Boston & Albany Railroad HO Scale Layout Tour with Chuck Oraftik New York Central

[Music] [Music] hello everyone i'm chuck araftic and welcome to my basement today i'd like to show you what's occupied my spare time for the past 20 years and probably for the next 20 also with my layout i've been trying to capture the excitement and romance of robust class 1 american railroading in the mid 20th century and perhaps also capture some childhood memories here in my basement it's always a sunny june day circa 1951 and i'm a little kid once again down here in my boston albany division of the new york central system traffic is heavy in the early 50s and both passenger and freight and it's all running along the bna's two-track mainline as you may know the the boston albany was uh acquired then absorbed into new york central system around 1900 and the boston community was outraged you can imagine if the yankees had bought the red sox well to sort of smooth things over the new york central wisely decided that they were going to maintain the dna lettering and logos on all motive power equipment overpasses timetables menus and so on until after world war ii by the 1948-51 era that i modeled the signs and logos were fading slate new york central diesels were arriving and by the end of world war ii i think the fuhrer had died down i modeled the western portion of the boston and albany from albany to the berkshire hills when i started i was striving to try to get as historically accurate a representation of that air as i could but as time went by i realized that i needed to fudge a few things some scenery some mode of power and i can talk about that as we go along 20 years ago when i started this i began by preparing the basement i renovated everything code compliant electrical work heating carpeting and so on and the one of the first things i did was create as you can see here these valances and faces in dark green i wanted the layout to appear as if it were sort of a long continuous diorama rather than just a tabletop kind of railroad at this point i've pretty much completed phase one and i'll be starting on phase two later this year phase one consists of this room here which we're going to be looking at up to this point phase 2 will be the adjoining room which will almost double the size of of the layout some of the more detailed points i probably should make is the minimum radius is about 29 inches in a couple of places the maximum grades about 2.1 percent the layout is about on the average about 54 inches high goes from about 54 to about 60 and pretty much eye level if i had to do something over again and probably lower that just a little bit i find that my wife and other people are a lot shorter than i am so it they have a little trouble that's why i have a number of stools sitting around the layout one thing i think is important here to point out is i've used a modular approach even though i've been working this for 20 years i always assumed that maybe someday we might want to move or for whatever reason not scrap the layout i'm really surprised when i see great masterpieces great layouts after a lifetime working on them just basically unceremoniously just destroyed so i've built this into five major modules each about two foot eight by about 20 feet and they're self-supporting including the scenery and they can be detached easily legs removed detached from the walls and lifted as a unit and actually moved out through the window that leads out to my driveway here probably would take about four or five people on each module because they are a little bit heavy but i did decide i'd like to do that on the other hand we're probably not going to move and it's going to be here for a long time to come hopefully i'll be here for a long time to come so um that is sort of faded but i like the idea though that it might might not have to be destroyed and i've got this set up such that i could do a lot of operations in the lab but what i really enjoy more is just running trains and building scenery and creating my own separate world down here and the part i think i like the least elect is electrical work if you look under my layout well i won't want you to look under my layout it's just a mess down there the electrical work um if anyone wants to help me with build phase 2 the electrical work i'm more than happy to have you join me the track is all prefabbed shinohara walthers switches and uh tortoise controls code 83 on the mainline and it's code 70 in all the yards and sightings this is actually my first finished layout i've started a couple of layouts before once when i was 12 once when i was in my 30s i didn't get very far on either one so this is basically my first real layout and it's taken me this long to get this far because i've been learning on the job so having said that why don't we get started with a visual overview and tour of the layout we'll begin our journey here in chatham [Applause] today chatham remains a charming and busy village but at mid-20th century it was bustling with the sights sounds and smells of major railroad activity the rutland roads corkscrew division terminated here where they forwarded vermont's milk and dairy shipments to new york city by the new york central's harlem division which also terminated here at chatham in addition several passenger trains arrived via the harlem division on the way to north adams pittsfield and other berkshire destinations both the rutland and harlem division had modestly sized yard and engine facilities in chatham which i planned to develop in phase two built in the 1890s chatham union station is on the list of national historic buildings and currently serves as headquarters for a local bank my scratch built model is about 90 percent full size and tower 65 is directly across from the station i have photos from 1930s that show these prototypes as an architect i really enjoy creating urban scenery and chatham as one of my favorite subjects i used a variety of kit bash structures to produce a reasonably close representation of main street chatham the 19th century firehouse bell tower remains to this day a prominent chatham landmark the parting chatham the bna follows stony kill creek through farm and dairy country until reaching the little village of canaan new york [Music] by mid-20th century canaan was merely a flag stop for almost all passenger trains but in the early 1900's canid warranted this handsome stone station it was one of more than 20 that the bna had designed by nationally renowned architect h.h richardson and his followers [Applause] tunnels were almost non-existent on the famed water level route these two state-line tunnels were the only ones on the boston albany the