Construction Begins!

In May of this year my wife and I decided to move from our prior home, where we had lived for 22 years.  This meant that my freelanced N scale railroad, the Peconic, which occupied a 10x10 bedroom, would have to be dismantled.  After a false start or two, we decided to have a house built in Indian Land SC, about 8 miles or so from our prior home.  Although I regretted dismantling the Peconic, the space allocated for a model railroad in the new home was bigger.  A lot bigger.  Basically, one room 22x14 feet with a wide opening to another room 12x17.  That was big enough for me to contemplate my dream of building a representation of the Lehigh & Hudson River, and big enough to ease the pain of dismantling the Peconic. 

After consultation with friends & a fair amount of paper and pencil sketching, I decided that I could, and would, build a double deck representation of the L&HR circa 1966-1968 with the New Haven Maybrook Yard as the eastern modeled end and Andover NJ as the western modeled end, with staging at both ends.  Going west from Maybrook I decided that I would include the EL ex Erie interchange at Greycourt NY, the L&HR yard at Warwick NY, the passing siding at DeKays NJ, Franklin NJ, the branch to Ogdensburg NJ, the Susquehanna interchange at Sparta Jct NJ, and the EL ex Lackawanna interchange at Andover NJ.

I also decided to take some modeler's license, and assumed that the zinc mine in Franklin remained open into the 1960s, as did some of the limestone quarries along the L&HR.  I also assumed that the merger with the L&NE, which was proposed in the 1950s, actually occurred, and that the L&NE abandoned their line to Maybrook in favor of the L&HR route.
   
On October 30 my wife and I moved to our new home, and on November 25, Thanksgiving morning, I began construction of the Lehigh & Hudson River in N scale.  I'm happy to report that as of yesterday, December 5, with the help of good friends Steven "AT" Johnson, Jeff Lindstrom, and Marcus Neubacher, all the lower level benchwork and about two thirds or more of the upper level benchwork has been completed.  Also, the transition to the upper level has been brainstormed to the point where I can make it happen without a helix and without having the mainline pass through the same scene twice. 

I'm very excited to see my representation of the L&HR start to come to life, and I'll add some posts later about proposed operations, as well as some pictures of the construction progress to date.