White River Division - Under Construction

The B&M sand house is placed at a point I expect it to reside in Westboro, NH. The spur is partly in place as seen in this photo. I will be doing a posting about this structure shortly.

The Layout begins to take shape once again

During the last week I have been working on the White River Division slowly. I had thought in two good days (8am-8pm) I could get most of the yard completed. Well when I was originally building the layout in my 40's it was easy to put in those kind of hours. At 59 I find I can only stand at the work area's for maybe two or three hours a day before my back and legs give out. So work is going at a much kinder pace. Since I am retired it does not matter how long it takes....I hope. The following photos view what has been done to date....George Dutka

I began building the spur line to Westboro by cutting out plywood roadbed with about a 34 inch radius. Once I was happy with how it looks I began building the peninsula.

Westboro is now starting to take shape. The trackage will be all curved into this area that houses the engine service facilities,  just like on the prototype. I next planned the diamond area at the station. The peninsula is just short of 4 feet long and is 20 inches wide.

There will be three tracks in Westboro, two that are attached to the layout and one short length that as on the prototype ended at the sand tower. This will be my new program track. It actually is a piece of the old main line that I saved that still has the power wires attached...a bonus.

The diamond area of White River Jct. One can see the Westboro spur in place and the plywood base for the diamond track in its early stage.

The B&M trackage that heads over the diamond in White River Jct., Vermont is now in place. It actually is not powered....it was installed to locate the ball signal and station as it was on the prototype. I can also stage some trains for photo ops. This is the most recent photo of the area. I had to remove a portion of the area in front of the main line were the section house and building flats are located. I actually cut the face board through and installed a hinge so I could pull it in to a point were the layout is only two tracks wide. Doing this will give me much needed isle room once I put in a curve on the other side of the layout taking trains into the next room. I want it to have a good radius curve. I will take some better photos of this area once I get further along.