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Welcome to the Yardley and Hillton Railroad

This website is about using conventional power controls with hand held tethered throttles, provision for one or two operators, flat paper buildings and hidden train staging. The overarching goal of my writings is to show how to have a lot of train operation on a room size layout without spending too much money. The Yardley…
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Yardley and Hillton Switching Shelf

Prior to building the 8×11 foot layout in my basement, I constructed a freestanding enhancement of Chuck Yungkruth’s Gum Stump and Snow Shoe track plan that was 1 x 7 1/2 feet. This Yardley and Hillton was later scrapped so the turnouts could be used on the big layout. The following two photos are among…
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Best Overall Pictures of the Yardley & Hillton

I wanted a picture showing most of the industries located just this side of the tall buildings in Hillton City, the largest town on the Yardley and Hillton RR. The photographer was standing on a step ladder in the operation pit. This is a tough place to have believable scenery. We are overlooking a…
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Revisiting Industries

This is an overall photo of the original location of the Cobb Corn & Grist Mill Co. in a corner of the layout at Hillton Junction as it had existed for several years. I always had a grist mill for the grinding of cattle feed and other supporting scenery there. Such as the grain storage…
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Emergency Fix on the Busy Mainline
A few years ago the hot box detector stopped a train right in the middle of the busy highway crossing. Of course I had to get up to where I could see what was happening. I think an axel had broken off at the truck side frame! The emergency repair crew used a log chain…
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Stories about the High and Wide

Trains carrying over-sized loads were called “high and wide”. I think most model railroaders have a few interesting flat car loads; some even have a high and wide train or a hospital train carrying heavily damaged cars which have been in collision or something like a hopper car upside down on a flat car,…
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Bricks are Hauled in Boxcars
I am not sure the camera will show very much of the action of un-loading bricks from a boxcar? ~ But let’s try. Bricks or concrete blocks have been hauled in boxcars for many years and still are to this day. Today we use pallets and motorized fork – lifts to load heavy bricks,…
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Y&H Company Boxcar

I wanted to try my art work on a 50 ft. boxcar. I laid this simple smooth sided car (doors are fixed and don’t open) on the scanner to get its colors into the paint program for alteration. Then I changed the lettering with the computer program to create my art. Home computers cannot…
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Heavy Duty Flatcar

The HO scale 16 wheel car has been available for several years, but they were prone to derailments. I did a couple things to fix that. First I cut away most of the under floor bracing to make room for a good chunk of steel weight held with Walthers Goo. And I used Athearn 6…
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Minor Derailment

Is there such a thing as a minor derailment? Not when you are the crew of the local out on the main line up against the clock and you get on the ground. I took these pictures on April 19, 1989 of a heavy duty 4 truck flat car in Salem at a time…
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Transporting the Long Reach Back Hoe

The crew of Conrail 2836 is cooling their heels at the Yardley Freight Station while the Yardley & Hillton switcher #65 spots this special handling load (New Haven 84217) at the Yardley end ramp ~ work rules say something about road crews are not qualified for spotting cars at local industries. I was disappointed that…