Gallery

Neil's Creek, frontal view. Photo by Bill Rutherford

Neil's Creek, with traffic running through it. Photo by Bill Rutherford

Looking down the tracks at Neil's Creek. Photo by Cotton Bowen

The Caboose Motel? Photo by Cotton Bowen

The girder trestle... Photo by Cotton Bowen

Neil’s Creek, New York

My latest rendition of what is becoming the Cohocton Valley Division of NVNTRAK made its debut at the Culpeper Train Days on 14 September. I designed this module to be a prototypical-adjoining module south of Wallace, NY (1936). In contrast to Wallace I did not make Neil’s Creek time specific; rather I made it to portray a number of different eras all at once. Not to be confused with the Cohocton River, Neil’s creek is the small creek flowing from the hills through a narrow valley west of Wallace. The creek and the cliff on the side of the valley come from the same geographic formation. The creek joins the Cohocton River just south of Wallace. 

Although the Lackawanna Railroad line, which runs just outside Wallace and is now the Bath and Hammondsport Railroad (still active), does not really join the Erie Railroad’s right of way (which is now ripped out). For the sake of future operations I had the line rejoin the Blue Line just outside of town. If I ever complete the division, the last module will be “12 Mile Creek”. It will have a cut off from the Blue Line on the other side of town. 

In the module I have portrayed the old Erie Railroad girder trestle that used to stand just south of town. It has since been torn down and replaced by an Interstate Highway (I-390). That location was a favorite swimming hole for the children of Wallace. In fact the casual observer will note a crowd of children swimming and jumping off the bridge. I am sure that OLI can use that scene for a valuable teaching point although in the 1920’s when my father grew up no one seemed to be concerned. Just a few yards from the bridge is a scratch built Lackawanna pagoda style station that stood just outside of town until the 1940’s. Although there was no building immediately available to measure and photograph for dimensions, I did have some old pictures of the building from various perspectives, and during a visit I discovered that the old foundation still exists. The foundations enabled me to measure the length and width of the station. A little use of high school mathematics on the proportional measurements of the photographs and the foundation enabled me to accurately calculate the height of the building. Later, discovery of an identical station building that had been moved to Bath, New York from Savona, New York enabled me to verify that I had calculated the correct dimensions. 

Further down the tracks is a dairy farm with a beautiful old barn (built in 1876), the “Caboose Motel” of Avoca, New York (not to be confused with the Caboose Motel of Strasburg, PA) and the “Country Goose Diner”. All in a few steps one can sleep in a Caboose and walk across the street for a filling breakfast. All for a reasonable price (including a $0.25 ever-flowing cup of coffee). If you’re lucky, you might even see the one train a week run by the B&H RR come by with its lone tank of fertilizer, and a flat car drawn by an S-3 diesel switcher in burgundy and black livery.