I attended the Amherst Railway Society's Railroad Hobby Show in West Springfield, Massachusetts on Saturday and Sunday, January 25/26, 2025. This is an annual two-day show that I first attended in 1998. The attendance on Saturday was 14,123.
As long as I can remember, the New Haven Society of Model Engineers, a model railroad club that originated in 1932, sets up and runs a 2-rail O scale layout at the show every year. The main feature of the layout is the Society's model of the New Haven Railroad's Scherzer rolling lift bridge over the Housatonic River between Stratford and Milford, Connecticut.
The model was built by club member Alfred Schellbach in the 1940s with drawings supplied by the New Haven Railroad. It is made from brass and was assembled using some 33,000 rivets. It's the first thing I go to see when I arrive at the show and the last thing I look at before leaving until the next year. I look forward to the show and seeing the bridge every year.
The real bridge is known as the Housatonic River Railroad Bridge and also as the Devon Railroad Bridge, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The bridge was completed in 1906 and is still in use by Metro-North Railroad and Amtrak. Two side-by-side spans each carry two tracks across the river. The total length including fixed Warren truss sections is 1,072 feet (22 feet 4 inches in O scale) and the draw is 110 feet (27.5 inches in O scale). I've ridden across the bridges hundreds of times.
At the show, the opening and closing of the bridge was demonstrated every 30 minutes by the president of the New Haven Society of Model Engineers, Inc.
Pictures and videos show the model in operation.
MELGAR
