Model Railroading > A Few Updates on the Onondaga Cutoff

As summer comes to a close and fall begins, I thought to post a few images and discuss some recent progress on the Onondaga Cutoff, my 1994 Conrail layout set in Central New York on a fictional bypass route around the city of Syracuse, NY.

The biggest change has been the decision to go with photo backdrops, spurred by my first experiment with them as seen in the first image below.  Once I saw the depth that a photo backdrop can add to a scene, my mind was set.  Plenty of research followed and I am now in possession of custom photo backdrops for the whole railroad.  Those will be installed this fall and I will keep you all up to date - lots of learning to do still here!

I also added a new branch line, representing an old 'main' line of the Syracuse, Chenengo & New York RR, a circa 1880 start up that ran from the NYC interchange at Dewitt down through Cazenovia, where it connected with a line that became a Lehigh Valley branch running through Cortland to Ithaca.  It adds some nice historical context, and also some nice new switching for my YAON-20 crew.  

We also added a PC upgrade to the layout, which has resulted in better operation of the CTC and WiThrottle, both via JMRI and the CATS software overlay.  

As the nights get longer here there will be more progress to report.  It's an exciting time of year!

Images:

1.  Conrail's BRSE train comes east through CP282 on its way from the Belt Railway of Chicago's Clearing Yard to Selkirk, NY.  My first foray into photo backdrops is seen here, the skyline of Syracuse NY as viewed from the south.

2.  Cement hoppers in Onondaga Yard, awaiting their first trip down to the customer on a recently-opened branch line.

3.  An overview of where the old SC&NY line passes beneath the former NYC, now Conrail main line east of Onondaga Yard.  Some rough cardboard painted brown helps me to visualize what I need to do for permanent scenery.  That NYC bridge will be heavily weathered, but will leave traces of the past - one of the fun parts of modern railfanning is to see links to the past despite the modern operations.  This is an area that will be greatly improved with the photo backdrop installation.

Thanks for looking!
~RGDave
Modeling Conrail in Central New York in 1994
http://onondagacutoff.blogspot.com/



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/23/16 05:08 by RGDave.

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Thanks for sharing Dave, I always enjoy seeing pictures of your layout.

Andrew C

Wow, having lived in Syracuse for 14 years and gone to a few games at SU, I recognize the Carrier Dome in the background!  Hah hah.  I lived there during the time from represented in the photo's - looks great!  Having grown up in California, I was struck by how old and run down everything looked back east - I guess it's a bit like Europe in the sense that the eastern rust belt cities have been around so much longer - lots of old decaying brick buildings everywhere.  Something to capture in model form.

Cheers, Jim Fitch



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/22/16 10:46 by SPDRGWfan.

If the 2016 PC ends up being half as scenery-blessed as your layout, I'll be happy. Very nice work!

Bob

Great work! I had to do a double take on picture #1 to see it was a model. I agree with the others, if my scenery is half as good as yours, I'll be a happy camper.
Cooper

I always love seeing pictures from this layout... Helps provide inspiration for me to make my feeble modeling efforts a bit less-than-feeble... Also I love those signal bridges; they're a refreshing sight since the real things are very, very endangered...

Thanks for posting, and look forward to more!

Excellent work. Do you have a map of the line from DeWitt to Cazenovia? I lived in Cazenovia during the previous century and am familiar with the Lehigh Valley branch coming up from Cortland. Any assistance is appreciated.

Thank you all for the nice comments and support!  It's very rewarding bringing this layout to life and I'm very excited to continue with scenery.  Gotta get that backup up first and that's a challenge, but once it's in place, this railroad will really come to life.

In getting this map ready to post, I realized my mistake - SC&NY is the Syracuse, CHENENGO & New York, not Syracuse, Cazenovia & New York.  I made that change to the original post.  In any case here is a piece of an 1884 map by an R.H. Alter showing the lines through Syracuse and the SC&NY coming off just east of Dewitt, then running down through Cazenovia.  The line that would become the Lehigh Valley (shown here as the Utica, Ithaca & Elmira RR) is the intersecting line in Cazenovia.

Sometimes, even a freelanced layout ends up teaching us quite a bit about history!

~RGDave 

 

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Great photos of a great layout that I've had the opportunity to operate on numerous times. 

Dave, only suggestion in photo 1 is to put a big puddle in the access road to the tower.  Railroad maintainer roads are NEVER neatly graded!  It really is a great scene, I agree the backdrop makes such a difference.

Great looking layout. Who did you have print the backdrops and what was the cost?
 

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

Water coming soon to many scenes!  I want to do a bunch of drainage and puddles all at once, and so puddles and mud along the ROW has waited.  I agree that it's rare to have well-graded MOW roads.

Ted the photo backdrop here is just a 20" X 40" print from Nations Photo Lab from an image I had taken south of Syracuse for the skyline.  I cut the sky away and mounted the remainder on heavy-stock black art paper, and mounted that to the backdrop.

The remainder of the backdrops have been printed by BackdropWarehouse, via their on-line store.  It's a long story but I will post more information going forward.  Their work is not cheap, but they do offer some good discounts if you order in quantity, which I did.  Pricing is outlined on their website.

~RGDave
http://onondagacutoff.blogspot.com/