Smith and Perkins Locomotive and Car Works

I am working on laying out the Virginia Locomotive and Car Works (VL&CW), also known as Smith and Perkins. The Railroad Gazette article in the link below gives a description of some of the engines that they produced.

Railroad Gazette article on Smith and Perkins Engines


There is sufficient information  in that article to build a model of a one of their locomotives. However, at this time I am focused more on their physical plant that existed in Alexandria in 1855.  And herein lies the problem. The information I have is incomplete and has discrepancies that are hard to reconcile.

Professor Caroline Quenzel, a librarian and professor of Mary Washington College of the UVA system, wrote in 1954 a detailed description of the factory in an article in the Virginia Historical Society Journal. She based her article largely on period era information reported in the Alexandria Gazette. She writes,

Locomotive manufacturing on the scale carried on by Smith and Perkins could not be confined to cramped quarters. In 1854 their locomotive plant on Wolfe Street covered 51,500 square feet of ground and fronted 177 feet on the Potomac River. The principal machine shop was a three-story building 130 x 35 feet. On the first floor were three tracks for setting up engines. 

The same floor housed the tool shop with its facing and other lathes, drilling machines, bolt cutting machines, a slotting machine, and large planer and boring machine for ''turning" car wheels.
The second floor contained the office, drafting room, and an 81 x 35
machine shop. The third floor was used for another machine shop and as a pattern loft. The "fitting up and finishing shop" on the site of the old foundry was 81 x 60 feet. Two locomotive engines could be "fitted up" at one time upon its tracks. 

The 100 x 36-foot blacksmith shop had 15 fires and one of "Nasmytherspowerful steam" hammers. The boiler shop was 100 x 40, and the four-track car shop 150 x 40. The plant had circular and upright saws, tools for punching and shearing iron, and the equipment required for planing, mortising, and tenoning wood. The 100 x 60-foot foundry on Wilkes Street held two furnaces for melting pig iron and a 27-horsepower engine for driving the fan. In 1854 it produced two and a half to four tons of castings daily, but it was capable of a maximum production of &om ten to twelve tons.

The plant consumed annually 1 ,200 tons of Cumberland coal, 250 tons of anthracite, 900 to 1 ,200 tons of pig iron, and 650 tons of bar and boiler iron. It employed approximately 225 workers. The general superintendent was Thomas Denmead, who had been superintendent of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad shops at Martinsburg. 

This description implies a facility with five structures with a sixth on Wilkes Street, one block away.  They are:

1. Principal machine shop  - 130 by 35 feet  3 story with three tracks for erecting engines.
2. Fitting up and finishing shop - 81 by 60 feet with two tracks. 
3. Blacksmith Shop - 100 by 36 with 15 fires and a Nasmyther steam hammer.
4. Boiler shop - 100 by 40 feet.
5. Car Shop - 150 by 40 with four tracks.



A Nasmyther Hammer in 1856

6. Foundry - 100 by 60 feet  with two furnaces on Wilkes Street.

Bird's Eye View during the War

Close up of the Quarter Master's map

I have not found any good drawings of the VL&CW facility in 1855. The two drawings I do have date from the Civil War, from 3-8 years after the works closed down. These are the  Bird's Eye View and the Quartermaster map.  It is interesting that the Bird's Eye View and the QM map do somewhat agree in depicting the buildings on Wolfe Street. 

The QM map gives dimensions of the buildings that they used in the war. It shows three interconnected buildings and  a few smaller buildings used for Contraband quarters. Note that the QM map does not show buildings that Army did not use during the war. 

So it is possible there were other structures present that the draftsman left out. More importantly, the QM map shows one railroad siding, while the Bird's Eye shows none. Quentzal describes three buildings with tracks for erecting cars and locos. 

The early 19th century drawing of the Harlan and Hollingsworth works gives some  clues. Note how the car works building on the right shows two tracks entering the end of a long wooden building. But,  note that a single siding runs parallel to the machine shop and no tracks enter the shop. Workers are using push carts and wooden wagons to move boilers and other objects around. Some people are working in the open air on boiler parts.

The second view showing  Schenectady Locomotive Works depicts similar activity. I suspect it wasn't until locomotives became too heavy to move around on carts and trolleys that the factories started building the engines directly on the rails. 

Harlan and Hollingsworth works in the mid 19th century

I assume that similar construction procedures were used at Virginia Locomotive and Car Works. I think that the erecting tracks were not connected to the railroad directly. Once the engines were assembled, they used carts to move the finished products to the departure tracks. 

There is a photo of the foundry on Wilkes Street as the building survived until late in the 20th century. 

The attached drawing shows my best guess at mapping the buildings described in Quentzel's article to the QM map using a lot of educated guess work. Everything is drawn to scale. The large yellow box shows an area of 51,500 square feet if one side of the box is 177 feet.

 There was no way to reasonably connect tracks to the Old Foundry to the siding shown on the QM map without 30 ft or less radius curves (see curve A). That would equate to a 2.26 inch radius in N scale. That is impossibly tight. So I suspect the erecting tracks were not directly connected to the Wolfe Street Siding. 

I replicated the car works from H&H to the VL&CW facility. I made it a separate building as there was no way the five buildings Quentzel describes would fit in the outline of the buildings on the QM map.

I have a photo of a large blacksmith shop in Washington DC. It is a wood building. If such a building was in Alexandria, it is possible it did not survive for ten years after closing.

Blacksmith shop in Washington DC during the Civil War.

If anyone has any additional information, I would love to see it.

