E&N Store Street Free-mo-N modules

[craigolio1]

I promised my self I wouldn’t expand my railroad until I finished the two sections that go around my room, that I’m working on now.

However…. I’m so tired of trees in the Malahat, even though I need several hundred more. The Lake Cowichan side is stalled because I need a bunch of 3d printed windows for the houses and I haven’t sorted that out yet.

Well, I came back from Rail Expo 2026 in Windsor very inspired and got thoughts in my head again about building more modules. Add that my wife and I visited the subject matter of this post in October so I could take measurements… AND I’ve acquired enough materials over the years, including some salvaged bench work…. That I’ve been able to accomplish what you see here for only $45!

And so we begin, the Store Street build.

Located in Victoria BC, and part of the CP Rail’s Esquimalt and Nanaimo Rly (E&N) Division, Store St was mile 0-0.8 on the Victoria Subdivision. They had up to 11 customers they served here using street trackage.









I’m not sure when the E&N built the Store St trackage. There are some pretty old pictures of a couple of the industries. So I’m thinking early 1900s?

Most of the decent photo documentation started in the 50’s.

Locomotives were based out of the Russels Roundhouse in Victoria.





Trains came down Island from the barge slip in Nanaimo.



 And were broken up in Victoria for distribution to customers. Loads destined for Store St were assembled into small 2-5 car trains.



Store St was served by a variety of small switchers.

The first diesel that ran there was a small CLC loco. It was a DTC D2 diesel hydraulic. A very cool loco. Had separate power plants for each truck and the wheels were connected by side rods on each truck. This would be a very fun model to attempt at some point.



Later Baldwin switchers were used.

DS 4-4-1000.

This one might be 7069 which was in the region at this time.



Then Alcos

S-2



S-11



And at the end, EMD

SW-8



SW-1200RS



Really any small 4 axle switcher was right at home.

I believe they did try to run a Baldwin DRS 4-4-1000 on Store St at one time but this was a mistake and was not repeated.

As you approached Store St, trains crossed the Johnson St bridge, known to residents simply as “the blue bridges”.

They were a pair of spectacular lift bridges. One for trains and one for vehicles. I have drawings for it and ideally would like to build it to scale.  In order to make this bridge fit my room, I need to flip it to the other side of the road. Trains will cross the bridge and make a right onto Store St instead of a left.





The bridges were originally black.



Both sides of the bridge were protected by signals. The only target signals on the railway, so finally I get to build some!






After crossing the bridge, trains reached the VIA rail station.



This station was built in 1985. The original terminus of the railway was also at this location. But had several tracks, as seen in the map below. Back in the day the E&N ran several passenger trains a day including mail and express. The trains were split into two and parked on stub end tracks here. Some time in the 60’s(?) the station was moved closer to the round house and this area of Victoria was reconfigured for better roads. Then, with trains only ever being two RDCs, running only once a day largely as a tourist operation, the station was moved back to this location in 1985.







Here’s a view some time after 1992 when the rails had been lifted from Store St.





I’ve decided to mostly model one side of the street which will allow the operator the best view of the operations and scenery, instead of having to look down into a canyon of buildings. Do this eliminates the two single car customers and the yard, and only one of the single car customers was served in my era.

That said I’ve also flipped one customer to the other side of the street cause why not, and am modelling a couple that were not served in my era, because they are cool, and also because why not.

So on that note, a tour of the customers I’ll be modelling.

A wholesale agricultural supplier:

 C on the map, was originally called Scott and Peden and later Buckerfields. The cars were pushed in through a roll up door. On the perpendicular street side were several truck bays and so I think the rail cars and trucks used the same loading dock? It likely took one car at a time. This customer had to be flipped to the other side of the street. Doing this made it so I could model the customer, but also, because I flipped the orientation of the Johnson St bridge to the other side of the street, it actually makes sense and flows. Trains come of the bridge and make a right onto Store St, and this customer is across the street as per the prototype. So it works.

Here’s an early days photo. It has the giant roll up door which I can only assume was for rail cars. So at the very least, this business was rail served in the early steam era.




