Surprise! Here's your History...

There are still some wonderful surprises in life!

The summertime is usually one where family and household activities take priority over layout time, and so it is this year.  With some capital improvements around the house it's an exciting (albeit exhausting) time.   We're finally doing a patio outside and a long-overdue kitchen spruce up with painting, new lights, cabinet repairs, floor polishing etc.  

In doing some moving to accommodate the work, I found an old collage from my mom's house, dropped off when Dad's new wife was doing some archiving of old family photos.  Seeing it was a landslide of distant memories!  Christmastime 1977 was held at my grandparent's home in Marcellus, NY, close to where mom grew up and a place of powerful memories for me - after all, this was the destination of many childhood trips, and functionally too the home from which I discovered the Chicago Line for the first time.  The old photos were labeled in some cases with the date and who was whom, but memory served for the latter.  Of course December 1977 found me just week short of one year old, so these aren't my memories; instead they are those of my parents - in some ways, more valuable to me than my own.

Here's my mom, seated, pregnant with my younger sister.  Standing at left is Sally, mom's older sibling, with their mother Rosemary Grimmelsman Dean, and with sister-in-law Colleen Dean at the right.  This is the kitchen of grandma's house on South Street in Marcellus, NY, a place I stayed many times in my youth, and from this place we'd ride in the cars of my uncles to see the trains at Dewitt, NY.

Also in the basement was my grandfather Bill Dean's small Lionel setup, with which I was always fascinated.  Here a few of my older cousins watch intently as Grandpa instructs.

I was too young to remember this gathering, as this photo shows - still learning to walk and almost one year old.  And yet my heart moves with viewing these images because so much of what was to come feels in my memory like these photos of their memories.  So much of my life was looking forward to these trips.  Quite a bit of the the energy around the Onondaga Cutoff is affected by trips to Central New York to see family.  

No family Christmas Eve is complete without a whole-family photo with a timer.  And so I bring you the Dean Family Christmas Eve, 1977, from the warm old colonial home of Bill and Rosemary Dean on South Street in Marcellus, NY.   The baby (me) is asleep but the cheer is alive and cousins are electric with excitement.  All 8 Dean kids are here:  Sally, Susie, Bill, Bob, Tom, John, Peter, and Carol.  

Sort of strange on a summer evening to be reminiscing of Christmastime but in any case I wanted to share these photos as part of the discussion of the true roots of the Onondaga Cutoff.  Yes, it's all about Conrail in Central New York, but that railroad and locale for me are tied up in the wonder and camaraderie of a big family, endless nights of fun, trials and tribulations and subsequent triumphs, and also the balance of loss and darkness that gives it all such a sense of light.  

The Abeles side was more local growing up, and the photos above bring me to want to share one from that side too.  Here's my great-grandfather's butcher shop on Ferry Street in Newark, NJ, in the 'down neck' section of town close to the Ironbound.  That's him on the left; with his son Richard (my grandfather) in Sunday-best clothes for the photo and his wife Ida frowning upon the scene.  

When we say 'down neck' in Newark, this is what we are talking about; north of the CNJ tracks and up to the bank of the Passaic River.  South of the CNJ tracks seen below would be considered 'Ironbound' as it was a triangle bounded by the PRR main line to the west, the CNJ to the north, and the PRR freight main (the Passaic and Harrimus Line) to the south.  

I'm grateful for memories and a sense of place, the notion of belonging to something without conditions, and with the idea that such a series of gifts is a foundation on which to build something for others to be part of.  

Mom's birthday is August 12, and that's a day I always fondly remember each year.  This year we get to be in Skaneateles for part of that. 

Big ideas, nearly limitless thoughts and dreams about life related to a model railroad and refreshed with re-discovery of a few old photos in the attic.  

Enjoy your summertime - more great OC news coming soon!

Remembering What Inspires Us

 Model railroading is an effort to capture in miniature the essence of what fascinates us about trains.  This can take a variety of forms: there's collectors, there's builders, there's operators, there's historians...and plenty of other approaches.  The trains are central to it all of course but railroads are part of western civilization, and so there are many ways the interest manifests itself.

