15-Mile Segment Selected

Posted Feb 04, 2020
Updated Apr 09, 2022

Back in October 2019, I decided that the prototype railroad depicted in my next layout will be the B&O from 1938-1948 in southwestern PA somewhere between Meyersdale and New Castle, likely including Pittsburgh. After four months of research and consideration, I’ve narrowed my focus to the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie line from McKeesport to McKees Rocks, a segment that partially spans two divisions over a distance of about 15 miles.

I decided pretty quickly to make my southernmost potential station Connellsville, instead of smaller Meyersdale, since it was a pretty significant station, junction and yard, making a logical end point for operations. Although I don’t know how much space will be available for the layout, the approximately 100 miles between these two points seemed like a lot, so I thought the best planning approach would be to research and document the points of interest that existed along that stretch, and use that information to help me select a shorter segment to model.

My research and documentation started by following the present-day CSX main line from New Castle to Connellsville via Google Maps satellite view, which revealed many former railroad facilities, such as turntables, tunnels, bridges and stations, plus evidence …

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January Progress

Posted Jan 31, 2020
Updated Oct 01, 2022

Sun Jan 12: Completed the painting of four figures. I began a spreadsheet to keep track of all of the figures I’m painting, including descriptions of the figures, a list of paint colors used on each one, and a name assigned to each one, since, after spending an hour or two painting a figure, I start to think of them as characters.

Sat Jan 18 Puyallup train show: Picked up a PanPastel Rust & Earth Weathering Kit, plus separate PanPastels in black, white and two shades of gray. As I was browsing the products, I told the vendor I had been using regular artist pastels that I grind off with a hobby knife, and asked if the PanPastels adhere to plastic better than regular pastels. He said he thinks they use a “proprietary” formula that helps it adhere, possibly containing CA. I spent about $40 on the kit, which contained some applicator tools, and the four grays. Later, I realized I was thinking of Bragdon weathering powders, which I had heard contain some form of CA.

Sun Jan 19: Completed painting of two figures (bald black dude and fat seated woman).

Mon Jan 20 (MLK Day): began prepping …

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Beginning my 2019/2020 Winter Modeling Season

Posted Jan 19, 2020

For a month or more, I’ve felt frustrated that other priorities (holidays, a house guest, master bath remodel and tattoo graphics for Chris), plus a lack of early-season snow in the mountains* have prevented me from getting back to work on my models this season. But, as I looked through posts on this blog from last year, plus progress photos on my phone, I realized that last year’s winter modeling season didn’t really get fully underway until the day of the Great Train Show in Puyallup in mid-January. So now I don’t feel so bad, and I supposed this just goes to show how excited I was to get back into the work.

I did manage to spend about 8 hours working on the chapel car, and a few more hours working on a 1950s wood kit (boxcar) given to me by a new friend, Karl, who I met last February at the UNW train show in Monroe. Karl drives trains for Amtrak and recognized me from my daily routine of walking from my office to the Spokane Street crossing on the BNSF main line to see the 2:20 Amtrak Cascades departure from King Street Station go past. In addition …

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TV Light Effect

Posted Nov 05, 2019

After seeing Bruce Kingsley’s Arduino-animated HO scale house in the April 2016 issue of Model Railroader, which includes a flickering TV screen in a dark room as one of its many effects, I decided to try writing my own TV-flickering code for the Arduino, and ended up with what I think is a slightly more realistic effect. Using a cool-white LED to simulate the glow of a black and white TV, the code creates the effect by changing the brightness to various levels at various time intervals, within preset ranges, in two different ways.

The majority of the flickers are sudden changes from one level of brightness to another, simulating the light effect of moving images and cutting from one camera to another. The length of time between changes varies each time from between 400-1,000 milliseconds (.4 seconds to 1 second). The levels of brightness are randomly chosen each time, from a range of 25-75, on a scale where 0 is off, and 255 is the brightest level possible.

The flicker effect alone, however, looks a little more like the light of an endlessly flickering flame than the light of a television broadcast. For more realism, I needed to include …

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Planning Map

Posted Oct 13, 2019
Updated Jan 16, 2026

Working from a copy of the Pittsburgh commuter routes map prepared by another Google Maps user, I’ve added a couple of the potential streetcar routes to see how I can combine routes on a future layout:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1LWkqzK7xX-t-N-FdqOk0k-oMVS5nXkEA&usp=sharing

Update from January 2026

Looking back on this old post, it was surprising to see how little I wrote about the planning map at the time, because it’s become a very useful tool in my planning and research process, not just for streetcar routes like I mentioned in the original post. I have since used it to map the locations of just about every notable structure that could potentially be included in the scenes of McKeesport, Terminal and West End This was much easier to do after I obtained a PDF copy of the 1949 edition of Polk’s Pittsburgh City Directory.

Notable 1949 McKeesport buildings in blue.

Side-note: I feel at some point I may change the name of the Terminal scene to Pittsburgh. I’ve called it Terminal because the scenes of West End and South Side are also in Pittsburgh. Now I think it makes more sense to call it Pittsburgh since that’s what the railroad called it, despite having multiple …

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Location & Time Period

Posted Oct 09, 2019

For the past couple of years, I’ve had it in my mind that I’d eventually choose a location, time period and prototype railroads to model after doing more research. About a year ago, I narrowed down my options to the Northeastern US or Pacific Northwest, during the steam or transition eras. I thought I’d take longer to decide, but when I look back at my intermittent research over the past two years, I realize I’ve only really been interested in the railroads of southwestern Pennsylvania in the 1930s through the 1950s, particularly the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and the Pennsylvania Railroad, so I think I’m going to consider it a settled matter now. Those roads have always been favorites of mine, and I grew up in that region, decades later.

The location will certainly be southwestern Pennsylvania, likely including Pittsburgh, and the main railroad modeled will be the B&O. If possible, I’d also like to incorporate a PRR line, and certainly the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad’s line through Pittsburgh, since the B&O’s named trains used the P&LE’s station in Pittsburgh.

Some existing models I’d like to use have narrowed down the previously-mentioned 30 year span to just ten. …

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