Here’s a shot from the mid 80’s.




A meat wholesaler…

Swift Meats, O on the map, took one reefer at a time.

Seen here looking at the track that served it turning to the right. The track facing you coming the opposite way was the lead for Kelly Douglas described below.






Here’s a couple of great shots from the 70’s(?)





A good front view while tracks were being removed.



Here’s an arial view





A dry goods wholesaler. Kelly Douglas , D on the map, took two box cars at a time. It’s the white building seen to the right here, tracks removed. The trucks use to be on a raised grade at the top of what is now that covered over area on the right.



Here is an arial view of their massive warehouse.



And a front arial view where you can see two box cars spotted in front.




A ship scrapping operation / recycler / sells everything store. Capitol Iron, H on the map. This business had a surplus store with a store front on Store St which is now a historical site and protected. In the early days they scrapped ships, cars, and anything metal. Recycled items were sold in the store along with other surplus. The store was there for almost 100 years and was the highlight of many people’s Saturday mornings, to head down to Capitol Iron and see what they had this week. It was served by a single track accessible by a switch back off of Store St. They loaded scrap metal into gondolas with a self propelled rail crane. The rail operation was gone in my era but I’m still modelling it because it’s awesome… and why not?

In this picture you can see the store front. The photographer is standing on the lead to the yard.



The scrapping operation doesn’t have any close up photos that I could find but I did find some arial photography.


An asphalt plant, Island Asphalt, P on the map, I don’t have any info on what cars served it but I’m thinking hoppers.

Seen here in the late 80’s, no longer having rail access.



Here it is in the 60’s with rail access.





A propane transload, ICG (Intercity Gas), G on the map, took up to two LPG cars at a time.



Pushing a single propane car down grade in the 80’s.




Here’s an arial view.




A yard with a team track, and freight shed, top right on the map. At this time I’m not modelling the yard as it would jut too far out into the basement and that space is in use for my son’s karate training!!  I may do a two track drop leaf if I need to for switching.

It was a busy place in the 50’s to the early 80’s





A train pulling out of the yard onto store street.



Here’s a decent arial view.





Amd of course the passenger  station.





In my era which is the mid to late 80’s, the E&N only served a few customers. The only regular one was ICG gas. When the Island pipe line was installed, this final customer went away and the Store St trackage sat in disuse.

By the early 90’s the area had been taken over by trendy businesses and condos, a cyclist was surprised by the tracks that had been there for 80 years, wiped out on the tracks on a wet day, yelled at a council meeting, and the tracks were pulled up.

But they will live on in my basement!! 

The next post will cover my previous attempts and current construction progress.

Craig.



 

[basementcalling]

What a cool prototype location.

[craigolio1]

This part about my youth and prior attempts is  super boring with no pictures. Scroll down to the bold heading that says “Fast forward to October” for current progress of you aren’t interested in my ramblings.

If you like ramblings, well read on my friends!

 I’ve been wanting to model Store St ever since I was a kid. We would go to Victoria to visit my Grand Parents and every time we were down town I would ask my parents to walk me down the street so I could see where the tracks go. We never did as were always on some kind of a mission that did not include walking my elderly Grand Parents through an industrial district. The nerve!! 

Anyway one time, in a mall, someone had a miniature architectural model of the downtown area and it included Store St and the Albion yard so for the first time I figured I had a handle on what these track were for!  Trolley cars!!!  Knowing nothing about railroading when I was young, (Dad said he was pretty sure they weren’t street cars, and that it was part of the E&N but what did he know?!  Fool).  Dad and I set about building a circle of track in the middle of my 4x8 HO layout, which of course ran across a blue bridge, and we found a pair of Bachmann “Downtown” trolley cars. All set!! It was spectacular.

When the internet was born I was finally able to research what it was all about. Street running!!  This was way better than Trolleys. Oh yeah… and Dad was right. Actually he was right about a lot of things. But I digress.

Fast forward to 2004 ish and I’m finally prepping my basement for a railroad. I needed to build Store St now. Of course I had no finished basement, no railroad, and had never laid track…. So why not start with super difficult track?! 

