The concept of the railroad is based on
a coal hauling line running from the coal fields in Pennsylvania,
northeast through New York, into Vermont, north into Canada and
east to the sea ports of Maine. The line also provides for bridge
line traffic. Other products the line hauls has not yet been
developed based on it's route. That will come later as the
details of the concept get worked out. Thus the New York, Vermont
& Northern Rwy.
The New York, Vermont & Northern
Rwy. is based on two railroads that ran in New York. One is the
Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh R.R. This line ran from the
coal fields in western Pa. north through Bradford, Pa. into
Salamanca NY to Ashford Jct. At Ashford Jct. it split. One line
ran to Buffalo, NY, the other to Rochester, NY. The other
railorad is the Lehigh Valley. Which ran from eastern Pa. to
Buffalo, NY.
Orginally I wanted to only model the
B.R. & P. from Salamanca, NY to Rochester, NY. After some
research the idea faded. In the mean time the LV was providing
interesting modeling of it's two branch lines which I live near,
the Hemlock Branch and the Rochester Branch. Both lines ran from
Rochester Jct. which is located north of Honeoye Falls, New York
and about 5 miles from were I live. The Hemlock Branch ran south,
while the Rochester Branch ran north.
After several years of gathering
pictures and printed matter of both lines, I decided to combine
the two railroads into one and call it the New York, Vermont
& Northern Rwy.
Now I had a line that I wanted to model
from Salamanca, NY to Geneva, NY. It would have been quite an
impressive line. I started to put together a schematic of what
the main line would look like. It was overwhelming to say the
least. I wouldn't have enough room to model all that line in the
basement of the house that I didn't even have yet. No way could I
cram all that track in, even with selective compression. The
whole layout would have looked like a bowl of spaghetti.
The picture of what the layout would
look like lay dormant for several years until one day at a
railroad swap meet. A friend and I discovered and bought a full
set of survey maps of the Lehigh Valley's Rochester Branch line.
It had all the info one could have wanted.
With this new info I started working on
a plausible layout based on Lehigh Valley's Rochester Jct., the
Hemlock Branch, the Rochester Branch and the B.R. & P.'s coal
dock in Charlotte, NY. I would model the two branches of the
Lehigh Valley and part of the B.R. & P. This combination
would give me two very busy branch lines.
Rochester Jct. would be modeled in is
entirety. The Hemlock branch would head south from the wye on the
eastbound tracks. The Rochester branch would head north out of
the five track yard on the north side of the station.
The Hemlock branch would include the
towns of Honeyoe Falls, Lima, Livonia Center, Hemlock and Hemlock
Lake. The Rochester branch would include Cedar Swamp flag stop,
Henrietta, NY, Mortimer, which was a junction point, and the end
of the line at the station in Rochester.
The above are the major points of the
line. More detailed descriptions of each town will follow as I
build on the aforementioned concept.
The above concept was written many years ago. Fast forward to 2011 and I'm rethinking the whole layout. In those years all I've done is dreamt about a large layout. This
past year I came to the realization that such a large layout would be impossible to build, finish and run for one person. This summer a friend of mine showed me a layout on the
net that a guy had built. It was just a couple of tracks in a switching district. Check it out at Lance Mindheim.com.
A very interesting concept, less is more. So the decision to build that large layout disappeared. I think I have it down to a manageable size now. I'm also going to build in
conjunction with the NY,V & N Rwy, the Otter Creek Falls Rwy Co., an On30 based logging layout. See the
On30" page for more detailed description.
As far as the New York, Vermont & Northern is concerned I've trimmed it down. At this point all I've got planned so far is a coal mine in HOn3 that delivers coal to a processing
plant. That then gets loaded into standard rail cars and is deliver north. The north focal point will be Rochester Jct. and a very short line north to Lake Ontario to be loaded
into boats for a trip to Canada.
I've given more thought to what I want in the layout. First will be as I said the coal mine, then the coal processing plant. The coal will move north through how I wanted the line
in the first place. Only this time the coal will arrive directly at Rochester Junction (from here on in called "RJ"). Nothing will be modeled in between. From here it will go north
to Charlotte, with through coal trains heading east to to Vermont.
I'd like to model a condensed version of the yard at Mount Hope Avenue. Right now I don't know if I'll model anything in between. From the yard at Mt. Hope Ave I'd like to make it
an electric line to the docks at Charlotte.
This is how it stands today 10/31/2011. Things could change.
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