Layout Tour #10 - Montreal (End of the Line)

     Montreal was built to serve as a staging yard and loop so I could have and place to store trains and provide continuous running.  This was "Phase 2" in my layout plans.  It was my intention to get everything finished on the main layout and then build this part of the layout.  Plans changed with Covid.  I had a little more time at home, and the need to get this phase done sooner rather than later.  Phase 2 construction included turning part of the basement's bathroom and closet into a layout.  I really wanted to demolish the whole bathroom, but everyone I talked to said it would be a horrible idea, and I knew that.  I just wanted the space.  

    Building this part of the layout included two holes in the wall.  One from the layout room into the closet and one from the closet to the bathroom.  Once the benchwork was built, I quickly realized this wasn't going to be much of a staging yard and abandoned the idea of using it as such.  Instead, the layout uses a fiddle yard concept in three different places on the layout.  I'll explain it in another post.  Unlike Phase 1 that uses Walthers track.  Phase 2 is all Peco Code 83 track. 

    This part of the tour beings by leaving Brockville and heading east. The end of the duck under bridge has a removable overpass to represent Montreal's Turcot Interchange.  The tracks go through a hole in the wall and end up in downtown Montreal.  

The Turcot Interchange is a hodgepodge of highway flyovers and underpasses connecting Autoroute 15, Autoroute 20, and the Ville-Marie Expressway (Autoroute 720 [now Quebec 136]).  Below this web of concrete is the CN mainline.

    In the photo below, the left side of the track is the Canada Malting Company.  This is a rail served plant.  In the background you can see the iconic Farine Five Rose flour company building and sign on the roof.  

Montreal Fire Service is at the Canada Malting plant responding to fire bells.  No signs of smoke or fire showing from the outside.

    Along the back wall of the closet are the tracks for the two downtown train stations.  On the left is the old Canadian Pacific Windsor Station (see below).  In my alternate reality, AMT (Agence métropolitaine de transport) uses the track in front and at least part of the station.  AMT have designated the downtown station, Lucien-L'Allier instead of using the name Windsor Station.  In reality, the Bell Centre (home of the Montreal Canadians) was built and blocked the tracks to getting to Windsor Station.  The west side of the Bell Centre is houses Lucien-L'Allier station for the AMT (now named EXO).  If I had space, I would have included the Bell Centre.  I haven't ruled out some sort of backdrop building, all hope is not lost.  

The track at Lucien-L'Allier/Windsor Station is empty this afternoon.  A train is due any minute coming in from Vaudreuil.

    The other station is CN's Central Station (Gare Centrale).  This station sees traffic from VIA Rail, AMT, and Amtrak.  Central Station tracks run below Place Bonaveture and many of the other buildings in downtown Montreal.  In this scene I've included the CN offices, VIA Rail Canada offices, Fairmont Queen Elizabeth Hotel, and the Place Ville Marie (with operating beacon on the roof just like the real thing).  

Gare Centrale has two trains in the station.  The left train is Amtrak 69 - The Adirondack currently loading passengers.  AMT has a train on the right that just arrived from Mont Saint-Hillaire on the south shore.

Below the entrance to Place Bonaventure is Rue Saint-Antoine Ouest, but there was nowhere for the street to go unless it crossed the many tracks in front of it.  As a result, I turned the space into a U-Haul rental location.

Downtown Montreal skyline

    In the forefront of all of this is the Pointe Saint Charles rail yard includes an engine house for the yard switcher, modern scale track, four yard tracks, the Wharf Spur heading to the Port of Montreal and old brick structure to represent CN's former Pointe Saint Charles Shops.

A small representation of the rich railway history in the Pointe Saint Charles neighborhood of Montreal - the old Canadian National PSC Shop.  The space is now used by the AMT.

    The tracks in front of Old Montreal move through the wall and enter the Port of Montreal.  The Port of Montreal is mainly decorative, there is not enough space to model all of the operations that you would see at transmodal facility like the port.  I use the track nearest the port as staging an intermodal train that runs from Toronto to Montreal.  The train gets the containers replaced with different ones and then leave to return to Montreal later in the day.

The Port of Montreal on the banks of the St. Lawrence River.

    Behind the port is the Molson plant.  This plant is no longer rail served (actually I believe the real plant has moved off the island of Montreal [someone can correct me if they know differently]).  There are tracks leading to the plant, so I have boxcars that brings in aluminum for cans.  There is also a place to spot a gondola car to bring out cullet (pieces of unused or broken glass) from the brewery.  

Molson's brewery with the Maison Radio Canada in the background.

    Leaving this part of Montreal, we move to two scenes that are nowhere near each other or the Port of Montreal.  The first is the grade crossing on Rue Courcelle.  This is actually in the Turcot area of Montreal on the west end.  It's a noteworthy crossing for how close the third track is to the buildings.  There is a crossing gate on the sidewalk because if you try to look around the side of the building to see if the train is coming, you risk getting hit by said train.  CN has since rebuilt this crossing to make it safer.      

VIA F40PH-2D #6454 is leading a train through the Rue Courcelle grade crossing.

A lot of tracks, but not a lot of space.

    The second scene is St. Lambert station on Montreal's south shore.  I included this on my layout to serve as a station for AMT, VIA Rail, and Amtrak to stop at.  It was a nice scene to model and my first in this phase of construction to complete.  The scene included the St. Lambert tower.  This was scratch built and the first time I used Vallejo's Chipping Medium while painting the structure.  The station is a Heljen school kit.

    The final section of Montreal is the duck under to allow me to get inside the loop of track that makes up this entire part of the layout.  My original goal was to make this scene the Victora Bridge across the Saint Lawrence River.  It would be a very condensed version of Pont Victoria, but I feel it would be a great scene for visitors to see when they walk into the room (the bathroom).  The use of the space has changed, at least for now.  Currently the inside track is my fiddle yard track for Taschereau Yard.  Tasherereau is the main yard for CN in Montreal.  Could I have the best of both worlds, the span of truss bridges that make up Port Victoria AND the ability to use the tracks as a fiddle yard?  I haven't ruled it out, but it's not a priority as of now.  Maybe it'll be a project for my Christmas vacation or for next summer.  It can be a conversation and debate for another blog post.

    That's the layout from start to finish!