New York Ontario & Western freight house

Two horse-drawn wagons are backed up to the platform of the newly built Port Jervis freight to either receive or deliver goods that may have arrived or will be shipped by the NYO&W Ry. The angled area at the end of the platform made it easier to back wagons in. Built in 1906, this structure served Port Jervis, NY

 

BY HAROLD W. RUSSELL

    Builder's plans for the New York, Ontario & Western Railway freight house at Port Jervis, NY indicate that it was erected about 1906. Details for our prototype drawings were taken from surviving photos beccause this structure no longer stands. instead, a supermarket occupies its location.

    This NYO&W freight house was a 20 x 72-foot brick structure that had an office at one end. The structure was surrounded on threee sides by a 27 x 98-foot wood platform that was angled at each end to make it easier for wagons or trucks to back up to it. On the trackside the edge of the dock was positioned about 73' from the center line of the track. The space between the dock and the freight car floor was spanned by a removable bridge during loading and unloading. An unusual feature of this structure is its rolling wood freight doors, built in place of the more common solid sliding door.

    Freight houses like this one, which were so important in handling and transferring goods, have little place in today's transportation systems. Except for a fairly recent service introduced by Amtrak, railroads are no longer in the LCL (less than carload) business. Warehousing and trucking industries took that over years ago. Few freight-house structures survive, and those that do generally stand empty or are occupied by some commercial venture.



MODELING NOTES

Regardless of the sccale, model railroaders wishing to construct a replica of this freighht house have access to a wide variety of wood and plastic materials.

    Wood materials are offered by Kappler Mill Lumber, Northeastern Scale Models, and Superior Hobby Products. If you use styrene scribed sheet and strip materials made by evergreen Scale Models, be sure to distress them with a wire brush to achieve a wood grain effect.

Brick materials come in embossed, cast, and printed form. Among the suppliers are Brawa, Builders In Scale, Campbell, CS Models, Faller, Holgate & Reynolds, Pikestuff, And Vollmer. Shingle materials are made by Campbell, Holgate & Reynolds, kanamodel Products, and Plastruct.

We couldn't find window castings, but you might try cutting Grandt Line's O, HO, or N scale Roundhouse windows into panels that are near the correct sizes.

Note: When printing the folllowing files you may want to adjust your setup to a vertical layout as to allow the drawing to fit on the page. You may also want to increase the percentage to get the desired size.

MAP OF PORT JERVIS

BUILDING PLAN-LEFT SIDE

BUILDING PLAN-RIGHT SIDE

SIDE VIEW

SIDE VIEW 2

 FLOOR PLAN

 This article was reprinted by permission. It can used for modeling purposes only and may not be used for commercial purposes. This article originally appeared in the August 1989 issue of Model Railroader. It was Volume 56, Number 8.

© 1989 KALMBACH PUBLISHING