Chesapeake Bay in 9 Modules, all in 1:220 // NEW MODULE

Since I grew up on a island on the North sea (named Foehr), there was one thing that was so typical and so scenic for this landscape, that I was wondering whether this can be found at the Chesapeake Bay as well. So I studied the maps and interviewed some American friends and they confirmed, yes, there had been a lot of them and some of them may even exist today. What am I searching for? A windmill !!!



This picture was the first evidence that there have been at least wind mills at the Chesapeake Bay. But are there still some and if so, what kind of wind mill have been common at the Bay? It was - like in Europe - the post mill, so named because of the large upright post on which the mill's main structure (the "body" or "buck") is balanced. By mounting the body this way, the mill is able to rotate to face the wind direction; an essential requirement for windmills to operate economically in north-western Europe, where wind directions are variable. The body contains all the milling machinery. By the end of the thirteenth century, the masonry tower mill, on which only the cap is rotated rather than the whole body of the mill, had been introduced. The spread of tower mills came with a growing economy that called for larger and more stable sources of power, though they were more expensive to build. In contrast to the post mill, only the cap of the tower mill needs to be turned into the wind, so the main structure can be made much taller, allowing the sails to be made longer, which enables them to provide useful work even in low winds. The cap can be turned into the wind either by winches or gearing inside the cap or from a winch on the tail pole outside the mill.
Here you see two examples as they can found today at the shores of the Chesapeake Bay:





In our scale, Archistories produces such a wind mill in an unseen before quality. In the US Anthony is offering the wind mill under the name of "Marienfehn", here is the link: www.zscalemonster.com/archistories/ . Anthony writes in the brief description: "The windmill ‘Marienfehn' is the oldest and most popular mill design. It is a highly detailed statue of a windmill whose example, one of the quite rare' right turners', once stood in Toftum auf Foehr. Of course this windmill kit is also equipped with a high-quality drive, allowing for a realistic slow and smooth rotation of the fine mill wings. A solid substructure, large-scale wood engraving and a lot of fine separately applied details to make the windmill ‘Marienfehn’ into a universal eye-catcher."
Well, we will put that to a test and will report back to you ;-)
Best, Sven

This helicopter view gives you a nice overview over the pier construction. Since the tracks are all electrified and the switches are working, we could do some test runs and check with some engines and trains whether we calculated length and activities correctly. Although the pier still lacks all the little details that makes it alive, a first impression could be gained. Even at this still construction state, rail roading is real fun!!! I will show some more pics later..........

I have a lot of questions Sven but I'll space them out.

How do you achieve the realistic water effect?

Are any of the models on your layout kits or are they scratch built?

How do you do the weathering on the models?



I have never seen anyone pull off such realistic scenery. I have to look several times to make sure I'm not looking at the real thing.

The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway was one of several Appalachian coal haulers and is perhaps best remembered for its buyout of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad in the early 1960s and its excellent management through much of the second-half of the 20th century, which earned the company substantial profits, especially during the waning years of the railroad industry in the 1960s and 1970s. It thrived on West Virginia and Kentucky coal and was a gateway between Chicago and the ports of Virginia. More so than its ownership of the B&O the C&O is best remembered for the legendary publicity campaign it created in the early 1930s; Chessie the sleeping kitten. An icon even outside the rail industry, many people today still recognize the kitten and its association with railroading in some way.
Following the Great Depression (which was not as terrible for the C&O as most other railroads) the railroad really began to take off and it was during the early 1930s that Chessie was born. The creator of the sleeping kitten image was an artist by the name of Guido Grenewald but Chessie is credited to Lionel Probert, who was an assistant to the C&O president. Probert, once he had permission to use the image, added to it “Sleep Like a Kitten” and within just a few years of its debut in 1933 Chessie had earned nearly legendary status!


(AZL offers the famous heavyweight Pullman trains of C&O)

The advertising campaign remains one of the most successful of all time and even today the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Historical Society continues to sell calendars and other memorabilia featuring Chessie (when the kitten debuted demand was so high that the C&O could not keep enough merchandise in stock). Of course, Chessie’s celebrity status did not end with merchandise and an advertising campaign, the kitten became synonymous with the C&O and she became famous all over again in the early 1970s when the Chessie System, a holding company for the C&O, B&O, and WM, overlaid the kitten’s silhouette in the Chessie System “C” adorning the railroads new vermilion, yellow, and blue livery.


(AZL offers the correct C&O engines)

Throughout the rest of the C&O’s life it would earn healthy profits (much of it due to the rich coal fields it served in West Virginia and Kentucky) and in the early 1960s won a bidding war with the New York Central for control of its much larger northern neighbor, the B&O. However, rather than merge the B&O out of existence the railroad chose to gradually combine the two railroads, slowly merging departments and other management areas. This was done for several reasons but two of the most important was to not upset the extremely loyal B&O employees (which would not take outright control and dissolution easily) and to retain the tax exemption status the B&O held in the State of Maryland.



In 1972 came the largest change for three railroads when a new holding company was created, the Chessie System. Its new livery with the Chess-“C” was an instant hit and remains today as one of the most colorful, popular, and dynamic railroad liveries to ever grace a locomotive. The new Chessie System would become quite a juggernaut, earning substantial profits throughout the 1970s, one of only a handful of railroads to do so during a time when the industry was in a downward spiral and scores of Class I railroads would file for bankruptcy during the decade, most notably in the Northeast.
The Chessie System, however, would last a mere eight years as an independent company itself as in 1980 it would merge with Seaboard Coast Line Industries (which was a holding company for a number of southeastern railroads including the Seaboard Coast Line and Louisville & Nashville) to form CSX Transportation in 1987. The creation of CSX, however, entered the Chesapeake & Ohio into its final days. As with the other companies it controlled, the C&O also would be gone in only seven more years, being the last railroad merged into CSX in May of 1987, a month after the B&O was merged out of existence. For all of the C&O and Chessie System’s success, CSX for many years was not managed nearly as well.

herewith I would like to continue with the windmill construction and placement. Dirk and I were positively surprised by the extraordinary quality of this kit by Archistories ( www.archistories-shop.de/epages/62672593.sf/de_DE/?ObjectPath=/Shops/62672593/Products/703141 ). Although Archistories states that its products do not require additional color treatment, we did apply some paint to mirror more complete the prototypical windmills at The Chesapeake Bay. As you can easily note by comparing our pictures with the original ones from Archistories, we applied white!



With the white wings our windmill has really become an eye-catcher and contrasts nicely with the dark and full green of the trees and meadows:



The windmill kit is also equipped with a high-quality drive, allowing for a realistic slow and smooth rotation of the fine mill wings. Dirk promised to do a video to show this effect. Seeing is believing !!




 

hi Sven,

Looks great! Are you also planning a sort of fidle yard as Dirk has on his Nordsee layout?

/Frank