LAYOUT CONCEPT AND DESIGN
As
many of the GLE followers know, the first four-level GLE was fully designed to
represent the trackage from Buffalo, NY to Renovo, PA in a near prototypical
fashion. After a move to Maine, a new Great Lakes Eastern was conceived,
however due to a variety of reasons, including a divorce, that version was never
constructed. The third concept is based on actual trackage and towns that exist
on the former Central Vermont Railway (CV) and current-day New England Central
Railroad (NECR).
CONCEPT
The new GLE layout is set in the modern era and covers a little more than 126 miles of trackage in Vermont and New Hampshire, along the Connecticut and White Rivers. The route is designed to follow the prototypical route, albeit with a bit more industry and customer base than is currently served by the NECR.
Named the River Subdivision, simply for the fact that it parallels the Connecticut and White Rivers in Vermont, the River Sub was once the mainline of the Central Vermont Railway. The portion of the route from White River Jct. to East Northfield, MA was sold to the Boston & Maine Railroad during a receivership period under the Central Vermont and trackage rights are retained by Pan Am Southern subsidiary Boston & Maine Railroad, today because of that deal.
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Operations on the River Sub will include a single through freight each way daily, a single intermodal train each way daily, a trackage rights Vermont Rail System stone train, Amtrak/VIA Rail Vermonter (Montreal-Boston) passenger train, and a daily trackage rights train from Pan Am Southern between East Northfield, MA and White River Jct., VT. Additional operations will come in the form of unit trains – salt, taconite (routed all-rail from the DM&IR/CN to Montreal then south over the GLE to New London for export), and coal moving to the Burlington Electric Power plant in Burlington, VT.
Brattleboro and Montpelier will exist as small yards only and see little train classification, while White River Jct. will employ a full-time switcher to make up the locals, handle interchange and also reblock traffic for the through freight and for Pan Am Southern.
Operating in a multi-deck design, the concept of the railroad will fall into a point-to-point operation with a lounge of some type available for crews not operating. The number of trains is enough to keep the single track busy, but not over-crowded if the dispatcher is on his/her toes. There will be numerous passing sidings and trains will be handled with Amtrak in the mix to keep operations interesting.
GLE acquired the route as part of the 2009 acquisition of New England Central Railroad and is currently revitalizing the route even further to serve numerous on-line customers, as well as provide more efficient interchange with Canadian National and the Vermont Rail System.
DESIGNING THE NEW GLE
The layout design will fit a building roughly 30 x 60 feet with 8-foot ceilings and only a few natural obstructions. Those obstructions include a furnace chimney, a staircase and the support beam. There have been several versions of trackplans developed in CadRail, however recent scouting missions have inspired me to go back to the drawing board.
Check back for design updates as trackplans are updated.