I wanted to be as prototypical as possible and researched girder rail. I happened upon

proto87stores.com.

He’s now closed up shop but at the time he was making beautiful turn out kits and girder rail. I contacted him and he was in the process of developing girder rail turn outs and crossings too. Albeit all for HO.

We discussed my project and he thought it could work for N and I promptly ordered a whole pile of rails and bits.

I decided since I didn’t have a railroad yet, I would assemble all of the important parts on styrene panels and make sort of modular. Then I could place them onto the railroad when done.

The concept worked for the straight parts and simple curves, but I needed to customize a lot of the rails to match the details on Store St. This didn’t go so well for the curved crossover at Swift St., for example. I tried to cut up bits of rail and grind them to intersect. But just made a mess of it. Ultimately the girder rail failed and I shelved the project.

Fast forward to October 2025…

My wife and I went to Victoria to visit some family. We spent an afternoon tooling around in Victoria and finally, with no old people in tow to hold me back…. After 40 years of waiting…. I got to walk down Store St!   

Even though she has no use for model trains, my wife loves my enthusiasm and is always game for my adventures.  We walked down Store St, me putting one foot infront of the other, counting steps between each of the streets. How far apart they are, how wide they are etc etc. I also noted that there was a grade on Store St that I hadn’t noticed before. I took a bunch of pictures and made my notes.

At home I made a simple scale drawing of Store St.



I’m pretty simple when it comes to designing and I like to see he actual size of things.

So I got out a roll of paper and drew it all in full size 1:160. To see what I’m dealing with.

Here it is, to scale from Johnson St to the Albion yard. Beyond that I compressed it. I know you can’t really see much of the track drawings but it’s there.





A couple of years ago I salvaged an N scale model railroad that was being torn down. From this I have bench work in various shapes and I also salvaged a few dozen Peco C80 turnouts in a variety of sizes, both insulated and electro frog, including Peco turnout motors. From previous unrealized plans, I have a large inventory of Peco and Atlas C80 flex track.

So for this project I decided to use C80 flex track and Peco Electro-Frog turnouts in the portions that will be buried in the streets. The track and turnouts are so robust, in confident that they not need to be replaced. I’ll control them with the electric motors.

The tracks from the  Johnson Street bridge to Store St will be C55 so that this end of the module set with the station is Free-mo-N compliant.

All tracks at the far end of the set, after the tracks leave Store St to serve Island Asphalt, ICG Gas and Captiol Iron, will be C40 flex and hand laid turnouts. I don’t care about compliance at this end as the entrance to Store St is a 9” radius and so anything past that is run at your own risk.

When I did the drawings I used the Peco turnouts as a guide for track layout.



After measuring what I had drawn I figure I could do it as a giant L. The main Store St leg being made of a 4ft and 6ft length, and the short leg for the Johnson St bridge being 4ft.

The bench work sections were 24” wide and I was initially thinking I’d narrow them to 15”




It was then that I decided not to do the yard and to flip the Johnson St bridge to the other side of Store St.




I decided to do 18” wide, so I got out the tools and started ripping it up.

I also needed to figure out what my grades were going to be.

As you leave Johnson St and make the turn on to Store St, the road goes slightly up hill to just before Swift St. I didn’t try to estimate this because it’s very gradual.

You can see it here in this pic.



And from the other direction here.



However, once you pass Swift St the road levels out a bit up to Herald, and then as you pass Kelly Douglas, it goes down hill at a decent grade.

From my measurements the Kelly Douglas spur was about 200ft long and at the steps at the end of the building, was about 10ft higher than the street. The grade carries on after this but these numbers gave me a place to start.

Here we are looking at the top of the grade at Herald St  beside Kelly Douglas.



Here’s the corner of the former Kelly Douglas building. You can see the road beginning to descend to the right.



Here’s looking up grade, with Kelly Douglas on the right.



My guesstimate indicated that it’s about a 5% grade so I set to work testing a Life-Like SW900 on a grade with trains of up to 6 cars.





