wm3798At Athens, Ohio, there was an interchange with the NYC. I think this would have been the same neck of the woods as Ravenna, mentioned earlier.
A slight correction, Lee. Ravenna is actually in NE Ohio; ~45 minutes SE of Cleveland and just E of Kent, OH.
I've been to the B&O depot in Athens. (It's right across the street from a wonderful Indian restaurant on the N side of town.) The depot is in very good shape and is currently being used for storage but it's not full of "junk". The B&O depot in Mount Vernon, OH is another neat building and worth seeing.
Tom
https://tstage9.wixsite.com/nyc-modeling
Time...It marches on...without ever turning around to see if anyone is even keeping in step.
Hey everyone!
The more I look at everyone's information, I think doing both would not be all that difficult. Although not exactly prototype, the area I'm modeling is based loosely on eastern Ohio (I'm actually from Wellington, which was at one time served by the Big Four), thusly making an interchange between the two (as well as some of my NKP equipment) entirely plausible.
The club I frequent in Delmar, Delaware (not exactly B&O country! but nonetheless) has an outstanding HO layout that models the B&O main from Parkersburg, WV across southern Ohio. At Athens, Ohio, there was an interchange with the NYC. I think this would have been the same neck of the woods as Ravenna, mentioned earlier.
That's the Athens section there. The B&O main is the double track where the boxcars are there in the middle. The NYC interchange track is the double siding on the left. The lines cross just around the bend to the right in the back. We've modeled the NYC as a simple branch that runs from the junction into a staging yard. There's one train that emerges from staging to clean up the interchange track once per ops session.
If you start by modeling that junction, then you can justify having one loop to run your Beano stuff, and one for the Central.
Now if you said you liked a Maine 2 footer and the Union Pacific, I don't think you could get away with that!
Lee
Route of the Alpha Jets www.wmrywesternlines.net
bogp40 Can you guess what my suggestion will be......
Can you guess what my suggestion will be......
A man after my own heart. I like to model ALL of B&O AND all it's incarnates, so I can have fun with them ALL!
i
-G .
Just my thoughts, ideas, opinions and experiences. Others may vary.
HO and N Scale.
After long and careful thought, they have convinced me. I have come to the conclusion that they are right. The aliens did it.
Modeling B&O- Chessie Bob K. www.ssmrc.org
Yes go with the B&O.
Russell
Since my maternal grandfather was the station agent at Dayton, PA, it's best you model the B&O.
Mark
If you ever catch the steam bug - chances are you will, at some point - you'll be disappointed to find out that NONE of the typical B&O steamers are made in HO (IMHO, USRA clones aren't really typical) whereas quite a few NYC steamers are readily availble. (see some of them in my videos, link below)
What about Southern Pacific? Heh, but seriously either the NYC or B&O would be a neat prototype, especially in transition and early diesel. I think it is a good point to perhaps try to include both. You could either try to find some place where they overlapped in real life or create an alternate history where they both shared trackage so you could run both roads locomotives. Sorry my knowledge of Eastern railroads is pretty minimal as I'm more into railroading west of the Mississippi.
Mr B & O wjstix nfrgcs10 Haha, yea, both are pretty awesome. Maybe I should just do both... That would work. I just bought the Green Frog's "New York Central Odyssey V.1" DVD set a few weeks ago and have been watching it. Although it focuses on the NYC, it shows a number of clips of B&O trains crossing the NYC, or B&O using NYC tracks under trackage rights. (I think B&O used NYC tracks to reach Detroit?) I imagine there were some cities where B&O and NYC used the same depot, and there probably were other trackage rights agreements between the two. If you don't want to model a particular real area, a fictional line of one of the railroads with the other having trackage rights would seem very plausible. Better yet would be Ravenna, Ohio--B&O owned the tracks, but NYC and Pennsy had trackage rights. There was a longish article years ago in The Sentinel (B&ORRHS publication) detailing the operations at Ravenna. Can't remember the issue, and the B&ORRHS doesn't have the Sentinel index up anymore, apparently. Greg
wjstix nfrgcs10 Haha, yea, both are pretty awesome. Maybe I should just do both... That would work. I just bought the Green Frog's "New York Central Odyssey V.1" DVD set a few weeks ago and have been watching it. Although it focuses on the NYC, it shows a number of clips of B&O trains crossing the NYC, or B&O using NYC tracks under trackage rights. (I think B&O used NYC tracks to reach Detroit?) I imagine there were some cities where B&O and NYC used the same depot, and there probably were other trackage rights agreements between the two. If you don't want to model a particular real area, a fictional line of one of the railroads with the other having trackage rights would seem very plausible.
