A Brooks for Hillendale - A Quintessentially Catskill Addition

May 02, 2024

A Brooks for Hillendale - A Quintessentially Catskill Addition

Say it ain't so!

The Hillendale Railway has long been a Baldwin route, partly because that was one of the first builders of locomotives I learned, and partly because, well, Baldwin machines are nice things.

But in March 2024, a Brooks-built locomotive turned a wheel over the rails between Hillendale and Coldbrook for the first time, and the superintendent found himself scratching his head and wondering how it happened.

Ulster & Delaware Railroad #5, the engine and picture that inspired this project. U&DRRHS collection.

It all began long ago when, as a little kid, I saw a picture of Ulster & Delaware #5 in the book Ulster and Delaware: Railroad Through the Catskills by Gerald M. Best. The engine was different from all the others in the book. For one thing, it was clean, but for another it looked decidedly and splendidly trim.

Its streamlined domes and flush boiler jacket gave it a sleek appearance, and with its large drive wheels, it seemed ready to leap out of the gate. Yet, this was not an engine without class, either: it was adorned with plenty of pinstriped trim, and wheels boldly rimmed in white. Altogether, it was simply a striking locomotive that looked to be wearing a sharp suit, and it caught my eye and lodged itself in my subconscious.

The image of these Brooks-built locomotives of the Ulster & Delaware would linger in my mind for many years, but it was not until recently that one came out of the book and my memory and became a real thing!

Freshly-shopped Hillendale No. 9 poses on the Hillendale Railway.

The Model

I had a spare locomotive. I am not someone who easily has spare locomotives lying around, but No. 9 came to us really by a stroke of fate. Sadly, a beloved local model shop closed, and sold off all its stock at tremendous discount. The passenger cars for the Hillendale Railway were acquired from this deal, and with them came No. 9.

No. 9 is a Bachmann third-generation ten-wheeler, and was attractively lettered for the Pennsylvania Railroad. It doesn't model any particular PRR locomotive, but is a good generic representation of PRR motive power anywhere from the 1880s to the 1920s. I didn't know it at the time, but the Pennsylvania Railroad livery also happens to be shared by several railroads of the Catskills.

For several years, the model didn't turn a wheel, as we didn't have a track-powered layout and this engine was track-powered. It seemed surplus, and with its stock-standard Pennsylvania Railroad livery, seemed it would never fit in on the Hillendale. So it waited in darkness, waiting for the day to come into the light.

Hillendale No. 9 as it was received. Unfortunately, I never took a good photo of it pre-modification, so this photo is courtesy Invaluable.

The Prototype Inspiration

Most of the Catskill railroads had a Brooks locomotive (or several) on their roster. The Ulster & Delaware, the mainline of the Catskills, was a particular supporter of the Brooks plant. I guess with the locality of the locomotive-builder in Dunkirk, NY, it made sense. (Though Doug Kadow tells me that Brooks were more expensive than Baldwins.)

When you see a picture of a Brooks locomotive, and a picture of a Baldwin locomotive, they kind of look the same. When you look at a whole bunch of Brooks builder's photos, though, and do the same for Baldwin, you start to infer something about the tastes of the individual locomotive manufacturers. Brooks had certain elements they liked, and so did Baldwin.

U&D number 1, of 1892 vintage, is a typical Brooks product of its time, with striping in white and gold and tender bands of Tuscan red sandwiching the tank. DeGolyer Library.

U&D number 17, built 1890, also wearing fresh Brooks livery. DeGolyer Library.

As delivered by Brooks, these engines would have been vested in a dark ground color, either deep green or black, over most of the engine. The boiler was clad in metal jacketing made from a polished pressure-treated bare metal called "planished iron," that looked medium gray in neutral light but was highly reflective, thus taking on tints from its surroundings depending on the light. The striping was in two-tone, white and gold, while two Tuscan red stripes sandwiched the tender tank on the top and bottom. Brooks loved white walled wheels, even into the 1890s, when Baldwin had moved on from such things. With varnished wooden cab doors and windows, this was the emblematic look of Brooks locomotives in the 1880s and 90s.

I call this the "quintessential Catskill engine look" because the Ulster & Delaware rostered sixteen Brooks, and its narrow-gauge subsidiaries had at least one. Thus in the 1880s and 90s, engines with the color palette and decorative details described above were common sights for passengers riding through trains through the Catskills, or taking a branch line narrow gauge up the Stony Clove Notch.