A challenge for serious hobbyists, though, is to keep a vision on what we set out to accomplish in the hobby.  We can loose sight of what really inspired us to get into the hobby in the first place. That's where looking through old photos and notes can help.  

Conrail TV-13, CP 286 at East Syracuse, NY, March 1997

In researching the C30-7A kitbash article for submission, I went looking for slides in my collection of prototype C30-7A's, and found a few that fit the bill.  I scanned them and noted how the image brought me back in time - it was exciting to see the image and imagine the sound, remember the scent, see the dynamics - I could almost feel the ground shaking as the train accelerated past.  

For those of us into the operation, all the rest of what we do in the hobby is in service of operations - the vision of an operating railroad, complete with the role-playing game that is required to make it run.  Operations is fascinating for many reasons and for me, capturing the essence of what Conrail was doing on the Chicago Line in the 90's is the goal.  Many diverse people from all sorts of backgrounds came together 24-7-365 to move trains, and they did it safely, with pride.  

Conrail TV-24, East Syracuse NY, March 1997.

Take some time to look through your old books and photos, notes, and trip logs.  We can't go back in body, but we sure can go back in mind.  Bring that to an operating session featuring a railroad in the past, though, and we can for a few hours travel in body back to a miniature world gone by.  That's a joy of the hobby for me, and a goal of the Onondaga Cutoff is to share that with others.

~Dave

Conrail on the Onondaga Cutoff - On the Cover of Model Railroader!

There are still surprises in life.  

I'm thrilled to present the August 2021 cover for Model Railroader magazine, with a neat kitbashing article taking the cover - a kitbashing piece I wrote for the Conrail C30-7A!  

This blog has an entry from several years ago describing the build, and in discussing with one of the Senior Associate Editors at MR, he advised that I should pitch it to the Editor.  I did, and it was accepted; I moved ahead with the whole piece.  It was submitted in January 2021 and in just 7 months was printed - with a cover shot to boot!  

This is the second MR cover shot for the Onondaga Cutoff, but the first with Conrail locomotives front and center.  Ever since Mike Tylick's pieces on building a junction module based on the Boston Line in the late 1980's, I have hoped to get Conrail, my 'home' prototype and modeled railroad, on the cover - and here we are.  

The whole thing is surreal and too-good-to-be-true, a lifelong dream achieved at 44 years of age.   From the start of this blog through to now is quite a journey and God willing there is quite a bit more left in the tank.  In some ways I think I'm just getting going, although this one is going to be hard to top.  May the best be yet to come!  

Time and a Sense of Place: Passing of the Torch

Moments come along in life that remind us of the journey we are on.  Some of those moments are full of bright memories, and others are in the shadows of darkness.  Regret, frustration, a sense of missed opportunity: these are real, honest feelings, and deserving of our time.  Darkness is part of life, after all.  However, the bright outshines the dark.  The bright spots are the most poignant of these moments and are nearly tangible in their nostalgia and in the good energy that we carry along in life.  

On Sunday, June 8 2021, one of the influencers of the Onondaga Cutoff passed away.  At first glace, the life of Barbara 'Babby' Siegelman would have little to do with a model railroad.  She loved gardening, family, horses, and her community.  Giving and thoughtful, she had more friends than days in the year and was a wonderful person to speak with.  She spent her senior years raising her granddaughters on a horse farm built by her late husband and laughing late into the night on the phone with lifetime friends around the world.

Photo by N. Garvey

And, she inadvertently offered one of the most direct influences of my vision for my model railroad: the vast layout built by her late husband in the basement of her country home in Bedminster, NJ.   