nfrgcs10 Haha, yea, both are pretty awesome. Maybe I should just do both...
Haha, yea, both are pretty awesome. Maybe I should just do both...
That would work. I just bought the Green Frog's "New York Central Odyssey V.1" DVD set a few weeks ago and have been watching it. Although it focuses on the NYC, it shows a number of clips of B&O trains crossing the NYC, or B&O using NYC tracks under trackage rights. (I think B&O used NYC tracks to reach Detroit?) I imagine there were some cities where B&O and NYC used the same depot, and there probably were other trackage rights agreements between the two. If you don't want to model a particular real area, a fictional line of one of the railroads with the other having trackage rights would seem very plausible.
Better yet would be Ravenna, Ohio--B&O owned the tracks, but NYC and Pennsy had trackage rights. There was a longish article years ago in The Sentinel (B&ORRHS publication) detailing the operations at Ravenna. Can't remember the issue, and the B&ORRHS doesn't have the Sentinel index up anymore, apparently.
Greg
Ah! So Mr. nfrgcs10, If you reemember I said I fell in love with live static displays of PRR locos and so allow the PRR to have "trackage rights" to run on my B&O and incarnates RR I see that I am not far off after all with allowing the PRR to have some "trackage rights" to run on my protolance B&O , and sounds like you could do the same with the NYC!!! Ah truely the best of the real world in the model world!
Question answered!
Ok. I like the B&O too! Sorry. no help
NYCS had a greater variety of diseasels. B&O favoured EMD, almost, but not quite, to the exclusion of the others.
Both roads had yard goats from all of the manufacturers. NYCS had ALCo road switchers, B&O did not. NYCS had FM cab units, B&O did not. NYCS had the only Lima road switchers. B&O had ALCo FA-2s, but not FA-1s. NYCS had both. NYCS had ALCo PAs, B&O did not. NYCS had some Baldwin passenger cab units, the only Baldwin cab units that B&O had were the sharks (NYCS also had sharks).
Most of B&Os road power was EMDs: F-units, E-units, GP-7, GP-9, SD-7. There were some Baldwin road switchers and the sharks. There were many FA-2s, but B&O probably bought them because EMD could not deliver all of the F-units that it wanted. There were some FPA-2s on the B&O, something that NYCS did not have. B&O had many passenger F-3s and dual service F-3s (A-A pairs: one unit had the steam generator, the other extra water tanks). NYCS had only two A-B-A sets of passenger F-3s, all of the other NYCS F-units were freight only.
Thus, you will find a greater variety of diseasels on the NYCS. There is, however, one caveat. NYCS tended to keep the diseasels from the same manufacturer together. EMDs ran on the Big Four, MC. P&E and P&LE. Baldwins were on the Big Four around Cincinnati, but did also run on the T&OC and MC. ALCos ran mostly in New York and on the B&A. FMs ran mostly on the Big Four. P&LE did not want any FMs, Limas or Baldwins on its tracks as McKee's Rocks did not stock the parts and the shop forces did not know much about them. This was despite the fact that P&LE's first diseasels were FM yard goats, which parent NYC quickly appropriated.
nfrgcs,
Although I've chosen to model the NYC, I think either one would be fine to model. As someone else already mentioned, the NYC chose more flat or "waterlevel" routes between New York City and Chicago. (The exceptions being the B&A and P&LE, which were in more mountainous areas.) The B&O followed some of the same routes as the NYC (e.g. along the Ohio River, west of Cincinnati) but tended to have more mountainous ones.
