St. Joseph Valley
Model Railroad Club
The
Valley Route
SJV train 341 meets 342 at the top of Krugers' Point
The history
of the St. Joe Valley
The St. Joseph Valley Model Railroad Club was formed
by a group of model railroad enthusiasts in 1963. They started meeting
and then building our first layout at the home of a local business man.
Coincidentally, this businessman owned Bob's Hobby Shop. The original name
of the club was "Bob's Railroad Club". We remained there until Bob closed
the store in 1973.
From that time in 1973 until the spring of 1977,
meeting were held at the homes of various members, as well at local restaurants
During that time, members helped each other on their railroads, while at
the same time began planning a new one. Sometime during that 3 year period,
the club changed to the now familiar "St. Joseph Valley Railroad Club".
In the spring of 1977, we found a new home. Once
again it was at a local hobby shop. Bruce Ridge, the owner of "Hobbyland",
rented us the first of two eventual rooms in the back of his store. From
1977 until March of 1995 we constructed the railroad.
This layout was an East West railroad based in
Nebraska with approximately 400 feet of track including hidden staging
as well as numerous hidden tracks to lengthen runs while inside tunnels
and such. It used a 7 throttle variable DC control system, as well as electronic
turnout controls. Most of the track, as well as the electronics were hand
built and designed my members of the club.
The layout was about 80 percent complete when Hobbyland
sold the building we were in. At the time of the move the main division
point yard was complete as well as many towns and most of the scenery.
Unfortunately when we had to move, it was impossible
to save most of the layout do to it's construction and scenery. It took
about three weeks to remove the old layout.
Our search for a new home was short lived. In June
of 1995 we found what we believe is the perfect location. Our new home
is in the historic New York Central freight house in downtown Mishawaka.
The building, which is on the Conrail (now Norfolk Southern) mainline between
Chicago and Toledo, was built in 1897. With this location, we routinely
joke amongst ourselves and to our visitors that we have a great sound system,
just no volume control.
The building is 377 feet long d 30 feet wide. This
does not include the loading dock which adds 6 feet in width and 48 feet
to the length on the east end of the building. We Rent the first 75 feet
on the East end of the building . Our layout room is 48 feet long and 28
feet wide. There is also another 18 foot extension off of the main layout
room for our hidden staging yards. The rest of the space is our meeting
room/ dispatcher office, storage room/ structure/rolling stock assembly
room, a mechanical closet and a 12 by 30 foot workshop/ lumber storage/
etc. room. Above the meeting/assembly/mechanical rooms is a loft/attic
where we are currently storing everything from old magazines to our completed
structures.
In January 1996 we began to do the major finish
work in the layout area. They room which now houses are pike was originally
going to be a nightclub. When the person who was building the nightclub
lost financing, quite a bit of work had been completed. This made our job
somewhat easier. We removed the "air lock" doors and insulated the walls.
After we completed that we installed drywall and then painted. By April
we had the outside walls up and ready. Our next big project was the J type
peninsula in the center of the room. This type of construction is not difficult,
until you take into account that there were two load bearing vertical beams
that we needed to support the lowered ceiling. Of course the previous owner
couldn't have put them in the place we needed, we had to build new ones
to shore up the ceiling. In June, after all of the preparatory construction
was completed we marked a line on all the walls to be a baseline for our
benchwork. You may ask why we did this. Here is the answer. The only square
corner and level surface in the building are those that we put in. At places
there is a 2 inch or more difference in floor height and as for the corners.
After all, the building is over a hundred years old!!!!
After we had our baseline up, it was time to start
benchwork. construction. Much to the chagrin of a number of members, we
saved the main division yard from our layout at Hobbyland. Don't get us
wrong, the yard was built well and worked on that pike, but with our new
design and and changes in operations (mainly to adopting DCC) it was not going work for us, but
we would try.
Now that we have our first piece of benchwork.
up, we can start building the rest of the layout. After some discussions
with Jeff Johnston (the primary designer of the layout) we began building
south from the yard. At this time we were dealt a hard blow. Phil Chasey,
a founding member of the club was in a serious motor vehicle accident and
passed away a few days later. The layout stood idle for about a month while
we all met at the club and remembered the good times we had with Phil.
At this time we also renamed the yard from it's original name of Kemp yard
to Chasey yard in honor of Phil.
Once we were back to construction, we made good
progress until we reached the end of the J wall. At that point Jeff had
to construct the benchwork. there. The reason we had to pause here for
Jeff is that the benchwork. is of a more difficult construction. At this
point the layout doubles back on the J wall and need to drop about 6 inches.
Jeff came up with an ingenious plan for this.
Photo taken on 10/98. Note upper
deck to
extreme top left of the photo.
As you can see in the above photo, Jeff had to
do some fancy carpentry to build the benchwork to be ascetically pleasing,
structurally sound, as well as work with our minimum radius and aisle size.
After the upper deck benchwork is installed, we will be using the John
Armstrong Tricuspid type of scenic divider. This way, we will be breaking
up the line of sight and creating 5 different scenes (1 for each deck on
the sides and 1 on the peninsula end). This is the only area on the layout
that a train will go through the same scene twice on the two decks.