After doing a variety of tests I found that it could pull a 6 car train up 5% no problem.  But this all blew up in my face later. Stay tuned for that. Haha.

I had salvaged a bunch of 1/8” and 1/4” plywood and strips of 3/4” plywood from @cnr when he moved. So I got work making road bed and end plates.

For the road bed I simple laid out strips or scraps of  1/8” plywood under my drawings and transferred them.



This mess is me realizing I originally drew the track arrangement to fit 24” wide and the. Adjusting it to fit 18”



Based on a 5% grade, I cut various risers to support the roadbed at various places, and set those aside.

Moving onto the end plates, these three modules would be permanently mated, so just the Free-mo-N end of Johnson St needed a flat compliant end.

The Johnson St Joint to Store Street, and the Propane/ Captiol Iron joint to Store Street need to be perfectly aligned everytime.

I came up with the idea of gluing 1/8” plywood strips to the ends so that they stick together like legos. Top and bottom strips ensure vertical alignment and one vertical strip in the middle ensure horizontal alignment.



The end plates had their alignment strips good on and then I screwed them together. I then ran the top edge through the table saw, taking off just a fraction of wood to true them up.



As I was setting up the modules on my basement floor, shimming to level, I noticed the ICG Propane/Capitol Iron module had developed a twist. Maybe cause it sat in the garage for two years and was now inside? Who knows. The other two were fine.


I discussed the issue with @CNR5529 and we decided to engineer it. I used threaded rod and nuts to create diagonal truss rods, the thinking being that it would pull the corners in and eliminate the twist.






After some experimentation it helped a bit but didn’t eliminate the issue. So back to the table saw with another piece of bench work and it’s been good for a week or so now.

Bench work woes sorted, I went back to the endplates which were now dried for about a week. The Johnson St ends went in perfectly and the alignment scheme worked like a charm. The sections are held together with 3.5” bolts in T nuts, are solid and perfectly aligned.

At the Capitol Iron end I left the end plates off as the tracks will cross the joint at one grade for the main, and another for the sketch back to Capitol Iron so I opted to leave that until I had the road bed in so I could cut the end plates to the perfect height to support the road bed at the joint.

And so it was onto road bed. I got out all of my blocks I had cut and set about shimming and screwing and getting everything perfectly aligned. Under the main grade on Store St I glued a piece of 1” thick lumber for the length of the 200 ft grade (about 15” long) so that it would not be a big S shape after bending. This created nice easements about 3” long at the top and bottom.



I also needed the road portion of Swift St to bend gently downward. To accomplish this I set my table saw blade to half the depth of the wood and cut kerfs in the bottom of it over the distance I wanted it to bend.



This made it nice a floppy so once screwed in it made the soft transition to a grade I was after.




The exact position of the propane transfer was unknown so I left its road bed much wider. It will be trimmed later.

Swift, Kelly Douglas, ICG Propane, Island Asphalt and Capitol Iron are all 1/4” plywood plates that are on shims/blocks set at the correct height for the grades that run into them.








With all of this sorted out I got to gluing the blocks / shims down. This was easy as they are screwed to the road bed. I just flipped them over. Put some PL adhesive on the bottoms and then flipped them again and pressed them into place.  I placed weights on everything and screwed some things down, and let it sit for a week.


With road bed in and dry I could finally do the end plate between Store St and the Propane/ Capitol Iron Module. I measure the height of the road bed for each leg, transferred those to the end plate, and cut the pair on my table saw.

I then covered both sides in PL, inserted them in the gap, fine tuned the placement to hold the road beds at just the right height, and clamped the modules together to bring them in tight using blocks I had screws to the side.







They sat drying for a week and the time came to separate them!  I cut through the road bed at all of the joints with a razor saw. Johnson came apart no problem. The other end not so much. I had forgotten to take the screws out holding the end plates together from when I did the alignment strips. So now my modules were inaccessibly screwed together! 

So I ripped them apart. No big deal. They are over built and the plates were held with dry wall screws. Problem solved.

Modules built and road bed in place it was time to get some track on and do some testing!!! 

I nailed on a few lengths of C80 flex and connected a power pack.

