jeff train: Derby & Ball

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laugardagur, 18. júlí 2015

Op session preps and Waterbury Progress

Low angle aerial view of Waterbury. Filled in the gaps between the old scenery and new fascia, adding about 4"-8" to the foreground of scene. Time to call in the ballast crew and the static grass landscapers.

Derby & Ball - ready for some final texturing and details.

What's with this guy? Obviously my son Matthew's work�.

Doing something I've never tried before - two op sessions in the same month. The smart thing to do would have been to leave the layout as-is from the last session. I find it difficult and somewhat time-consuming to make the shift between "construction mode" and "operating mode." Maybe as more of the layout gets "finished" this will become less time consuming. That's my hope.
Of course, in the two weeks between I redid some the fascia in Waterbury - which left a gaping hole between the old scenery and the "new" fascia.
I filled that in with foam and got a coat of earth-colored paint on it with some basic texturing in the form of sifted dirt.
I was going to repaint the fascia (it now needs it - badly!) before today's session but cooler heads prevailed when I had images of my operating crew members sporting spots of green paint!
Next on the agenda is finishing the country store for Williams Creek, getting Mrs. Griffith a house to go with the barn, and then a LOT of static grass work between the end of the peninsula and Randolph.

Possible location for the Griffith Farm house?

But right now I have to make sure the throttles have fresh batteries�. and find the directions for the fast clock�.
Remind me WHY exactly I'm doing this?

fimmtudagur, 26. mars 2015

Progress Report

They say there's nothing like an open house or a visit from some fellow modelers to really kick things into gear. I hadn't really been all that motivated to do a lot of modeling in January and February. I'd say it was more "puttering" than progress. But when I learned that two of my good friends and great New England modelers were going to venture forth from their winter hideaways to visit several layouts in the DC area, including mine, I figured it was time to get my you-know-what in gear again!
The blog has also suffered from a lack of progress posts except for a couple of "wordless Wednesdays." What do you want from me - to make progress and then have time to actually blog about it????

So what has been going on:
1. These visitor preps always seem to start with cleaning up - the layout had gotten littered with "stuff" again. Actually just getting the surface of the railroad cleared off can be a huge motivator.
2. I engaged the services of Rich Cobb to build a couple more White River Junction structures to go along with the station he completed for me a couple of years ago. This meant getting Rich photos, footprints and other bits and pieces.
3. Bernie came out here and we "swung for the fence" with an attempt to fix the issues with the "black hole of White River. You can see what our plan was here. The result, still very much under construction, can be seen below:

Rich came through in record time with the White River Junction ball signal (Rich delivered the models painted but unweathered - the final finishing is on me):

Yes, I consider myself blessed to have great friends and talented modelers who are willing to help me out with this project, but ultimately it's my railroad � which means I should probably do something�.

I did get the WRJ station platforms completed - by far the largest paved area I've ever in one sitting. I think I'll save the specifics on that for it's own blog post, but you can see the platforms behind the E7 in the photo above.

There was the unfinished river scene north of White River Junction that needed a little something. Last weekend was spent patching the sub terrain, adding the "dirt" texture layer and painting the backdrop. I'm still getting my sea legs under me with the painting, but I do enjoy it! A couple of evenings to prep a couple of boxes of Super trees, and another evening spent flocking and "planting" them. A quick coat of fresh black paint will double as the water surface for the time being. Yes, the bank still needs vegetation, and track needs some ballasting. Overall, I think this will be a nice photo spot on the railroad - I know I'd certainly wait for a train here, and would be sure to frame the picture with that "electric maple" on the right:

A few weeks ago I did a post about the Derby & Ball building in Waterbury. Just to show I actually do things other than redo track and make trees, here's the progress shot of the Derby & Ball building (obviously still under construction!) I couldn't determine how the prototype was painted in my era, but I kind of liked the colors it's painted now, so I went with those. Very New England color palette.

One last thing - just tonight (so Jim and Randy just missed it) I got the Twin State Fruit Company building for WRJ from Rich. So out with this stylish mockup -

And the "official" structure awaits signage, weathering, and details:

Sorry for such a long post - I'll try to keep future posts shorter and more frequent!

