Thursday Night found about a dozen the Pines & Prairies guys visiting the
CB&Q's Minnetonka Beach division. Since last hosting about two months ago, the
Chicago Yard (inspired by the Illinois Central's South Water Street yard
photographed by Jack Delano in the 1940s) has undergo substantial roadwork.
When I first roughed-in the foreground mainline for the 2010 NASG Convention
layout tours, I neglected to elevate it in order to provide some visual
separation from the diesel yard lead and the inbound/outbound tracks which
flank it. Before I knew it, I had ballasted in the mainline, Ken Zieska's three
amazing curved turnouts and continued its progress across the Chicago River
bridges. With all of the other tracks in the Yard pretty much permanently in
place, the lack of the elevation difference between the main and the yard
tracks bothered me. So, after the last visit, the mainline and 6 handlaid
curved turnouts and White Oak #8s were spatula-ed up and replaced on cork. That
meant, of course, adding new flextrack, all wiring, wire Tortoise rods and
replacing all ties on the lengthy handmade turnouts.
Two months later, it was reballasted and ready for display. The rest of the
yard also received its first layer of cinders and weeds. It's really starting
to look like the Transfer Yard which it is.
In its heady days, Chicago featured 500 (!) classification and transfer yards
large and small. This represents a smaller transfer yard with freight house and
REA facility, TOFC ramp, team track and house track. It also serves the
Borden's and Gold Meadow cold storage facilities. Essentially, fast freights
and name passenger trains will parade by the yard in the foreground, with
smaller freights from various lines dropping cars to be picked up by local
switch crews and moved to other yards. The delivering power must return to
their next assigment "light" because of local Chicago railroad union rules.
That means lots of action as foreign road switchers have to come into the yard
to pick up the cars that the Q's yard goats have sorted and assembled.
RRM's 0-6-0 with a Tsunami Light Steam decoder installed made its first
appearance and while it ran smoothly and looked great doing it, managed to find
every little piece of ballast hiding in the rail webs, flangeways and frogs.
Spent the weekend filling rail gaps and cleaning out the excess ballast before
the next layer of cinders and weeds are laid down. I've offered to host a
layout tour during next April's Sn3 national convention in the Twin Cities, so
there's tons to do after the Yard is finished. A year is not actually much time
and I'd like to have the village of Wataga finished by then. It's on the other
side of the viewblock from my farm scene.
Great to read about everyone else's progress. These are the Golden Days of S!
Steve
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