The Paoli Local

Vital Statistics

Owner Name:	Jay Keese
Date Built:	1998	Status:	Complete
Module Type:
Length:	4 ft.	Width:	2 ft.
Passing Sidings:	No	Additional Lines:	No
Industrial Spurs:	Yes	Yard Tracks:	No
Engine Servicing:	No	Crossovers:	No

Gallery

It’s a sunny afternoon in October 1953, at Wayne, PA. As the 3:20 Paoli Local moves on down the line, a shiny new A-B pair of F-7’s lead an eastbound freight into the heart of the Philadelphia’s leafy Main Line suburbs.
Photograph by Dave Davies

Passengers await the next train to Philadelphia, as a rickety string of MP-54’s whine down the eastbound tracks towards Paoli.
Photograph by Dave Davies

The Paoli Local attempts to capture the feel of the Standard Railroad of the World in a four-foot module.
Photograph by Dave Davies

Description

By Jay Keese

The Paoli Local, my first attempt at an Ntrak module, made its debut at the Great American Train Show in Chantilly VA , October 17-18, 1998. It was an appropriate time of the year to introduce Paoli, given that the scene is set in October 1953 at a suburban commuter stop on the Pennsy Main Line west of Philadelphia.

The area was home to me, and I was close to the railroad in more than just geographical terms. Both my grandfathers worked on the PRR. Mom took dad to Wayne Station every day where he hopped on the Paoli Local to Center City Philadelphia. I rode MP-54’s and Silverliners to school and work under 4 different roads, the PRR, Penn Central, Conrail, and Septa

Paoli is a plain old four-footer (2X4). Being an SPF, there really was no question that my module would have four tracks the only question was would there be live catenary? As you can see, I decided to keep it simple for my first attempt, so that project may come (quite a bit) down the road! I did make a few PRR-style catenary poles from plasti-struct, however. Again for simplicity’s sake, the only track option I chose was to add an orange line in the front. The orange line gives Paoli the flavor of Pennsy’s four-track Broad Way. The tracks split between the blue and yellow lines, curving gently to allow for the center platform. I used Peco code 80 flex track throughout. The frame is standard Ntrak bench work, but I chose to do the scenery directly on foam, keeping the module very lightweight.

Paoli features about two dozen structures. Although they are pretty standard N-scale fare, I’ve added some details to give the module the feel of the Main Line. There’s a mixture of DPM, Atlas, Life-Like Model Power, and others. In panting and detailing, I used conservative colors throughout and made sure there was lots of red brick. The Main Line was a pretty clean place in the 50’s so I went easy on the weathering. Grass is green and appropriately manicured. Wayne Station has the Victorian style shared by all the Main Line stations and features a typical Pennsy brick passenger platform. There is a brownstone retaining wall behind the station that just screams Pennsy, right down to the ivy crawling up the sides of the wall! I kit-bashed three old Bachman signal bridges to make a single bridge that would span the four-track Broad Way. There are several other trackside structures including the new Atlas tower, which resembles Pennsy architecture quite nicely.

The four main blocks of Downtown are removable. I mounted the structures on sidewalks made from various examples of Evergreen Sheet styrene. To create instant city streets, I simply place each block right on top of a large flat area of foam and Hydrocal scenery painted grimy black. Downtown features typical small town shops and restaurants, such as a newsstand, drug store, appliance shop and even a diner. Conestoga Road is a tree lined suburban street leading off from Downtown into a residential neighborhood with clapboard houses made by Pola and Model Power. One of my favorite structures is Micro-Engineering’s depression-era Mobil station that I’ve freelanced a bit.

I really enjoyed making the computer-generated signage that gives the module the feel of home. It was great to hear some Philly natives attending the show rave at seeing the Wayne Hotel, the Radnor Fire Company and a Main Line Moving and Storage van on a train set in Virginia! If you look closely under the roofline of the center platform you can see track locator signs for Paoli and Philadelphia. Other signs were cut from the excellent Blair Line sets handily printed on styrene.

The module was designed to be an amalgam of Main Line towns. I’ve attempted to capture the feel of Main Line rather than model a specific station stop. Serious SPFs will recognize some inconsistencies. Wayne Station did not have a center platform; Bryn Mawr, I believe was the only station on the Paoli Local that had such a feature. My goal was not to get too bogged down in prototype details, but rather to capture the essence of the Standard Railroad of the World at its zenith.