Starting the Passenger Terminal, Part 2: Mail and Express

Layout Concept Continues to Evolve

No matter how well-researched, imagined and planned, a layout's concept continues to evolve as it is built.  A track plan that looks perfect on paper can become problematic when executed in three dimensions - especially for a layout designed for both visual and operational satisfaction as mine is.  Because it aims to create a visual statement of urban life around a railroad terminal, views into the layout have to be carefully orchestrated and controlled in order to create a visual experience.  Operating scenarios and their track plans have to fit into scenes that are viewed in certain ways, which can throw a good track plan into crisis.

Two things are most valuable to keep in mind when building a layout's operation with scenery in mind:

1. The layout 'talks to you.'  As a three-dimensional model, a layout is a living entity where everything that gets built has a way of telling its own story.  A builder has to be in tune with this three-dimensional aspect of the model and be open to where it can lead.  George Sellios commented that he doesn't plan any of his scenes or the structures on his Franklin and South Manchester; rather, he just builds and it 'all comes together.' Believe it or not, building with no set plan is as much a skill as it is an act of faith.
2. Thank god for nailing track! Because track-laying is both art and science, one needs the ability to make adjustments to suit the scene, the operation and unforeseen mistakes in track laying (kinks - the curse of any railroad!).  This latter lesson I just learned when laying the mail and express terminal tracks, which will be illustrated shortly.  Gluing track doesn't prevent kinks any more than nailing causes them (which several people have actually argued vehemently to me), but it makes adjustments a messy and far more difficult process than nailing.  Again, this point will be illustrated clearly in a moment.

Letting the layout speak to you requires a flexible approach to building grounded in the faith that it will all come together and the skill to carry it off, and having the ability to make adjustments in the track makes nailing onto a good bed (such as homasote) a lifesaver.  Evidently, my mail and express terminal operations are exploring uncharted territory both for me as a modeler and for the community of layout-builders here in Utah.  Here is a report on the progress of that endeavor.

Modeling Mail and Express Terminals

Mail and express operations require the modeler to be both detective and historical researcher.  Both mail and express operations vanished from the American railroading landscape a half a century ago, and most of the modelers I know locally have no connection with, or direct understanding of them. Mail and express terminals and equipment disappeared shortly after their operations ended. They simply are not the experiences that connect the current generation of model railroaders to railroading because both were gone before they discovered trains.  I could develop a whole essay on the socio-psychology of model railroaders as train enthusiasts, but the focus here is understanding how to model mail and express operations.

My modeling of the mail and express terminal operations for the Overland Terminal Railway have relied heavily on a couple of historical resources:

• Larry Mulally and Bruce Petty's excellent history of the Southern Pacific in Los Angeles has a detailed look at the Los Angeles Union Passenger Terminal (LAUPT) and its operations: https://www.amazon.com/Southern-Pacific-Los-Angeles-1873-1996/dp/0870951181
• Jeff Wilson's recent guide on modeling mail and express: https://www.amazon.com/Express-Mail-Merchandise-Service-Wilson/dp/1627003789
• Victor Roseman has written extensively on the Railway Express Agency, its equipment, operations and modeling.  Here is a short list of his definitive work for the modeler: https://www.google.com/search?q=victor+roseman+railway+express+agency&oq=victor+roseman+railway+express+agency&aqs=chrome..69i57.12998j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
• A very enjoyable and informative book is the biography of Klink Garrett's career in the Railway Express Agency: http://www.unmpress.com/books.php?ID=10174272156963
• A recent discovery is a photo archive of the mail and express terminals at LAUPT: https://www.loc.gov/resource/hhh.ca1458.photos/?sp=1&st=gallery

For me as a trained historian, modeling mail and express operations is particularly satisfying precisely because it brings together my love of modeling with a discipline of historical research and discovery.  Pouring over personal accounts and photographs over the past 2 years has surfaced some patterns in terminal design and track placement that are useful in my fictitious terminal operation somewhere in Southern California.  Here is how the mail and express terminal operations have materialized in the track plan.

Laying the Track for Mail and Express Operations

Mail and express operations may have shared space in baggage cars, but it is vitally important to understand that they were entirely separate and often competing entities with their own terminals, practices and uses of the railroads.  They must be modeled accordingly, which can be a challenge on the confines of a layout.

This north-facing view of the mail and express terminal tracks recently laid at the Overland Terminal shows them as separate operations with the tracks needed to support them.  From the single #6 switch in the foreground, the Railway Express Agency veers off to the right with a dedicated spur lined up to the future terminal building and, at center right, two short stub tracks that serve two purposes:

1. Loading both mail and express in shared cars (baggage cars marked for Railway Express Agency) from their separate terminals.  Typically, even at large stations, these tracks were short, holding 2-4 cars each.
2. Holding tracks for cars being switched at the terminals and, occasionally, the switchers operating the terminal.

Leading straight out of the top of the passenger ladder (Track 1 on the station map) are additional tracks with multiple functions necessary to switching the terminal:

1. Mail loading and unloading from dedicated tracks.  Typically this track is for mail storage cars, which are locked at the terminal to carry mail from point to point anywhere in the country. Such cars could travel all the way to New York, Boston, Chicago, Atlanta or anywhere undisturbed.  Occasionally, Railway Post Office (RPO) cars are serviced on this track, but they are typically loaded and staffed directly from the passenger station platform.
2. Sears Roebuck and Company priority shipments (on baggage or express box cars) at the far end beyond the switch adjacent to its planned distribution center
3. Motive power ready and escape track on the far left is the multi-purpose track of the operation, allowing switchers to work the mail terminal and Sears distribution center.  At the same time, this track is a waiting area for power changes on through passenger trains, a common operation at both transfer points between roads (Ogden Union Station, for example, changed power between Union Pacific and Southern Pacific for their respective routes) and different legs of a scheduled train on a single road. Motive power is removed for switching operations at the terminal - especially for switching out head-end equipment to/from the mail and express terminals.  Finally, this track is where the switchers assigned to the terminal wait for their next assignments.

