As with many model railroaders, my parents took notice of my
fascination with anything that ran on rails, and for my 11th
birthday, my father bought me a Hornby train set that kept me
fascinated hour after hour.
After my career in pharmacy began to grow, and once we pur-
chased our first family home, I decided it was time to relive
some of my early childhood experiences with trains and mod-
eling. I began building my first proper model railroad back in
the 1970s, and after I completed and tore down about three
of them, I thought I had accumulated enough knowledge and
experience to begin serious layout building.
The current layout I am working on, and the one featured here,
is probably my sixth completed layout. During a family holi-
day with my two daughters to upstate New York, I fell in love
with the scenery and vistas of the Adirondacks, and decided
then that my next layout would capture the look and feel of
this panoramic location. I was also surprised to see and learn
that the famous Vermont RR was still operational, and that this
would be a unique feature to capture in my recreation.
After doing some background research on the history of the
railroads of the Adirondacks, I found that the New York Central
once owned the rails through the Adirondacks all the way to
the Canadian border. This is another railroad that would fea-
ture heavily in the locomotives and rolling stock of my layout.
My layout is not intended to be a completely historically accu-
rate representation. I always intended for it to give the look
and feel of a fictional area in the upper Adirondacks, while still
featuring accurate townships and natural features. This allowed
me greater control and more artistic license with my work. My
layout is intended to be a bridge route between the towns and
cities that lie along the railroads from upstate New York all the
way up to the Canadian border.
There are a number of famous natural lakes and streams in this
area, including Tupper Lake, Saranac Lake, Lake Clear and Lake
Placid. These all feature prominently in the layout. I built two-
and three-track yards in each location, with the main yard at
South Junction.
When it came to selecting a time period to depict in my layout,
I decided upon the crucial era of the late 1930s to early 1950s.
2. Delaware and Hudson RS11 #5002 is underway
with a long freight out of South Junction yard on a
cloudy day with the Adirondack Mountains shrouded
in fog in the background. As SW7 #874 pulls in for
maintenance, Vermont railway #603 can be seen
arrives with a caboose ready for reassignment.
2
Lake Tupper & South Junction- 2
MRH-Jul 2014
