"Milepost 15": East End & The Floinge River

Today's progress doesn't look like much. I reprinted out tiles for all the settled areas and spent more time trimming the edges..I then spent a few hours "re-papering" Average & Owertown...

Average

Owertown

The paper was necessary because the spline and other styrofoam covers the original. I like being able to see where everything is going.

The scenery work continues. Spent time on East End finishing up on that side of Hollow Mountain. Built out the aisle side of the cut that leads into the tunnel (two track). I roughed in the scenery the rest of the way along that aisle. I was swinging west around to Carbon Point when I realized I didn't like how things looked.

At one time in the northeastern US railroads were literally tripping over each other. The anthracite lines in particular crowded into every river valley they could find. As a result you would often find several railroads running parallel in the same valley. I'm not talking "parallel routes" as Conrail os NS or CSX would see it. I mean parallel tracks. The most blatant case I can think of is the Lehigh Valley and CNJ running on the same side of the Lehigh Gorge. What appeared to be a four track mainline was actually two separate railroads...

Penn Haven

In other places the two railroads ran on opposite side of the river while a third line crossed over both on a high bridge. I believe there are several points were this occured. The Lehigh & New England and the Lehigh & Hudson River were constantly crossing the other two. In other places, like Aldeen and Catasauqua, four or more railroads would cross at grade over or under each other. In Philly, where I grew up, the PRR, Reading and B&O ran parallel in many places, including the area around 30th Street station. Then there's that famous shot of the tri-level crossing in Richmond, Va...

Two Over One

My point is that the average eastern railroad was not alone. Competitors were everywhere and many times too close for comfort. So I decided that it would not be too farfetched for my Average Eastern to run side by side with the competition. Hence the abandonement of the tunnels on the Class 1 tracks and this bit of scenic trickery...

Floinge River

I updated the plan after the fact having actually roughed in said waterway between Carbon Point and East End...

Floinge East End Bridge

Floinge Carbon Point Bridge

Not only do I get an excuse to run two railroads parallel, I get to make two more bridges.

I'm getting ready to work on the areas I've passed over so far. Alpha, Carbon Point, and the powerhouse/colliery are prepped and waiting to be roughed in.

I made some small changes to the plan that may add some other scenic interest. In Owertown, Milliard Fillmore Elementary is now a high school. This creates all kinds of possibilities as the youth of America explore their surroundings in small town America. Across the street from Milliard Fillmore High is a corner soda shop where the kids hang after school. Later on the crowd moves to Rockettes for more fun and frivolity. If things go as usual the conversation will turn to cars and eventually the gang will head over to Rt 442 in Quotidian. Mix teenagers with a half mile of straight asphalt and anything can happen,,,