Buildings and DCC on the Seneca Valley Lines

Bob Hogarth has been a member of the Rochester Model Railroad Club since 1990. His interest is in building buildings around the Seneca Valley Lines, when it was in existence. The club gets a lot of information from books, like a book titled the Lehigh Valley Railroad in Western New York. They have been able to gather a good amount of pictures and dialogue of all of the buildings that were in the area, including the route 96 Bridge out of Victor, the Geneva station taken in 1910, and more.

The railroad uses Northcoast System digital command control. They unfortunately had problems with the wiring when they changed over from regular DC to digital command control. In fact, that’s probably the one area where the layout is the weakest–the wiring. The wiring that was done originally is not really adequate for DCC, so it’s a big concern.

If there was a serious wiring problem, it might be hard to sort out. It probably would have been better to remove everything and start over, but instead they kept what they had and dealt with the operating problems. To keep track of wiring changes, they use CAD drawings that are updated when changes occur, try to use consistent color coding in the wiring, and use more consistent techniques.

The club must keep the 30 odd people working on the layout organized. Their solution has been to break up the layout so that for each section there are superintendents who direct people. These five or so people report to the Chief Engineer. They go on to discuss how the club keeps the rolling stock running properly. Watch more from Allen Keller’s Great Model Railroad series from our archives.