Virginia Blue Ridge & Southern

I've been working on the Railroad

2011-03-12T13:41:00.000-08:00

It's been a week since our first op session of 2011 and I've been working to fix some things that needed fixing. First many of you said you were directionally challenged on the VBR&S, so there are now North-South indicators all around the layout (and some East-West ones in a few locations that require those).
I've got to admit that even I've had trouble with directions on the layout and I know the area well and built the layout. Of course I am dyslexic, but this will help I think.

The other thing I've worked on this week is adjusting the Walthers streamline passenger car's diaphragms. After testing I found that while they are springy, they are not springy enough for some spots on the layout, so I fixed them. I'll be running all of the passenger trains around the entire layout before the next session to make sure I've got'em right.

I'm also continuing to re-enter all of the freight car data into the CarCards program so that I can eventually print new car cards and waybills and do switch lists on the computer.
Til next report,
Bill

The Lower Basin Revisited

2011-02-20T11:38:00.000-08:00

At first glance these pictures probably look just like those from last month, but there have been improvements.
The over all area is pictured here. Whats new is a second row of structure flats behind the main buildings but in front of the city backdrop. Also since Commerce Street is several stories above Jefferson Street there's vegetation in areas where the ground would be visible.

Starting on the south end of Jefferson Street we see Craddock Terry Shoe Corp. and the Schewel Furniture Warehouse, the only plastic kits in the Lower Basin scene.

Moving west Strother Drugs appears to the right of Schewel Warehouse.

A bit more west and Barker Jennings is on the right.

Finally N.B.Handy is to the right of Barker Jennings. I like the effect that three layers gives as you move along the street, different areas of the back drop and second row of flats become visible. I think I learned that watching a Disney episode on the making of cartoons as a kid.

Anyway, it's not finished, but it's getting there.

A Snow Day

2011-01-11T13:11:00.000-08:00

We had a snow day Tuesday Jan 11th (without the snow it turned out) but I finally got to do a time consuming project on the layout, the back drop for Lynchburg over the Lower Basin Scene.
This is a panoramic view of the entire thing. You can click on it to enlarge it. The backdrop is from three different poster prints I took of the city last spring. A few modern buildings show, but they will be covered when I do the next phase. There will be an intermediate row of buildings behind the Jefferson Street buildings and in front of the city skyline. These, like the buildings will be made from Kingmills's Commerce Street "Radical Flats", which are slightly smaller than HO scale to add depth. Even without them, and taking pictures from strategic points the backdrop makes a big impact on the scene.

The tall building on the backdrop is the Allied Arts building, built back in the 1930's. At 16 stories it was the tallest building in Lynchburg in 1956. I left out the Bank of the James building, built in the 70's which is now the tallest in Lynchburg.

A lot of church steeples show on the Lynchburg skyline, and they are pretty tall themselves. Plus downtown Lynchburg is built up a steep hill.

Looking a bit further east at Piedmont Mills. Those of you familiar with Lynchburg know that the Expressway Bridge (now Business 29)is just beyond here. It wasn't built until 1960 though so it will not show in the scene either.

Another look at the west end of Jefferson Street. I'll have to build up the street just to the right of the N.B. Handy building and place a RR tunnel in the middle of it.

VBR&S Photo Backdrop Installation has begun

2010-05-19T16:47:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple of really quick non professional type photos of the first area on the VBR&S to receive photo backdrops.
This is the north end of Monroe Yard. There will eventually be a tree line from track level in front of the photo backdrop, but even this looks better than the blue sky by itself.

From the Monroe Depot looking northwest. The highest mountain visible is High Peak which is actually visible from the real Monroe Yard site.

Photo ops at Ops session

2010-04-19T09:31:00.001-07:00

While my operators were running the VBR&S April 18th, I found some interesting photo ops. Here are the shots.
A Trailways bus has pulled up to Kemper Street Station in Lynchburg with a group for the train.

At Monroe Yard an SW is working hard shoving freight cars.

In Piney River, VA we find ole #7 tied onto #2...the lone VBR caboose.

At Main Street Station in Charlottesville a Greyhound bus has a group for the train. It must be a nice spring day to take a tain ride.

Over at the C&O yard in Charlottesville, we catch up to a Geep and a C&O cab.

Railfanning Monroe in 1956

2010-03-14T14:23:00.000-07:00

We arrive around noon at Monroe, VA's depot.
The yard is full of cars, and we get permission to take photos.

