On my little Hermitage Road switching layout, I wanted to include a grocery warehouse to generate refrigerator car traffic on the small layout. There were a few grocery warehouses in the Hermitage Yard area that were rail-served through the 1950s so I felt it would be okay to include one on the layout. While studying Sanborn maps, I didn’t find any in the immediate area on the Seaboard, but I found several in the Richmond area on the ACL and C&O lines. This photo, below, provided some inspiration for my model. I understand this one was in Dallas, Texas. When … Continue reading No. 168: Hermitage Road Layout – Modeling the Grocery Warehouse

I had minor arthroscopic knee surgery last Wednesday and took a few days off from work to recover. I was able to make some good progress on the layout during those days. Here’s an update. Traverse Table Here’s what the small, 7 x 18-inch Hermitage Road layout looks like today. At the far end, the dark square box is the entrance to the staging area. In this photo, the traverse table tracks are mocked-up to see what’ll fit. The drawer slides are underneath the table, and extend out behind the table to allow the table to slide across all five … Continue reading No. 167: Completing the Traverse Table, and Milwaukee Road Single-Sheathed Box Car Re-Do

The 16 Days program ended last Monday when my wife and daughters returned from their U.S. trip. In those 16 days I was able to complete major work on several structures for the layout, rebuild and repaint a dozen freight cars, complete construction on one new freight car, and paint the traverse table for the layout. I also sold five models on eBay and in other places, and I also spent a considerable amount of time writing on this blog. I normally try to keep the layout and workbench very clean and organized, but during the 16 Days I allowed … Continue reading No. 163: 16 Days, Pt. 4

Work on the railroad continues as the family is traveling in the U.S. for two weeks. One of the industries I built this week for my Hermitage Road switching layout as a “grocery warehouse”. In the area of Richmond, Virginia, where my layout is set, there were quite a few grocery warehouses, and I wanted to include one on the layout so I could use refrigerator cars. There are no known photographs of the grocery warehouses in the Hermitage Yard area so I was forced to proto-freelance something. On my old Ackley, Iowa layout I built a large cannery as … Continue reading No. 162: 16 Days, Pt. 3

Work continues while the family is away! When I last showed the Richmond Cinder Block Company, it needed windows. The windows I used, seen below, are from Tichy. I painted them with a Tamiya Metal Gray and then added clear styrene sheet windows and fixed them with canopy glue. Once the glue was dry I then sprayed the whole assembly front and back with full strength Dullcote. I painted in a few window panes white to simulate broken glass repair. Next I added the windows to the structure, gluing them in place from behind with Tamiya extra thick liquid solvent. … Continue reading No. 161: 16 Days, Part 2