Ever since I had finished my CNJ Bronx Terminal layout, I was playing with the idea for adding a complementary section with the CNJ’s extension yard on the NW side of Third Avenue Bridge. The plan has never materialized as I would have simply no space for another layout. It would be even bigger than the existing one. But now that I have the bridge completed, I could add at least a small diorama with the JL Mott Iron Works building in the background.
A photo from the archives of the New York City Department of Records gives a good idea how the neighborhood between Third Avenue Bridge and the Mott Haven Canal looked in the 1930s. The footprint of the J.L. Mott Iron Works buildings was already greatly reduced while some of its original buildings were reused for other businesses. A few new structures have appeared, such as the towering 8-story Bruckner Building. The CNJ New Yard built after 1927 has extended the capacity of its Bronx Terminal and serves new customers.
I decided to cut a small slice from that block between Harlem River and 135th Street. The diorama would just include the CNJ tracks, the first row of buildings and the Harlem River with the bulkhead and enough water for the barges. The size would be about 2 by 2 feet and it would connect to my bridge diorama. The photo archives have an abundance of plans for that area, albeit mostly distorted. Fortunately, they also provide detailed scale dimensions of the structures.
With these and with a map of the extended CNJ Bronx Terminal published in the Railpace News Magazine from July, 1988, I was able to compile my own detailed plan in Inkscape. The plan shows uncompressed building footprints, and I tried to stick to the available details. I took some freedom in determining the extent of pavement, however. Apart from the Iron Works main building, I would have to add a one story structure adjacent to that one.
Extension Tracks
The CNJ New Yard tracks are connected to the Bronx Terminal through a single straight track underneath the Third Avenue Bridge. That track branches off the storage track along Harlem River. A switch about a hundred feet away from the bridge creates a double track that leads into the New Yard along the Mott Canal. My diorama ends at the 75 degree turn so I only have to model those two tracks. There is a third track, however, that leads from the beginning of the New Yard in a tight curve to the center of the J.L. Mott main building. It passes through a doorway wide enough for boxcars to the other side. From there it extends to the loading dock of the Bruckner Building. For my track design, this meant two turnouts very closely together.
To build the turnouts, I again used a jig with engraved notches for the rails, guardrails, and ties. See my previous blog on track building. I managed to build all the stock rails from one piece of rail. I had to plan a little more ahead as I had to bend and file the rail needs before any soldering. And once soldering has started there is almost no room for error. Fortunately, all worked out well and the turnouts are fully functional.
A major portion of the tracks is directly embedded in the cobblestone and concrete pavement. The cobblestone is engraved in 3/32″ basswood and 1 mm deep notches hold the rails in place. A 0.5 mm deep flangeway gap provides enough room for the wheel flanges. To avoid too much lateral pressure of the curved rails, I removed the ties from the MicroEngineering Code 40 flex track. I bent each rail individually and according to the correct curvature before adding back the sections with ties and gluing the tieless track into the notches. This approach of embedding the rails in basswood proved to be very successful and I’m very happy with the result. All cars roll freely in the cobblestones without friction. Using the laser cutter allows a very precise construction so that the track is well within NMRA specs. In addition, it looks very prototypical.
General Builders Supply Corporation
There exists very little photo material available for this building apart from the side view shown at the beginning of the blog. The fact that it was part of the larger J.L. Mott Iron Works complex give some clues on how it must have looked. It turns out that this building (as well as second identical unit behind it) has a similar size on the pre-1925 surveyor maps as the foundry building on Third Avenue. A photo probably from 1897/98 shortly before the Third Avenue Bridge was completed, and before the CNJ Bronx Terminal was built shows some nice detail of it. Specifically, it shows the design and dimensions of its typical (crow-) stepped gable that we also see on the General Builders Supply Corp. building. The large and super sharp photo further reveals many more details. It shows that the fronts of the buildings along Third Avenue were all built in the same style and with similar story proportions. They all share the decorative bright molding (of sandstone?) across the entire front below and above the windows.