Night Photo - Battle of Cambrai

This shot is one of my all time favorites model railroad photos. I shot it for my book, "Model Railroads Go to War." Alas, the printed version really does not do it justice since a CMYK print doesn't have the dynamic range to render the dark clouds and shadows properly. But on screen, the image pops.

The loco is a ROD Robinson 2-8-0 that Chris Williams let me borrow for the shoot. The flat cars are Macaw bogey wagons that I scratch built.

To learn more about the story behind the scene, please see my book, "Model Railroads Go to War," available on Amazon  Model Railroads Go to War (Layout Design and Planning) or

 at www.AlkemScaleModels.com for a signed copy.

Diorama backdrop - Wolfe Street

Wolfe Street on backdrop

I finished the second portion of the backdrop tonight. This part of the backdrop depicts Wolfe Street.  I didn't have any good prototype images showing what buildings look like in this area, so I relied on the Bird's Eye view.  I drew the structures in Adobe Illustrator and composited the scene in Photoshop. I added the slight hill that leads to  Lee Street. Once it was printed and cut out, I added finer texture such as grass, weed, ruts using pencils, water colors, and acrylic paint.

Using a piece of flex track to mock up the loco works siding.
The actual siding will be hand land on wood ties.

An earlier attempt at painting a track extension on  a backdrop

The last remaining backdrop task is to paint the loco works railroad siding on the backdrop as it heads to Union Street. The test image below shows approximately where it will be. The final placement will wait until I get the actual track installed.

This is a very tricky backdrop interface to paint. I've done this once before and it works well, but only from one viewpoint- straight in. So one needs to use view blocks to prevent looking at the interface from oblique angles.

Laser Cut Pieces - No Mistakes!

I also started building the loco works. Again, there are no good photos except the Bird's Eye view. The ACW era QM Map shows the dimensions of the building's footprint, but no other data. Using those dimensions and the Bird's Eye view, I drew up this plan.


In a laser cutting first for me, the first draft of the building had no mistakes. Maybe I should buy a lottery ticket!


I quickly glued the parts together to see how it fits. I plan to use texture paper to add the bricks to this building. We'll see how that goes.

Diorama Backdrop - Duke Street.

Photo panorama made by Wally Owen, former Asst Dir/Curator Ft Ward Museum.

The backdrop for the Alexandria Antebellum diorama presents several challenges. First is that there are only a couple of photos showing the area we are representing. The best image we have is a view to the northwest from the top of Pioneer Mills. It only shows about a third of the area we need to show in the backdrop. Also, there are no views closer to ground level. I want the backdrop to have a ground level versus aerial perspective as I find that works better in model scenes, especially when taking photos.

The last major challenge is that there are two streets that intersect at 90 degrees to the backdrop. These are some the most challenging backdrop-3D terrain interfaces to have to deal with.

The following are step-by-step photos showing the backdrop process.

The backdrop is 1/8th inch masonite.  Here it is
being measure against the diorama base

The backdrop received 3 coats f Gesso primer applied with a roller.
I sanded it smooth in-between coats.

The cut and primed backdrop screwed to the diorama.

 Although I primed the backdrop front and rear with three coats of gesso, it still warped when I added the blue color latex paint. So I had to add a support frame. I was hoping too avoid using a backdrop frame as it might make the diorama deeper.  But I had no choice. I don't think it will cause problems in the final installation (My fingers are crossed. Yes, I did measure alcove and test fit the diorama base in it, but Murphy has a way of showing up,)

Base coat of bright blue and ground cloud. I used my airbrush to
paint the clouds.

The blue latex paint caused the backdrop to warp slightly. So I added
a 1x2 frame to the rear. Since I didn't want to drive screws through the
front of the backdrop, I used glue and lots of clamps,

Duke Street flanked by the mill's  coopering House and sheds

I tried a couple different ideas to depict Duke Street and the buildings behind the mill. In the end, I decided to draw the scene in Adobe Illustrator. I use AI perspective grid feature to create the vanishing point and help draw the buildings receding into the distance. I spent more time than necessary detailing these distant buildings, when in the end they are very tiny on the backdrop.

The two main buildings in the front of the backdrop came out really nice.  The large brick building is the coopering house where they made the barrels to ship out the flour. The three sheds on the right are for an unknown purpose, but we had a decent view of them in prototype photo. So I was able to represent them pretty well.

Test photo looks good.

I used actual brick and siding textures to embellish them. That worked surprisingly well. One the backdrop was printed on 11x19 inch paper, I added two sided tape film to the rear. Then I trimmed the image using a X Acto knife. I touched up the edges with a dark green marker.
I used watercolor pencils to add some texture and shadows to the structures and street. Then I installed it on the back drop.
That is 19 of of 43 inches total need. Just a little less than half way.

Snowzilla Schooner Success

Finished model schooner in Alicia's hand.

The schooner will be positioned by the (almost finished) mill.

The N scale schooner on an O scale schooner hull. With this N scale ship completed, I am really I am looking
 forward to working on the O Scale ships for the Aquia Line.

Scratch built anchor with a chain.

Carved skiff from a small block of basswood

It's been snowing for the past 27 hours and more is expected - a perfect opportunity to get some modeling done.

I finished up the rigging. Added the skiff and davits to the rear and an anchor. 

I hit the model with dullcote to hide shiny glue spots. I used my airbrush to apply the dullcote instead of a can as, I didn't want to get lacquer on the lines for fear that they may loosen. I noticed that acrylic matte varnish on the lines did cause them to become slack.

Now, on to the rest of the diorama.

Oh yeah, it has been snowing here.