Toledo & Sanborn maps.

Toledo.

The more I research it the more I like it.

First I looked at Cleveland and then at Cincinnati, but the cons of both outweighed the pros.

Now I have had to go in and re-design the blog again because I have moved on to the next major city in Ohio.

Toledo has all of the elements I've been looking for from the get-go. It has a union passenger terminal which was used by four lines; NYC, B&O, C&O, and Wabash. In addition to that, the NYC Water Level Route ran right through it. Toledo had a terminal belt railroad that in addition to those four railroads also interchanged with NKP, PRR, WLE, Ann Arbor, and DT&I. It is a Great Lakes port city with a large river (the Maumee River) navigable by large Great Lakes freighters.

In addition, the Toledo area is flat. Where railroad right-of-ways crossed over each other, it was either a level crossing or a man-made overpass. Really, with only a few exceptions the banks of the Maumee River and tributaries are the only natural terrain features in the area.

Sanborn Maps.

I discovered a depository of Sanborn maps online. You can find it at Digital Resource Commons Ohio Link . You can search for cities in Ohio and you can also refine the searches to look for specific locations within the city. The one thing I don't like about the site is that the maps are not arranged in any sort of logical order. You have to use the search engine to find what you want and there is no browsing tool for map searching. There are also multiple maps for a specific location spanning several decades so you have to watch out that you are not pulling up a 1904 map when you want a 1951 map of the same spot. Another thing I don't like is that all the maps are in JPEG 2000 format (.jp2). This format will not display in any of the readily available Windows-based photo viewers. There is a free image viewer called FastStone Image Viewer available online though that is actually a very nice image viewer and it will display the .jp2 files. You can then convert them to any other format you like. I like .bmp format because it doesn't distort as you zoom in like a .jpg does, but they are huge files and don't post well on blogs.

Here are a couple samples of the Sanborn maps from Ohio Link:

This is Toledo Central Union Terminal circa 1951, right after completion in 1950.

And this one is an area just north of the terminal and is where the NYC, B&O, and Wabash all had freight houses. There is also a NYC locomotive servicing facility and a Great Lakes Terminal warehouse (basically a non-RR owned freight house).

These maps are giving me lots of planning ideas. I think I will finally be able to come up with a track plan that has the elements I want and fits in my space.

Status Update

Not much activity lately other than Wordless Wednesdays and other non-layout related posts.

Main reason for this was because the wife and I were doing some re-negotiation over layout space in the basement. As is usually the case, it was my own fault. I started to go beyond the original boundary figuring it would be OK, but it wasn't. Long story short, after the re-negotiation I'm still in the same part of the basement and I'm still in my original dimension which is 13' x 27'. I know, stop complaining - there are lots of model railroaders that wish they had that much space.

Also, I have to say that we still do not own this house yet. Our other house still has not sold due to 3 different buyers failing to get approved for financing. We are in our 4th contract presently, which is actually looking good for finalized sale here in April. Fingers crossed. Once I actually own the house, I will feel better about drilling anchor holes in concrete block for benchwork.

A quick recap on my layout planning activities to date. Passenger ops, passenger ops.

Originally I wanted to model Cleveland Union Terminal, or some facsimile of it. Research pointed to the fact that CUT wasn't well liked by the tenant railroads, and I started to share their pain trying to come up with a functional track plan in HO scale for it.

I started searching for alternatives and found Cincinnati Union Terminal (also called CUT). Perfect layout as far as facilities, which is actually not good for modeling because end-to-end CUT with coach yard and facilities is over a mile and a half long which is about 85' in HO scale. Operationally though, Cincinnati is a dream.

Some more research led me to Toledo Central Union Terminal (also called CUT...). I found an article and track plan for it in the Feb 2003 issue of Model Railroader.

The MR plan is for 20' x 27', of which the long dimension fits perfectly in my own space. The terminal layout is on a curve at one end, which is great for modeling because all layouts have corners. The thing I don't like about the MR plan though is that there are no freight operations. I still want to have passenger AND freight operations. And I want to do it in smaller space.

Here is my first go-round at a rendition of Toledo Central Union Terminal. This actually fits in my space with room to spare.

In the MR plan, for the curved end of the terminal they use 28" radius curves and #6 turnouts on both throats and #8 for crossovers. In my plan, each pair of platform tracks is 36" on the inside and 38" on the outside. This will allow the long passenger cars to not hang over platforms as much as they would with 28" curves. I use #6 turnouts at the curved end, #7 at the other end, and #9 for the crossovers. I also added mail and express to the right of the terminal ala Cincinnati style, and I fit it all into just over 20'. The shortest platform track is just under 11' long which will allow me to have 9 & 10 car passenger trains. There is still plenty of room left in the layout space to fit in a coach yard, engine servicing, and some freight operations.

After a couple hundred hours and several dozen unsuccessful CAD designs trying to do Cleveland and Cincinnati, I think I may have just stumbled onto something here in Toledo. Stay tuned.

Wordless Wednesday #11

I think this terminal was designed by a model railroader.

Great Lakes Brewing Turntable Pilsner

I had high hopes that the latest offering from the Great Lakes Brewing Company, named Turntable Pilsner, might be referring to some of Cleveland's railroading heritage. Alas, it is reference to music and not railroading.