Besides books, historical societies are a wonderful source of information. I belong to the New York Central System Historical Society (NYCSHS). The NYCSHS does a decent job and they're continuing to improve upon things. IMO, B&O Railroad Historical Society (BORHS) is better organized and they tend to make themselves (and related info) more accessible via train shows and their web site. They even have there own modeler magazine.
A list of some available NYC early-transition diesels and manufacturers (HO):
Hope that helps...
Thanks. I see a lot more B&O stuff out there, and since my NKP layout is modeled (albeit loosely) on the Wheeling district, the coal trains of the B&O would suit nicely. Does anyone have any experience with bachmann's h16-44s? This is not to say that NYC is out, but I'm just exploring a little.
The choice between B&O and the Central is purely subjective. Go with the road that you like best. Commercial availability of equipment is about the same for either road. A fun part of modeling a road is visiting and photographing stations, bridges, rolling stock and so forth, so if all things are equal, go with the road that is closest to where you live. I just got back from a visit to the B&O museum in Baltimore. They have B&O rolling stock and locomotives going right back to Tom Thumb. It's a great resource for modeling.
David Starr www.newsnorthwoods.blogspot.com
nfrgcs10... Thing is, I'm trying to choose a particular railroad to model. I'm looking at transition-era diesels, but can't decide between B&O or NYC. ...
Did you grow up near either of those two roads? If so, which one do you remember more fondly? And what were its characteristics? (never mind, I just read one of your later replies) The B&O ran thru some mountainous terrain and frequently needed helper engines to push it over those steep grades; it carried a lot of coal as well as general merchandise freight. I don't really know enough about the NYC, other than it seemed to stay close to rivers and other flat areas and served a lot of industrial centers.
I grew up in southeast Michigan and was planning to model Ford's River Rouge complex, so I started out modeling mid-1960s NYC. But soon my family moved to Maryland and I got to know and love the B&O, and that was what most of my mrr friends were modeling. Nobody modeled the Central because it never ran in Maryland. So I eventually adopted the B&O as my own road also.
-Ken in Maryland (B&O modeler, former CSX modeler)
Here is my reasoning for choosing the B&O. You may agree or disagree, or I may have given you food for thought:
I proto-lance {freelance a prototype RR} the B&O and all it's incarnates {B&O; C&O; Chessie; CSX} mainly because I loved watching the Chessie stuff go by as we waited to cross the tracks when I was young in the 70's.
I like all the incarnates as I can swap out locos and change "eras" on my layout from old time steam to modern day diesels. Swap out a few buildings too, and you can have a broad area of fun to avoid tedium. SOme buildings stay the same and have been around a century and a half or more. I can become bored playing with the same year{s] over and over if my layout was locked into a time-warp certain era.
I also like the fact that the B&O and incarnates is a popular and very available for locos to buy, because it IS popular. I can find about anything they ran at any given year {and some "made up" that didn't really exist on the lines} to run on my pike, rather than having to kitbash build my own OR be frustrated as to when, oh when, will they ever come out with a "abc in the -xyz RR colors"???
{I also have grown to love some Pennsy stuff, based on seeing the real things on static displays, so I imagine on my pike that the PRR has some trackage rights to run over my B&O trackage.}
Just my opinion. Others will vary.
May you have success in which ever one you choose.
Welcoe to the forums.
Road selection is pretty much a personal choice. Since you are looking at transition era diesels, look at what is available in each road. If you find one has more selection of types of locos you like, go for it. You could also think of what type of modeling you want to do for operations. Your scenery/industry preferences could be used to base your choice. Don't only look at locos and rolling stock, look at your other preferences to help you.
Good luck,
hello everyone,
I'm pretty new around here, just starting to check things out. I've been looking to expand my layout (basically a 4x8 loop with a small yard on a side wing). Thing is, I'm trying to choose a particular railroad to model. I'm looking at transition-era diesels, but can't decide between B&O or NYC. So any pros and cons for each would be appreciated, and any advice you might have would be great!