 

In this view from the opposite direction, the multi-purpose tracks are easier to see.  Clearly, the switches in the foreground allow separate loading of priority shipments to/from Sears and Roebuck's Distribution Center and an escape route for switchers working the mail and Sears operations.  The stubs leading off the bottom of the frame serve as locomotive waiting track (right) and Sears priority freight clearing the switch to the left.  On the cork roadbed to the left wait several baggage cars in the short, shared terminal loading tracks.  A Southern Pacific Fast Mail train modeled from a consist dated April 1966 is making a station stop on Track 4 at center right.  Making a quick stop without switching, the SP Fast Mail is routed to the outer track, leaving Tracks 1-3 for switching passenger and head-end equipment.  

This configuration still needs to be wired and run-in as an operation, during which time adjustments will be made.  

Here the Railway Express Agency (REA or REX) operation is shown with dedicated track along the main street connecting the passenger station to the heart of Downtown.  The Atlas flex track boxes are exactly the dimensions (length, width and height) of the future REA terminal, as the piece from the Walthers REA Terminal kit illustrates.  The Walthers kit is based directly on the REA Terminal at Jersey City, and its modular design will allow me to combine multiple kits easily for an impressive, super-detailed terminal.  Blue painters tape marks foundation lines for low-profile buildings at the terminals, while the short tracks at center show their function with a waiting baggage car.  

(Victor Roseman recently published a well-illustrated and thorough guide for building the REA terminal, which I use as a guide in building my model: http://original.trainlife.com/articles/140/part-i-modeling-a-railway-express-terminal-from-a-walthers-kit)

Although real operation with real switching scenarios will be the real test of this design, the REA and US Mail terminals on the Overland Terminal Railway follow what appear to be prototype operations.  Once wired and operational, the terminals will be extensively tested, de-bugged and adjusted before the scenery goes into place.  A modeler gave me sound advice before I started the layout: always run-in an operation thoroughly before applying scenery.  There is nothing worse to a modeler than having to rip out days, weeks or months of work to fix track problems.  My experience running the layout so far has proven this point  many times over.

A Note on the Merits of Nailing Track

With a clear plan of action I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning last Sunday/Monday (lifelong insomnia can have its benefits), I completed the track work for the mail terminal operation.  All proud of myself for all of the precision of my track laying, I performed a final inspection tour and, much to my horror, found this sight at my last point of the inspection:

In the famous words of Charlie Brown, UUUUUGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!  A nasty kink, the bane of all railroading, reared its ugly head.  

More sound advice from experienced layout-builders is to nail track onto good roadbed and to check its quality by looking down the rails.  Looking down from above the tracks while laying it can be deceptive, as illustrated here.  Even using chalk lines and a straight edge to lay the track were unable to spot and prevent the kinks from the track that are now obvious in this picture.

Nailing track is a lifesaver.  When I discovered this kink at 2:30 am, I was too tired and disappointed to do anything about it, so I slept on it.  Next morning I gave Starbucks more of my money for a venti with two shots and got back to work on remediation of the kinks in the track.  After maybe 30 seconds of removing nails, the track was ready to adjust.  Using a solid and true straight edge I set to work, taking many breaks to walk around the layout to inspect the new alignment before re-nailing the track.  All told, the effort was all of 20 minutes.  I can only imagine what a nightmare this process would be if I had glued the track! Wetting roadbed to loosen glue, waiting for the water, then dealing with the distortions of laying track on wet roadbed are all the fear I need to counter the arguments of the Glue Religion.

Twenty minutes after setting to work, the track was where it should be:

All of this might be obvious to the more experienced layout builder, but this experience was invaluable for me in learning how to build, operate and maintain my own model railroad.  Different techniques all have their merits when presented by their advocates, but my experience is the ultimate test and determination of what works on my layout.

The Ongoing Process of Learning to Model a Passenger Terminal

Researching and laying the track for the main passenger terminal, coach yard (subject of a forthcoming series of posts) and the mail and express terminals shown here have been invaluable leaps in my modeling techniques and knowledge.  Building a layout is an ongoing learning process that is not for the timid or typical train enthusiast (properly called 'foamers' by railroad employees), and one has to be open to take on so many things beyond what is comfortable and known.  When I set out to build this layout I only had a vision and a desire with little else to guide me.  My friends all teased me that I would never do it, but I was committed from the beginning.  I had to line up so many things I never thought I'd be able to do in order to make the layout happen.  

Other modelers have told me on many occasions that this clarity of focus, drive and willingness to learn are what separates a layout builder from the vast sea of train enthusiasts in the hobby. Other layout owners have consistently given this advice - that the people who are the quickest to tell you how you should build your layout have never built one and likely never will.  

Building a layout requires an insatiable curiosity, an inexhaustible eagerness to learn from others and AMPLE resources to bring it all together - time, space, money, patience and more money.  Because my main interest is modeling a good passenger terminal operation, this blog documents the process of learning how to model such an operation.  More posts will report on what I've learned in building the passenger operation.  To be clear, the layout is NOT exclusively a passenger operation; rather, it is a model of urban transformation with railroading at its center.  Freight switching is a major focus of the layout as well, and it will be the major focus of future modeling - especially because it brings so much attention to the dirty work of keeping the city going.  This dark, dirty work and the scenes around it are the spirit of modeling 'Railroad Noir.'