The Smoky City – Planning an HO scale model railroad set in Pittsburgh, 1949.

Switching to Walthers Heavyweights

Posted Apr 14, 2024
Updated Jun 16, 2024

A year ago, I was souring on Athearn heavyweight passenger cars, and I put the brakes on acquiring and/or detailing more of them. This year, I bought my first four Walthers heavyweights (a coach and three sleepers), and soon decided to completely abandon the Athearn heavyweights, in favor of Walthers. They have a good level of detail and none of the problems of the Athearn cars. I bought two more sleepers in April.

After reviewing the B&O’s 1949 passenger train consists again, I updated my list of cars needed for the eight trains I’m modeling, using Walthers cars instead of Athearn. I also created a wish list on Trainz.com and saved searches on eBay for the cars I need. In total, there are 46 cars needed (I have 7 of them so far), including heavyweight and streamlined lightweight, but not including the elusive streamlined heavyweights of the Capitol Limited.

The Walthers cars don’t come from the factory with interior lights, but they make LED lighting kits for them. I don’t think I want to use those, because there’s no way to turn them off while they’re on powered track, and I don’t think there’s a capacitor built in, so they’d …

Continue Reading →

Building 8: DPM Townhouse #2

Posted Jul 30, 2023

I received this Design Preservation Models kit as a gift from Chris when he took me on a birthday shopping spree in 2021 to The Electric Train Shop, Eastside Trains and Skyway Model Shop. I assembled the exterior walls in late April, and on May 1, I painted the side and rear walls with a mix of Model Master acrylic Railroad Tie Brown, Boxcar Red and Engine Black. During the same spray booth session, I was painting this mix onto the rear and sides of Building 7. The next day, I painted the front with a mix of Aged Concrete, Railroad Tie Brown and Engine Black. I didn’t take any photos of this building at the time, but I logged these steps in the Excel spreadsheets where I keep track of the steps I take. Then, the project sat idle for just over two years, when most of my modeling time was consumed by Building 7.

Items purchased on the birthday shopping spree, including this building kit in lower left. — Items purchased on the birthday shopping spree, including this building kit near lower left.

Building 7 was completed in late April 2023, and about a month later, I was getting very close to finishing Building 4. I was ready …

Continue Reading →

Building 4: DPM Townhouse #3

Posted Jul 30, 2023

Technically, I started this building in January 2020 when I sanded the edges of the exterior walls, but the parts went back in the package until that May. I then took three days to fill divots on the interior walls with plastic putty, glue the walls together, prime them and apply a base coat of paint. I filled the divots because I planned on painting those surfaces for use in the interior scenes. I later decided it was much easier and looked better if I covered the walls of interior scenes with paper, printed with my own custom graphics. The putty would shrink a lot while drying, requiring multiple coats and lots of drying time. It was too much work.

On the base coat of paint, I was going for a warm yellow brick color, like I had seen on a lot of older buildings around Pittsburgh. I used a mix of Model Master acrylic International Orange, Reefer Yellow, Rust and a touch of Grimy Black. Unfortunately, it was way too orange and would have to be repainted, but it sat idle for nine months. In February 2021, I tried to strip the orange paint with 91% isopropyl alcohol, but …

Continue Reading →

Building 3: DPM Townhouse #1

Posted Jul 30, 2023
Updated Sep 28, 2023

Building 3 started as the Design Preservations Models kit “Townhouse 1”. It was only the second building interior I had detailed, and my plans for it changed a lot during the process, resulting in some behind-the-scenes construction that looks a little sloppy, but I’m really happy with the visible parts, and that’s what really matters.

I started this project simultaneously with Building 2 in April 2019, but then didn’t touch it again until January of 2020. On March 23 that year, I began working from home, and the state’s “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” order took effect, keeping everyone at home except for essential activities. While people complained about having to stay home, I was actually excited about how much modeling time I’d have. By March 28, I finished painting the exterior, and about a month later, I sketched floor plans to figure out what interior scenes I would build. I decided the signature feature would be a stairwell visible through the door and windows above it, leading to a bulkhead on the rooftop where some women would be doing laundry in a washtub and hanging it up to dry.

I built the stairwell scene as a self-contained module which I …

Continue Reading →

"Baltimore & Ohio Passenger Service, 1945-1971 - Volume 2: The Route of the Capitol Limited" by Harry Stegmaier

B&O Mail & Express Trains 31 & 32

Posted Jul 07, 2023
Updated Sep 12, 2024

After reading Jeff Wilson’s book Express, Mail & Merchandise Service, I wanted to include a mail train in my operations, but I didn’t think the P&LE had one (still not sure), and I figured if the B&O did, they probably ran it to their own station, not the P&LE terminal I’m planning to model. But while reading Harry Stegmaier’s 1997 book, Baltimore & Ohio Passenger Service, 1945-1971 – Volume 2: The Route of the Capitol Limited in March this year, I learned that the B&O did run a pair of steam-powered mail and express trains over the P&LE in 1949: Trains 31 and 32, operating every day except Mondays and days after holidays, starting in 1948. Prior to that, 31 and 32 used the B&O station across the river.

