Layout Information

and

History

Layout

The Delaware and Ontario is a fictitious railroad that runs between Wolcott Bay and Kingston. The concept of the railroad originated by taking a map of New York State and drawing a line between the towns of Kingston and Wolcott Bay. The major towns between these two endpoints were incorporated into the layout. Major local yards are at Kingston, Grand Gorge, Oneonta, and Wolcott Bay. Considerable local switching exists at Weedsport, Cortland, Otisco Valley, Hart Lot, and a few other sidings.

View from the CTC tower

 

Plan

The HO scale layout is designed for operation as a point to point but can also be run in a continuous loop for our annual open house and any special events that the club may host.

Electrical

The club recently completed a total rewiring of the layout. There was very little documentation for the old wiring. Combined with decaying wire, it proved to make troubleshooting almost impossible.

In the fall of 1997, the club voted to redesign and install all new wiring. At the same time, it was decided to relocate the Centralized Traffic Control Station to a back room above the layout. This would isolate the CTC office from the railroad and give it a more remote feeling (the board faces away from the layout). The layout uses standard cab control at this time. We are hoping to move to DCC by the end of 2004. The mainline is controlled by the CTC dispatcher with four mainline cabs and local controls for towns and yards. The CTC panel is equipped with train detection for the entire mainline (only 15% active).

Our newly installed CTC panel

All mainline turnouts are controlled by CTC and are stall motor designs. Many of the turnouts have (and all will soon) local signals indicating turnout position. Local yards are mostly twin coil with two yards levers and springs. The club recently decided that future turnouts will use stall motor controls, example is the Kingston yard (which just came online) was converted to all stall motors!

 

Operation

The layout is operated on the first Friday of every month. It takes at least 6 people to operate the railroad, but more the merrier! At this time we are not running with a fast clock. We use a master schedule to sequence our trains and rotate the era of trains each month. We try to be as prototypical as possible. So one month may be all steam, the next some early diesels, and all the way up to double stacks and modern age engines.

Most trains from one end of the layout to the other. Loaded coal trains depart from our operating mine at Oneonta and empty coals trains depart from our operating coal dumper in Wolcott Bay. We use two-way radios for all our communications between towns, CTC, and road crews.