Early again 
Last week, I spent more time working on the 17 inch expansion at the club. I closed off the road and inserted turf. I created a crossing.
Removing the older crossing allowed me to build a small lake.
Scott Smith
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I haven’t been posting weekly on this thread as usual, and today you will see why. I’ve spent the last five weeks scratchbuilding something I’ve wanted to build for a long time…a split entry house. Now that may not seem very exciting, but the reason I did it is that I wanted to build a much more contemporary house than the early 20th century houses seen on most layouts and comprising most of the model railroad house kits found in all scales of the model railroad market.
This style of house was developed in the 1960’s and became very popular in the 1970’s. They are still being built today often with more contemporary architectural features. But what really motivated me to build one is the fact that they are all over rural Pennsylvania. Using a commonplace structure instead of yet another cutesy 1920’s house adds greatly to the realism of the layout.
Aside from some of the window frames and the Woodland Scenics light fixtures, the structure is 100% scratchbuilt. These structures generally have an integral garage as well, so it will be sunk down into the scenery instead of just being plopped onto a plywood benchtop which again adds to the realism.
Some of the features you can see in the photos are laser cut shingles (they took forever to put in place!), the open garage door with a car inside (still needs a PA license plate), the rooftop plumbing vents, and the gutters and downspouts.
This structure got me really fired up, and I had to share it with those who regularly post on this thread. I have two more structures to build for the area of the layout where the house will be placed. Once they are finished, I will resume work on the terrain, ground cover, and trees on this part of the layout and will post pictures of the house in place, but that probably won’t be for a number of months. So no trains in this week’s post, but hope you like the split entry house!
My model of Boston & Maine F-3 #4227A was made by Sunset/3rd Rail and delivered in 2021 at an MSRP of $699.95. Unlike most 3-rail F-3 models, this one has a fixed pilot.
The B&M purchased two F-3 A-B locomotive sets in 1948, #4227 and #4228, for passenger service. Each individual unit had an EMD 567 two-cycle, supercharged V16 diesel engine that developed 1,500 horsepower. #4227 ran between Boston, Springfield (MA) and White River Junction, Vermont. It was retired in 1966.
MELGAR
I have been messing around with this diorama base that I have. Anyways, here are some pics that I took:
Greg P
A 2022 Christmas Layout memory 
Waltburg:
I wouldn't mind living here: A nice pool to take a dip in and then sit pool side to do some train watching:
walt
Off to a great start this morning, thanks Scott for starting this once again this week. Everything looks really good this morning so far, Neal, that is a really cool house you scratched up, I've never seen one of them, of course, where I came from and grew up in, the ground was mostly flat, some hills but usually if they were going to build houses, they just bladed everything flat, you hardly ever saw a house with a basement (something I always wanted), so when I saw yours I was really surprised at the type of house you constructed, I'm looking forward to seeing it on the layout with the scenery all around it. You did a really nice job. Where did you get the brick sheets or who makes them? Holgate Reynolds used to make some all kinds of brick sheet materials way back when but unfortunately, they went out of business. If I remember correctly, they made them in all scales. Thanks for sharing.
Melgar, I really loved your 3rd Rail F-3, very nice and the prototype had a really long life.
TrainBro89, nice diorama, it made me chuckle when I saw your big articulated running between the two buildings, that's what I call close quarters to the extreme. I really like the B&W shots, you don't see that much anymore.
Great pics this morning, off to a good start this fine Friday. I hope everyone has a terrific weekend.
It's Spring in Central VA.......and, we have some really nice warm and sunny days this week. So, it's time to get back to painting and construction of model kits!
I am starting with two Korber apartment background building fronts. These were bought for background on old layout.......which was taken down in 2020 before I got to them. Now, they will be made into one building.
The next building with be the Korber Union Ice Service Co.
Then, I started a rehab/rebuild/refresh on two old favorites.
