September Layout update

All of this still needs work, but here are the beginnings of the underpass beneath the tracks at Runnymede.

Greetings everyone. As I said in an earlier post, I've not worked on the layout too much over the summer. 

I did manage to paint the track, get some scenery done and get the framework started on the underpass at Runnymede Road. I've also started on the parking lot where the Lambton yard office is. 

I was dithering about what colour of materials to use, where to start etc. I found that between magazines and online material I was reading more about model railroading that actually doing any of it!

I won't go into a blow-by-blow description of how I did everything to get the layout to this point. Here's the basics:

The start of the scenery and access road. The cardboard shimming the track will be covered with ballast. 

• Scenery: I draped plaster gauze over balled up plastic bags to form the hills on either side of the underpass. I then pulled the bags out after everything was dry. I painted the scenery brown with a cheap acrylic paint and used ground foam for the grass. The gravel road is a mix of four different ballast colours (two greys, a brown and a black). There's still plenty more layers of scenery material to apply here (grass tufts, foliage clusters, etc. etc.)

• Parking lot: This is done pretty much exactly how Lance Mindheim describes here. It's Rustoleum grey primer paint, followed with an India ink wash applied with an airbrush. The road paint (parking lots lines) also follows the Mindheim technique described here in the Aug. 24 post on his blog. I'm going to redo the road markings on the street that runs along the underpass. I  made a failed attempt at that before reading Mindheim's technique. 
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• Track paint: here I used Brown camo paint from Home Depot. Looks oK but it's a bit too uniform, I want to go back and weather up the rail and certain ties. 

What's next?

I've got to finish the scenery here in the yard, including the ballast, which I'm not looking forward to. It's a tedious job. I'm also going to a train show in a few weeks that will give me a chance to pick up some of the background structures I need. I'm also preparing some  rail photos I shot over the summer around the area to laminate buildings and use for the photo backdrop.

Sorry this isn't more detailed. I will include more pics in my next post. 

Here's a look to the right of the bridge. The cardboard rectangle in the background is a mockup of where a warehouse building will go for the spur that runs there. 

February Layout Update!

It's been a long time coming, but here's an update of the work I've been doing on the layout lately. Still lots to do, but with no end in sight to this long brutal winter, I'm going to hunker down and try to get as much done as possible in the next few weeks. 

Please feel free to comment on any of my posts.  

By turning the Walthers kit into a background building, I was able to  lengthen the structure, which extends out about only five inches from the backdrop.

Korex kitbash

Though this is a smallish layout, my hope is to keep the industries as close to prototype size as possible, even if they are just background buildings. Back in the transition era, many small industries were rail-served. These days it seems only the larger industries rely on rail deliveries, which creates a challenge if you’re trying to model the modern era on a (room-sized) HO layout.

Located at the end of CP's Area-H spur in west Toronto is Korex. It's a mid-size packaging manufacturer (I believe) that takes plastic pellet hoppers. Lots of them. The industry is served by four spur tracks and I've seen as many as eight cars there at once. There’s also a handful of storage silos both on the roof and outside the building and a truck loading area on the north side.

Here's a prototype shot of Korex. The industry is served by four spur tracks.

I looked into scratch building this industry but by the time you add up the cost of all the styrene, brick sheets, windows, etc., I decided it was cheaper and easier to kitbash it.

The kit I settled on was Walthers Paper Mill as my source of raw material. It had the right general look of a modern industry, lots of brick walls, varied roof heights and even came with some of the tanks that I’d need. The kit is supposed to be built with a square(ish) footprint with four truck loading doors and a door that can accommodate a railcar into the building. My plan was to turn this kit into a background building using the “fourth wall” pieces to extend the length of the structure. It's 35 inches long, which will give it the scale that I’m looking for.

The real Korex is served by four  spur tracks. I'm thinking mine will have two.

The build

I won’t go into a cut-by-cut description of what I did, but essentially my plan worked OK.

The Feb. 2010 issue of MR had a similar kitbash: they took a large Walthers kit and made it into a background building. In the process they created a structure that suggests a large industry typically served by today's railroads.

 

Here's how the MR project turned out. Making this a background building allowed the builder to use the "fourth wall" material to lengthen the structure. I took a similar approach with the Walthers Paper Mill Kit.

In many ways I this kitbash was inspired by an article in the February 2010 issue of Model Railroader “Build a Big Industry in a Small Space.” Here they cut up a Walthers Tri-State Power Authority kit in a similar way, making it a background building and using the “fourth wall” material to make a large background building (see pics above). The effect is that the building looks like a part of a much larger building that is typical of a modern, rail-served industry.

In the end I opted not to follow this MR scratchbuild of a modern plastics plant. See photos below of a flickr user who did. 

Another Model Railroader piece that influenced me here is a scratchbuild covered in their 1986 book HO Lineside Industries You Can Build (I'm not sure when the story first ran in MR, if ever). That build combined Pikestuff brick block units and styrene siding to build a modern plastics plant, also a very large background structure, similar to Korex. I took a long hard look at this story but decided to stick with my kitbash plan because the end result would come closer to the prototype I was modelling.

However flickr user Larry's Trains did follow the MR piece and that build looks great. See his pic above or you can click through on this link to see it.

So how did it turn out?

Um, not bad?

Some of the seams are a bit more rough than I’d like, though I’m still working on filling some of the larger gaps and putting putty and black paper behind others to make them less conspicuous. My building isn’t exactly like the prototype (click here for an aerial shot), I didn’t try to recreate every window and piece of piping, just the general look and feel.