first bore was completed in the 1840s and then supplemented a few decades later by a larger second border which today handles double stack trains until world war ii the small shack at the entrance provided shelter for a tunnel inspector who checked for fallen rocks and ice problems during the winter months these tunnels were favorite locations for b a photographers leaving the stateline tunnels we soon arrive at the new york massachusetts state line a minor b a flag and water stop state line is where the new york new haven and hartford railroad exchanged freight from their danbury branch with new york central [Music] you can see the new haven line disappearing into the trees behind the station where i have a two-track staging area the state line dairyman's cooperative and ice house complete the scene [Applause] most of the scenery on the western portion of the of the boston and albany is pleasant rolling farmland and gentle hills but it's not all that spectacular or what comes to mind when remembering the bna so i decided to take an artist architect's license and fudge the scenery just east of state line and just west of pittsfield was a sort of mini summit well i've taken the liberty of substituting the gorgeous scenery near washington summit east of pittsfield with the unremarkable pittsfield summit just west in this thing we're looking at the very photogenic location of the twin ledges that occurred near washington summit you may have noticed the dense hardwood forest cover that blankets the berkshires well so far i've completed about 4 000 quote super trees it's a tedious process however i do it in many small batches over an extended time period and with a tv nearby but i do think the results are worth the effort a key aspect of my decision to incorporate the scenery near washington summit is the inclusion of the westfield river this river is a prominent feature of western massachusetts and is integral to dna imagery the dna mainline crosses it multiple times often on classic stone ridges and viaducts which were already a century old by mid 20th century so so like cane in new york richmond massachusetts was just a flag stop for most of its existence with almost no 20th century images to go by i did my best trying to represent this little town approaching pittsfield we come across one of the b a smaller customers the interlocking tower just beyond superior building supply marks where the new haven's passenger line joins the bna into pittsfield this new haven line also hosted year-round service for new yorkers yearning for escapes to the berkshires in the background here we see a small representation of the gigantic general electric pittsfield complex these two buildings and signings are just a minor stand-ins for the mile-long complex that was a major source of dna traffic and revenue in the foreground we see modest engine servicing facilities and a small yard being they had no such facilities in pittsfield but the new haven did well i just couldn't help myself i thought they looked great and would be perfect way to display mode of power so i decided that on my version of the vna these facilities actually belonged to the bna just one of many compromises with reality that are happy to admit to welcome to downtown pittsfield massachusetts here you can see more of my love for urban scenery this is a view down north street and all the buildings shown are very close approximations of those in the early 1950s today some such as the palace theater are gone but many others live on england brothers department store is gone but has been replaced with an office building of almost identical size height and dimensions sadly the b a freight house and pittsfield's spectacular union station are also gone but they live on in my basement the bna freight house is modeled from both atlas and design preservation components combined with some scratch building pittsfield union station was created by a major kit bash of two walthers power plants combined with dollhouse components and some scratch building i was delighted when a visiting fellow modeler from pittsfield reminisced about walking the streets i've recreated and pointing out where he learned to drive a stick shift almost all my structures have lighting and several have interiors as i mentioned earlier i've strayed from total dna historical accuracy but after all what new york central fan could resist running a few niagara's of streamlined hudson's even though they never ran a mile in the bna you may have noticed this previously and you can also see it again here in pittsfield the engine you just saw a pull up to the water column here in pittsfield is probably my favorite it's a beautiful division point model it's the classic boston albany berkshire first created in the 1920s this is 1442. has a hudson tender with it which it was equipped with uh in the late 40s as some of the hudson's tenders were replaced by pt tenders on new york central they were moved down to the dna i have several bna beautiful models such as this um j2c hudson here with the extra large sand dome for trying to conquer the berkshire hills and their grades even though you probably saw a lot of niagara movement today i love niagara's too and even though they never set one wheel on the bna it's my my railroad and i love them and i run them as well as i run some streamlined hudsons i even have the empire state express running along here every now and then anyway as i worked on this more and more the bna i started to realize that i love everything new york central and the b a is wonderful but who wouldn't want to have these types of engines running on your layout whether it's b a or new york central so that's one of the compromises i'm happy to admit to and feel really good [Music] about [Applause] um um [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] well we've reached the end of our tour today of the boston albany i've had a ball building this and i've enjoyed sharing it with you and thank you for watching [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

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Views: 218,229

Keywords: HO Scale Layout Tour, Boston & Albany Railroad, New York Central, NYC, Model railroad, train layout tour, train layouts, layout tour, model trains, ho scale, model railroad layout, ho scale train layouts, model train layout, ho scale layout, ho scale trains, model railroader, model railway layouts, model railroading, model railway, ho scale model railroad layouts, train layout, model railway layout, ho trains, model train, model railroad scenery, Model trains in action

Id: HRyzoMuVJAc

Length: 20min 15sec (1215 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 14 2021