The Plasticville Cathedral is too small to be a cathedral, but it easily can be a small church surrounded by taller urban buildings. I got some great ideas from the Forum this week on how to reconstruct the stained glass which had deteriorated into powder in many places.
The Lionel Diner was an urban staple on my 1993-2003 layout in a previous house. The signage was added when Lionel announced that production was moving to China.
The next picture is from the old layout.......
I have contracted with these local (to my childhood home in the Bronx) railroads to flatten the diner inserts. They have been in the New Haven Power book all week.
Have a great weekend, folks!
Peter
This week I finally got this guy running again. Enjoy your weekend.
Great photos, everyone. Here are two oldies of mine that remind me of my wife's old neighborhood in Jackson heights, Queens -
Thanks Scott for getting us rolling! Here's my photos of the fun kind for this fine weekend!! Scenes along the Mountain Division of the Free State Junction Railway. Have a wonderful weekend everyone!!
A bad order car has been set out on a MOW spur as it waits for a truck and mechanics from the Car Dept. to show. Meanwhile MOW workers move some crates around. A C16 Dockside locomotive heads a short freight train on the main. 
" Now I got a tell you William, the smallest feesh I caught was this long!!" Yep, that's right too!" William scratches his head as he here's yet another of Willy's "feesh" stories. 
Logging on the Mountain Division yields some pretty big timber. 
About to traverse a country road grade crossing at 10 mph with whistle blowing! The echo of the whistle bounces off the mountain slopes. Farmer Zeke Mathers toils away in the vegetable garden paying no attention to the passing train. Trains are pretty common around here. 
I've shown these before but what the heck, it is Easter after all
2 years ago I hosted my daughter and son and their families, which included my 4 grandkids, for Easter. I set up a temp Easter layout hoping that the grandkids would enjoy running some trains - they DID!
- walt
@Putnam Division posted:I have contracted with these local (to my childhood home in the Bronx) railroads to flatten the diner inserts. They have been in the New Haven Power book all week.
Have a great weekend, folks!
Peter
Peter,
Your reading material is the same as mine...
MELGAR
@scott.smith posted:Last week, I spent more time working on the 17 inch expansion at the club. I closed off the road and inserted turf. I created a crossing.
Scott Smith
Scott: do you have free reign to do whatever you want to or do you have to get approval from some sort of board or committee?
beautifully done either way.
walt
@walt rapp posted:Scott: do you have free reign to do whatever you want to or do you have to get approval from some sort of board or committee?
beautifully done either way.
walt
The members of my division have to agree on changes. The tinplate division is only me, my son Joshua, and Graham Claytor. Graham lives an hour away and can only make it when we have special day events. So as far as changes go I can do whatever I want. I did ask for approval to use some of the extra lumber in the storage room from the club's president for the expansion. As the head of my division I can spend up to $100.00 of the club's money at a time without member approval. If I want to spend over $100.00, it has to go to the members for a vote. The majority of the members are in the HO division. They have a different idea on what is expensive. However I was pleased when I wanted to replace a loop of track with USA Track for a little over $400.00 and it was approved.
Stuck at the station until the line ahead clears.
Nicely done Joe.
I would suggest having a plan in place with designated caretakers to carry on the collection.
@PRRMiddleDivision posted:I haven’t been posting weekly on this thread as usual, and today you will see why. I’ve spent the last five weeks scratchbuilding something I’ve wanted to build for a long time…a split entry house. Now that may not seem very exciting, but the reason I did it is that I wanted to build a much more contemporary house than the early 20th century houses seen on most layouts and comprising most of the model railroad house kits found in all scales of the model railroad market.
This style of house was developed in the 1960’s and became very popular in the 1970’s. They are still being built today often with more contemporary architectural features. But what really motivated me to build one is the fact that they are all over rural Pennsylvania. Using a commonplace structure instead of yet another cutesy 1920’s house adds greatly to the realism of the layout.