After reading about the trains in Stegmaier’s book, I looked them up in my October 1949 copy of the B&O Through Passenger Train Consist Book No. 12, a PDF I purchased from the B&O Railroad Historical Society in August 2021. Both trains would carry several baggage cars, an express reefer and a rider car. Train 31, which departed Washington at midnight, would arrive in Pittsburgh at 8:15 AM with …

Continue Reading →

A Wealth of Information in a 1949 Pittsburgh Phone Book

Posted Jun 19, 2023
Updated Aug 17, 2024

In order to accurately depict scenes along the P&LE in 1949, I have to figure out what businesses occupied the buildings near the tracks at the time. I’ve mostly relied on historic photos collected from various sources on the web, which I’ve organized in the Photos app on my MacBook. I’ve been plotting buildings and known occupants on my Google Maps planning map. I’ve been able to identify a lot of building occupants that way, but there were still a lot of unknowns, until a tip I read in Model Railroad Planning 2023 lead me to a massive source of information that I’ve only just begun to utilize: the 1949 edition of Polk’s Pittsburgh City Directory, which I purchased and downloaded from Masthof Press & Book Store.

The book is described on its title page as Containing an Alphabetical Directory of Business Concerns and Private Citizens, a Directory of Householders, Occupants of Office Buildings and Other Business Places, Including a Complete Street and Avenue Guide, and a Postal Zone Guide; also a MANUFACTURERS’ DEPARTMENT, A BUYERS’ GUIDE and a Complete Classified Business Directory. Basically, you can look up people and businesses by name, address, or business type.…

Continue Reading →

Souring on Athearn Heavyweights

Posted Mar 05, 2023
Updated Mar 18, 2023

Running my Athearn heavyweight passenger cars on Karl’s layout a week ago showed that they’re worse off than previously thought. My BLI Pacific, which is a pretty strong puller, slipped significantly on a couple of inclines, the steepest of which was about 2%. I knew the cars are overweight, and I knew my homemade phosphor bronze power pickups were causing drag, but I was still disappointed to see how hard it was to pull them up grades. My test runs used a consist simulating the Washingtonian (five or six cars), with a coach filling in for the combine. Two of the cars had the newer “floating brass” pickups, which I think have less drag than the others with phosphor bronze wire. The test run confirmed that I have to try loosening the wire to reduce drag.

The Bachmann Spectrum cars were just some of the good deals I got at the UNW show.

Earlier that day, I found a good deal on four B&O heavyweight cars made by Bachmann Spectrum (in the late 90s, I think). It was two coaches, a combine and an observation car for $40. The cars are in great condition, but the lighting sucks and they …

Continue Reading →

P&LE McKeesport Station

Posted Nov 08, 2022
Updated Apr 29, 2023

In September, a post in the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad Interest Group on Facebook featured a scan of a 1928 publication showing small photos of various P&LE stations, including one labeled “McKeesport”. It was hard to see any detail, but it certainly wasn’t the B&O station I was familiar with. That’s when it struck me: I had been so focused on B&O passenger trains serving the B&O station in McKeesport that I gave very little thought to the possibility of the P&LE having their own station in McKeesport. I just assumed the P&LE and B&O both used the B&O station I saw in so many photos. Considering the age of the photo, I wondered if the station was still in use in 1949. Google searches kept showing me the B&O station while trying to find a P&LE station.

My first clue that P&LE had their own McKeesport Station

Today, it occurred to me to search that Facebook group for the word McKeesport, which turned up a better photo of the P&LE station, from a postcard postmarked in 1910. Mixed among comments of people mis-identifying its location as that of the B&O station was one guy saying it was located …

Continue Reading →

Plan Summary, Five Years In

Posted Oct 27, 2022
Updated Jul 20, 2024

I recently realized it’s been over five years since I started using this blog to document the planning of my next model railroad and thought it was time for a written summary of my current vision for the layout. I remember thinking in the beginning that I could easily spend over five years researching and planning this model railroad, gathering prototype photos and information to paint a mental picture of what the layout would look like. I’ve gathered more information than I expected by this point, thanks to resources like Historic Pittsburgh and many books and special interest publications from Model Railroader and Classic Trains magazines. I’ve organized the information and photos in albums, spreadsheets, Google Earth and Google Maps, where I’ve been marking the locations of buildings and industries as they existed in 1949. So far, I’ve added building locations to three of the four key scenes. There’s quite a bit more research and planning to do, but after five years of it, I have a much clearer picture in my mind of this future layout.

In some areas, it feels like I have just about all of the information I need, and perhaps the next five years will …

Continue Reading →

Identifying Industries On the P&LE Line

Posted Oct 16, 2022
Updated Jun 16, 2024

Although this layout will be primarily focused on passenger operations, I still intend to include some local and through freight operations, with switching in the terminal scene at least. It’s not hard to identify what types of freight would likely be delivered to or from industries along the P&LE in Pittsburgh in 1949, but I started down the path of accuracy when I came across a 1929 map on Historic Pittsburgh, identifying the names and rough locations of industries at that time. Later, I heard about Rails Unlimited, which sells reproductions of old railroad shipper’s guides. They have one for the P&LE (New York Central), which is, as the cover describes, a list of industries with private or individual side tracks, and list of team tracks, at common points on the NYC/P&LE, to which delivery can be made by the NYC/P&LE or its connections.

Only six of its 314 pages pertain to Pittsburgh, and it was published in 1963 (14 years too late), but it was worth the $50, because I was able to compare it to the 1929 industries map to compile a list of 36 that would have been in operation in 1949. The tables in …

Continue Reading →