Nevertheless, it is quite a tasty beer and is available on tap at Ohio Brewing in Akron.

Wordless Wednesday #10

Could this be the next addition to the workshop??? Chris Ellis, weren't we just talking about this?

Wordless Wednesday #9

Caught these two on the tail end of an eastbound CSX manifest train in downtown Akron OH on Sunday 3/6/2016. LTEX 1207 (Larry's Truck & Electric) is an SW9 converted from an SW7 that was built in 1950 as PRR 9392 and was last working for NUCOR Bar Mill Group in Jewett, TX. AZER 3469 (Arizona Eastern RR) is an SD40-2 that was built in 1980 as UP 3805.

Test Module construction - Part IV

Not much progress on the module lately.

I did manage to complete a pre-test module module though to see how well the Kwik Seal adhesive caulk and the Pliobond works.

I used the Kwik Seal to glue down 3 pieces of CV ties on a small piece of cardboard. The tie strip in the middle is a CV 2002 Branch Line tie strip. The outer 2 pieces are both CV 2003 Mainline tie strips. The CV 2003's have the small bend-over spike bars built in. The CV 2002 Branch Line tie strips do not have that and have to be glued and/or spiked down. The tie strip on the right is glued down to a strip of Topper Tape while the other two are just glued down to the cardboard directly.

The Kwik Seal works wonderfully, both on the plain cardboard and the Topper Tape. It sets quickly yet it remains liquid enough that you can still make adjustments for several minutes after application. It is also quite tacky so that the curved tie strips don't slide around on their own either. Below I have used it on the #7 turnout and the 36" radius curve leading into the #7 turnout (the turnout closest to the camera). You can also use a putty knife to pry up the ties after the Kwik Seal has dried, although I haven't tried this yet on the Topper Tape.

Spiking and CV ties.

Metal spikes work well with CV ties as you can see below. These are Micro Engineering Small Spikes. There are only two actual spikes in the photo below. Can you spot them? I have also attempted to bend over the built-in spikes on the CV ties with mixed results. I need to go pick up a smaller nail set to use for this because the one I have is too big. I ended up using the tip of a small flathead screwdriver for some of these and it didn't work too well.

You cannot use metal spikes on top of the Topper Tape. The Topper Tape is too spongy and you can't get a good firm base for driving the spike into the tie. You also cannot use the bend-over spikes on the CV 2003 ties on top of the topper tape for the same reason.

Pliobond and CV Ties. 

Looking at the very top photo again (and the one above too), all of the rail on the three tie strips is code 70 and is glued down to the ties with Pliobond. The Pliobond works great for gluing down rail, but it is quite messy and not that easy to work with. There will be spots where there is dried Pliobond stuck to rails and ties that you have to go back and scrape off with a hobby knife. I have two kinds of Pliobond, one is the low VOC type and the other is regular type. The regular type is a little easier to work with although the low VOC type I have is several years old and might be past it's shelf life which could be why it was a little gummier than the regular type which I just bought.

Pliobond is a contact cement which means you apply it to both surfaces and let it dry, then apply another thin bead to one of the two surfaces right before you tack the pieces together. You really only have one shot at this but if you don't put any pressure on the rail as you lay it down, you can still make adjustments to it. The Pliobond works great at gluing rail down to the CV ties. The bond is very strong yet flexible enough that it can move around without breaking the bond.

Using Pliobond is somewhat messy and I now know I have to buy some of the plastic micro tips made for dispensing Pliobond on small parts such as rail and ties. I used a regular 22 gauge syringe and it worked ok, but maybe a larger gauge syringe would have worked better. The glue in the syringe started to gum up after a while and it got more difficult to dispense after a few minutes.

Overall impressions of CV ties.

I haven't tried to make a CV turnout yet. That is coming soon. I have mixed thoughts about the CV ties though, just based on this very small experiment. It is definitely more work and more time consuming to use. The Pliobond is also quite volatile and requires good ventilation to use. I found myself getting a headache after breathing the fumes for a couple hours even with fresh air coming in.

Gauge: If I were constructing a layout to Proto:87 standards, I would not use CV ties. According to the NMRA, Proto:87 track gauge should be .649" - .663". The CV ties above with code 70 rail gauge out at around .665-.670. That is, however, still within standard HO gauge of .649" - .672".

Appearance: I like the way CV ties look with the tieplate detail and the slight randomness of the tie pattern. However, the more I read about other people trying to "superdetail" HO scale track, the more I am thinking it is a lot of work for not much visual payoff in the long run since it is harder to notice the small details in HO scale.

Cost: 99' of CV ties including ME unweathered code 83 rail costs around $160 give or take a few bucks. 90' of Micro Engineering code 83 flex track is around $180 give or take a few bucks. Cost therefore is not enough of an offset to make CV ties worth the extra effort. The CV turnouts are quite inexpensive though, with a single turnout kit around $13 or two turnout tie strips alone (without the detail kit) for under $10.

In summary, based on what I've experienced so far in this small experiment, I'm thinking that for the larger layout I will probably try out a combination of Fast Tracks for turnouts and custom trackwork and Micro Engineering flex track for regular straights and curves. I may also try my hand at traditional handlaying with wood ties to see how that works out.