Aside from some of the window frames and the Woodland Scenics light fixtures, the structure is 100% scratchbuilt. These structures generally have an integral garage as well, so it will be sunk down into the scenery instead of just being plopped onto a plywood benchtop which again adds to the realism.
Some of the features you can see in the photos are laser cut shingles (they took forever to put in place!), the open garage door with a car inside (still needs a PA license plate), the rooftop plumbing vents, and the gutters and downspouts.
This structure got me really fired up, and I had to share it with those who regularly post on this thread. I have two more structures to build for the area of the layout where the house will be placed. Once they are finished, I will resume work on the terrain, ground cover, and trees on this part of the layout and will post pictures of the house in place, but that probably won’t be for a number of months. So no trains in this week’s post, but hope you like the split entry house!
This is pretty much our house when we lived in Chesterton, Indiana in the late 70s. The only difference is we put the garage on the side of the house and not in the sub-basement. This is an awesome model and it brings back memories (i.e. my first Lionel Layout).
@J. Motts posted:Off to a great start this morning, thanks Scott for starting this once again this week. Everything looks really good this morning so far, Neal, that is a really cool house you scratched up, I've never seen one of them, of course, where I came from and grew up in, the ground was mostly flat, some hills but usually if they were going to build houses, they just bladed everything flat, you hardly ever saw a house with a basement (something I always wanted), so when I saw yours I was really surprised at the type of house you constructed, I'm looking forward to seeing it on the layout with the scenery all around it. You did a really nice job. Where did you get the brick sheets or who makes them? Holgate Reynolds used to make some all kinds of brick sheet materials way back when but unfortunately, they went out of business. If I remember correctly, they made them in all scales. Thanks for sharing.
Melgar, I really loved your 3rd Rail F-3, very nice and the prototype had a really long life.
TrainBro89, nice diorama, it made me chuckle when I saw your big articulated running between the two buildings, that's what I call close quarters to the extreme. I really like the B&W shots, you don't see that much anymore.
Great pics this morning, off to a good start this fine Friday. I hope everyone has a terrific weekend.
Hey, thanks for your nice comments about the house. Usually I use plastic brick material and mortar the joints then spray it with India Ink to get rid of any white haze on the bricks and age the mortar. But I didn't want that look on the house since it is a much newer structure, so I went with this brick paper. I bought a bunch at York quite a few years ago. Think I saw them selling it up near the front left corner of the Orange Hall back in October.
Far East Imports just started operating out of a formerly empty lot in Plano that is under a bridge beside the Proviso yard. I see that they still have some landscaping to do, but I worry that it may not be their highest priority.
Art
@C&O Allan posted:This is pretty much our house when we lived in Chesterton, Indiana in the late 70s. The only difference is we put the garage on the side of the house and not in the sub-basement. This is an awesome model and it brings back memories (i.e. my first Lionel Layout).
Allan,
Thanks for posting about your house. These things are all over the place, including rural areas of Pennsylvania. See for yourself...
This one is just west of Lewistown and right by the tracks. In fact, the picture was taken out the window of Amtrak's Pennsylvanian. Just a one car garage, but compare it to the model:
Now here's one close to where I live and pass all the time on my daily walk with the garage doors on the front:
And as Allan alludes to in his post, here is one with an attached garage, this one being at the level of the basement. From what I've seen, more often than not, if they have an attached garage, they are built at the level of the upper floor. But at least around here, they usually have integral garages in the basement. It too is in rural Pennsylvania in the Path Valley. I believe that's Kittatinny Mountain in the distance:
As my late friend Don Cassler would have said, "Often seen, seldom modeled."
Happy Weekend. Freight train pulled by Bangor & Aroostook GP9 #76 & #77 ready to go.
Here is ours. Also, we had it built, so it was ours so to speak.
