While the South Bronx had an impressive industrial history with lots of railroad artifacts, it was always dwarfed by what happened in the industrial zones of Manhattan. My shift of focus over time reflects Manhattan’s gravity for railroad history. One of the most fascinating areas for me is West Chelsea with its New York Central West Side Freight Line. The West Side Line is more colloquially known as the High Line today. The rail trail opened to the public in 2009 as a linear park and follows the elevated part of the West Side Line between West 34th and Gansevoort Street. For more information on the history of the High Line and the park check out this link.
The West Side Project was completed by the New York Central Railroad in 1934. It was built to cope with the ever increasing demand for transportation services of the various industries in Chelsea and Tribeca in the first half of the twentieth century. Until then, goods were delivered by freight trains on Tenth and Eleventh Avenue. With congestion increasing on the busy West Side, plans were made in the 1920s for a grade-separated railroad and eventually the elevated West Side Line was constructed. It connected the existing tracks along the Hudson River from West 34th Street with a new freight terminal that replaced the existing street level freight depot on St. John’s Park.
My new planned layout combines elements of the street-level New York Central Westside railroad that dominated Tenth Avenue until 1934 and elements of the elevated West Side Freight Line that began operation in 1934. While in reality there was only a very short overlap of those two operations, my layout will straddle both eras. As with my previous projects, I’ll place it somewhere in the beginning of the 1950ies. By then, the tracks on Tenth Avenue had long gone, of course, and the meatpacking district was exclusively served by NYC’s high line.
The N scale layout is a single level L-shaped shelf layout and has a size of 7.5 ft times 8.5 ft. Two dog bone-style loops extend across the entire layout, one for the street level freight trains and the other one for the elevated Westside Line with freight or passenger traffic. The two loops are connected by two ramps. Trains running in counter-clockwise direction can change on the right track from the elevated system to the street level and back up to the elevated loop. Trains in clockwise direction would have to use crossovers to get on the left track so they can change the level. The grades are between 2.5 and 3%. The street level tracks are mostly laid into the streets and can be used by the trolleys as well.
Construction is modular using the one one module at a time approach. Modules are fully functional sections of the layout built on a frame 40 cm long and 65 cm deep (approximately 16×25″) with the reverse loop modules a bit larger. The current plan is to have seven standard size modules and one reverse loop module at every end.
While I’m not that much interested in operations, the layout will have plenty of opportunities for operational activities. Along the tracks, several key industries and businesses and New York City landmark buildings will be served by the either West Side main lines or by stubs. On my plan are the Terminal Warehouse, the B&O 26th Street Freight Station, the R.C. Williams Warehouse and at least one of the Nabisco buildings. I also intend to build St. John’s Terminal and use it as an end point and rail yard.
Those buildings (located either on Tenth or Eleventh Avenue) will be placed more as space and the track plan will allow rather than at prototypically correct locations. Nevertheless, the layout will be a prototypical-freelance type model railroad and should embody the vibrant business district of West Chelsea.