop…