T-Trak: Chester Railway Museum module (part 1) - Railroad Equipment

I am a member of the local N scale T-trak club in Albany and operate my Japanese Tokyo module with them. However, sometimes my wife wishes I would run some of "our" (she has an extensive collection of Western Pacific N scale equipment) trains at the shows. Since I am always looking for new projects I thought building a new T-trak module would be fun.

My "triple" Japanese module is nearly 36" long. That is a foot shorter than a regular N-trak module, but it still is hard to store something that big between shows. So I wanted something smaller. I brainstormed a British themed module a while ago and that might eventually be built. But for now, I am sticking with American. So, what should be the theme?

The first idea that jumped out at me was the Chester Railway Museum in Chester, Mass. We have camped there twice in their caboose and loved it. Running right by it is the double-track mainline of the former Boston and Albany (now CSX) railroad. The museum has a station, a caboose, a tank car painted for Baker's Chocolate, a speeder, two old wooden boxcars, and an old steam engine on display. It is compact, has sentimental memories, and wouldn't be too difficult to model. 

One thing I decided was that it wasn't going to be a perfect model of the station or the equipment. I was going for "close enough".

The general arrangement at the museum is interesting. To get there you drive in from the road shown at the bottom of the picture below, swing under the tracks via the bridge on the right, and then pull up to the museum. The ground is slanted, rising from right to left, and it all looks like it was carved out of a hill. Very nice, but not easy to model on a flat top module. So, I decided to have the right side of the module be right before the bridge to avoid that issue. 

In the picture above, northwest (towards Albany NY) is to the left and Southeast (towards Boston) is to the right.

Here is a shot of the dirt access driveway leading directly to the caboose, as well as the grade in general.

The museum grounds feature a disconnected track running along the statino platform and connecting the station area to the caboose. A small speeder is parked near the tank car, and two older wooden boxcars are at by the station platform, nicely painted on the side facing the museum. They use one for storage and the other as a children's play area with toys, games, a model train along the ceiling, etc. The track ends at a display of a wooden passenger car truck, which sadly needs further restoration.

On the other side of the station platform is a bay window caboose painted blue for the Baltimore & Ohio railroad that is used as a kitchen for catered events on site. When we were there last fall they were digging out the area to hold a full size passenger car, and it was finally delivered in late December 2025. I don't know how much of this area I plan to model.

The station property and CSX mainline are separated by a chain link fence. On the other side of the the mainline tracks is a maintenance of way siding that is occasionally used. There is no room on the front of the T-trak module to include it completely, though I might add a track in the weeds with a dummy switch. Or not, I am not sure.

I decided to do a quick search online to see what I could find for a tank car, caboose, and station. Without those key components, the project just wouldn't work. 

Finding a suitable tank car was easy. The tank car at the museum has a dome but if you search online for prototype information on Baker's Chocolate tank cars (such as here and here) many of the pictures of other prototype cars don't have domes. I don't recall the history of the museum's railcar, but it might not have been used in actual chocolate service.

There are several companies that make models of them in N scale with domes (Model Power, Intermountain, Micro Trains, Atlas Industrial Rail) but I picked Intermountain because it had a white platform around the dome. It might not be a perfect match but it was close enough. 

Upon receiving it I trimmed the coupler "air hoses" off, painted the wheels brown, and gave it a light weathering using drybrushed brown acrylic paint. I also rubbed the handrails with the sides of a pencil to darken them a bit. Though it probably could use another layer of overall grime, I didn't want to be heavy handed as they try and keep it in nice shape. Within minutes of working on it I realized that N scale is tiny, getting the wheels into the trucks isn't fun, and it is very easy to break delicate details!

The caboose was a bit tricker. The one at the museum (where we sleep at night) was an old Rutland car built by the New York Central when the Rutland was their subsidiary, currently painted up for the Boston and Albany. 

I couldn't find anything exact in N scale except a laser cut wood kit by American Model Builders. A friend of mine who models the NYC in N scale advised me that this kit was not for the faint of heart, so I passed. Instead, I chose an Athearn model (ATH14447) that featured three important characteristics: it was wood-sided, it had the right number of windows in approximately the right locations, and the cupola was also in the right location.  

I disassembled it by removing some truly miniscule screws, and then removing the cupola. This allowed me access to crack the clear window glazing from the inside. The roofwalk was also scrapped, though I kept the smokejack. Then, I used metal and nail files to smooth the roof and remove any roofwalk support nibs.

I used two small jewelers files to open up the windows to a larger size. There was barely any room to slide the file in and out of the opening before hitting the opposite wall. But, the plastic cut pretty easily. Then, I used a small chisel blade to remove the exterior window frames. Next, the windows were framed with Evergreen #8102 styrene on three sides, and some 0.060" Plastruct L-angle on the top. These windows and gutters were likely later additions added by the museum when they restored the caboose for camping service on the property.

The cupola was butchered by cutting most of each of the walls away, leaving just the corner posts. These were then shortened in height.

Finally, new window "frames" were added by taking some scribed styrene and cutting away portions to leave only one vertical row of siding (to represent the frame) with the rest gone (to represent the window opening). Fiddly, because everything was so small, but hardly noticeable from a foot away.

Lastly, the roof was given a layer of single-ply tissue paper and flooded with thin superglue.

Unfortunately, when I woke up the next morning it was a disaster. Excess tissue soaked with glue bent down and attached to the sides of the caboose. I spent the next hour doing my best to scrape, chisel, and sand away excess tissue paper stuck to to the sides. Two windows had to be rebuilt, and some wood siding was scribed with a knife to try and restore the look of wood boards. I was disheartened but pushed on, figuring I wouldn't really know how bad it looked until it was painted.

I used red primer to paint the caboose, which was a good match for the final color of the car. It was sprayed with clear gloss on the sides and then custom decals by Precision Design Company were applied. They aren't inexpensive but the company is great to work with. Mine went on fine, though I botched them a bit on one side and had to redo them (thank goodness they include spares!). Because of the window spacing I had to relocate the "NYC" oval emblem to the end of the caboose instead of between the windows, but I can live with that.

I didn't reattach the body to the body to the frame as I might want to add lights, and this will be simpler with it disassembled.

Also on site is a small 0-4-0 steam engine #74 named "LUCY". Trying to find an exact model of this in N scale was impossible, but again I only needed something close enough. 

I don't think it has an actual connection with the museum or the granite quarry across the street. It was looking a little rough around the edges, but she is cute and colorful.

In my collection I had a pair of small steamers which might work: a Bachmann "Docksider" 0-4-0 and a LifeLike saddle tank 0-6-0. Neither ran well so I didn't mind sacrificing them for the project. The Bachmann engine's length and wheel arrangement was correct, but the LifeLike's saddle tank assembly was closer to what I needed. So, I started with that.

I disassembled everything, and since it never had to run again I didn't have to be too careful. I removed the valve gear by pulling the crank pins, which allowed me to remove the center axle and the gears on the axles. I glued the chassis back together and had an 0-4-0. The frame was too long, so I took it over to my bandsaw and removed about a quarter-inch from the rear. I used a belt sander to shorten the cab to match.

Then, the boiler shell was modified. I carved away some grab irons molded on the saddle tank, the two extra sand domes, the water filler hatch, and the headlight. I used files to smooth over the areas, and also plugged the two dome holes some styrene rod that I had on hand that fit perfectly. 

After only about an hour's worth of work, this is what I had. Is it perfect? No. But the real thing looks a bit rough around the edges too. If you compare it with the prototype above you will note that I didn't replicate the large headlight on the front. I found it a bit ugly so I omitted it, though I may go back later and add something.

I then painted it up with black, green, silver, and white paint. There was a lot of touch ups using toothpicks to get the black, white, and silver exactly where they needed to go. And I didn't paint the wheel rims white as I knew I couldn't do it cleanly, but I did do the side rods and crossheads. 

Alas, it wasn't meant to be. Though it looked resplendent in its green and black scheme, both my wife and son pointed out that the prototype engine was all black. I had painted it from memory using a black-and-white printout of the engine, and my memory was faulty. 

So, I had to repaint it black. With a red roof (another detail I didn't notice with my black and white picture. Then I looked at more pictures online and saw that the front buffer had wood boards painted green (perhaps that was what I was thinking of?), and a number plate that was red. The window frames also should have been green but I decided to quit while I was ahead.

Finally, I ordered some decals and again I turned to Precision Design Company. Though I was planning on just putting the number 74 on the cab, they drew up the artwork for the name "LUCY" and a white box around the number as an option. And did they ever go on easy. Though the entire model is only about 1.5" long, it came out great.

I also went and repainted the cab roof bright red to match pictures I found online, and I also added a black oversize headlight on the front made from a cut piece of paintbrush handle.

For the speeder, I first bought an old styrene or resin kit from Durango Press. However, after destroying the walls just trying to get them separated from the sprues I punted and went with a 3D resin casting that I purchased from Anthony Kochevar. For those with 3D printers, the file can be found here. Anthony sent me a painted one and his work was fantastic. It is roughly the size of a marble yet has so much detail packed in. 

With the rolling stock done (except for the two wooden boxcars and the B&O caboose), I decided that the project was indeed feasible and moved on to building the station itself.