Trains handled the grade in front of Kelly Douglas no problem…. But I was only able to pull 4 car trains. And it was slipping on the S curve down to the Propane spur and Capitol Iron. In my tests I used a shorter length grade and didn’t account for the S curve on the grade with a tight radius. D’oh. This is where it blew up in my face.

There were a couple of other issues as well. The joint at Store/Propane actually had a dip in its so bad I needed a weight to get the track to sit down in it.




So combined with tight radius, grade, and S curve, it was a bit roller coaster like and causing my longer LPG cars to derail.

No matter. We will succeed.

At this point my back was tired of working on the floor and it was time to get these on the wall.

I prepped my chosen spot and screwed some heavy duty shelf brackets to the wall. The track is suppose to be 60”. It’s actually 59 1/4” - when I measured I used the side of a module forgetting I had 2” of foam on the Johnson St module so initially the modules were 2” too high. Moving the shelf brackets down two positions got me to 59 1/4”. No matter for now. If I ever connect this set to the railroad in the other room I’ll raise the brackets. For now it’s on the wall!! 



This has been very beneficial as I can eye ball the road bed at eye level and I’ve identified a few issues. I mentioned the dip at the joint. There’s also one part of the propane grade that’s much steeper than the rest. You can see the space under the straight edge here.



I got out the Multimax tool and cut the road bed away at the Store/Propane joint. It immediately relaxed into a more neutral state.




 A small shim  under that took care of the dip.



 A shim under one support block took care of that other grade variation.


Now I can run 4 cars with no derailing or slipping from the Propane spur at the bottom all the way up to Johnson St.

I’m planning to do more adjustments to the over all grade. I’d like to get it to 5 cars. Also @CNR5529 is sending a Bachmann 44 and 70 toner home with my son from Ottawa, so I can test those. I’d really like to know what they can pull and if I have to I’ll adjust the grades so they can reliably pull a train. It might have to be shorter. Maybe 3 or even 2 cars. But that will make oops fun. I’ll make a timetable for operators to follow.

For now I’m really pleased with where it’s at. It’s turning into a real thing and I am actually running trains on Store St now.

More to follow once the locos arrive.

[craigolio1]

I had a bit more time to play this week.

Initially when I did my testing, I settled on a 9” radius because my LL SW-900 and all of the cars with truck mounted couplers handled it no problem.

Well…. As I was testing other cars, I got out my Prairie Shadows gondolas. They have body mounted couplers and a prototypical ride height. They did NOT like the 9” radius and they need to make it all the way to the end to serve Capitol Iron. Some experimenting found that they would do an 11” radius no problem so I set to work relaying the curves. Now with 11” at the entrance from Johnson St bridge and at the end by the propane spur, I can run four gondolas being pushed or pulled.



The SW-900 can push three up the gear there so more grade work needs to be done.

I also need a Peco turnout to fit in front of the Asphalt Plant, so I tested what the radius of a medium radius turn out is. It’s 18”. I relaid that curve to be 18” and it eased into the 11” as it decends to the switchback.





I’ve also been reconsidering the Proto87 Stored girder rail. The street running is the whole point of this build and photos will showcase it, especially on the grade down Store St beside Kelly Douglas. I believe I believe I have enough turnout points to do the four street turnouts. And I definitely have enough straight girder rail. The curves will be too tight and the frogs the wrong angle but I can live with using regular rail there. I think it would look really good to have girder rail down the main straight section on the street so I’m going to play with that a bit too.

[CNR5529]

From rainforest to concrete jungle... I dig it. Cant wait to see you knock this one out of the park!!

You HAVE to make those blue bridges actually tilt up and down. Mainly so the interlocking signals serve a purpose of couse.

[craigolio1]

From rainforest to concrete jungle... I dig it. Cant wait to see you knock this one out of the park!!

You HAVE to make those blue bridges actually tilt up and down. Mainly so the interlocking signals serve a purpose of couse.