If the yardmaster knew we were up on the roof of the LCL freight house he'd probably.....not care. After all this was not a time that the railroad worried about being sued by railfans for being careless. We get a good shot of two freights chortling away near the depot. The southbound on the far track has just arrived from Charlottesville, and the nearer one is ready to head north.

From the north side of the depot another look at the northbound,

and a look south along the mainline.

Here's closeup of the lead RS3.

With an op session coming up, I thought this would be a good way to get everyone ready. The trains are where we left them last time, and our intrepid railfans have taken their pictures. Now lets move some trains!

Since the signals are finished, and I have to wait for spring to begin taking the pictures for the photo back drop, I've spent the last month or so giving Monroe Yard some rock treatment. I'm sure with spring coming some weeds are sure to start growing there too.

Charlottesville passengers now have a depot.

2009-11-15T07:03:00.000-08:00

Over the past few weeks I've been "adding to" the flat from a previous layout that has served as Main Street Station in Charlottesville.
It's on the layout now, and I was pretty pleased with the results. I'll probably adjust it's actual location a bit more as the area between the Southern & C&O tracks on the layout isn't exactly like the real thing. I had to shorten the depth of the main building some because of space considerations, but all and all I think it looks good there. If I had been building it from scratch I probably wouldn't have detailed the Southern side since it's not really visible, but since I had already built that part, adding onto it means there's detail on that side too.

Ya gotta hate it when the roof walks end!

2009-10-06T07:49:00.000-07:00

At the October 4th VBR&S Operating Session, the Monroe Yard crew employed this guy to handle the close up work. He even walked the roof walks on a moving train until interrupted by a lack of more roof walks. See more shots from the session by pressing "Operating Sessions" on the right.

A quick tour of some nice spots

2009-09-07T07:35:00.000-07:00

With all the signal work lately, it was nice to look around the layout as I cleaned track for the next op session. Here are a few shots of buildings waiting for scenery around them.
I built the Amherst Depot a few years ago. This one is in my home town and still exists, although it was moved from track side a couple of years ago. The real thing is awaiting money to be made into a welcome center for the town of Amherst. The backdrop here is about the only area I've painted and I'm not sure I'm happy with it. I may experiment with actual photo backdrops.Kemper Street Station in Lynchburg is probably the most complicated scratch built structure I've ever built, but it came out okay and resides at the south end of the layout in Lynchburg.

This is a Walthers kit doubled in size to represent Quality Foods an actual industry near Monroe. It is not meant to replicate the real Quality Foods which is a rambling single story affair.

Lynchburg's Lower basin is home to a lot of industries on the VBR&S as it was on the real Southern in 1956. Most of the buildings here are from Radical Flats and are of the actual buildings that still exist in the lower basin. Here we're looking at NB Handy on the right with two other actual lower basin structures visible beyond.

At the other end of the Lower Basin along Lynchburg's Jefferson Street we find Piedmont Mills. This is a temporary version from the guys at Radical Flats as they are still working on the roof details on this building.

What all the fuss has been about.

2009-08-24T09:51:00.000-07:00

Any of you who have seen me in the past two months have probably been subjected to a long dissertation on the somewhat involved installation of signals on the two ends of the visible layout. I finally finished it late last week. Oh there are still some labels to add to the dispatchers board, but it all works and the electronics is done. Here are some pictures and explanations.
The Dispatcher's desk now has a small CTC type board to control the two ends of the layout, Montview and Rio. While the layout is double tracked completely (as was the prototype in 1956) the hidden reverse loops at either end are such that only one train may move into or out of them at a time...it's an electronics thing and it's not a problem, but every session someone forgets and it causes a short which shuts things down momentarily. Now the dispatcher can control a signal for every movement into and out of the reverse loops. There can be a green signal in only one direction.

This is the Lynchburg end of the board (south end of the layout), and the signal is for Montview. In's it's middle position so there is a red signal for both northbound and southbound traffic . You might have to click on the picture to make it large enough to see the green detector lights in the schematic. These enable the dispatcher to "see" a train moving past the signal, so he can again make it red. These are strictly controlled by the dispatcher, and not any automation.

This is the Charlottesville (north end), the signal representing Rio, and it is flipped to allow southbound traffic to proceed, northbound will have a red signal.

That means the southbound traffic can come out of hidden holding, and the signal for that is on the hidden loop routing board in the access door as you see here.

