Model-train socializing

Rochester-Junction as modeled. (Photo by BobbaLew.)


Rochester-Junction for real. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

The other day (Saturday, March 8th, 2014) I attended an open-house of the Rochester Model-Railroad Club.
Even though I think model-railroading is silly — I prefer real trains. I attend because it’s a chance to fellowship with a retired RTS bus-driver who’s a model-train buff.
I enjoy his company; he always prompts a few laughs.
I also attend because people tell me I need people in my bereavement. Well, yes; but they are not my wife, who died almost two years ago.
The Rochester Model-Railroad Club has a giant layout in the basement of a church. It more-or-less models the Lehigh Valley Railroad of the ‘50s.
It has all the flaws of model-railroads: mainly too much track in not enough space.
Curvature on a model-railroad is way tighter than reality. You’d need an entire basement to accurately model just a tiny segment of a real railroad.
The joy in model-railroading is operating trains. Although a model-railroad train is much shorter than a real train. A real train might be 100-or-more cars. A model-railroad train might max out at 30 cars. Often they’re only 10 cars or less.
A model-railroad my neighbor-and-I built about 1959 would stall a five-car train — in which case a big hand drops from the sky and helps the train up the hill. That hill was too steep and on a tight curve. Real railroads have to compensate (reduce) the grade on a curve.
Another problem is how model-trains operate. Real trains are often slow compared to model-trains. Getting a real train moving, or stopped, is an extremely slow process. A model-train is up-to-speed in seconds, and stops so quickly it would throw passengers out of their seats.
The other hairball is what powers the trains. With model-railroading the track is energized; real trains generate their own power on-board.
It used to be, and in many cases still is, that power-delivery through the track-rails was varied, which varied train-speed.
In other words, no electricity through the rails equals a stopped train.
Now miniature computers are in the model locomotive. Track power is constant, and use by the model locomotive is varied by computer direction.
But energizing the track is not real. Plus it causes problems where a negative rail abuts a positive rail, which often happens.
If a model-train crosses such a polarity reversal, all-of-a-sudden it reverses.
More real to me would be unenergized track with battery power for the model-trains, and radio-control to vary train-speed.
A LITTLE HISTORY:
Lehigh Valley Railroad was founded mainly to move northeast Pennsylvania coal from Lehigh valley (where it was mined) to the New York City area.
The northeast Pennsylvania coal is “anthracite,” which burns cleaner, although it doesn’t have the heat-content of “soft coal.” Anthracite is rockier = harder.
As the market for anthracite began to dwindle, Lehigh Valley built an extension to Buffalo in 1892. Lehigh Valley had already begun using Erie from Buffalo as a feeder-connection at Waverly, just north of Sayre, PA. But it wanted its own railroad.
The idea was to grab bridge-traffic from Nickel Plate and thereby avoid New York Central toward New York City.
The Buffalo Extension was Geneva to Buffalo; Lehigh Valley had already built to Geneva.
At least two railroads built Buffalo Extensions. One was Lehigh Valley, the other was Delaware, Lackawanna & Western.
Lehigh Valley’s Buffalo Extension was very well engineered. It crossed difficult terrain, yet could boom-and-zoom.
People venerate Lehigh Valley, now gone. Even the Buffalo Extension is gone.
The Buffalo Extension was probably the best-engineered railroad across western NY. It also would work well as a current railroad, since it avoided cities.
So that this club would model it isn’t surprising.
Their model has the confined-space flaw. Packing 150+ miles of railroad into a basement is impossible.
It has to snake back-and-forth like spaghetti. Lehigh Valley’s Buffalo Extension was straight and fast.
The layout models some of the towns the Lehigh Valley went through.
But it can’t be too realistic.
The model-railroad has to horseshoe-curve 180 degrees to get to the next town.
And some towns are missing. I miss the long grade from Geneva toward Ithaca beside Cayuga Lake. I think Lehigh Valley had two alignments up this hill, the newer easier than the older.
Ithaca isn’t even in the layout. Ithaca is the location of Cornell University, which Lehigh Valley’s color was: Cornell-Red.

A Finger Lakes Railway U-boat in Lehigh Valley’s Cornell-Red. (The train is a railfan excursion into Victor on a short portion of the original Lehigh Valley Buffalo-Extension alignment. Finger Lakes now operates the segment to get freight to Victor Insulators via a connector to the old NYC “Auburn” line.) (Photo by Bobbalew.)

