Looking Around the Interim Layout, Part One

     In this post, we will look at old photos of the interim layout. Railfanning the layout as it were.  .

Alco S-2 22 is spotting a load at the Curren Candy Company.  This structure was built from Art Curren's book:  "Kit-Bashing HO Model Railroad Stuctures."  

Some shots taken in the Central District.  Here, a B&O box is across the street from a parking/alleyway between the Kozy Kitten tavern and Stan's service Station.

 

Boxcab 1 is in front of the Orient Pacific Trading company building with an empty from the Schoeneman Brewery elevator.

A view down the street.  Looking pretty busy at Stan's.

Central District view of some trackage serving the Schoenman Brewery receiving and Bottling House, Midwest Terminal Warehouse, and the city Fruit Exchange.

Airial view of part of the central district showing the Schoeneman complex and the produce and merchandise team tracks.

Baldwin AS-616 A and B units leading a train past the Central District.  The track in front heads down to the West Linncott industrial area.

                 

 CY&P EMD rebuilt Baldwin AS-16m 501 seen here in Brighton Park.

 

Gulf Mobile and Ohio Alco S-2 is idling by Tower BY in Brighton Park.

CY&P 41 is an EMD rebuilt Baldwin S-12m.  Seen here rolling along behind some buildings in Brighton Park.

A view of Rock Island GP18 at Brighton Park.

West Linncott

     I had mentioned the West Linncott industrial area in a previous post.  During the rebuild to the interim layout, about a two foot by nine foot area became available.  I developed this into an industrial area  at the end of a branch.  Six industries and a couple interchange tracks are in this area.

    The name, West Linncott is an anagram of Linn Westcott long time editor and associate of Model Railroader magazine.  I saw this place name on a track plan so many years ago and thought it quite clever.   It gives me a chance to honor a giant in the hobby for me in my formative years.

The interchange tracks are at the extreme right and are under part of the layout so are not really visible and are just a drop off-pick up operation.  The turnout marked 6L on the right side should read 6R.

This view is from the East end where the 'High Line" crosses over.  The Tri-State Baking plant is on the left with the water tower and Purity food on the right.

 Viewed from the West end, the Steel Office Furniture plant is on the left.  The track in the middle is the lead into the district from a tunnel.  On the right is the Spectrum Paints factory.

Going down to ground level, looking west from the street crossing, we see the Spectrum factory on the left, the lead from the tunnel, and the Steel Office Furniture (SOFCO) plant on the right.  Spectrum receives tank and boxcars of materials and ships boxcars of product.  The SOFCO plant has an inside receiving track not seen in this photo, and dock doors for truck and rail receiving and shipping.

 

East end of SOFCO showing truck receiving dock and in back the inside rail receiving dock entry.

 

Turning to the east at the grade crossing, the Merchant's Shipping and Strorage building is seen with the Purit Food and Tri-State plant in the distance.

 

Cook County Oil is tucked in behind Merchants,  This lead also serves the inside dock at SOFCO.

Two views of the Purity Food plant showing its location just east of Cook County Oil, and the loading docks underneath the second and third floors of the plant.  CY&P 10, a Baldwin VO-1000 is at work down the line. Purity receives reefers of meat and ships reefers and boxcars of product.

Tri-State Baking on the right provides spots for bulk sugar and flour, and vegetable oil unloading, as well a dock for receiving bagged materials and packaging supplies.

This relatively small area can keep an operator hopping.  For a person with limited space, with the addition of a staging track area to the west, this might be a great stand-alone layout.
 

Video of scene on first run.

 I took a short video of the northbound train with RS-1 160 leading near the Central District commercial.  160 rounds the curve as traffic waits at the bridge that overpasses the line to West Linncott.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djS80HyobcM

 

160 at this time was not sound-equipped.  The music in the background is from a playlist on my I-Pod that I completely forgot was playing as I filmed.  The music is "Do The Bop" by the Juvenairs.  This was the earlier version of the more popular "At The Hop" by Danny and The Juniors. 

First run on the interim layout.

