Another LDE...

Prince, WV

Another landmark location on the C&O is Prince, WV. Its starkly modern station stands in contrast to the remote landscape of the New River gorge. It may seem odd to have a station of such significance in such a locale, but it also served as the connection to the outside world for several sizeable towns up the Piney Creek branch including Beckley.

In modeling the location, I wanted to include the east portal of Stretcher's Neck Tunnel (which provides a convenient way to make the mainlines disappear), the junction with the branch at NI Cabin, and the station as it would have appeared in the 1950s. Little has changed around Prince since then. In the 1970s the mainline west of the Piney Creek branch junction was single-tracked, and now Amtrak's Cardinal stops at the station a few times a week instead of early streamliners in blue and yellow several times a day. Coal is still king here. Below, see my diagram of the track plan.

There is actually an error in my diagram - the crossover closest to the station is actually east (right) of the station.

With my newfound space in the basement, I built a 16 foot by 3 foot segment to represent everything from Stretcher's Neck to the west yard ladder near Quinnimont. The photo below shows the benchwork. The near end is Prince, the far end is where the Quinnimont yard ladder will be.

Below is a view from the west end of this segment. The track in the immediate foreground is the Piney Creek branch, the mainlines curve off to the left and will enter Stretcher's Neck tunnel at the edge of this LDE. A bit further up, you see the junction at NI Cabin between the mainlines and branch (currently represented by a photocopy of a drawing). Just past that on the left side of the mainlines is where Prince station will be.

Moving east just past the station, you can see the end of the second crossover in this construction pic below. The branch becomes the yard lead, then it and the mainlines snake through an S-curve before rounding the bend at the yard ladder as it curves towards Quinnimont. On the fascia you can see the control panel I made for the yard ladder.

Below is the yard ladder. It's wired up, operational, and as you see I've been "playing". :)

Last, a quick diagram of this segment. Red is the Prince station, blue is NI Cabin.

Planning (and building) some LDEs

CW Cabin at Hinton, WV

When I first came to the Atlanta area, I stumbled across an Alkem Scale Models kit for the C&O standard brick cabin and bought it since that's what stood at the west end of Hinton, WV. I figured I'd throw together a diorama / LDE with the crossovers at the west end of the yard. I pored over period photos of the location (fortunately, for modeling the C&O such photos are easy to find thanks to the C&O Historical Society and its publications) and came up with the design seen below.

Left is west, right is east. The track nearest the tower (top, in this image) is the yard lead - yard would be off to the right. The other two are the mainlines.

I started building the benchwork for this segment in early 2010 and soon had some track down as you see below. I was still in a small apartment in Atlanta, so it didn't get much beyond that at the time.

Since moving to Woodstock, I have a modest basement for the layout. Below is the current location of the CW Cabin segment, wired up and ready to be integrated into the layout once I reach the point of tying it into the rest.

Introduction

I'm modeling portions of the C&O Hinton Division in N scale, starting with the mainline between Hinton, WV and Prince, WV. The era is the 1950s - steam was still present but fading fast with first generation diesels having a firm grip on Chessie's road.

This blog will document the progress of construction and eventually operating sessions.

It all started nearly 17 years ago on a trip to Hinton, WV to visit some relatives. I was intrigued by the area and the fact that my great-grandfather was a carpenter for the C&O there at Hinton. Being a budding model railroader new to N-scale, I decided to model this line. I drew up a track plan for a very small layout and bought an Arnold S2 painted for the C&O. The layout was just a switching toy and didn't last. Eventually I built a larger switching layout. Neither of these two were very prototypical. After participating in operating sessions at several large layouts, I had a good idea of what I wanted to do - and it was going to need some space.

A while back I knocked together a 6' long Layout Design Element based on the crossovers at CW Cabin (west end of Hinton yard) as a taste of what was to come. Finally just a year ago I moved to a rented townhouse that had a modest but very useable basement and some real construction began. Since this is still not a permanent location, I've been building in segments around the concept of Layout Design Elements. While not truly modular, these segments are designed to be disassembled readily and re-assembled elsewhere with relative ease (as opposed to destroying and rebuilding an entire layout).

Recent work has been in the construction of the segment including Prince, WV and the mainline up to the west yard ladder at Quinnimont. Next up will be Quinnimont itself and the east yard, followed by some shopping for a larger basement so I can fill in between there and Hinton before doing further work on the branch lines.