But there's been a lot going on (some things I'm keeping close to the vest for the time being!) and wanted to catch you up!

fimmtudagur, 26. febrúar 2015

Derby & Ball Co. - 3

Quick update.
I've been making some progress on the Derby & Ball Co. complex - as you can see, the basic walls of the "main" building are assembled and have been primed. The building is resting on the "plans" for the woodworking shop portion of the complex.

þriðjudagur, 17. febrúar 2015

Derby & Ball Co. - 2

Logo from a 1934-vintage Derby & Ball scythe handle.

I haven't been able to turn up a lot of detail on the Derby & Ball Co., but have found a few interesting facts that I'm including here in the hope that more information may reveal itself.
Derby and Ball is an example of a manufacturing company that changed with the times and adapted to new markets when their original product was no longer in demand. The company was founded by Albert Derby, one of the principals in a company called Frost, Derby & Co. The company started manufacturing scythe snaths in 1857. In 1882, Franklin P. Ball, who had been engaged in the manufacture of scythe snaths in Springfield, Vt. since 1852, joined the firm which was renamed Derby & Ball. The company had two locations - one was in Bellows Falls, the other in Waterbury. The Waterbury facility specialized in manufacturing the wooden (primarily willow) handles for the various scytes.

Catalog page showing the various styles of scythe handles offered by Derby, Ball & Edwards Corp.

In 1920, the Edwards & Edwards Co. merged with Derby & Ball forming Derby, Ball & Edwards Corp. In 1933 the company was reorganized as Derby & Ball, Inc. In 1933 they started manufacturing baseball bats in addition to scythes.

The company would last into the early 1960s but not as a manufacturer of scythes or even baseball bats. (The bats were only made for a few years before that business was sold to the makers of Louisville Slugger.) Recreational skiing started becoming popular in the years before WWII, and purely by accident the company started to make skis in 1934. A December 1950 newsletter of the Mt. Mansfield Ski Club explains the story behind how the company got involved in the ski business and explained how the skis were made.

mánudagur, 9. febrúar 2015

Derby & Ball

Derby and Ball wood shop is visible to the left side of this Phil Hastings photo. The smoke is obscuring everything but the smokestack on the remainder of the complex.

Bernie is coming out here in a few weeks and we'll either resolve the White River Junction issues or break out the saws-all and fix it the fun (albeit messy) way.
In the meantime I decided to focus my attention on a few more of the Waterbury structures.
First up on the docket is the Derby and Ball Co. building complex.
This includes a long two story structure and a one-story building that was likely used as a wood shop.

You can see the basic outline of the main building in this mockup, which is nothing more than a piece of newsprint cut to fit the layout with rough sketches of the window and door locations.

The footprints of the Derby and Ball buildings to the left of the mainline.

I'd already done some mockups of the structure - my models will be fairly large as model railroad structures go but won't be scale size - I simply don't the have length. But I should be able to capture the spirit of the complex.
The smoke from the locomotive in the Phil Hasting's photo is obscuring the two-story buildings - here's how they look today - like many of the older trackside buildings in Vermont they've been renovated and altered slightly over the years, but the basic "bones" are still there - I have to thank George Dutka for these shots which he was kind enough to lend me (and they're published here with his permission):

George Dutka photo shows the Derby and Ball main building. The white "garage" in the background is the old woodworking shop.

Sanborn Insurance Map closeup of the Derby & Ball complex.

Another photo from George. This shot of the shorter building in the two-story complex reveals the gable roof was different at one point. I plan to build my model following the lower gable trim since I think the resulting model will be a little more interesting.

George even found an "earlier era" picture of the complex - I'll be using this shot to backdate my model in some places - there's room for artistic interpretation even in prototype modeling!

At this point the model isn't much to look at since I've been laying out the doors and windows on the sub wall - more updates to follow.
(I have to add after building the last three or four structures from wood it's really, really nice to be working with styrene on this one!)