Givens

• N Scale (LayoutStandards)
• Pennsylvania Railroad
• 1954-1959 time frame
• Monongahela Valley

Druthers

• Steel industry facilities
  • Partial to U.S. Steel rather than J&L (which makes being as far north as the South Side problematic)
  • This gives us the choice of Homestead, Duquesne, or Clairton, McKeesport^? or Edgar Thomson if I wish to model across the river and thus also B&O/P&LE/Union.
  • I'd like some blast furnaces, so modeling Homestead means including the Carrie Furnaces on the Rankin side of the river.
  • Homestead is without a doubt the most interesting facility in the valley, but also the largest, especially in view of the need to fit in Carrie.
  • Edgar Thomson is probably a second choice, and would enable fitting in some of the PRR main line, which may be ideal or may be a problem.
  • In any case, fitting in the Union Railroad would be nice, and could be done for any of these.

-- DerrickBrashear - 05 Dec 2005

• • Homestead had more ancilliary facilities and not just a hot end even if you ignore Carrie, but with touches like the Amity St and East gates, and the transportation and office buildings, it's definitely appealing to do.

-- DerrickBrashear - 07 Dec 2005

• • The Arcadia Publishing "Duquesne" book provides a view illustrating some detail of the main gate at Duquesne; A trip to the Homestead/Mifflin Township Historical Society is probably warranted to see what else there is, photowise.

There is some appeal to doing something which would to some extent be Union Railroad-focused, namely, something starting at about the Riverton (McKeesport^?-Duquesne) highway bridge at the south end of the City of Duquesne and including the mill and perhaps a few streets worth of the town, which would also then include the trolley line, the PRR and Union Railroad bridges at Port Perry as well as part of the Union's yard directly south of the bridge (and maybe the PRR up to Kenny... hm.), stubs of the P&LE and B&O on the north side of the river as well as a facade of Edgar Thomson, the PRR mainline coming in from alongside E.T., including an era-inappropriate-but-operationally-convenient Brinton U, Westinghouse Electric's sprawling East Pittsburgh works, and then the Union up the Thomson Run valley as far as the cement plant at Universal, as well as the PRR main line into but no further than Pitcairn yard. This is probably both too ambitious, and insufficiently operationally interesting. It merits further thought, and I am going to sit down with some maps in the coming week and work on this idea a bit more.

-- DerrickBrashear - 06 Feb 2006