The Smoky City – Page 2 – Planning an HO scale model railroad set in Pittsburgh, 1949.

Building 7: Fruit Market, Pharmacy, Salon and Detective Agency.

Posted Oct 01, 2022
Updated May 09, 2023

My seventh structure project started from the “Front Street Building” kit by Design Preservation Models (Woodland Scenics), which I bought during a husband-sponsored birthday shopping spree at our local hobby shops in March 2021.

When I began the project, I already had four other structure projects at various stages of completion, but the idea of creating two storefronts plus two upstairs businesses in one building seemed like a lot of fun, and a little different than the buildings I was already working on, so I got started anyhow, painting the exterior before I decided what would be inside. I’d get back to the other buildings later. Sometimes switching projects can renew my level of interest and excitement for the hobby in general, and defuses frustration that may creep in with other projects, which are sometimes resolved more easily after taking a break and then taking a fresh look later.

I had some pretty solid ideas on what I wanted the four businesses to be, after having studied photos from Historic Pittsburgh and other sources, depicting interior and exterior views of various Pittsburgh businesses from the 30s and 40s, including the four I ultimately chose: a pharmacy, produce market, beauty salon …

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Building 2: Derelict Storefront

Posted Sep 30, 2022
Updated Apr 29, 2023

I started this project on April 7, 2019, a few months after purchasing the Design Preservation Models (Woodland Scenics) kit “Kelly’s Saloon” at the train show in Puyallup. The idea to model a derelict storefront came when browsing Pittsburgh Bureau of Building Inspection photographs on Historic Pittsburgh.

I found one of them particularly appealing, and it had the same basic storefront design as this kit, making it easy to recreate. I liked the broken windows, the grime, the many signs and posters attached to the front, and the fact that two of the posters were for Kennywood and West View, two local amusement parks. The photos were of such high resolution that I was able to read all of the lettering on the signs and recreate them at scale in Illustrator and Photoshop. I completed this model on December 17, 2020.…

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Making 1940s Billboards from Scale Lumber

Posted Sep 29, 2022
Updated Jul 17, 2023

Something that stood out to me in photos of Pittsburgh street scenes in the 1930s and 1940 is the number of billboards on roads and buildings. There were dozens on Carson Street in what I call the Terminal and West End scenes. Most of them had the same basic wood construction, usually painted green. I’ve seen photos of a different design, painted white, but the green ones were more common.

I found plans for scratch-building this type of billboard using scale lumber, in an article titled “Highway billboards from the 1930s and ’40s” by Stanley Reynolds in the August 1989 issue of Model Railroader magazine. In another issue (I’ve lost track of which one), the magazine provided copies of vintage billboard graphics, which I printed on my crappy old inkjet printer. Future billboards (I’ll need a lot more) will be printed on my new color laser printer, which prints in higher quality.

I assembled one of my first billboards without its support structure and mounted it to the side of Building 2, the derelict storefront. These first two billboards were built and painted over a few days each, in June 2020.…

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Building 1: Radio Shop

Posted Sep 28, 2022
Updated Apr 29, 2023

I started this project on January 20, 2019, after purchasing the Design Preservation Models (Woodland Scenics) kit, “Pam’s Pet Shop” at the train show in Puyallup, which was the first structure kit I’d built in 30 years. I initially planned to put a small restaurant and second floor apartment inside, but later decided it was too small for a restaurant, and chose a radio shop instead, which needs very little space, and would help convey the late 1940s era.

By March 2019, I had started to build interior walls and floors and installed LED lighting, which by April was animated by an Arduino to simulate a 24-hour cycle of lights coming on and being turned off in each room at different times. The animation included a simulated TV flicker effect in the living room of the second floor apartment. TVs were still a pretty new thing in 1949, but they were on the market, and I figured the owner of a radio shop would be the type of person to be an early adopter of the technology, and might have one in his living room. However, when I obtained 3D printed vintage radios, they came with a small vintage …

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The Shortcomings of Athearn Heavyweights

Posted Sep 11, 2022

In the year or more that I’ve been planning for a roster, using the B&O’s October 1949 consist book as a guide, my intention has been to use old Athearn cars for the heavyweights (spruced up with paint, new wheels, interior detail and lighting), and more modern models for the streamlined lightweight cars, which are only needed for two of the seven B&O trains through Pittsburgh. However, I’m now thinking I’ll use the Athearn cars only for the two B&O trains in the daytime operating session (and probably the P&LE/NYC commuter trains), and will go with modern models for all five of the night session trains, both lightweight and heavyweight.

