BridgewaterLayout4

Bridgewater Layout - Page 4

WARNING!!! The quality of the pictures and the diagrams are very poor. Proceed at your own risk!

This next portion of the model railroad is Ridgewood Junction. I really never got the scenery started/finished in the Ridgewood area, but I'll show you some of the pictures of what was there. It was completely operational, just not asthetically pleasing. I've also put pictures here of the first attempt at the Fair Lawn area and its connection to Ridgewood. This later proved, not to be wrong, but I found a better way to do it. I rebuilt the Fair Lawn section of the layout and moved it over about four feet towards the furnace, away from the cellar wall and separated it from the Paterson area.
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Under construction from the wrong direction. The track on the right became the Bergen County Line and
was straightened to go to Glen Rock. Suffern is above and Ridgewood Junction is center stage.
Another picture of the Fair Lawn area with some very busy spurs in Nabisco and General Motors.
Looking back toward the then "Fair Lawn" area. This whole area was shifted four feet to the right in the picture. Connection tracks were taken up and put down again in different positions to separate the mainline and the Bergen County Line.
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Beyond Ridgewood and Ridgewood Junction, the scenery comes into view again and the area diagram is here.
First, a correction on the diagram. The tower at the east end of the Waldwick yard was WC tower. XW was in Paterson.
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The major features of this area are Ridgewood Junction, Waldwick yard and the Ramsey siding.
Waldwick yard is the focal point of short haul commuter trains. The commuter trains tied up for the night at Waldwick, departing trains left early in the schedule to bring commuters to Hoboken and then in a mad scramble at the end of the afternoon, all came back westbound. Other commuter train destinations were Suffern and Port Jervis, NY. In particular, afternoon commuter traffic on the model railroad raised havoc with freight movements all over the layout during operating sessions. Prototype running has it's "come downin's". Hoboken had twelve commuter trains leave in the space of twenty mintes (real time).
Operators (both mainline cab and tower operators) would bitterly complain about all the commuter trains stopping at various and sundry stations in boring repetition and holding up freight switching.
Personally I thought it was a real hoot! and prototypical.
Nuff said. Here's some pictures of the action.

Ho-Ho-Kus station west of Ridgewood in lower center. Further west near another Sam Braen Construction Co.
siding slightly east of Mahwah is up above.
Waldwick yard under construction with no scenery, but with commuter trains. The next picture
is almost from the same location at a later date.
WC tower at left at East end of the Waldwick yard. Some scenery left to go. Mainline peddler is
up above on the Ramsey siding.
Looking at the east end of the Waldwick yard over WC tower. Note PennCentral extra
on the siding in a special move on the EL.
Waldwick yard from the west end under construction. Allendale station in foreground.
Waldwick yard from west end crammed with commuter trains. Yes, that is the Ramsey
Journal building on the left (in Ramsey).

Another picture of the west end of the yard. There's that PC freight again!
A wider under construction look at the Allendale area beyond the yard.
A full look at the entire area under construction as the mainline climbs from Ridgewood to Mahwah.
View of the farm in Mahwah. Note below the pedistrian bridge in Waldwick
Another look at the farm from the west.
The back of the Mahwah station and Sam Braen Company spur.
Mahwah station and hotel on the mainline.
A closer look at the Mahwah station.
Sam Braen Company spur next to the Mahwah station on the mainline.

Our next stop is the Suffern and Hillburn yard complex. This area was the end of the layout for a while until the extension to Port Jervis was added. Early operation sessions used the Hillburn yard as the western termination point and added an element of "where am I gonna put this train?" to the operator at the Suffern tower during these sessions. Although the yard was fairly big, it wasn't sufficient to store large through freights. Here's a look at the detail diagram of the Suffern area.

Lead to the Hillburn yard under construction. Just homasote and track.
Ramapo Ajax Company spur in Mahwah east of the Suffern station
Overview look at the Hillburn yard. The front part is the passenger yard and towards the rear is freight yard.
Hillburn yard. Commuter trains and the local drill in the foreground right and freight hauls on the left.
A low shot of the east end of the Hillburn yard. Yard buildings, radio tower and the New York Thruway. This roadway also posed as Route 3 bridge over Berry's Creek in the meadowlands east of Rutherford.
Under construction picture at the west end . More homasote and trackwork.
Freight motive power and hacks stacked up in the Hillburn yard. Phoebe Snow on the mainline.
Hillburn yard under construction looking east to west. Note control panel for the area over top of layout.
Hillburn yard west end. Phoebe Snow tail car on mainline headed east.
The benchwork is revealed. On top is the Hillburn yard. Cab control is plugged in. It must be play time.
A long distance train passes the Hillburn yard eastbound on the mainline toward Suffern.

At a later date Port Jervis was installed over Hoboken as the western terminus of the model layout. This relieved the congestion of the Hillburn yard and made operations much smoother.

Here's a couple of more shots from off the layout.

E8A's line up at Waldwick yard waiting for the morning commuter rush on the layout.
E8A's line up at Waldwick yard waiting for the morning commuter rush on the layout.
Oh! Wait! These are the real ones.

A eastbound freight moves past the Hillburn passenger yard under the New York Thruway. Models (as if you can't tell).
A eastbound freight moves past the Hillburn passenger yard under the New York Thruway. The real McCoy.
Well, at least the buildings are close.

The biggest problem is that I have NO pictures of Port Jervis or of many "finished" parts of the layout beyond what is pictured here. These "finished" areas included engine facilities at Hoboken including turntable, roundhouse and MU shed, PennCentral interchange with three track yard and many industries in the Hoboken area. Most of the areas that are pictured here were eventually detailed and finished with scenery. Port Jervis was never finished and left as homasote and trackage for large train storage. I tried to model (scratchbuild) to prototype many of the stations. You've seen pictures of Mahwah, Ho-Ho-Kus, Glen Rock (BCL), Garfield, Plauderville and Kingsland in some of these pictures. Not pictured, but scratchbuilt, in addition were Waldwick, Ramsey, Delawanna and Glen Rock (mainline).
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Click on underlined area to view pictures of most of the prototype stations
on George Elwood's "Fallen Flags" web site
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Many of the structures, buildings and the bridges ended up in Northlandz and can be found on that layout in Flemington, NJ. We moved from Bridgewater in 1993. Except for the trackwork, aforementioned buildings and structures, and the rolling stock, the entire layout ended up in two 9 cubic yard dumpsters. I called many museums, historical societies and private people to trying to give it away and there were no takers.

This layout is on the list for the best top ten layouts on the world wide web. It has, for the past six months, been
voted as one of the top ten layouts on the web, placing second OCtober 1999 and third December 1999..
By clicking on the banner below, you can vote for this layout with a BIG "5"

Our next episode involves the present layout(#4), now in progress, the Erie Lackawanna at Port Jervis, a division point modeling adventure. Click here to continue to the Port Jervis layout. Thanks for your time and patience. I hope you enjoyed the tour. If you have any comments, just email them to jjordan@blast.net.

Click here to return to the EL "Train Nut" home page or to the web site Jordan Comedy Network home page.

E8A's line up at Waldwick yard waiting for the morning commuter rush on the layout.	E8A's line up at Waldwick yard waiting for the morning commuter rush on the layout. Oh! Wait! These are the real ones.
A eastbound freight moves past the Hillburn passenger yard under the New York Thruway. Models (as if you can't tell).	A eastbound freight moves past the Hillburn passenger yard under the New York Thruway. The real McCoy. Well, at least the buildings are close.