The layout starts at Buffalo, then horseshoe-curves into Caledonia (“Kal-uh-DOHN-yuh;” as in “California” and “own”). I think a junction with Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh, south out of Rochester, was in Caledonia. By the ‘50s, BR&P was Baltimore & Ohio; now it’s Rochester Southern, part of the giant Genesee & Wyoming shortline rail conglomerate.
The model then goes to Rochester-Junction, where Lehigh Valley had a branch north to Rochester.
That line is of course gone, although a small part of it still exists to serve a lumber-yard.
Livonia, Avon & Lakeville Railroad, a shortline, built a connector from its ex-Erie line toward Rochester to service that lumber-yard. (Lehigh Valley and Erie ran parallel into Rochester.)
Another branch came off Rochester-Junction, a Lehigh Valley line south to Honeoye Falls (“HONE-eee-oye;” like in “oil”), Lima (“LYE-muh;” not “LEE-muh”), and Hemlock Lake.
That line is also gone.
Rochester-Junction, what I pictured, is of interest to me.
Since it’s the Rochester Model-Railroad Club is probably why it was modeled.
Rochester-Junction had a grand wooden depot. I visited it numerous times.
By the time I visited, the ‘70s, it was derelict and abandoned.
I remember vandals trying to torch it. It burned down in 1979.
The club had exquisitely modeled it, although I noticed it had the passenger canopies on the east end instead of west, as in my “real” picture.
So maybe during the ‘50s the passenger-canopies were on the east end. —Although I can’t see Lehigh Valley investing in such an “improvement.”
Then I noticed the giant Lehigh Valley truss over Honeoye Creek. It was very well modeled, but only 200 scale feet from the building. In the real world, it’s 1,500 feet west. In other words, if that creek truss was where it is on the layout, my train would be threading it.
The layout continues east through Victor, a small town north of where I live.
The real Victor has a lot of trackside buildings. A few are modeled, and the modeled Victor is on one of those horseshoe curves.
That Cornell-red Finger Lakes U-boat is on Lehigh Valley’s Buffalo-Extension alignment in Victor.
Finger Lakes now owns and operates it. What used to be a 60-mph railroad is now good for about 10 mph.
And through Victor is not a curve. It’s straight-ish, boom-and-zoom!
The layout then does Geneva, which is somewhat modeled. It ain’t the Geneva I know, and most of Lehigh Valley’s alignment through Geneva is gone.
The layout also models Lehigh gorge, and this is extraordinarily well done. A large section is all trees in fall colors; they really did a good job on this section.
Although it’s loaded with track. I wonder if so much track was in Lehigh gorge? It also has tunnels; I wonder if Lehigh gorge had tunnels?
The model also has a long trestle, a model of an actual trestle on another railroad, New York, Ontario & Western’s Lyon Brook Trestle. But it’s much like Lehigh Valley’s trestle at Brooktondale, PA. (All the coal-hauling railroads in that area used trestles of similar design — NYO&W was also a coal-hauler, although it tanked in 1957.)
The layout passes giant Bethlehem Steel-Works, and that too is modeled.
It’s nice, but too pretty. That steel-works is spotless. In the real world, it would be weathered and dirty, belching fire, smoke, and filth.
Finally the layout ends in Jersey City, although it missed a few towns. In Jersey City it crossed a river through a long truss.
The river is plastic; it’s not actual water, which I’ve seen but never works. Tugboats are on the river. They may have been Lehigh Valley tugboats — I didn’t notice. I’m sure the railroad owned tugboats.
To get to New York City, Lehigh Valley’s freight had to be ferried. Lehigh Valley never crossed the Hudson.
A bunch of railroads, including Lehigh Valley, were going to bridge it, but never did.
Only Pennsylvania Railroad crossed the Hudson; they tunneled it, and that was just passenger-trains.
Lehigh Valley wasn’t mighty Pennsy, although its passenger-trains used Pennsy into New York City.
The layout is worth seeing, if that’s what turns you on.
But only five people at a time.
Crowd 50 in there, and it’s unbearable.
The aisles between segments are 3-4 feet wide. You’re cheek-to-jowl with everyone.
We could only stand about a half-hour.
Lehigh gorge is extraordinarily beautiful, but not when farting halitosis GrandPap is blessing you with stinkbombs, and breathing in your face.
Our visit was worth it, but “never again” said my retired bus-driver friend.
We then drove out to Despatch-Junction, a model-train shop east of Rochester.
It’s in the old “Despatch” railroad-station, hard by the CSX main, what used to be the New York Central main through what used to be called “Despatch,” but is now East Rochester.
My friend a had a $70 Despatch-Junction gift-certificate, given to him for his 70th birthday.
Despatch-Junction is awash with model-railroad paraphernalia, which I glanced at, but I was attracted to windows that looked out on the CSX main.
Hours passed, with people in the shop loudly arguing powerpak performance. A know-it-all store employee detailed how a Lionel transformer would light up the entire city of Rochester.
Finally, after hours of silence, I detected the rumble of an approaching train.
Model-trains are intriguing, but I prefer the real thing.
The train was westbound, and soon an eastbound passed.
“Where are the boxcars? Where’s the caboose?” cried the father of my friend’s friend.
The train was doublestacked truck containers. Some of it was trailer-on-flatcar.
And cabooses went out long ago. They were replaced by a small radio-device that monitors brakeline air-pressure, to inform the train-crew up front if it drops.
It’s what the guys in the caboose did, and look for flaws in their train. Now those flaws are detected by trackside defect-detectors that radio a report on the railroad’s operating-frequency.
Our final stop was a sports-bar for lunch. It’s in the shadow of the giant railroad-bridge where West Shore crossed Fairport Road.
West Shore was the line meant to compete with New York Central, but it was incorporated into New York Central.
A lot of it was abandoned, but this segment still exists, used as the Rochester Bypass.
The old West Shore line down the west shore of the Hudson River also still exists. It’s used as the CSX main toward New York City, although it doesn’t cross the Hudson.
The massive bridge is double-track, and was probably built by New York Central.
The line is now single track, although heavily used.

• For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS) in Rochester, NY, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and environs. My stroke October 26th, 1993 ended that. I retired on medical-disability. I recovered fairly well.
• My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17th, 2012. I miss her dearly.
• The “West Shore” was a line financed by the Pennsylvania Railroad to compete directly with the New York Central Railroad in New York state in the late 1800s. It was merged with NYC at the behest of J.P. Morgan, who got all the warring parties together on his yacht in Long Island Sound. The NYC got the West Shore for no longer financing the proposed South Pennsylvania Railroad (which was graded but never built, including tunnels, which were later incorporated into the Pennsylvania Turnpike).