I literally stumbled into this one out of the blue.  The layout had been years in the making by 1995, but we wouldn't know Babby for years after that.  After my mother passed away in 1995, my dad poured time into his work as a teacher and into each of his three kids: me, my sister and my brother.  He saw each of us off to college as a widower, a show of strength I will remember for the rest of my time.  He'd regularly travel to Syracuse, Ithaca, and Millersville for sporting events in support of each of us, bringing friends along for the ride, creating community wherever he went.  He didn't date until about five years later, the summer of 2000.  A blind date was set up by his cousin, where he met Babby.  He called me on his flip-phone cell, after they had enjoyed supper and were walking the gardens at her home.  "Dee - you GOTTA come see this!  What are you doing right now?"  She had been talking of her late husband and how he wasn't the gardener - his hobby was in the basement.  Needless to say I didn't go down that night - never interrupt a first date! - but did shortly thereafter, and upon seeing the sprawling 3-rail O scale setup, I called Jack in the same manner Dad called me.  "DUDE - you GOTTA see this!"

This was a huge 30' X 70' basement, and the layout was two tables: one about 20' X 30'with an operator's pit, and other about 20' X 10' that was controlled from the same pit.  Large loops allowed a few trains to move at once.  But it hadn't turned a wheel in the several years since Babby's husband passed.  

At first we were a bit reticent about running the trains - after all, Babby's late husband had built it and we were guests - but after a few visits with Dad, Babby offered that I could call and we could come by ourselves.  Jack and I worked up a plan to make a few improvements and asked permission to do so.  Babby was thrilled, "I just love to see it running again, you boys are welcome anytime.  Give me a call and come down, and you can do as you please with it - it's wonderful to see it working again!"  

That was all the invite we needed.  Over the next few weeks we adopted the 'orphaned' layout.  We moved all of Jack's 3-rail stuff down there, and also boxes of all my HO stuff which at the time was in storage at my apartment in Westfield.  And from the fall of the year 2000 right through the start of the Onondaga Cutoff, Jack and I went to Babby's on hundreds of evenings, and put thousands of hours and dollars into the layout.  We were young, fully employed, and without many commitments, and the layout blossomed.  

Jack came up with a name:  Claremont & Saucon Valley.  It represented generic northeastern territory allowing us to run different sets of power on different nights with the same operating plan. Jack developed a system of train symbols and a car-forwarding plan to fit the infrastructure. And we got to work.

We rewired the whole thing to be run by three Lionel ZW transformers. We changed the routes, smoothed joints, added interlockings, added sidings.  I painted the walls, added backdrops, and added another interchange track to the two that were there already.  Jack slowly but steadily came up with a whole new design for the tracks and switches in the middle of the larger layout, and we separated wiring for the smaller layout where I would now be the operator.  

We developed a system to operate it by 'running time' instead of laps or distance.  This kept trains moving while we switched, classified or worked other trains.  Quickly the size disparity made operations tough, so with Babby's permission we reorganized the basement and added an extension to create an 80-car, stub-end classification yard.  

 

It was 3-rail, yes - but with mostly scale equipment thanks to Jack, and I began to contribute too.  After all, I had no home layout at the time, and this was the bird in hand.  Jack and I would bring beers and a pizza to the layout, eat it down, and get to work.  We installed large amounts of new Atlas O track and switches for reliability and appearance. The operation grew.  Big-time, main line action, with yard and switching to support it.  

  

Babby began to have parties when we would operate so that others could come see the layout in action.  By 2003 friends started to bring their kids, and relatives made time to see it work.  We hung red curtains made from old tablecloths as layout skirting, and added scenery to improve the appearance.   

We turned the lights off and had 'nighttime' sessions too.

We continued with the layout through ups and downs in life. Jack traveled to Europe, and I traveled the American west with Heath. The night after 9/11, I was in the basement at Babby's painting the wall blue, full of sorrow and despair in the state of the world.  A few nights after my sister died in 2003, dad was with his cousin, Ben with his friends, and so I was in the basement at Babby's drinking beers with Jack.  A day after each of us graduated with master's degrees, we were down at Babby's. As the decade passed we discussed our families, hopes and fears in that basement.  Babby was a confidant as we searched our lives for women to fall in love with, a friend and a wise mentor.  We'd visit with her for a while during our visits and share the goings on. 

