This is my N-Scale version (But it can be converted to HO) of the Central Jersey Railroad’s NYC Bronx Terminal Facility. It was active until sometime into the 1950’s. Today it is an empty lot.
Here is a picture of the prototype Round Freight house.
Because of the unique round freight house kit-bashing it will be a fun project. The curves are very tight, Peco small or Atlas #4, due to space. Operating the facility will also be a challenge and use small switchers. It could occupy an operator for several hours depending upon how the orders are set up.
It is my design. However, feel free to use it or any part of it if it interests you.
Are you going to actually model the barges? I was visiting the Treasure Coast club in Florida, and they have a barge terminal facility. I may have a couple of pictures at home - I’ll look later and see if any are worth posting for you.
I’m not sure if they actually did it, but they were talking about using the barges as “casettes,” making them removeable so that you could take a loaded barge off and replace it with an empty, or replace it with a different set of cars for switching.
One aspect of barge loading that I learned is that they don’t actually run the locomotives on to the barge. Instead, they use an empty car as a buffer. This means that they don’t have to bring the heavy engine on to the barge or the bridge used to match the tide-dependent barge height to the fixed rails.
The CNJ freight house used a string of skeleton cars, three or four if memory serves. They looked like what was left after the termites finished with a steel-framed wooden car. The barges had to be unloaded one or two cars at a time to keep the lateral load reasonably balanced - lots of switching for ten or a dozen cars!
The “cool” Bo-Bo diesel is CNJ 1000, which has been offered as an HO model by (I think) Roundhouse.
The inner circle (actually a loop) had a 90 foot radius - just 12.37 inches in HO. Standard couplers some times required a bit of TLC (applied with a sledgehammer) to convince them to couple on that inner track.
In the mid-70’s the Chanute Model Railroad Club layout actually had a crude model barge loading facility. The “barge” cassettes were just pieces of board with tracks, otherwise devoid of detail.
Chuck (native New Yorker happy to be away from his birthplace - several thousand miles away)
I have one of those little Roundhouse Diesels. The guy who had it before me(Igot it at an estate sale) has a pantograph mounted on it. Iv’e had plans for over a year now to string catenary on my branchline for it. Don’t know if it even runs but when we get to that project we have ways to make them run.[}:)]
In a book I have, titled"Where the Rails Meet the Sea"
by Michael Krieger, isbn1-56799-597-7 ,there is a picture of that terminal taken in 1944. Says it was 200 feet in diameter and was copied from an earlier terminal built in1898 for the Harlem Transfer RR. Almost the whole yard associated with it is in full veiw. Pretty close to your plan. Interesting detail is the Ruppert Ale sign had been updated. but still in the same place. the entrance and exit is located where the word house is on your diagram.
There is a plan of the Harlem Transfer in Freight Terminals and Trains by John A Droege. This book published in 1925 was reprinted by the NMRA in 1998 isbn #0-9647050-2-8
The Harlem Transfer’s only rail connection was the car float. The freight house was an oval 180’ long x 150’ wide plus a 4’ platform all around. The inside oval radius was 90’ and the outside oval was 104’ . The facility also had 10 team tracks (lengths from 5 to 17 cars) a 1-car track with an overhead crane, and some other tracks whose use is un clear to me, but may have also been used as team tracks or to facilitate switching.
Thanks everyone for the feedback, the books, and other barge terminals. I wont be modeling the actual barge aspect but will have an I/O exit track to my main yard, Only my saddle tank and two small Plymouth diesels will work it. It will provide me hours of enjoyable operations.