     After the taking down of the old layout and rebuilding the benchwork, enough of the new project was in place to take a train around.

Locomotive 41 is an EMD rebuilt Baldwin S-12m at work making up a train in Riverdale as Alco RS-1 160stands by.  There is little to no scenery in place at this time.

160 is coupled and is pumping up for the northbound run to Chicago as 41 idles.

Caboose 1058 brings up the rear as the train crosses the cal-Sag channel into Blue Island.

Blue Island is just a flat plywood plain with the Freytag Foundry temporarily placed.

160's train is rounding the curve by the produce and merchandise team tracks.

The train is seen here on the "High Line" above the West Linncott industrial district.  The oil tanks have not been set in place yet and noticeably crooked.

160 is about to leave the "High Line" above West Linncott.

Entering the yard in Brighton Park.

160 has cut off and is drifting away.

The Interim Layout

     After really deciding to go on with the big change, the disassembly and moving about of the components began.

       Scratch one duck-under!  I put the cut-off wheel to the tracks and sabre-sawed through the sub-roadbed, then took out the risers and track pieces, unscrewed the section and out the stripped section came..

    The old commercial/industrial I wanted to save intact and place in a different area.

Shown here is the old Central District.  I had to piece together several photos as as I couldn't do it in one shot.

    I removed all the structures and disconnected this entire area and removed it from the supporting legs. 

I was able to stand it on edge and by the luckiest of chance it just barely fit under the header and lower ceiling between its new location.  I then placed the old supporting legs there and tipped the entire district onto it.  Wow!

    Some of the old benchwork was stripped clean for the new Blue Island.

 The Cal-Sag Channel is to the left of the "plywood plain," with some of the old layout showing below.

    Then new Steel-stud benchwork was made using much of the old for this configuration.

 In the background is Blue Island with the foundry placed to be adjusted, and the new benchwork that will be Brighton Park yard.

Some of the carnage going on during the rebuild.  Riverdale is on the left where most of the rolling stock was moved to before demolition/reconstruction.  Cal-Sag and Blue Island in the background.

 A new alignment of tracks in the Central District was needed.

 

Some of the track here was part of the main line and Central District lead.  This was re-aligned to become, the track on the right, the lead down to an different industrial area, and a new track just to the left became the mainline going to Brighton Park.

    I never made an actual drawing of this plan, but here is a rudimentary sketch of what went on.

 The result was a point-to-point operation between Riverdale and Brighton Park.  The structures were replaced in the Central District and an interesting new industrial area emerged I will talk about in another post.  The elevated line was re-used from the old layout although shrunk from 13 feet to about nine and connected the Central District and Brighton Park.

    I will have a number of additional posts of this layout coming up.

    

A Change From The "Big Layout."

     I the previous entry I described some of the big layout begun in the early 2000s.  By 2015, there was so much unfinished and there were some design problems that were annoying.  The duck-unders were really a limiting factor to enjoying the pike.  It was getting more and more cumbersome crawling under to access some areas when I wanted to work or operate.  It was feasible earlier, but everyone ages and it was getting to be a chore rather than an enjoyable pass-time, and I wasn't running or operating very much anymore.  It seemed that everything was at a stand-still. 

    At the same time, there were postings on forums and groups involving layout size, having time to complete a layout, and other areas of satisfaction. I was considering reducing the size for a while, sometimes just going into the layout room and pondering different scenarios.  

    The big kick-in-the-pants came from reading a September 2015 post on Lance Mindheim's blog:  http://lancemindheim.com/  If you want to read the entire post from the blog.

    In it, he poses three points that I will paraphrase here of interest in my case:

1.  Satisfaction of Assembly  "... taking a pile of “nothing” and toiling to make it “something” can be tremendously rewarding ...  and what aspect of the hobby do you enjoy most?”  Structure building is consistently at the top of the list..."  Building structures and rolling stock, scratch building, kit-bashing and detailing have always been my most enjoyable aspect of the hobby.  So much time has been and would continue to be in layout construction that it diminished that aspect for me.

