To better understand the prototype Horseshoe Curve, I am inserting some material here that eventually should move to the full prototype story:

The Horseshoe Curve was opened to traffic on 15 Feb 1854, as either a single-track or double-track line (the records are not clear, but it was definitely double-tracked by the end of 1854), widened to three tracks in 1898, and widened to four tracks in late 1899 through early 1900.  The Allegheny Crest is NOT at the Curve, which is uphill all the way (westbound) or v.v., but is located some three miles due west (five miles along the RoW) UNDER Tunnel Hill, where the original bore, the New Portage Tunnel, carries Track 1, the eastbound main.  A second bore, the Gallitzin Tunnel, still stands but is now abandoned; it carried Track 3 until 07 Sep 1965.  The third bore, the Allegheny Tunnel, was enlarged and deepened to handle stack trains (as was the New Portage Tunnel) and now carries both Tracks 2 and 3, the westbound main.  There is an abandoned RoW just east of the eastern portal of the New Portage Tunnel which used to carry the New Portage Line south to the also-abandoned Muleshoe Curve; this was the old 1850 New Portage Railroad which bypassed the inclined planes of the original 1834 Pennsylvania Main Line of Public Works and Utilities between Duncansville and the Muleshoe.  The Portage Line was abandoned in1857, reopened in 1904 to relieve pressure on the Horseshoe Curve route, and abandoned again in 1981 and taken up when U.S. Route 22 was relocated northward closer to the Main Line.

Here is a rough sketch (a schematic, ONLY; not to any scale) showing the tunnel arrangements ca. 1940:

(05 Jul 02 sketch by and © 2002 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)

Here is a "doctored" similar sketch showing how the Berlinerwerke will "fake" the area:

(04 Sep 02 sketch by and © 2002 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)

UPDATE of the BERLINERWERKE (HO) Saga

You vill remember, kinder, von't you?  (Ve haf vays of dealing mit dunderheads vot can remember nicht.)  Dose of you vot veren't arount are excused; read on, bitte.

Great-grand-uncle Weiner Berliner (Vee'ner Bearlee'ner) reputedly (it said so in the NMRA/NER/SRTD Cannon Ball, so it must be true) "founded a small ironworks somewhere in Germany".  The story has it that it was moved to the good old U. S. and A., ending up at Mineola Junction.  Later the works (werke) moved to Glen Head (Glen Cove P. O.), up the Oyster Bay line.  Then a major facility was set up on the banks of the Little Conemaugh River (tributary of Johnstown flood infamy) in central Pennsylvania, just over the Allegheny crest from Altoona.  Heading east, the nearest town is Cresson, where helpers are serviced and turned, then come the towns of Gallitzin at the crest and Tunnelhill sitting directly over the Allegheny tunnels, next the great Horseshoe Curve itself (and the former Muleshoe Curve), and finally Altoona, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, and New York.

Two previous articles {included herein but not yet integrated} discussed at great length the rationale of the Berlinerwerke and how the Horseshoe Curve was to be at one end of it, logically fitted into the whole shebang as part of trackage rights across the Pennsylvania RR of several highly unlikely railroads and, eventually, through the Pennsy tunnels under the Hudson and East Rivers, through Sunnyside Yard, and out east along Long Island to that staggering feat of engineering, the great railroad bridge across Long Island sound between Greenport and Rhode Island (and I'll bet most of you didn't even know it was there).

The BW's primary affiliate is a giant road, the Northfork and Western, from Boston, via Peekskill (Hudson River bridge), Port Jervis, Scranton, Williamsport, Lock Haven, and west to Pittsburgh, bypassing both Harrisburg and Altoona.  By running an alternate through Rhode Island and the Sound bridge, across LI to New York, and then along the Pennsy main line to Altoona, the Berlinerwerke's operating divisions have a viable alternate routing.  By connecting the two between the Horseshoe Curve and Williamsport (at Lock Haven) with another subsidiary, the Wopsononock Northern RR, an arduous crossing of the Alleghenies is avoided and the distance to Pittsburgh greatly shortened.  Another connector is the Paumanok and Conodoguinet RR (the Algonquian names for LI and a creek near my sister's home in Enola, of all places).

The BW plant includes a museum and restoration shop, so anything can and does run on the BW; thus there are no chronological restrictions.  There is also an excursion RR, the Lattingtown, Landing, and Locust Valley Light 'Lectric Line (Go to "L"), running battery tram cars à la the Edison-Beach cars on the LIRR's West Hempstead (Tigertown) branch, and a heavy-duty moving group with super-gigantic engines (the legendary DDP-45, and FAR WORSE) and enormous well and drop-center flats and Schnable cars (up to an 880-ton monster with 38 axles, scaling out at exactly 1 meter in length in HO), the DD Diesel Delivery Dept. (Dependable Drayage).  There is never any shortage of weird, wonderful rolling stock.