The camaraderie grew to include regular attendees.  Scottie S. and Rick S. were both present quite a few times, sharing laughs, trains, and beers, and the fun continued.

Most of all, it was FUN.  Trains moved and we had FUN.  And so many of the lessons we learned at Babby's are part of the foundational fabric of the Onondaga Cutoff:  camaraderie, fun, multiple-track mainline action, interchange, a car-forwarding plan, night operations, open houses, regular sessions for both readying the layout for running and for operations themselves.  The Onondaga Cutoff has roots in the energy of the Claremont & Saucon Valley.  

And when Jack and I each got married, each of our wives met Babby and enjoyed the camaraderie, too.  Even as each family began to have children, we still made time for the layout and to keep Babby appraised of the journey.  And time goes on.  Shadows pass: Babby was in a terrible car accident around 2010, and was ill for months after.  We checked in, but visitors were restricted.  Once she felt better we returned, and the layout was off and running again.  By this time the vision that was so tangible to me was starting to be realized in the Onondaga Cutoff, construction of which began in 2008 and operations in 2011.  We split time between layouts but more children arrived in each family and time began to shrink.  We stayed in touch with occasional visits and calls, but time goes quickly, and for the first few months of 2021 I could tell things were different.  Reading of the news of her death was a breathtaking pause, a twinge in my mind and body in realizing in a moment the weight of the loss.  

And so, Godspeed Babby.  Thank you, for everything.

Correcting A Crossing Circuit - With Expert Help

As regular readers know, we have a fully automated grade crossing on the Onondaga Cutoff.  Just west of CP 277, Highbridge Road crosses the Chicago Line, and the grade crossing is protected by lights and gates mounted on posts.  These are automated through the use of sensors placed along the track - distant sensors, located so as to provide gates being down before a maximum-speed train's arrival, and 'island' sensors on each side of the crossing so that the gates rise immediately after a train passes.  

I used the Azatrax system for this as detailed in the March 8, 2019 post https://onondagacutoff.blogspot.com/2019/03/protecting-grade-crossing.html and have found it to be excellent.  

However, it was designed for a simple double track main line application - not one with a crossover between the distant sensors and the crossing.  Essentially, where the diagram above reads 'Track 1" there are switches that allow trains to cross over in each direction.  Therefore, depending on the sequence of traffic, the machine would be deceived by certain crossover moves, since the incorrect sensor would be triggered or missed, and that lead to unprototypical operations.  

After one of the Facebook Live video releases on the OC Facebook Page ( https://www.facebook.com/onondagacutoff/ ) a viewer commented that he could help with this.  Matt Paquette, who is a professional signal maintainer for a major northeastern freight railroad, advised that we could use the internal contacts in the Tortoise Machine to re-wire the distant 'E' and 'W' detectors to provide proper detection for crossover moves.   Matt built a new diagram to follow.

Essentially, the Q1 output needed to be routed through the internal contacts in the Tortoise machines so that the grade crossing board would see the proper distant detection for the move.  It took some doing and soldering in tight clearances - not my best work - but it's functional, and seems to test out.  The true test will be an operating session!  

So, thanks to Matt, the Onondaga Cutoff just got more prototypical.   Matt's expertise helped where I had run out of choices, and this becomes another example of 'Let Experts Be Experts.'

Progress, Here & There

Progress on the layout varies a bit by season.  Looking over the 12 years or so of entries here, in most cases there is a load of progress on the Onondaga Cutoff in the winter and spring which tails off a bit once we get to the warmer months.  Part of this is more outdoor activities and household maintenance tasks, and more of it is using free time for trips or helping on other's layouts, too.  It's all a welcome part of the hobby. 

Some of those trips are just local jaunts with the kids.  Kristen and Susie had a weekend Girl Scout camporee last weekend, and so the boys and I had a weekend to spend time together.  Teddy calls that "boy time" and looks forward to it, which warms my heart!  Pete & Teddy wanted to watch trains, see some new things, and explore together, and so we did just that.