I think I agree with you about the bridges. I’m just not sure how I want to tackle them. It looks like I don’t have the space to do them full size. They would be about 28.25” long. Since I have to compress I’m not sure I’ll bother doing an accurate model of them. I have a bunch of Kato truss bridges and Micro Engineering parts. I might see if I can do something with a kitbash. As long as they are a Bascule lift bridge and they are blue, they’ll be instantly recognizable.

I did find a very close looking double track Bascule Lift bridge on Thingverse. The designer wasn’t able to tell me how long it is and it’s not available in a single track. But it looks quite nice.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6916828

Still thinking on this one.

[John]

I downloaded the "mock up" file from Thingiverse .. Loading into a slicer, it shows as 460mm long ..  about 260 N scale feet ..   That would be quite the project .. I think FDM might be a good medium with some of the detail parts in resin ..  Either way, its going to take some time

[BCR 570]

A fascinating prototype which is just begging to be modelled.  I have seen photos of other street running locations but this one excels for its concentration of rail-served industries in such a small area, and variety of cars including boxcars, refrigerator cars, gondolas and tank cars, all served by a fabulous bridge.

I walked the Store Street branch in the late 1980s or early 1990s and still remember it well.  At one location there was a very sharp 180 degree curve through a parking lot then across a street and down into an industry.  We watched a red switcher squeal its way around the curve to get a boxcar down in that industry.

Steve Stark has modelled a portion of this on his E&N layout including a shortened Johnson Street bridge, and Michael is contemplating adding a Store Street scene to his E&N layout at some point.


Tim

[craigolio1]

I downloaded the "mock up" file from Thingiverse .. Loading into a slicer, it shows as 460mm long ..  about 260 N scale feet ..   That would be quite the project .. I think FDM might be a good medium with some of the detail parts in resin ..  Either way, its going to take some time

Thanks for doing that!  That’s bigger than I want to fit. I’m hoping to come up with something that fits in about 20”.

[craigolio1]

A fascinating prototype which is just begging to be modelled.  I have seen photos of other street running locations but this one excels for its concentration of rail-served industries in such a small area, and variety of cars including boxcars, refrigerator cars, gondolas and tank cars, all served by a fabulous bridge.

I walked the Store Street branch in the late 1980s or early 1990s and still remember it well.  At one location there was a very sharp 180 degree curve through a parking lot then across a street and down into an industry.  We watched a red switcher squeal its way around the curve to get a boxcar down in that industry.

Steve Stark has modelled a portion of this on his E&N layout including a shortened Johnson Street bridge, and Michael is contemplating adding a Store Street scene to his E&N layout at some point.


Tim

Yup. The customer you are talking about is the Garden City warehouse. Took one box car at a time. Unfortunately at this time I’m not modelling the Albion yard.

I’m really enjoying this project. I’ve wanted to start it for a long time.

[Van Horne]

This is truly an amazing post! Could be the start of a book! I've seen a lot of stuff on Store Street before, but nothing as thorough and as well organized as this.

Dave

[craigolio1]

This is truly an amazing post! Could be the start of a book! I've seen a lot of stuff on Store Street before, but nothing as thorough and as well organized as this.

Dave

Thanks Dave.

[craigolio1]

The industry that @BCR 570 is referring to is I on the map, off of Chatham St. I didn’t cover it as I’m not modelling it. It was called Garden City warehouse and along with ICG propane, was one of the final two customers on the line.

Here’s the entrance to the Albion yard and you can see the track carrying on to the right.




This is the view into the spur from Chatham St.



A box car spotted on it.



Here is a switcher buried in between the buildings.



And an arial view.




There’s really only one more customer to cover so I may as well.

E on the map is Dowell Moving and Storage. They took single box cars. I’ve never seen a ton of pictures of it and I’ve never seen any pictures of it being switched. I don’t know into what era it lasted, but I don’t think it was past the 70s.

Here’s the turnout on Store St



Here’s an arial view that shows the curved back of the building.



And another from the other side of Store St showing a box car spotted

[Angus Shops]

This is a great project! There’s tons of interest and plenty of modelling challenges.

[craigolio1]

This is a great project! There’s tons of interest and plenty of modelling challenges.

Agreed!!!  I’m very excited about it.