The Shortness is Only Acceptable in Isolation

The shift in thought came when I purchased two modern models of heavyweight combines to use with the Athearn heavyweights, since Athearn didn’t make coach/baggage combines. The fact that the Athearn models are about an inch too short becomes very apparent next the the modern cars, which are the correct 72 scale feet long. My reason for wanting to use Athearn heavyweights in the first place was so that I could incorporate the seven that my dad built from kits in the …

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Interesting Joint Service

Posted Sep 10, 2022
Updated Sep 11, 2022

From an operations perspective, the most interesting passenger service at the P&LE Pittsburgh terminal in 1949 was the joint operation of the B&O’s Washingtonian and the P&LE’s Steel King, running between Baltimore and Cleveland in two hours and forty minutes, the fastest option at the time. The Steel King operated on the segment west of Pittsburgh, and the Washingtonian operated on the segment east of Pittsburgh. When arriving in Pittsburgh, incoming trains would hand off their last two cars (an Erie coach and a B&O parlor-dining-lounge car) to the counterpart train for the rest of the run, with about 30-40 minutes between the arrival of the inbound and the departure of the outbound.

Engineer David Budd (with glasses) and Fireman Phillip J. Hagerty (on ladder) posing with four steel company secretaries in front of the Steel King. May 1, 1950. Photo from Historic Pittsburgh.

The Steel King was itself a joint operation with the Erie Railroad, which contributed half the motive power and one coach. The train was pulled on alternating days by either Erie or P&LE locomotives, while the other was serviced in Youngstown between runs. Since the morning arrival and evening departure in Pittsburgh both occur …

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A Closer Look at McKeesport

Posted May 15, 2022
Updated Apr 29, 2023

Until recently, the vision in my head of what a McKeesport scene might look like was pretty fuzzy, except that I knew what the train station looked like, and that it was situated on the B&O tracks that cut diagonally through busy downtown streets, where every stopped train would block car and streetcar traffic for blocks. I’ve recently gathered more historic photos of the area around the station and realized it had exactly the kinds of street scenes I want to model: shorter brick buildings housing a variety stores with big signs painted on the bricks or covered in lights. After studying the photos (some of which came from the book McKeesport (Images of America: Pennsylvania), I could start to see where the boundaries of a modeled McKeesport might land, space permitting.

In the purple boundary line shown above, the upper right corner (northwest) was chosen because that’s where the B&O tracks connect to the P&LE tracks. The main focal point would be the train station, which would have at least one block of town modeled on each side of it, hopefully two blocks to the south of the station, which would provide a …

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Prioritizing Scenes

Posted Apr 05, 2022
Updated Jul 17, 2023

Western portal of P&LE tunnel under J&L Steel Works.

I’ve been thinking for a while that I’ll be lucky if I’m able to include all nine scenes on a medium-sized layout. I previously identified the Terminal and West End scenes as most important to model, and I figured I’d just go as far east as I can from there. In recent months, however, I’ve been thinking that McKeesport is just as important as the other two, because it’d be a significant station at the opposite end of the modeled portion, and it has great urban modeling potential, with retail storefronts, big lighted signs and streetcars along both sides of 5th Avenue, all in close proximity to the passenger station, since the B&O tracks cut through the middle of downtown. With that in mind, I’m now thinking the absolute smallest version I’d be happy with would include the scenes of West End, Terminal, South Side and McKeesport. I include South Side in the list because of the way the prototype mainline disappears into a tunnel under the J&L steel mill, which would make a great way for the modeled mainline to disappear before emerging in the next scene, whatever that ends …

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Planning for a Roster

Posted Sep 16, 2021
Updated Apr 13, 2024

In January of this year, I took my first steps toward building a roster (or at least the start of a plan for one). Using information in timetables from the B&O and P&LE, I compiled a spreadsheet listing the passenger and commuter trains using the P&LE terminal in 1949, including their scheduled times, direction, origination, destination and train numbers. With this information gathered in one place, I determined that the 40 daily arrivals and departures could be simulated with just 14 model trains, like actors playing multiple parts in a play. I was also able to identify how many storage tracks would be needed in the terminal scene and in the east and west staging yards, if all trains were to be modeled. I also decided to plan for two types of operating sessions: a day session for terminal arrivals and departures between 6:00 am and 5:30 pm and a night session for arrivals and departures between 8:30 pm and 4:00 am (there were no trains scheduled between 4 and 6 am). With a 3:1 fast clock, the 11.5-hour, 24-train day session would take about 4 hours, and the 7.5-hour, 16-train night session would take 2.5 hours.

Visualizing Train Movements

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Scene Refinements and Reeling in Expectations

Posted Jan 17, 2021
Updated Oct 15, 2021

About a year ago, I narrowed the focus of my model railroad plan to the segment of the P&LE main line between McKeesport and McKees Rocks, where I would model the through service of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad’s named trains, which used the P&LE line, with a possible cameo appearance by the Pennsylvania Railroad line that parallels part of the P&LE in Pittsburgh. Over the past year, I’ve continued learning more historical information about these railroads, which has helped me begin to plan which trains and industries I’ll model, and which locomotive and car models I can purchase that would be suitable for the layout. I also began to practice some basic track planning skills in Adobe Illustrator, to help me visualize how much space is needed for things like loops, yards and stations, which has has prompted me to prepare for the possibility of eliminating scenes from the plan if the space requirements are too high.

Elimination of McKees Rocks & Esplen

I cut the westernmost scene, McKees Rocks, because it’s the site of the locomotive service facility, fabrication shops and a classification yard, which would take up a huge amount of flat, open space, and I’m much …

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