A Station for Yew Corners

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Yew Corners, a locale on the Hillendale Railway, needed a station. This begged the question of what a station on the Hillendale Railway would have looked like, and more importantly, how it would have appeared by 1898, my approximate year of modeling focus.

Being in a Catskill sort of mood, I went to a regular artistic muse, the Ulster & Delaware Railroad, fount of many aspects of the Hillendale, which once had been called the "Only All-Rail Route to the Catskills." I found inspiration in a particular style of station once found along the old U&D.

Historical Background

With a few outliers, most of the stations along the Ulster & Delaware Railroad can be categorized into four architectural schools. The first category of stations, the "pole barns," were very simple, utilitarian buildings erected when the railroad was still young and called the "Rondout & Oswego." They had board-and-batten siding, very little ornamental trim, and a gable roof with wide overhanging eaves.

"Pole barn" at Olive Branch. NYCDEP.

In the 1870s, the U&D began to build new stations to impress the rich clientele coming up from New York City to summer in the mountains. These were called "gingerbreads." These were extraordinarily beautiful and complex stations with elaborate cut trim, complicated fretwork, and lacy detail. They were typically laid out with an enclosed passenger section in the middle, and an open veranda at each end of the station.

"Gingerbread" at Hobart. Note the sunbursts and mirror triangles in the gable, a classic motif repeated on the U&D's gingerbreads. DeGolyer Foundation Collection, The Ulster & Delaware... Railroad Through the Catskills, Gerald M. Best, 1972.

By the late 1880s, the Ulster & Delaware began to see that its ornate "gingerbread" stations required a lot of maintenance after the harsh Catskill winters, and with some of the stations being open only during the summer season, it just was not worth it. By the late 1890s, most of the "gingerbreads" and any "pole barns" that had not been converted to freight houses were remodeled, and any new stations also built to what would be called the third school of U&D station architecture: the "simplified gingerbreads." The stations were still Victorian in appearance but much of the lacy detail work was supplanted with straight lines or simplified detail, in the Stick style.

"Simplified gingerbread" at Fleischmanns. Note the rainbow glass on the lower story, and the overall simpler decoration compared to the "gingerbread" style. Library of Congress.

In 1899, a fourth school of station architecture would emerge on the U&D - the Ulster & Delaware Standard Station - but we'll save that for another day because I decided to make my Hillendale Railway Yew Corners Station in the pattern of an Ulster & Delaware "simplified gingerbread."

The question remained of how to paint it. Some scholars carry the belief that a historic building's colors can be interpreted from a black-and-white photograph; studies have proven this to be untrue. Simply put, the number of variables in the taking of a historic photograph are so vast that it is impossible to tell what color something was just by looking at the shades in a black-and-white photograph. Different photographic emulsions saw colors differently; some construed red as dark and blue as light, while others did the opposite; some even registered pale yellow as a dark gray shade! Thus, the best way to conduct paint research is to do a forensic paint analysis on a surviving structure.

Fortunately, the Ulster & Delaware Railroad Historical Society (now disbanded) did just that. They have discovered that the U&D's first generation of stations, the "pole barns," were painted brownish red. This comes from Doug Kadow, former president of the UDRRHS.

With the fancy "gingerbreads" came ornate paint schemes which unfortunately have not been studied. Doug is of the opinion that their main body color was white, to match the equally ornate Hudson River steamboats of the day, while I prefer to hold that they were a nice combination of high Victorian earth tones. In truth, no surviving gingerbread has had a paint study done.

As to the "simplified gingerbreads," Doug believes that since the stations were converted or built in different years, and given the U&D's lack of standards when it came to such things, there was no consistent paint scheme. The singular "simplified gingerbread" that has had its paint studied, the Roxbury, NY station, is believed to have been buff with caramel trim at one point; and pumpkin orange with chocolate trim at another.

The ultimate paint design I chose for my station, envisioned as a mirror-reverse of one of the liveries used on the U&D's 'simplified gingerbreads.'

Going against my own rule of inferring color from black-and-white photographs, I skimmed through photos of U&D stations around the turn of the century, and developed a hunch that the orange-with-brown-trim might have been common. The Fleischmanns, NY station looks like it could wear this scheme. (Of course, it is just a guess.)

I decided to paint my Yew Corners Station in a rough inverse: chestnut brown as the body color, with orange trim, as to not copy the Ulster & Delaware directly.

The Model

The basis for the model is a POLA station kit, purchased used and pre-assembled. It came molded in a yellow-and-brown scheme used by the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad out west, which especially unweathered, looked a bit garish, including the "Hollywood Western" lettering POLA used on the signs.

onlytrains.com

The station got a coat of chestnut brown to cover the yellow parts, and orange trim. The entire station was painted with craft store acrylic paints, and so far is holding up just fine in the weather, under the shade of a yew tree.

I read in a Victorian painting book that sensibilities of the late 1800s favored window sashes being painted a darker color than the other colors used on a building. This makes the windows appear to recede into the edifice, making the building appear inviting. Obviously, nobody told the Hillendale painter that. At the turn of the century, Hillendale management told a worker to go to the store, buy some paint, and slap it onto the station needing some work, as was also the suspected operating practice of the Ulster & Delaware.

Structurally, this station so very well resembled the character of the Ulster & Delaware's "simplified gingerbreads" that there was nothing physical to modify. However, I added a few details.

By the early 1900s, electric lighting was already seeing some use on railroad stations. However, as late as 1912, many stations along the U&D still utilized oil lamps. I figured that Yew Corners, being a small and rural stop, would not have been upgraded to the modern doohickies yet, especially in 1898, the year of focus on the Hillendale Railway.

I made my station oil lamps based on a technique shared by the Magenta Mining and Lumber Company. Playmobile carriage lamps scale out well for 1:20-ish station lamps, and a string of solar-powered fairy lights provide the illumination.

One more thing the station needed was signage. A station tablet, patterned after the ones used on the U&D, was crafted from wood, with tongue-in-cheek vinyl lettering on a painted base. "American Express Company" signs (yes, still in business today) hang under the eaves, inspired by a photograph of a U&D station at Big Indian. (The station tablet comes inside. The American Express signs stay outdoors.)

By the way, what's in a name? An English yew tree shades the station, and "Corners" was a popular suffix for place names in the Catskills in the 1800s. (Dean's Corners, Haines Corners, Hubbell Corners... the list goes on.) This, coupled with the fact that the station literally is at a corner of my yard, fixed the name.

A grouping of light freight completes this scene of Yew Corners as a rural turn-of-the-century station along the Hillendale Railway. Some of the other stations (like Hillendale, the southern terminus) may have been fancier, to pamper the rich clientele bound for the Railway's on-line hotels. But a great portion of the Railway's character lies in a rural flavor, and many of the stops were utilitarian depots, classy enough to get the job done but with no extra frills.

Sources

I have to thank Doug Kadow, president emeritus of the Ulster & Delaware Railroad Historical Society, for his help in understanding the station architecture of the Ulster & Delaware Railroad, and its paint schemes. Doug lives in the Catskills, and has dedicated many years of his life to the study of the U&DRR, including its stations, a particular interest of his. He has made several pieces of artwork which appear on this site.

Information about Victorian Stick Style: https://dahp.wa.gov/historic-preservation/historic-buildings/architectural-style-guide/stick-style

Interpreting color from black-and-white photographs: https://ngdiscussion.net/phorum/read.php?1,211548