Yep, that's a split entry. Your attached garage was built halfway between the upper and lower levels. There are so many variations, but the key is that they are basically a ranch house, but on a split, the front door is built halfway between the basement and first floor. This reduces the cost of excavating and building the foundation which does not have to be as deep as on a ranch.
Out here on the South Plains Division of the Panhandle & Santa Fe Railway Company, we do not have the 100 MPH track that they have up in Kansas, but we can run 79 MPH on passenger and 55 MPH on freight. We are handicapped by several speed-restricted curves as we undulate our way across the South Plains. Our passenger trains are not fancy by Santa Fe standards, but they are clean, comfortable, on-time, and we serve delicious Fred Harvey meals in our dining cars. These days (1952), the normal motive power for our best passenger train, which originates in Clovis, NM, and carries a through sleeping car and chair car from Los Angeles for Houston, is a 300 Class “bobtail” - an A-B-B rednose F7.
Tom, I love the picture with the 3 head searchlight signal! I'm hoping to catch up with you in the signal department, but have a long ways to go. I have been wearing my BNSF caps and getting lots of compliments. AND they cover up my bald head too.
I have a new friend who is a real railroad guy and he is trying to educate me on running better operating sessions and talking more like a real railroad guy too. Hope you and Margie are doing well.
Art
This is the best thread on the forum. I look forward to this every week. Thank you Scott.
Joe,
You have done a tremendous job on your layouts and the associated memorabilia.
Neil,
You did an excellent job with the house.
@NJCJOE posted:Some current shots around the train room.
Joe, what an amazing layout design and construction! I’m blown away.
Train World delivered my new Lionel Vision Boxcar yesterday and it is great fun and looks right at home on my layout:
Well this special run Train Master by Stockyard Express has me into a project.
I was born in Youngstown about a year after WW II raised and matured there when Youngstown was only second to Pittsburgh in steel production.
I am working on what could have, should have and WOULD have been the Akron, Canton & Youngstown if Frank Sciberling didn't get his hooks into it. The ACY was founded in 1907 to connect Akron to Youngstown due east (Steel Mills) and Mogadore due south to Canton (Timken and Hover). But Sciberling wanted a "better" path for his tires to Detroit bypassing the PRR, B&O and Erie roads so "pushed" west to Columbus Grove OH to interchange with Ford's DTI. Now National Lime and Stone in Carey Oh on the ACY line produce tons of Dolomite, Limestone, and sot coal for the steel mills in Youngstown and area. The ACY interchanged with the C&O that interchanged with the B&O in a wide north east to south east ark to get the Dolomite, Limestone and salt coal to the Mills in Youngstown. According to the chart in Morning Sun's book on the ACY the car loads of Dolomite,Limestone and salt coal were 2 1/2 times that of tire & tubes for the period 1947-1962. So the ACY would have had a straight 135 mile shot to Youngstown,
So I have bought an unlettered NE caboose and sets of ACY decals and 10 Akron, Canton & Youngstown 2-bay hoppers car to depict what would have been.
I have/am painting up th loads from these 10 hoppers to represent four loads of crushed limestone and six loads of dolomite.
Heres the painting progress of the loads.
The medium dark grey is a good representative on the Dolomite. the is good for the base for the crushed limestone. I need to detail those up with white, grey, cream, and tan. But cannot find my brushes for dry painting the tans.
Here are two the hoppers with these loads.
Ron
The return train from Searsport passes a Maine farm on a beautiful summer evening.
Exquisite Johan!
Old Standard Gauge layout from 10yrs ago
Here are a few shots of early evening in the city layout.
Prewar 226E pulling 17 prewar cars, well 16 wood/tin kit built cars riding on prewar trucks and a 2757 caboose... Runs pretty good and can get a fairly slow run out of it lol.
Very nice and fun photos this weekend. Here's my entry. I thought this would be a nice view from the homestead where off in the distance you can see the once bustling and thriving small town. The farmers look on regularly, with sadness, at the decline they've seen over the years on those side of tracks.
Dave
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