2.  Visual satisfaction "... to be transported to a time and place...scenes, real or imagined,... a compelling reason to create them in miniature.  In short, we just like looking at what we’ve created... "  I do very much enjoy a completed or nearly so scene.  It is greatly satisfying taking and viewing a train through  areas like that.  Again, the size of the layout leaves so much to do with the time available, and there is always maintenance on what is already done.

3.  Operational satisfaction  "... type of operations you enjoy ... (... switching, locals, etc...operational satisfaction may just mean...switching a few industries.)  If that’s the case, you don’t need a layout that will sustain a four hour session."  Really, this is for me.  I like making up a train and switchlist, heading out of the yard to a commercial area,  and picking out loads and empties and spotting cars where needed.  I did enjoy the mainline when I wanted to see trains just go 'round and 'round, and will probably miss seeing the passenger trains operate, although I think I may be able to establish a commuter run.  So much of the mainline remains to be completed, and the passenger terminal is only a two track skeleton.  Both of these are taking time from my main satisfying interest. 

    I was able to come up with a Point-to-point plan of an imaginary urban line between Chicago and Riverdale on the very far south side.  This allowed plenty of yard and commercial switching, and eliminated all duck-unders.

    Here are some photos of clearing out the main yard at Chicago and elsewhere on the pike and moving it all down to Riverdale for storage out of the way.

            It is early morning on the big day and CY&P RS-1 160 is already at work with moving  its train down to Riverdale.

        Alco S-2 27 is tacking on a caboose in Chicago.

        Another S-2, 22, is seen here southbound in Brighton Park.  As you can see, this area was pretty rudimentary.  The old Brighton Park was a scissors cross-over that allowed trains from the freight yard or the passenger terminal to access the main line west, and also incoming freight or passenger trains to obtain the freight yard  or passenger main leads.

        

        Big Fairbanks Morse H24-66 Trainmaster is Riverdale bound with a heavy transfer on the "High Line" with the Chicago yard below.

        A Baldwin AS-616 A and B set is in Blue Island crossing on the double track truss bridge over Chicago Junction.  Chicago Junction is where trains entered or left the continuous run double track main.

        Milwaukee Road SD7 509 moves a reefer block into Riverdale across the Cal-Sag bridge at Blue Island.

        Finally, CY&P Baldwin VO-1000 "Ten Spot," is leading an all caboose train onto the "High Line"  toward Riverdale.

 

 

 

The Old Layout

     In the early 2000s I started the "big" CY&P.  It was a huge project and filled most of a 16' X 26' area.  It had provisions for one large yard, a passenger train terminal double track main line continuous run, and a commercial/industrial branch to a transfer yard.

                                       A somewhat primitive sketch of what I had going on.

    It  kept me busy for sure over about 15 years.  I will include a number of photos from that era:

 

  

                                        Main freight  yard at Chicago under construction.

    It was at this time, I made a decision to change to DCC occurred.  I was kind of a skeptic about DCC, but when I started drawing up wiring diagrams with all the toggles, blocks and wiring, just for this area,  I took a serious look at it.  I checked out vendor sites on the internet, joined some DCC Yahoo groups, decided what features were of interest to me and narrowed my choices to CVP, NCE, and MRC.  CVP had a nice system, but at the time did not offer a walk-around throttle.  It came down to NCE and MRC and the economics of the MRC system won me over.  Over the years it has done what ever I expected and I have been very pleased.

    Last of the benchwork and sub-roadbed installed illustrating the use of steel-stud benchwork framing described in an previous post.

First run a of a train on the reverse loop under the area shown above.  Seen here is CY&P Fairbanks Morse H10-44 79 leading.  #79 is an old Cary metal cast body on a stretched Athearn chassis with a Kato motor.  A favorite puller!

 Out on the main line.  the tail end of a local freight is passing over a culvert..

Alco RS-1 160 is just entering the "high line" a long elevated stetch on the way to Blue Island and Riverdale.

Baldwin AS-616 A and B pair in Chicago.  A lot of construction "stuff" fills the scenery.