In the Beginning.....

A lonely boxcar still lettered for Penn Central is spotted at the Market Basket warehouse in Geneva.

I suppose thats how all blogs start - sort of cliche, but thats how it goes. I've been lucky enough to be a part of a couple different modular layout groups from across New York, first with NMRA-type modules, and most recently with Free-mo as the standard. While the latter has certainly provided more operational flexibility, prototypical modeling, and dedication amongst participants, there are still limitations. You can't build that awesome kitbashed warehouse thats 5 stories tall. OK, you can, but try transporting it to more than one event without having to re-assemble it. You can't have a yard with relatively tight curves. You have to be careful about placement of switches, heights of the railhead, scenery completion...the list goes on. Don't get me wrong - I love my modules, and I look forward to the one or two shows a year that bring them together with those from other fantastically gifted modelers and all around good friends from across the Northeast.

There's a room on the back of our house, one that appears to have been added on somewhere down the line, but was likely the victim of a budget-minded renovation during the depression. A couple of inches out of level, un-insulated, and in bad need of some TLC, we had used it more or less as a storeroom for toys for the kids. But as they had grown a bit, they liked playing in their rooms more, and my wife didn't like the idea of using it for a scrapbook room. You know, her feet might get cold or something. This gave me a space that was readily available, and I was certainly willing to give it a well-needed facelift. The old carpet came out, and some over-run wood flooring from Pioneer Millworks was installed. A fresh coat of paint, some crown moulding, and a couple of new outlets and it was ready to go. An oil-filled electric space heater provides necessary warmth, and the summer months allow for open windows and a nice south breeze. The only stipulation to these newly acquired trackage rights was the storage of my wife's elliptical machine, which tucks out of the way just fine.

With a blank canvas before me, as well as some 2 x 4's and 3/4" cabinet grade plywood, my good friend Andy and I got to work. We started by ripping 2 x 4's in half and placing them 2 corners of the room, and at 2' intervals in between. These provided the anchor points for the benchwork, rather than screwing into the wall and repeating that with any changes that would inevitably happen. Using plywood for the benchwork is crucial. Not only does it save a bunch of money, but it gives you a far more stable layout. In my environment, where the temperature would be changing frequently, along with humidity swings common in our area, this would make for a layout that would stand the test of time. I used similar techniques to those used when building modules. You're basically building a box, and then placing support joists at 12" intervals in between. The frames were then screwed to the 2 x 2 posts, and then angles brackets carried the load from the front of the layout down to the posts. Where the depth of the shelves were pretty narrow, 12" or so, I didn't use any other supports, just screwing the inside of the framework directly to the walls. The peninsula that came out into the middle of the room was supported on the rear by the wall-mounted benchwork, and on the end by a pair of 2 x 2 legs with angled braces.

Notice......there's been no mention of a trackplan, yet there I was framing up a layout. Huh? Well, at that time, my goal was to pack as much track as I could into this thing, and did I ever. My friend Dave and I talked about the design a lot, and I fixated on a plan that published in Model Railroader quite some time ago. It had switching, a diamond, a yard, everything I wanted. Yeah - did I mention that this room is only 9 x 10 feet? After adhering my 2" foam insulation board, I went to town getting track installed. No roadbed here, as it was going to be looking like a well-worn branchline or spur in the late 1970's.

I proudly declared trackwork complete before the snow flew, about a month after starting, and invited a couple friends over to operate on the layout. Ouch - you had to break your train in two to run around it, curves so tight that 1/2 my rolling stock didn't operate properly let alone locomotives larger than a 44 tonner, and each industry ( I think I crammed 12 of them in there ) barely had room for one car to be spotted. Sound more frustrating than enjoyable? They told me they liked it, but I knew that it needed a lot of work.

Phase two involved re-building 3/4 of the layout to make fewer industries, with longer spurs. However, there were still issues with curves being far too tight, and overall it looked like there was just too much going on. I left the layout alone for a few months, focusing on rolling stock projects, constantly bumping into the peninsula every time I was going in and out of the room. Then one day this past January, my nephew and I were staring at the layout talking about how I wanted to make it work better. Painful as it was, we removed the peninsula and the tiny wing on the West wall, breaking it down to an L-shaped layout with a overall length of a whopping 19 feet. I cleared the layout of track all the way back to the yard, which was the only thing I had been happy with all along. With a wide open room, and a much smaller area to focus on, I began looking at the work of Lance Mindheim, well-known for his modern layout depicting Miami's urban appearance perfectly. Beyond the perfect structures, creative techniques, and superb attention to detail though, there's a certain simplicity to his modeling. An 8' section of layout might only have one industry - and thats really OK!

Pondering the industries I really wanted, the timeframe I wanted to recreate, and developing the story behind the layout, the Seneca Terminal Railroad was born.