On the Montview board the northbound signal is red.

As is the southbound signal at Kemper Street Station for entering the Montview reverse loop.

Looking northbound at Charlottesville is the red signal that not only protects the C&O crossing but also the entrance into the reverse loop beyond Main Street Overpass. Try to ignore the scenic model railroad parts that represent the city of Charlottesville at the moment.

Lets face it, adding signals is a lot of wiring and doing so after the fascia is in takes a lot of crawling around up under things. Getting the Montview signal and detector wiring over to the dispatcher's location on the Rio side meant crawling into the attic and pulling cables. Then it all had to be hooked up correctly..whew!

More Signals!

2009-05-30T10:54:00.000-07:00

I've been crawling around up under the layout again. The reason I say UP UNDER is the fascia is in my way, so I have to go under, and then try to fit in between the bench work to install a lot of this. That's why my progress is so slow. Never the less, I have now installed signals on either side of Monroe. They look just like the others already pictured, so no point in showing that, but these have an addition. You see our Yard Master finds the need to stretch his switching jobs outside of yard limits on occasion, so he wanted to be able to hold trains away from Monroe a bit. I've named the signals after the real thing, Winesap on the south end, and McIvor on the north, but their locations are off because it's a model railroad and there just wasn't room to do it realistically. Winsap is just north of the James River trestle, McIvor is just south of Amherst on the VBR&S.

Our Yard Master gets a small CTC like panel where green indicates the normal condition of the ABS, but if he needs to hold an expected train, as he is the southbound train at McIvor in this picture, he can override the normal green aspect. Now, before you signal purists call me on it, I'm aware that a single head red aspect can be passed as long as the engineer can stop his train in half the distance he can see, but on the VBR&S, because of the shorter distances involved, we will consider it a stop signal. Okay?

This shot shows you where the Yard Master's panel is located on the fascia at Monroe. I was rather pleased with the way this turned out, although I used or pulled muscles I didn't know I had getting into the awkward positions necessary to install the wiring under Monroe Yard. As soon as I recover, I have another signal module and a set of signals ready to be installed somewhere else.

The first signal is up and working on the VBR&S!

2008-12-01T11:03:00.000-08:00

This is the southbound main signal at Tye River. It's companion is just out of sight on the left and controls the northbound track. I'll have more details on the signals and the system I'm using to control them. Stay Tuned!

Progress in the Lower Basin

2008-11-23T07:35:00.000-08:00

I've actually been working on the railroad! In Lynchburg's Lower Basin I've added three buildings from Chris Wiley's Photo Buildings series which are actually in the Lower Basin.

This one is near the Strouther Drug spot on the layout and because it's actually still there and was next to the Strouther building which isn't there anymore, will take it's place on the VBR&S

N.B. Handy is still around, and so it is now in place in it's proper location.

In addition to adding these buildings, more will be forthcoming...Chris is working on them now. I've also begun work on adding signals to the VBR&S. The first installation location will be Tye River. The module is here, and I'm building the signals for it. Stay tuned for progress reports. The Southern used ABS on my portion of the railroad in 1956, so that's the system I'll be using. They won't replace the Timetable & Train Order system we have now, but simply add to it.

Operators views of the VBR&S

2008-03-28T14:20:00.000-07:00

The Rockfish area is the first thing you see when entering the layout building. Above "Rockfish" is a fast clock monitor and a real time Southern Railway clock. Below the Rockfish depot you can see part of American Cyanamid on the "Piney River" lower level.

This is the Monroe Yard area. Normally three operators take care of yard operations during an operating session.

This is Covesville to Red Hill on the main level, and more of Piney River on the lower level.

2008-01-04T15:42:00.000-08:00

The Virginia Blue Ridge & Southern is an HO scale model railroad located in a 24 X 36 building which was built expressly for it. The layout may be operated realistically by from 8 to 12 people.

This is my model of Kemper Street Station in Lynchburg. From the aisle you see the street side of the station, and in this picture we are looking from almost the exact opposite direction as the actual picture of Kemper Street Station below.

Main Street Station

2007-12-30T17:51:00.000-08:00

Charlottesville, VA in the 1950's.
This is the northern end of the VBR&S

Kemper Street Station

2007-12-30T17:30:00.000-08:00

Lynchburg, VA in the 1950's
This is the southern end of the VBR&S

2007-12-30T09:30:00.001-08:00

New Southern Railway Cabooses arrive in Monroe, Virginia.