Layout Tour #9 - Brockville, Ontario

    Brockville is a town in eastern Ontario.  It's a little more than 100 miles to the south of Ottawa.  It has a rich history as a railroad town.  The Canadian Pacific's Smith Falls subdivision terminates in front of the train station in Brockville.  VIA Rail uses the Smith Falls sub to get trains from Toronto to Ottawa.  If I had more room in this section of the layout, I'd include the CN railyard that is just to the west of scene I model.  

    On my layout, Brockville immediately follows Port Hope.  The tour starts with a dead-end road on one side of the main line and the fictitious Brockville Building Supply Company on the other.  The lumber yard is no longer rail served, but if you look really closely you will see the railbed and ties from the track that once serviced this company.

This was an Atlas kit that my father built for my first layout back in the early 90's.  It was too nice to just keep in a storage tub.  The stacks of lumber are from Osborn Model Kits.

Under all that tall grass is the railbed and old rail ties for a spur to the Brockville Building Supply Company.  

    The William Street Bridge is next.  I moved this bridge from the east side of the station to the west to help transition from Port Hope to Brockville.  It also hides the track to provide continuous running. 

    There were two buildings I wanted to make sure I included on the layout and they both ended up in Brockville.  The first was Faller's 1970's church.  The second was the Aurtown School building.  I really like the large windows on this school building.  To make both of them work together, I made it a Catholic School.

    One of the signature buildings in the part of the layout is the CN Metals Distribution facility.  This facility has two tracks to bring boxcars in.  Different bulk metals are unloaded and transferred to flatbed semis that move the metals out of the facility.  Servicing the facility is done daily by CN.  I scratch built this from a Pikestuff kit.  It's provided additional fright switching work for the local that works in Port Hope and Brockville.  This facility should be across the tracks from the Brockville train station, but I wanted it to have enough room, so I moved it to the other side of Perth Street.

    The train station was scratch built by the previous owner.  It was a building that my parents purchased for me at a train show when I was younger.  The station was part of a scene on a lift gate the original own had on his layout.  The actual lift gate benchwork didn't last long but I kept everything that was on it, including this station.  I've always liked the building and respect the time and energy the builder put into it, so I've included it on this layout.  It doesn't look like the real Brockville station, but it fit the space and it does the trick.

    VIA trains coming from Toronto normally come into Brockville on track one and have to make their way over to the third track to get to the station platform.  They enter the station blasting their horn for the Perth Street grade crossing. 

Train number 50 from Toronto, enroute to Ottawa moves from the mainline track (left) to the station track (right) in Brockville.  

    Where the CN Metals Distribution Property should be, I've placed an Esso gas station.  In reality it should be a restaurant, but I haven't seen a building that looks like John's Restaurant.  If I come across something that fits or I decide to do a little scratch building, the gas station may go.

"You're on your way with Esso."  It's a Canadian layout and I'd like bonus point for taking a knife to the Esso sign on the roof.  The last word ordinally read C-E-N-T-E-R, but I made sure to invert the R and the E so my Esso Service Centre looked the part.

    At the end of Brockville is the main entrance to the layout room.  I have a five-track duck under bridge.  Every model railroader that talks about avoiding a design with a duck under bridge is right!  It's no fun to constantly have to bend down to clear the bridge every time I want to go in or out of the layout room.  The bridge can be taken out if I need to, but it's not an easy process.  Three tracks head toward Montreal.  One track represents the CP Smith Falls spur.  There is a siding track on the opposite side to represent the Brockville CN yard.  Cars are set out on this track for the CP interchange.  The tracks on this bridge also serve as a fiddle yard for AMT commuter trains coming from Montreal and heading to the Quebec suburbs that I have no room to model.

The track on the left is the CP's Smith Falls Subdivision.  The track on the right is all I could manage to fit for the CN's Brockville yard.