Construction thunders on in Bethesda on the Purple Line project and as they make way for the station in Bethesda, the old right of way for the Georgetown Branch is unearthed for probably the last time. The buildings above the right of way were demolished, and now grading is complete. They’ve dug down a bit further than the original right of way, but it’s as good as it will get. Take a look at the photo below. You can just make out the concrete bridge carrying Wisconsin Ave over the old RoW at the bottom of the photo. The large angled pilings in the bottom right cover the RoW and it curves over toward those red awnings in the distance. Can you see it?!
In the fall of 1954 the National Railway Historic Society put together an excursion train which included a trip down the Georgetown Branch. I recently purchased two prints off of eBay which show the train being mustered in Eckington Yard down in Washington, DC as well as the train at the end of the Branch under the Whitehurst Freeway in Georgetown. Enjoy!
NRHS Georgetown Branch excursion train musters in Eckington Yard. Photographer unknown. Collection of Ben Sullivan.NRHS Georgetown Branch excursion train idles in Georgetown. Photographer unknown. Collection of Ben Sullivan.
I re-worked my drawing of the Bethesda Freight Station, I’m calling this v.2. I was looking at the first attempt, in laser-cut form, on the layout, and noticed that the loading dock was extremely high. I pulled an HO scale delivery truck up to the dock and it came up about 1/4 of the way up the back door of the truck. Unacceptable.
I went back to my archive photos and the drawings. I reassessed how I got my original measurements and made new references off of the photos, trusting more in some known dimensions I had, namely the garage doors and windows. I also used some logic to determine door size as well as the height of the loading dock. I assumed the loading dock height to be about 42″. I assume the door is about 7′ high. After re-drawing the plans, here is what I’ve come up with:
Here is my second attempt at drawing the Bethesda station after major revisions to the vertical scale.
I’m MUCH more pleased with this result. I know it’s not perfect, but I think it will be about 95% close to correct. I’m going to print this one out, mock it up and see how it looks on the layout. More to come, soon!
I just found out about this neat documentary covering the history of the Talbot Avenue bridge which crossed the B&O’s Metropolitan Branch at Georgetown Junction. If the preview doesn’t work, click the link below.
The small historic village of Lyttonsville laid right at the spot where the Georgetown Branch broke away from the Metropolitan Branch of the B&O. The line was built around 1892 to serve the new power plant at Connecticut Ave in Chevy Chase. The Lyttonsville property was purchased some time around 1850 and has a rich history.
Lytton was in his sixties when the Metropolitan Southern Railroad division of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company began planning to construct a freight rail line from the railroad’s Metropolitan Branch, which in the 1880s had linked northwest Washington to West Virginia. The railroad had to acquire right of way along the length of the new line and its 1827 charter gave it two ways to acquire it: direct negotiation with property owners along the route or through condemnation proceedings against recalcitrant owners with whom they couldn’t come to terms.
Some great news about the doomed Talbot Avenue Bridge, although I’m not sure which specific parts will be saved. My guess is it will be the span itself, and perhaps it will be placed in a park on new footings, as the original supports were completely rusted away in some places and in really bad shape. Hurrah!
So it’s been a very long time since I did a layout update and a LOT has happened. A year or two ago I reached a point where I really got stuck. When I designed the layout, a lot was left out and as a result I’m having to tackle issues that I hadn’t planned on. You may say that this is a normal aspect of building a layout, and I agree. However, being that I am new at building this type of layout, I really got stuck and discouraged. Between the Summer of 2016 and 2017 I barely set foot in the basement. I spent maybe 2 or 3 days of work over the entire time span. Why? I couldn’t figure out the track arrangement between Georgetown Junction and Chevy Chase. I had mistakenly ignored elevation and as such the design was asking for the track to go down hill about 6″ in about 10 feet. The grade was ridiculous and I tried many methods or alleviating it. None worked.
During that time, I made friends with the son of a late member of my model RR club. He and I had met before, but never really spent time talking trains or what projects we were working on. Turns out, he’s building a tremendous layout in his basement that is an absolute gem. (I hope to profile it some day!) He and I have been working on each other’s layouts over the last several months and I couldn’t be more happy on what progress is being made. More progress has been made in the last few months than in the last few YEARS! It’s really fantastic. He helped me figure out the grade issue, taught me about good wiring techniques, really seeking the soul of the prototype to dictate how the track plan is refined and implemented, good practices, the magic of plywood sub roadbed (I was planning on using splines) and how to make track mockups out of cardboard. All of this (and so much more) has put me on a fast track to getting a LOT done. I’m going to share some photos here, and plan on doing more in the near future. I am considering doing a vlog, but that remains to be seen, if I can find the time.
I told you fun stuff was happening! So I had a chance to test out my drawings and laser cut the station out of mat board as a proof of concept. Wow! I am so pleased. The drawings proved to work perfectly well. Have a look:
Next steps: I need to finish the drawings. I am now applying textures (brick, concrete) to the file so that when I do my actual laser cutting/engraving all of the bricks are represented as well as the concrete foundation. I even sourced images of brick which match the pattern of 5 and 1 for the soldier courses. I also sourced some .020″ laserboard which I will use to create the custom windows and garage doors. I didn’t realize that the top three courses on the garage doors were filled in with glass panels!
And for reference, here is the station in 1984:
5/16/1984 Bethesda Freight House. Photo by Matthew Vurek.
A drawing I created from blueprints and photos to recreate the Bethesda Freight House in HO Scale.
Progress is being made on my HO Scale model of the B&O’s Bethesda, MD freight house. This unusual structure consisted of a rectangular building build of concrete & brick with a loading dock and two garage doors. The oddest thing about the structure is the fact that it was never connected to (nor aligned with) any railroad tracks! I believe it was never intended to handle much more than administrative capacities and smaller LCL freight items, perhaps. More details on the build soon!
I’ve been on a hot streak lately working on the layout and have made tremendous progress thanks to help from friends. I hope to make a blog post soon detailing the progress and maybe a vlog. For now, I’m spending time thinking about designing and building the three bridges that carried the B&O over Canal Rd. and the C&O Canal down in DC.
B&O H12-44 9725 leads the Georgetown Local westbound across the C&O Canal toward Georgetown. Wm. Duvall photo (ca. Nov 1966)
This is the spot where the line had nearly descended all the way to the canal level and broke away from the Palisades and crossed over toward the Potomac River on a beautiful trio of historic bridges and sweeping curve. I have the blueprints for these bridges and plan on modeling them, but I need them to fit my space. Right now it’s a very tight fit. I did a mock-up below:
Mocking up the three bridges that carried the B&O across Canal Rd. and the C&O Canal. The *just* fit!
I’m considering options for including the bridges. Everything from only modeling one of the three, two of the three, or all three. Curving them more. Using tighter radius curves at the approaches. Or moving it to another location. One final option is to ditch it altogether. What do you think? Feedback below!