Of course, along with the Northfork and Western and the LL&LVLLL, there's also the Skunk's Misery Excursion RR (that's actually the name of an auto road up here), the Norfork nor Wetson [the Burgher Line, part of Commodore Vanderbuilt's Patroon System (you've gotta be a true York stater to understand all this)], the totally insane Wrong Island RR, the one that runs the PRR Z-6s Arctic 4-2-2, and, as a nod to my Colorado-born brother-in-law, the D&RGW [Diaphragm and Rubber Goods Works (the Yampa Valley Male, Route of the Chauvinist Pig)].  Anent this inanity, you might want to note that the real Yampa Valley Mail was actually called the B&FE (Back and Forth Empty), shades of the LIRR!

Skunk's Misery Road signs at West End Avenue and at 10th Street in Glen Cove and at Overlook Road in Lattingtown:

It's Lattingtown Road on the south side in Glen Cove and Skunk's Misery on the north side in Lattingtown.

The previous articles and a long clinic went into excruciating detail about the existing layout, the Curve itself, the tunnels, etc.

My layout is huge; the basic table started out as a piece of 3/4" plywood, 4' x 6½', left-over from an unfinished headboard project.  It was spliced crossways and longways later to 6' x 14½' and now has banjos at each end to make the loops 44" and 46" radius.  There were 39 turnouts (29 automatic and 10 manual, and now there are almost double that.  It always was basically a yard in which to store and run anything that tickled my fancy (usually either huge or miniscule).  The main line was a ½-mile long loop (0.499925 smiles).  Now, with the banjos, it's even bigger, some 2.3 miles.  By running double track up along the wall and around the back of the basement, through the Curve (on a nominal scale 86" radius), under the mythical Ruckberg (Back Mountain) at Kreisdorf (Loop Town), and, amazingly, back through the Curve again, etc., twice (double track), I will have a total main line run of some 4½ miles with the classical PRR 4-track main through the Curve!  All grades are also prototypical, 1.75% on tangents and 1.45% on the curve (0.2"/' and 0.175"/' rises).  Thus, I can sit at my control panel and see exactly the same magnificent sweep of track as at the actual Curve near Altoona!  With a sofa up against West Bend, one can sit down at eye level with the park in the Curve and watch the procession of trains rumble around the curve above exactly as one can in Pennsylvania at the real thing.

So, what makes this worth writing about after 12 years (23, now)?  Well, it's because this time it's actually happening.  I have already relaid the track on the main table, worked out exactly how to run up along the wall, simulate the tunnels at the crest, swing the curve, and superelevate it.  With 4 tracks through the curve, roadbed will be a bit tricky.  It's kind of exciting for me now that it's actually happening.

Epilogue:  I STILL haven't run the HO Curve out yet, but I SURE did put a lot into the Z version of the Berlinerwerke, q.v. (well, hold off a little while I rewrite that mini-saga to meld with this one).

(Photo 15 Jun 07 by and © 2007 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved.)
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Erecting Heavy Steel on the BW!

(11 Apr 03 photo by and © 2003 S. Berliner , III - all rights reserved)
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The straps in the distance have additional bolts; they go through the holes that held the top lally column flange and tie the channels to the beam longitudinally (the ends float).  Well, I put those heavy channels up single-handedly, using a pair of miniature block and tackle I rigged up; the recent incredibly-heavy snows squashed my house down a bit (it has a large, low-pitch roof) and I put up five much lighter I-beams under a central load-bearing wall that was 20" offset from the main steel beam, using the same tackle:

(11 Apr 03 photo by and © 2003 S. Berliner , III - all rights reserved)
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(11 Apr 03 photo by and © 2003 S. Berliner , III - all rights reserved)
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Isn't this the way EVERYONE practices model railroading?

[* - Funny story about cutting that permanent lally column - I sawed the column off about two feet from the floor to use it as a pivot for the HSC park (for access to the track) and my power hacksaw blade teeth kept dulling out until I spotted sparks and realized that the column was filled with concrete!  Very carefully girding the column cut away all the steel and rocking it cracked the concrete core at the cut, leaving me the stub column as a very stable pivot indeed!]

As noted on the main Horseshoe Curve page, the basic HO layout is now 31½' long, with 8' banjos at each end.  Doing a rough calculation, allowing for the end curves being pulled in several inches to make room for the "high lines", and ignoring any smoothing from easements, this works out to about 80½' of outer track or just over 1¼ smiles.   (29 Jan 04)

Thus, when I'm being even sillier than usual and have a train so long that its loco pilot is just shy of catching up with the caboose's rear coupler, I am pulling a string over a scale mile long [can you hear me, Uncle Irv (Athearn)?]!