Saturday, November 9, 2019

It's time to start building, buildings

As I previously mentioned, I contacted the O&WHS about obtaining copies of drawings of stations along the UV. The only station plans available are of the Edmeston station. Jeff Otto the O&WHS president and one of the archivists believes that it possible that many of the drawings may have been handed over to the UV when the O&W sold this section.
As mentioned earlier in this blog, much of the UV archives are presently held at the University of Missouri at St. Louis.
Below is a photo of a small section of the end view(s)
Having the interior details, such as the right end view. I'm considering adding the interior...Am I crazy?

Saturday, October 12, 2019

Unadilla Valley Railway Archives

A conversation with a friend on another site reminded me that this past summer I found that the UVR archives are held at the  University of Missouri at St. Louis. I had attended the St. Louis RPM this past July. Unfortunately, I didn't find out about the UV archives until after I was back home in NJ.
The St. Louis RPM is held every summer so, I'll make arrangements to view the archives.
Also, The ACF archives are held at the same facility if anyone is interested.

Thursday, October 10, 2019

The purpose

 I began writing this blog and planning to build a layout of the Unadilla Valley Railway in 2013.
The one issue I had with building this short-line at the time was that I couldn't have operating sessions with more than 2 people! So, I moved on to other railroads and plans. I found the Eastern Pennsylvania Cement District really interesting. I began purchasing and building A LOT of cement hoppers. The one thing that kept nagging me about this idea was my real interest has always been agriculture ie: the dairy industry and the businesses required to support the farms.
I spoke to a few friends about the change in modeling themes with the first question being : "Am I crazy?" Well, it turns out many modelers have brief thoughts of tearing down their layouts and starting over, few follow through.  I decided to bite the bullet and just do it! So, my cement hoppers will be transformed into milk cars.
The year I am modeling this layout is 1953.

Ok, so, the decision is made to model the UV. The question of operations is still there. Keeping two operators busy was the most the UV could support. The UV interchanged with the NYO&W, New Berlin branch at New Berlin Junction and with the DL&W, Richfield Springs branch at Bridgewater. The plan is to model as much of each branch as possible which allows for more operations. I, like many model railroaders, like switching operations. Switching operations cause you to think.  In many cases it's like solving a moving puzzle.
So, off we go to build my "dream" layout. I'll try my best to keep this blog updated as the layout progresses.

Friday, March 22, 2013

Where to begin....



In deciding what portion of the U.V. to model first, I wanted to have some switching and of course show the businesses that the UV served....Agriculture.


Edmeston was at the end of the only branch of which was 2.3 miles long.Originally, owned and operated by the N.Y.O.&W. The U.V. purchased the Edmeston branch from the O&W in 1941.




The track map sketch shown above lists the businesses served by the UV in Edmeston.

All photos shown below, unfortunately have no credit to the original photographer(s)
If you know the original source please, post the photographers name or source in the comments section.

#1: Edmeston Station built by the O&W. Owned and operated by Agway in '53.
The O&W H.S. has drawings available for this station. I ordered a set in order to build an accurate model.














#2: Milk plant Borden's bottling plant & creamery
















#3: Feed Mill. D.F. Yunk & Sons
This is one of the buildings at the end of the line

















#4: Lumber/Saw Mill  
In search of information and photo(s)



#5  Turntable at Edmeston