The Dictator was a 13 inch siege mortar used to bombard Confederate positions around Petersburg in the summer of 1864. It was mounted on a specially constructed flatcar so it could be moved around easily. It was initially used to silence a Confederate artillery position across the Appomattox River from the Union right. Until this position was silenced, the Confederate artillery enfiladed the right end of the Union line and made life especially difficult for the Union troops stationed in the trenches there. The Dictator was pulled out of the front line service on September 28, 1864 and put in reserve at the base at City Point.

However that isn’t quite the end of the story. This letter found in the National Archives indicates that as late as December 4th, 1864, some men, which came from the 1st Connecticut Heavy Artillery regiment were still watching over her.

Here is the text of this letter to Rufus Ingalls, who was the Chief Quartermaster for all the Armies before Richmond..

Note that E.L. Henry’s painting of City Point shows the Dictator positioned in an altogether different location, at the end of the tracks serving the Quatermaster Department Wharves. It likely that this is where the Colonel’s men were spending their time watching her. Note that Henry even painted a guard next to the mortar.

Looking at the map of the City Point railway, which was drawn after the war, shows that the bakery tracks do extend a bit past the end of the bakery buildings. It’s clear that if the Dictator was positioned there, it could be guarded by the men manning the City Point defensive line. Whether this is the extension that was requested or not and whether the Dictator ever ended up at this extension of the bakery tracks is unknown to me.

Though this little investigation of mine has little importance to anything or anyone, it is fun to see what can be found out about such trivial issues.

Most of the railroad yard now has ballast and dirt installed. The bluffs also have basic ground cover in place. The dirt comes from a yard of clay that I had purchased for use in a horseshoe pit.

For model railroad purposes, I baked it in an outdoor BBQ in order to kill any living organisms and then sifted it. The baking also removed excess moisture, which made it easier to sift.

I think the clay looks great in this application. My last model railroad used commercial ballast, which appeared oversized and too light in color to me.

Next part of the project is to clean up the track and get the switches moving freely again. I then need to wire the switch machines to the control panel and get all the switches and track operating.

When I get the track issues all straightened out, I will move onto installing the car repair shed. After that, I will finally be able to focus on the centerpiece of this module, the engine house.

The bluffs are going up on my model railroad. You can’t really tell from this image, but it’s making a vast difference in the the appearance of this incomplete module. This really gives me motivation to move forward to see how it’s going to look with some more scenery in place.

City Point Engine House Frames

I’ve been slowly starting to construct the frames for the City Point Engine House. At the top of this image is the queen post section of what will become an interior frame. At the bottom is one of end sections. First, I cut all the lumber to length. In order to get consistent results, I use an acetate sheet to hold the beams over a scale image of the framing while glueing together. The glue does not stick to the acetate which, once the glue drys, allows me to “peal” the acetate away from the wood frame.

Car Repair Shed Progress

I’ve been adding battens for board and batten siding to the end of this structure. I figured it would easier to paint/weather the 1×3″ lumber before adding it. The six over six windows are Tichy Train Group #8024, which appear to be a near perfect match to the originals.

Buildings Under Construction

I have one wall on the car shed, and it is starting to look like a real model. This wall went on a lot easier than I expected. I still have to stain it, and add battens to the siding, but I’m starting to think that the end product might turn out OK, despite the steep learning curve that I’m going through. In case you are wondering, I’ve designed these buildings to use Tichy Trains’ #8024 6 over 6 double hung windows, which seem to be a pretty close match to what I see in the pictures of City Point.

I’m learning a lot building the City Point car repair shed. The most important thing is, without a jig, cutting beams to consistent length can be very difficult in a HO scale world. I ended up buying a Micro-Mark Chop-It in order to make cutting the beams for the City Point engine house, a much easier, more consistent effort. While not the most precise device in the world, I’ve been able to cut quite a few beams for the engine house in one sitting, as you can see on the right hand side of the picture.

I’ve also going to try a different order of construction for the engine house. Rather than use the big beams to connect each frame, I’m going to connect the frames with the smaller connecting pieces (known as blocking) that hold the windows in place. I will connect the big beams afterward. The problem with connecting the frames with the big beams first, is that the blocking needs to fit very precisely between frames, which is very hard to do in HO scale. I think it will be much easier to use the blocking to connect the frames, and then lay the big beams from frame to frame, which should require a somewhat less precise fit.

This is the first time that I’ve tried scratch building a structure and I’m finding it is a lot more fun than wiring the Engine House module. I plan on adding some detail to the interior and making the roof removable. Here is what it looks like at this point.

Scratch Building City Point Car Repair Shed

In order to generate the drawings, I cropped, scaled and de-skewed a digital image of the car repair shed in photoshop. I then imported into Illustrator and drew what I think the framing should be like over the top of the image. I then printed without the original image.

Car Repair Shed

There are several surviving historic photos of the engine house, a warehouse and a storage shed under construction. Though I’m familiar with modern wood frame construction, these buildings were put together somewhat differently. Here is a crop of a photo of a storage shed under that is under construction.

City Point Storehouse Under Construction

Track Laid on Engine House Module

So far, over 1200 ties, 1000 Spikes, and 100 feet of rail used on this first module. I’m out of spikes, so there is a bit more work to do on the car repair track.

There is a lot of track in this small area, but there is no traditional type yard. I wonder how they organized loading of stores onto appropriate cars and then made up the trains. After all, there was something like 100 cars and 10 or12 locomotives on the City Point and Army Line Railroad.

You can see where I pulled up and relocated the car repair track on the left side of the image. There may be other places where track may be tweaked, but I don’t expect to do any other major relocations. The buildings are paper and card stock mockups and will be replaced with custom made models.

Next steps are to wire the track and switches and make sure that the trains can negotiate this track without too much trouble. After that I’ll start on structures and build the car repair shop. I haven’t decided what to use for ballast or when to place it.

Here is a somewhat similar historic view taken before the car repair shed and turntable were built. The image was probably taken in October, 1864. My layout is designed to replicate late March, 1865 and a lot of things changed between those dates.

Engine House from Cut

I’ve been working hard on the track and have 8 of the 10 switches operating. I think I could be done with track in about a week, though wiring of the track and switch frogs may not be done by then. Part of the remaining work involves moving the track for the car shed, as I’m not happy with it’s location. It’s spaced too far from the tracks leading to the engine house.

City Point Progess – Feburary

Despite doing considerable planning, one thing that has surprised me, is how much of this section of the layout is dominated by the track, itself.

Building and installing the switches has been extremely time consuming. Even after the practice of completing eight of them, it still takes an hour to build the switch skeleton and then a couple more hours to install, and that is without ballast.

Another thing, is how tight the spacing is for the three switches that lead from the main line to the engine house. For the same frog number, it appears that stub switches take quite a bit more space when compared to more modern switches.