Touring the C&O Hinton Division: Sewell & Hinton

Our tour of Jim EuDaly’s C&O Hinton Division goes to Sewell and Hinton. After climbing through the gorge, the train enters Sewell on the mainline on the New River Subdivision on the bottom deck of the layout. Here the train approaches another crossing of the New River. The bridge is four feet long and was built from prototype plans with hand embossed rivets and four spikes on every tie. The rapids below were made with white acrylic paint for the foam and stippled plastics water.

At Sewell Bridge, the train moves from the north side of river to the south side. Sewell has a classic C&O frame station with an octagonal tower from the 1890’s. It was scratch built with strip wood and siding with grandt line windows. The line heads over Schuster Bridge. This heavy duty bridge was not built form a prototype but was the design of a friend Bill Schuster. Because he wanted to run a 24 hour schedule, night lighting was very important to Jim. His room and structure lights can be dimmed. They are controlled by a fast clock running on a 2.7 to 1 ratio, so 22 minutes and 12 seconds is equal to one hour.

The layout has three levels. Upon exiting Schuster Bridge the train heads into Stretchers Neck Tunnel and moves to the middle level. The middle deck is called Hinton Yards. Hinton is the biggest scene on the railroad and is a division point between New River Subdivision or the lower level of the layout and Alleghany Subdivision or the upper level of the layout.

The extra emerges from Stretchers Neck Tunnel into the mid level. The next structure on the layout is CW cabin, which controls the west end of the Hinton Yard. The town of Hinton is up on a bluff above the railroad. Jim goes on to discuss his scratch building and the tour of Hinton continues.