jeff train

These two sheds make up most of the Shepley Coal complex at Waterbury.

View from the opposite end. Still need to stain the end wall!

You can see the two coal sheds to the right (in front of 2-8-0 452) in this George Corey picture of Waterbury. The next industry I plan to work on in Waterbury is the Cooley-Wright foundry, visible in the distance to the left.

 We have family visiting for the Thanksgiving holiday week, so I simply can't spend a great deal of time in the basement. Since I tend to wake up early (thanks to two dogs who don't seem to get the concept of "sleeping in on the weekend") I have some time in the morning to get a little modeling done before the rest of the family rolls out of bed. 
Since I need to be quiet for these morning work sessions I've chosen to finish up the coal dealer and freight house in Waterbury. 
Photos show the current state of the Shepley Coal Company sheds. Though not as interesting as silo or elevated ramp style sheds, these lean-to sheds were perhaps the most common in New England in the 1940s and 50s. 
Mine is made from Scribed basswood sheets with 6 x 6 posts glued along the side. The bracing crossmembers are 2 x 8s. Everything is stained with a combination of Hunterline Blue Gray, Creosote, and Light Brown stains. The roof is black .040" styrene - I'll add tissue to the roof to represent tarpaper. 
Also, the rear walls of the two sheds face the backdrop, so these are also plain styrene. No reason to expend effort on something no one will ever be able to see. 
You'll notice there is some pink foam crumbs visible where I carved away some scenery to make room for the sheds. I didn't vacuum it up before taking the pictures - need to be quiet, remember?
Finally - about the name - Shepley was the name of the company as seen on prototype Sanborn Maps. I didn't have room to model the sheds full size - but my sheds are plenty long. I have a small shack that will serve as a scale house that will be installed when I add the scenery texture to this scene. I'm not sure I'm going to call the industry Shepley. I might name it after a friend. 

This table shows a list of the trackside industries in Randolph from around the time frame of the layout. I say "around" the time frame since this information is taken from a CV List of Industries - dated December 1945 (Original provided by the late Jim McFarlane).
Of note to my crew members familiar with the layout is the addition of another Demeritt Co. Cannery (there's already one in Waterbury - I wonder how many misrouted cars will result from having two industries with the same name!) and the fact that there were two operating creameries in town at the time. Not unheard of, certainly but much of the model railroad literature published on milk train operations has usually emphasized two things - (1) creameries were on double-ended sidings and (2)there was only one creamery in any given town active at any given time. (Obviously, these were not always the case).

A "mockup" of the Green Mountain Paper Co. complex in Everett shows things are slowly coming together.

 I once again find myself with several �almost finished� projects in the works. A natural offshoot of trying to get as much done as possible before the September 15 op session. Then the layout will be open for tours and operating session during the MER Convention in October. Actually work on the layout will cease on September 7 as I go into full fall cleanup and op session prep mode. Between September 7 and the open house dates in mid-October I�ll limit my modeling efforts to things like rolling stock and locomotive decoder installs. In other words, tasks that won�t trash the entire railroad!

City Classics Warehouse walls combined to form the "new" warehouse at Green Mountain Paper

 
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This overview shows Everett in its mocked-up glory. The Green Mountain paper complex dominates the town, as it should. Although Curren Mills, on the right, is also a large customer.

With the "open country" scenery well in hand (I installed the barn in the peninsula scene last week) I've been spending some time thinking through what the Everett scene should ultimately look like.

As a reminder, "Everett" is a fictional place - but it serves as important purpose on the model railroad providing a place for one or two large "destination" industries. In other words, industries that require a dedicated turn to switch them out each shift.
But what should this imaginary place called "Everett" LOOK like? For those who know the prototype, imagine it to be something like Bellows Falls, St Johnsbury, or Bennington moved north of White River Junction along the CV ..... something like that.
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Sometimes inspiration comes from an unexpected source. This Mike Pearsall painting showed up on another forum and provided much of the inspiration for the Everett scene.

But I hadn't come up with a real inspiration for the scene - what I think it might look like. Then I ran across this Mike Pearsall painting on another forum - and it's what I think of when I picture the Everett scene. No, I don't plan to model this painting exactly - but the general impression - a medium-sized city, mountains in the background - a street busy enough to require crossing guards but not so busy that the railroad or state have gone to the expense of lowering or raising the street to cross the tracks - residences on the hillside.
Everett is based on a mishmash of inspirations from various New England locations. It�s also inspired by model railroad scenes � anyone familiar with Paul Dolkos� B&M layout can spot the origin of the paper mill complex; and there�s a series of New England �triple decker� tenements, complete with laundry drying on the line, that could have been dropped from Dick Elwell�s or Earl Smallshaw�s railroads.

The first problem was the track arrangement wasn�t exactly working. Both spurs in the foreground (one planned to go to a team track or freight house, the other to a feed mill) came off the main. Basically there were three turnouts in a row coming off the mainline and it just didn�t look right. It also meant there was little if any room for the passenger station platform since there were sidings along the entire length of the main.
So I rearranged the siding to create a switchback from the feedmill track and lengthened the feedmill track. You can see that in the top photo. While this will make the area a little more difficult to switch the tradeoff is a much better scene. Once the altered track was wired and working I spent the rest of the evening playing around with various buildings in the foreground � a freight house, a small factory, etc. All interfered with reaching the turnouts and tracks leading the paper mill complex in the rear. What I needed in the foreground was a very low industry that wouldn�t impede someone reaching into the scene. So I got out the foam excavation tools and dug out enough of the pink foam to create an area for a sand/gravel dealers supply yard. The trestle is an American Model Builder�s laser kit.
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American Model Builder's coal trestle kit. This will be a stone and gravel dealer supply yard.

Once the track was rearranged I spent some time yesterday afternoon arranging and rearranging various kit walls, boxes, tubes, partially and completely finished structures and other "shapes" as a type of 3-D sketching. It's getting close.

Green Mountain Paper Co. complex. Chemical yard in center, "old mill" to the left with the "new" warehouse to the right.

I think the Sylvan station building, which dates back to SNE #1 in Wisconsin, may be a little too small for a place that's turning out to be much bigger place than I first envisioned so that station may be replaced with the one from the South River Cambridge crossing kit.

Green Mountain Paper to the far left. Curren Mill complex (named after my late friend and co-worked Art Curren) in the center. The Sylvan station, which has served on every layout I've built since my first Southern New England may be a little too small for a town this size.

Anyone familiar with the CV in Bellows Falls will recognize the �brick canyon� effect. I�m not sure those mockups aren�t just a little too big, but they present a nice contrast the extremely rural scenery found on the rest of the railroad. 

I ran across a tremendous resource at the University of Vermont web site. A collection of historic photo graphs of Vermont, many of which show scenes familiar to railroad modelers of the state. I found two of them of particular interest:

The first was this view of Essex Junction that shows the industries located in the around the wye - this shot dates from 1930 (the dates on some of the captions have been questioned, but the presence of the Burlington & Lamoille RR trackage in the middle of the wye makes me believe the 1939 date.

Another neat find was this photo showing a close up of the Demeritt Company in Waterbury.