Now how does this tie into the Hillendale? Very recently I realized the similarity between my spare Bachmann ten-wheeler and these engines, and though I at first merely sought to create an emulation, it soon became evident that without much more elbow-grease I could have a really splendid model, and so began No. 9's entry into the Hillendale Railway.

Brooks-ifying a Bachmann Ten-wheeler

Fantastically, most of my work had been done for me by Bachmann's Pennsylvania Railroad paint scheme, which just happened to be quite close to the standard Brooks paint scheme of the 1890s. (PRR was one of the first railroads to adopt a standard paint scheme, in 1868. In the years to follow, several locomotive builders would appropriate the stylish pattern as their default factory livery. The livery could be applied to any ground color, but the arrangement of decorative striping was consistent.) This bolstered my motivation quite a bit, as a lot of fancy paintwork had been done for me. Some of the pinstriping was changed to white (Bachmann had rendered it all in gold), but aside from that, hardly any paintwork was removed.

A bunch, though, was added. The tender received two Tuscan red bands, top and bottom. All the wheels received white rims; "Brooks" was added via waterslide decal to the cylinders; and fresh numbers cut on my Cricut machine and added to the sand dome and cab.

The completed tender, with some of the linework changed to white, and Tuscan red bands added to the top and bottom following the standard Brooks pattern.

White rims on all wheels and "Brooks" spelled out on the cylinder are consistent trademarks of the Dunkirk, NY manufacturer.

The cab itself received some physical work, with inset panels mimicking the wainscoting of the Brooks cabs, rain gutters installed on the roof, and the windows and doors picked out with blond-oak-colored contact paper. Just ahead of the cab, the dynamo was removed (too modern).

Thin bamboo plywood was scribed with a dead ballpoint pen to create the inset wainscoted panel shared by the three Ulster & Delaware Brooks engines in this article.

At the front of the locomotive, the pilot supports were painted black, and a swoopy wrap-around handrail added mimicking Brooks practice. The smokebox front received the most mechanical modification of the whole locomotive: the dogs securing the door shut were removed, and replaced by a pivot latch common in American locomotives at the time. That is much more typical of an early 1890s locomotive than the dogs of the Bachmann model. I also added a number plate that I made by laminating vinyl over the original.

The headlamp was replaced by a box one, also by Bachmann. It doesn't have the integrated number boards of the Brooks headlamps, but in a pinch, does the trick. In general, I wanted to mimic Brooks practice as closely as I could, to set aside my model as definitively "Brooks" as opposed to the Baldwin prototype the Bachmann model is originally derived from.

The "face" of the locomotive, with new box headlamp and modified smokebox door. The wraparound handrail was an emblematic choice by Brooks.

The new number plate was hand-painted with black paint onto a gold vinyl base. The "9" and gold rim were masked with vinyl stickers, while the text encircling the plate was scratched into the black paint with a needle while it was still tacky.

One area in which I took exception to prototypic fidelity was in the running board tops. These should be painted a mineral brown or red color, but in truth, Brooks never intended this surface to be seen by the viewing public. Only us modelers with our birds' eye view get to see them. I thought the brown marred the sleek lines of the locomotive, so I kept them black to make them mostly invisible. The engine now looks much more sleek running around the railroad. One neat feature of Brooks running boards is that they have molding underneath them, and the polished steel nosing is super-thin compared to Baldwin's. I replicated these features on my model.

I was going to leave the pilot wheels as-was, but then one of the axles broke. Replacement wheelsets from Bachmann, delivered in jarring maroon, provided the perfect opportunity to make a set that better matched the Brooks wheels.

New wheel centers, formed from thin copper sheet, replace the Bachmann wheel centers seen in the background.

Painted and ready for installation on the locomotive.

One thing I haven't done is cap the domes with flute thingies as Brooks did. I may do this in the future if I feel like it, but for now, Hillendale No. 9 is up and running, and looking much like a Brooks 1890s engine that might've been found in the Catskills.

The best part? All the lettering and striping is done in water-resistant Cricut vinyl, and 90% of the paintwork is factory (and therefore indestructible). This engine is robust, and can be run rain or shine.