My building in 1932 must have been modified when it transitioned from a iron foundry to a construction material warehouse. The building is shorter (it probably was shortened at around 1927 when the CNJ New Yard tracks were built). Furthermore, the roof monitor on the foundry building was replaced by a simple gable roof. I kept the monitor to preserve the original look of the building. The number (relative to the reduced size) and shape of the roof hatches remained the same.
Design
Equipped with this high quality material, I felt confident enough to design the foundry. I planned to cut and engrave everything with my laser cutter. I spent several hours in Inkscape to work out the details of the various layers and components. For the layering I used a similar structure as for the Iron Works main building. With the brick textures dominating this building, I wanted to use basswood instead of the harder MDF. For the walls, I used 1/16″ thick basswood. The masonry pilasters between the windows and at the edge of the facade are made of 1/32″ thick basswood. For the window layer as for the decorative bands, lintels and window sills I used .024″ thick lazerboard. Where needed on the facade, I could easily engrave the shape in the wood and fill it with the lazerboard. Again, the multiple layers give the building depth and a more realistic look.
I also had to make a few compromises and simplify details while still preserving the overall character of the structure. Small details are often not only difficult to create in N scale but they’re even more often hard to see. For instance, it is not clear if the transoms above the straight lintels of the three arched windows in the center are actually transom windows. They also could be just recessed brick walls. I designed them as windows.
Build
It took me sometimes two or three iterations to get everything as planned. Once I had the facade pieces built, I took on building the supporting structure with the roof. Constructing the monitor roof was a challenge. I resolved it by creating a vertical frame that almost separated the building into a main and two side naves. The central pilasters on the front facade could suggest such a construction but there is no evidence. In any case, I needed a structure that provided lateral and longitudinal stability and the chosen design perfectly met this requirement. The partial ceiling of the first floor also interlocks with the side walls and at the same time provides the lintels. The structure gives the building strength and avoids warping on the relative thin walls – especially the high facade.
I still had several questions open when I finally only had to construct the roof. Based on the photos I assumed that the roof was covered with tiles. I managed to get a somehow realistic looking roof texture by engraving 1/32″ basswood with a scalloped shingles pattern. To make it stronger, I glued this basswood layer to a piece of 1/16″ MDF of the same size.
Next, what about those many skylights on the roof? Were they dormers with windows or just hatches? It looked like some of them were in a closed position but most were open – so the answer for me was hatches. The same for the structures sitting on the ridge which I also designed as open hatches. All the hatches sitting on the ridge and on the roof are open just as the walls of the monitor are open as there is not enough space for clerestory windows.
For the annex building on the Harlem River side I couldn’t find any more details. On most photos, the details are hidden behind piles of construction materials. Assuming the structure was built at the same time as the foundry building, I used the proportions of the upper floors of the main building. On the roof a sign that extends over the entire length of the annex is mounted. I created it by engraving the General Builders Supply Corporation name into a white painted strip of lazerboard. A billboard scaffolding-like rack made also of thin lazerboard keeps it in place.
Harlem River Barges
Why on earth would I scratch-build barges? After all this is about modeling railroads. Well, very often when we try to create a prototypical scene, we are confronted with elements that don’t fit into preconceived ideas. Barges were an important element in New York’s multi-modal transportation infrastructure. They didn’t simply disappear with the ubiquitous availability of rail transportation. We see barges in the New York harbors well in the second half of the twentieth century. Some goods that could be more easily sourced locally, like construction materials, apparently were often transported over water. We do not know if the General Builders Supply Corporation was a customer of the CNJ. But given the several photos with barges loaded with bricks and lumber, we know that this company heavily relied on barges in the mid-1930s.
The barges on the rivers around New York City must have been very simple – most of them were flat-bottomed scows. This made them very suitable for the shallow waters around New York. On the archive photo from 1932, we see two types. There is a longer flat deck barge and a second shorter type of a covered barge. That barge has a little house on top of the freight hold with a massive cargo boom. Both barges show a very low freeboard particularly towards the stern, a sign they were heavily loaded. The longer flat deck barge is loaded with construction material, mostly bricks and/or block stones.