Along our local mainline, the NS Lehigh Line across central NJ, we did some hiking along the rivers and found a new-to-us through truss bridge.  Teddy still loves bridges of all types and especially railroad bridges.  They were amazed!  

During the evenings, I made time to finish a few projects that had been hanging around the workbench.  Months ago I finally purchased a vacuum car for the layout after finding a good deal on eBay for one.  It was the Lux model from Germany but works seamlessly with my DCC system.  But, I thought the bold German lettering was a bit much.  So it got a coat of paint, replacement couplers, and new lettering for a plausible piece of Conrail maintenance equipment.  Here it is, awaiting final weathering, after which it will join my CMX track cleaner car in the setup night maintenance train.

And, some of the long term collecting of Conrail covered hoppers is beginning to pay off.  Thanks to amazing weathering by Lenny Harlos, we soon will have a unit grain train for the Onondaga Cutoff, which fills yet another gap in our operating plan.  Here's a sneak peak of work so far.

As spring opens up in to summer, and as pandemic restrictions seem to finally be waning, it's exciting to look forward to so much that we used to take as guaranteed.  Operating sessions, family gatherings and road trips - all these things are coming back soon and it's an exciting time.  Best wishes to you on this Memorial Day weekend, may we keep in mind those that have given their life in service to our community and our nation.  

And may the best still be yet to come!

~Dave

Upgrading the Tower at CP 282

 A continuing vision for the Onondaga Cutoff is to 'Let Experts Be Experts.'   We've discussed that before, and it is manifested in different ways.  Skilled hands helped with benchwork.  Trusted advice from Model Railroader and Railroad Model Craftsman guided track installation and wiring.  Computer and IT experts helped me with networking.  Signal professionals did the signal design and guided the installation.  Transportation Planning professionals designed the car-forwarding and locomotive distribution systems, and design each operating session.  The list goes on, but it is clear that the total is much greater than the sum of the parts.

Recently, I had been searching for a suitable permanent model at CP 282 to represent an old NYC tower, repurposed as an office.  My vision was to model the tower that once stood at SJ interlocking, which became CP 293 under Conrail's tenure.  Al Tillotson, a talented modeler and regular operator on the OC, had contributed a foam-core and photo-printed stand-in that was suitable for its purpose for the last several years.  However, my goal was to model the brick and mortar construction from the 1930's as NYC upgraded its route through Syracuse.  

SJ was a critical interlocking that included not just the Water Level Route mainline but also the old Auburn Main, the Freight Bypass to the north, and the Lackawanna Oswego main line and interchange - plenty to keep the operator busy.   By the late 1950's though, NYC was installing new Centralized Traffic Control on its main routes, which allowed interlockings to be remote controlled from many miles away.  This made the tower operator and manual interlocking redundant.  The machinery was removed in the late 50's but the maintenance crews continued to use the tower as an office for decades to follow.  By the mid-90's, though, the end came and the structure was demolished.  

I worked with Perry Squier, a local modeler and expert scratch builder, to move forward.  Perry offered to build the tower if I could find plans.  Through the internet I came in contact with a former Conrail employee that - believe it or not - rescued the actual blueprints for this tower from a dumpster.  Amazed, I reported back to Perry who was surprised and pleased that we'd located the actual plans.  I made copies and Perry got to work.  

Perry asked that I do any interior detailing, which I did during a test-fit of the structure.  I also added lighting before returning the project for completion.  Perry delivered the final structure after several months of work, and I installed it on the layout - what an improvement!  

This adds a tremendous amount of NYC heritage and flavor to a scene that was already nearly complete.  The old tower was removed, and will be headed for my boy's layout in the attic, thanks to Al's generosity.  The new tower does an amazing job at night!

Another example of collaboration that turns out for the best: asking experts to help has made this layout greater than it could be if I were doing it myself.