The building and operations on my Penn Central Hitop Secondary model railroad
Even before the sun rises above the surrounding hills, people are up, awake, and already tackling the day's work and chores. In the Kanawha valley itself, smells of breakfast cooking fills the air, along with fog and the smells of industries. Always a blue collar area, the people of the area have always been an industrious, hard-working people. Some scenes below of morning on the Hitop:
Photos below of another weathering project for a friend, this one a newer Tangent car:
For those new followers who also read or have read Model Railroader magazine, my original 4x8 layout was published in the March 2016 issue
As promised, here are photos of following the Spring Street turn once again. He came up from Dickinson engine light to pick up cars from the Nitro turn, plus two loaded boxcars at Armitage Furniture. The first task was to tie onto the transfer caboose that was in the service track, to tack this onto an outbound cut.
Next task was to pull all the outbound cars off the various tracks to put his train together. Outbound train consisted of an empty coal hopper from Kanawha brick, an empty bulkhead flat from 84 Lumber, an empty EEC boxcar, and finally, the two loads from Armitage.
I caught him pumping up his air before departing Spring Street, then caught him arriving back in Dickinson yard:
I thought I'd post another recommendation here this morning. If you're a fan of the Penn Central, consider joining this great society: https://www.pcrrhs.org/
Yesterday I got out early to chase trains around the Kanawha valley. After a breakfast of ham and eggs at Sam and Mickey's in West Charleston, I drove down to Nitro to catch the turn doing its work. I caught him switching all the industries around Campbell Manufacturing, 84 Lumber, Paxton-Sullivan salvage, and Allied Chemical. First though, a photo of Sam and Mickey's:
The following are photos of the Nitro turn going about its work. The turn had to pull two scrap gons out of Paxton-Sullivan, had to move an all door lumber boxcar out of 84 Lumber, so it could pull a coal hopper out of Kanawha brick and block, then spot a Railbox boxcar there, then re-spot the boxcar of lumber.
S2 9806 then tacked on an extra cabin being sent back up to Spring Street yard. I caught him leaving Nitro, then followed him up the valley to Spring St where he sorted his cars for the inbound Spring Street turn.
I'll cover the Spring Street turn next time.....
