Wright’s Cove (N)

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Back in January I wrote a post on the National Gypsum operations, here in Dartmouth, at Wright’s Cove where they transload gypsum from rail to ships.

I can’t get this out of my head. Plus, I needed to do something creative during a period of well you know. The above sketch is something I created by importing a screenshot from Google Earth into Templot and then drawing an N scale version of the tracks at Wright’s Cove in N scale without compression.

Just as I proposed, back in January, I’d connect the inbound and outbound tracks by a sector plate and feed hoppers through this scene in a variation of “loads in-empties out” where I take four to six loaded hopper cars from B and C then feed them into the unloader at A. As they shove back through the unloader they land on the sector plate where they repeat the same process steps again.

The real cars can be unloaded remotely and they dump down into a hopper from where a conveyor moves the gypsum to stock piles or to an awaiting ship. That intermediary hopper, under the tracks, can only hold about four cars worth of rock so, every four cars, they have to pause the unloading process to wait for the conveyor to catch up and clear enough rock. Yup, that’s where I slide out the four cars from unloader to inbound loads – crafty eh?

What’s neat? In real life National Gypsum’s engine is remote control operated from the ground – just like on a train set.

While National Gypsum own the train cars and trackage within their mine (at Milford) and at the transload operation at Wright’s Cove the bit in the middle is CN’s domain. CN provides the engines and crew to move hoppers from Milford to Wright’s Cove and back again using their train 511. The whole operation runs, at least, daily and five days a week, twelve months a year. That 2100 was a leader on 511 a couple years ago, in the snow. It might be fun to set the model in winter too. Big, six-axle power like this used to completely irrelevant to my interests but I have learned to discover how much I rather like them now. If this layout blossomed into something more or even as cameos I could see buying models like these – what a mature-feeling change to observe in myself. I’m glad current Chris is the way he is now.

This layout fits in my space and is something I can readily research. I like the story too and it satisfies my sense of operations by the measures of satisfaction and contentment.

I can be unhealthily myopic in my ability to see potential in model railway design. My interest in British industrial railroading in the 1970’s is never lessened but in Wright’s Cove there’s a chance to adopt in some of that aesthetic. Directly because they actually used to use a British-built Hunslet diesel-hydraulic to shunt cars through the unloader and figuratively too because I could wander carefully from the engines are cars used here to model other engines or cars from other similar operations to change the identity of the the layout to enjoy the variety of a remote-controlled GP9 in place of the SW8 we usually use.

It’s been a while since I’ve been this close to a plan that seems to work so well. Am I finally at the “let’s go buy some pink foam” stage? I hope so.

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‹ Coy Paper (HO) first sketch

Coy Paper 2 (HO) ›

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Categories: model railway design, national gypsum

Tags: n scale, national gypsum, National Gypsum Wright's Cove, shelf layout design