Amoskeag Northern - Conrail Portland (PRO&C) Line Engineering Thread

[M.C. Fujiwara]

Don't forget "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain":

"Well, we'll all go out to meter when she comes..."

Hey, give an a$$hat an inch...
 

[DKS]

[packers#1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter

Kinda my whole point; the first month or so of my engineering class last semester was on unit conversions and basic formulas; I wasn't saying they weren't important, more that if we used the metric system this wouldn't have lasted a whole month

[Ian MacMillan]

Ian, are those strips the brighter 5050 LEDs?

Do they take something more than a 12V wall pack to power them?

Yes they are. They are just wired up temporarily to an auto jump pack and are plenty bright on that. When everything is all said and done they will be wired to old PC power supplies.


[/unthreaddrift]

[S Class]

/rethread drift

Mallory: Metric, who uses the metric?
Lana: every single country on the planet except for us, Liberia and Burma.
Archer: Wow, Really?
Lana: Yep
Archer: Because you never think of those other two as having their s*** together

[Ian MacMillan]

Quite a bit accomplished this weekend on the layout. I picked up 3 sheets of 4x8x2" foam so I could start banging out mountains on the east end of the layout in West Ossipee. Photos to be added shortly.

Most of the mountains are working out to be around 200'  while the impressive Mt. Whittier Ski Area (actually on Mt. Nickerson..but whos counting) is turning out to be about 270-290' tall. As I started building the northern edge of the Ossipee Range along Route 25 I came to the frustrating conclusion that Mt. Whittier would not be as large and as much of a landmark due to the depth of the space between the backdrop and Route 25. Using some modelers license I moved it to the orther side of 16. In the terms of proper geography, Mt. Whittier would be located just to the right of the Route 25 river crossing in West Ossipee on the the trackmap, and in the Gmap.



I am also an abandoned ski area nut, and Mt. Whittier has always been one of my favorite mountains to research. One of the things that I wanted to have on the modeled mountain was either the abandoned tramline or the radio tower on the top as it is a dominant and quickly identifiable feature of the area.

Photos from New England Lost Ski Area Project





Due to the space restrictions the modeled mountain that I was able to fit in the area did not give me the height I wanted. I decided to use some modelers license and flip the mountain over to the other side of Route 16, so that it is now the mountain that covers the helix to staging.  This has allowed me to get the height that I have wanted and still keep features such as the Rt.16 and Rt. 25 interchange in the location I want it. It also allows me to still model the tramway base lodge, which can be seen here as the large building in the upper left.



Plans are to model the area as abandoned with the trails having somewhat grown in, or being rebuilt and the trails being cleared out. I have cut a few slopes out of Masonite and have them mocked up and ready to fill the scenery in. I am looking at using some of Bob's NH/PRR/NEC pull off towers to use as the lift towers for the tramway.
.
Two CV bridges have also arrived, so that I can start building the West Ossipee crossing of the RR over the Bearcamp River. I plan on building it as a double track, reduced to single, using an example from the CV website, and also a bridge in Nashua on Guilford's NH Main Line that was once 3 tracks and is now 1.

[DKS]

This is going to be epic. We used to have a tradition of riding the lift up Mt. Whittier at least once a year (if not more). Makes perfect sense to flip it around so it's in the balloon.

[murf10346]

Have driven by that area many times to different employers. A beautiful area to model. There are a lot
of different possible industries to model.

[Ian MacMillan]

Alrighty. Here are the photos from this weekend so far.

[peteski]

Wow!  You don't mess around, do you?  You're very serious about building this layout! 
Nice progress!

[Ian MacMillan]

I work 4 on 3 off. Kids are at their mothers on Sat/Sun, and all 3 are in grade school. So I have lots of time! Well until kid 4 shows up in a few weeks.

[davefoxx]

Ian,

Why the Masonite for the slopes?  When you go to put foliage on the mountain, it's going to be a real pain in the butt to plant even a small tree in the Masonite (you wrote that the trails would be slightly overgrown).  I would just carve the slopes into the foam.  But, then I admit that I love the smell of foam carving in the morning.

DFF

[Greyryder]

Ian,

Why the Masonite for the slopes?  When you go to put foliage on the mountain, it's going to be a real pain in the butt to plant even a small tree in the Masonite (you wrote that the trails would be slightly overgrown).  I would just carve the slopes into the foam.  But, then I admit that I love the smell of foam carving in the morning.

DFF

Does it smell like victory?

[Ian MacMillan]

Ian,

Why the Masonite for the slopes?  When you go to put foliage on the mountain, it's going to be a real pain in the butt to plant even a small tree in the Masonite (you wrote that the trails would be slightly overgrown).  I would just carve the slopes into the foam.  But, then I admit that I love the smell of foam carving in the morning.

DFF

I used masonite to get me the slope shape that I want, and also so that I could wet it down and form the pitch that I want. It also helps me to keep the inside of the mountain hollow so that I can go in there and rescue a train if needed. With carving the foam I had concerns on how deep I would need to go and reduce stability of the mountain.

At the time frame of the layout the area would have been closed for about 9 years (The area was reportedly closed in 1985, but saw some operation until 1987.) Most of the trails have filled in with White/Silver Birch and Maple, which for a ~9 year old tree would be about 15-20 feet tall. Since the height would be somewhat shorter than the older trees , they really wont be "planted" but anchored in ground goop since they really wont have a trunk structure that needs planting to remain upright.

Some quick cell grab shots during work today.



Tramway mid station. Whittier had 2 base lodges. Main lodge, Main entrance on Newman Drew Rd.  and Tramway lodge on Route 16. The tramway lodge did not have any ski trail access to it, and you had to get off/on at mid station to access the slopes or stay on an continue to the top. This helped the area grab the tourist traffic off of Route 16 and not need them to actually ski. Like DKS.

You can see that someone with skis has been here in the last few days. It doesn't show up well in the cell shots but someone has been carving some very nice turns a few times from the top of the mountain to here on the recently cut out lift line. NH COOP Electric has an easement along the lift line to the left to power the NHSP Troop E and Verizon tower at the top of the mountain and this past summer Asplundh cut back the trees.





Bottom of the main trails. Main base lodge is just to my right.


Found some other photos from the Town offices. Sometimes I think I should just tear out the layout and model an HO scale ski area in the whole layout room. 

[Ian MacMillan]

A little 1:1 modeling in the layout room today. The workshop area of the layout room is a mock up of your typical New England textile mill and today I was able to get the "upper floor" floor planks installed. I also started mocking up the 7x7 beams which "support" the upper floor. Half brick will be on the walls.