I had all my locos and rolling stock removed from my layout for a much needed track cleaning. The next morning when I came down to work on the layout, it struck me that the scenicked portion of the layout now looked like a ghost town. It made me think back to when I read about the abandonment of the New York, Ontario, and Western, which was one of the railroads that influenced my fictional New York, Binghamton, and Western. I wondered if this is how the railroad looked after all the equipment had been sold off or sent to the scrap heap and the only thing left to do was pull up the track. I also wondered what became of the industries along the line that relied on rail transportation when the NYO&W folded. Some had already begun switching to truck transportation which was one of the factors that doomed the NYO&W but surely there were some that suffered a major blow.
I decided the scene deserved a few pictures.
Abandonment did not figure into the history I wrote for my railroad when it was in the planning stages. In the years following the era I modeled, it was soon absorbed by the NYC, and survived into the Penn Central and Conrail days with some of the branches being sold off or abandoned. I suppose I should add a chapter for the post Conrail days. Was that the CSX or the NS that took over Conrail? Shows you how much I follow modern railroading.
Very sad but unfortunately very real. Nothing more lonely than an abandoned rail yard. Hurry up and get your cleaning done so your NYB&W can get back to the business of moving freight before I start to cry!
The track I laid in the yard was done with methods that are fairly standard. The ladder is made up of Atlas #6 turnouts laid end to end which yields track centers of 1 3/4". They are controlled by Atlas undermount switch machines. The one material I used that doesn’t seem to be popular with other modelers is the roadbed for the yard tracks. It is 1/8" blue foam board, the same material that is widely used in 1" and 2" thicknesses. This stuff comes in a bundle folded up like and accordion. It mates perfectly with WS foam roadbed. The individual sheets are about 2’ by 4’. It is by far the most economical material I’ve seen for where wide areas of roadbed are needed. I forget what I paid for it but it wasn’t that expensive and I used less than half the bundle for the entire yard in which the longest track is about 25’. I’ve mentioned this stuff on many different threads but no one has seemed too excited about it and I haven’t come across anyone else who has used it for model railroading.
One of those scenes of desolation where you could quite easily imagine an old man taking his young gran-kids around telling them “I used to work here kids”.
Those are some great photos. They have a real eerie look about them. If there were some weeds growing between the rails in the second photo, it would definately look completely abandoned. You have a very nice layout.
Eerie was just the feeling I had when I entered the train room the day after I did the track cleaning in this area. Besides reminding me of the abandonment of the NYO&W, it also created the feeling of a Twilight Zone episode. “WHERE IS EVERYBODY!!!”.
Come visit where I live. You’ll see a ghost town. The city taxed all the industries to death instead of treating them like their bread and butter. Those that didn’t go bankrupt shut the doors and moved to Mexico. Every week you read about 50-200 people getting laid off because some company closed it’s doors. Everything was serviced by the RR’s. No businesses, no business for the RR’s[V]. The only thing you get to see is a couple of B units bringing plastic pellet hoppers into the plastic bag factory every week or two. Half the time they just leave the empties and locos right on the branch line and take a cab home. (no traffic to worry about)
Some company just announced that they bought all the track and rights from CSX and that they had “big plans” for it. The city officials made a big deal about it. Had pics of them shaking hands with the new owners on the front page of the local paper saying this is going to mean great things for our town. Not unless the city is going to pay all these industries to move back from Mexico! There are no companies for the trains to service. The city officials are morons![D)]
The new track owners only have 12 employees and they’re not a railroad company. My money says that they’re going to start tearing up the track and selling it for scrap.[:(!] Pretty soon our ghost town won’t even have abandond track running through it. (sorry for the rant)
Reminds me of the Springsteen song “Your Hometown”. Governments can be so shortsighted. They never think through the consequences of their policies. Businesses will adjust to whatever policies governments create, and often the consequences are just the opposite of what was intended. Instead of increasing the tax revenue, the predatory tax policies just shrunk the tax base and I’m sure resulted in less tax revenue, not more. Your city officials
Can you tell me how long your yard is? For example, from the water tower at the far end next to the yard ladder to the building at the near edge of the picture…outstanding trackwork!
From throat to throat, it is 8 paces, approximately 24-25 feet. I don’t know if you can tell from the pictures but it is actually two parallel yards, one for eastbound and the other for westbound traffic. On the far end, a single ladder serves both yards. On the near end there are actually two separate entrances, one for each yard with a caboose track between the two entrances.
The width is 12 tracks wide counting the thoroughfare track at the far left. From outside rail to outside rail it is about 21". There are 5 tracks in the longer westbound yard which is to the right of the photo and the shorter eastbound yard to the left is 6 tracks wide. I actually planned to have one more track but after the track was down, I realized the last track would be so short as to be useless. The left most track of the eastbound yard is a caboose track and it holds 5 cabooses. The westbound caboose track which runs diagonally between the two yard entrances holds 6 cabooses.
On my current layout I have modeled an abandoned spur, but I’ve always been interested in modeling more extensive abandonment scenes - or integrate them with active service rails. On occasion I travel on the MBTA commuter rail from Lowell to Boston. This route is full of abandoned (or distressed) track and facilities. I watch the scenes go by and wonder what it was like when all the tracks were in use.
I also ran across a very interesting picture taken recently of a Guilford MEC (now Pan-Am) geep attempting to move down what I always thought was an abandoned line in Cambridge MA. Well, it might as well be abandoned because the loco bottomed out in the mud:
In all seriousness, John, VERY nice tracklaying and use of space. It has interest without it being too busy. Is your layout point-to-point or continuous run?