I decided to build both types and so started with the shorter and covered one first. I started with a bottom plate of 1/16″ MDF first. Then I built a frame structure of transversal bulkheads and two interlocked longitudinal frames. I then added the planking made of 1/32″ basswood. Instead of building a rectangular hull, I designed it so that both bow and stern were slightly tapered. This just would look better and more boat like and was also a little bit more complicated to design. I also designed the frames such that the flat deck would rise continuously from stern to bow. I’m assuming that this rise is less a consequence of the construction but more due to a center of gravity towards the stern. The second barge I designed in a similar way, just longer. I designed all parts in Inkscape and cut them on the laser cutter.
For the covered barge, I built a frame of MDF and filled the panels with engraved basswood. The entire structure is very delicate due to the lightweight frame. Since all parts were cut and engraved on the laser cutter, I felt that the result was a bit too perfect. I then built a second version with the same MDF frame but with scale lumber glued over lazerboard. I soaked it in an isopropyl alcohol/India ink mixture before dry-brushing it with white acrylic paint. This gave me the prototypical look of weathered wood. I then glued it on the lazerboard and cut the composite on the laser cutter for a precise cut. The result was surprisingly good looking and better than hand cut limber. Looking at the end result, I definitely prefer the aged lumber panels to the red painted and laser-cut basswood version.
Finally, I added a wheelhouse to both freight structures at the stern. I also tried to emulate the cargo on the flat deck barge with piles of lumber cut from basswood sheets, bags of cement, barrels, and bricks I made of plastic brick sheet. To hide the very poorly looking brick texture, I covered the pile with a tarp. I made the tarp by soaking a piece of tissue with diluted PVA glue. I then painted it with gray primer and weathered it with a black wash.
Ground Cover and Scenery
Having my own laser cutter, I was able to make the paved areas as integrated components of the diorama. This worked particularly well for the extensive cobblestone pavement, as the plan at the beginning of this blog shows. While I had to cut and compose similar pavement on my CNJ Bronx Terminal layout from purchased cobblestone sheets (usually from MonsterModel-Works), I now could engrave larger pieces with the FLUX Beamo cutter using a Inkscape pattern based on a smaller photo. The irregular cobblestone pattern looked randomly enough so that I even the larger areas did not look artificial. Similarly, I was able to make the concrete deck in front of the Iron Works building and in the underpass (for which there’s no prototypical evidence) with a notch engraved for the track.
The only lesson learned I took away from this exercise was that I would have to take into account the tapered walls of the cutting grooves. As the kerf is slightly wider on top of the surface than at the bottom, tightly fitting pieces of 3/32″ thick cut basswood need to be slightly larger. When cut, they have to be sanded along the edges to get a vertical cut. In my case I had to cover some of the wider gaps between two pieces with vinyl putty.
For some of the parts of the diorama I used Arizona Rock & Mineral granite mix as ground cover. I used 70% isopropyl alcohol and diluted white glue to harden the ground. Several types of bushes and tufts from Martin Welberg Studio placed sparingly on the edges of the General Builders Supply Corporation’s storage yard and along the tracks add visual interest.
For the ultimate photo with which I’m trying to emulate the archive photo setting (first photo above in blog), I combined the New Yard extension with the Third Avenue Bridge diorama. I also added the Bruckner Building behind the J.L. Mott Iron Works main building. Since my Bruckner Building is two stories short of the prototype, I moved it a bit closer to the extension so that it is still well visible. The photo shows all foreground elements of the original photo, including the bridge’s pedestrian walkway but excluding its fender. More buildings in the middle ground, such as the coal silos along the Mott Haven Canal or Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad’s Harlem Transfer terminal would certainly add to the realism of the photo. They are beyond the scope of my project, however.