I still have to do some light weathering on the walls, and I want to add the larger outside tanks, possibly from the Cornerstone PlasticPellet Transfer Facility kit, but essentially the structure is done.

There are plenty of nits to pick here: the brick colour isn’t really close to the prototype but I lost a key airbrush part during cleaning (it’s now on order) and I didn’t want to hold up the build while I got the new part and new paint. The weathering on the tanks didn’t turn out right and I may go back over it.

I will say that buying the Walthers kit (even though it cost  $70) was the right way to go. I’ve got loads of parts left over: wall pieces, windows, doors, roof details, etc. This material will come in handy for future builds/kitbash projects.

For my first kitbash (and second building) I’m generally happy. I’ll be less apprehensive about attempting a kitbash next time. I’ve heard many modellers say they view all kits simply as raw material for kitbashes and don’t even bother with the kit instructions. I like this approach. As I look at more and more layout photos online, I see the same kit structures popping up again and again, which isn’t the worst thing but it’s something kitbashing avoids.

Now I've just got to build the tracks down here. Otherwise, that hopper is stranded!

I’ve yet to lay track down the Korex side of the peninsula. I’m probably only going to run two tracks to serve Korex (the prototype, as mentioned, has four). But between the two tracks, the industry will be able to hold eight hoppers, so it will generate plenty of traffic.

This build has many flaws, but then when I take a close look at other layouts, including ones in modeling magazines, I see flaws there too so I’m going to move on to the next part of the layout without worrying too much about how this building fell short.  I can always come back to this building later. I'm keen to keep things moving forward.

Other layout progress

As mentioned before, I've decided to split the peninsula in half, with Korex (and possibly Battenfield Grease) on one side of the backdrop and 2 staging tracks on the other. The photo below shows the two sides. And no, I've not yet had a chance to update the track plan posted on the front page of this blog. 

So it's industries on the left, staging on the right. And yes, I will extend the layout edge on the right to prevent cars tumbling to the concrete floor below.

With this plan, there were now be staging on both ends of the layout. This way trains can move though, exchanging cars at Lambton Yard before continuing their trip "off layout." From there a switcher can work the industries. 

Still lots to do here, but the stream is taking shape.

Adding a river (well, a stream really)

One layout design element Lance Mindheim suggests is having a scenery-only area in the middle of your switching  layout to enhance the feeling that  trains are moving from one place to another. 

My scenery area is at the base of the inverted "U," where you see the partially sceniced slope. I wanted to add a small stream here and I've read a million articles about how to do this. Right now I'm wrestling with paint colours, trying to get the black in the middle to simulate depth, with a brown (or tan) along the water's edge. This remains a work in progress. So far I've not been able to create the "feathering" effect, but I've yet to try it with my airbrush (which, as mentioned above, is awaiting a part delivery). 

Right now I feel the edge colour is too "reddish" I'd like it more tan and feathered better into the black before I pour the water. 

The stone bridge I made using Hydrocal and a casting I built. It's not perfect and I've fiddled around with a few different pours and colours and I think I'm going to use casting you see in the photo. Making plaster castings for bridges, retaining walls, etc is quite fun. I think I've leaned a few tricks that will ensure I make a better mould next time.

Check out this guy's website for some great tips about using plaster moldings in modelling (he also has a casting service if you want something made).

So that's it for now. I'll be working on tracklaying the Korex spur this weekend and fiddling with the river scene. Your comments are always welcome. 

Also, I love linking to blogs/websites of other layouts that feature modern, room-sized switching layouts. If you see one that isn't already in my link list, please let me know about it by commenting on my page.

I wil leave you with a picture that illustrates what happens when a full bottle of plastic welder is dumped, by accident, on the surface of a foam-based layout. My advice: stand back and don't breathe in.

Here's were I spilled a full bottle of plastic weld on the layout. Went right though the foam of course. Perhaps this will be the future location of an HO-scale illegal toxic waste site.  

Happy modelling.

(Mini) layout update

Some progress to report

Greetings, the snow is starting to fall so it's officially model railroad season. I've managed to make some small progress on my layout in the past few weeks. Here's a summary.

Tweaking the track plan

I felt the layout would operate better if there was some "off layout" staging on the peninsula. That way a train could start on the workbench (east) staging move through the layout and exchange cars, then head to the staging track on the peninsula (west staging). I have more rolling stock than can operate on the layout at once (anyone else?) so I want to put a drawer under the layout beneath the staging tracks so cars can come on and off the layout. 

The trackplan on the home page does not yet reflect these changes, but what I also wanted to do was divide the peninsula with a view block, separating Korex from a two-track staging yard. But to do this I really needed to lengthen and widen the end of the peninsula. Which brings me to the point below: 

Move to extend, widen the peninsula

The move to extend and widen the peninsula took some re-jigging of the benchwork.  But I had the space in the aisle, so I figured I should take it. The staging tracks will be on the right. There will be a scene divider (backdrop) about six inches in from that right edge. Korex will go on the other side. 

Here it is with the foam added. 

I decided that the original peninsula width (21 inches) was too narrow to accomplish what I wanted. So I extended it two feet in length and widened it about eight inches at the end and tapered that back to the 21 inches. About six inches of the peninsula will be a two-track staging yard and Korex will be on the other side of the scene divider. 

I want to try and model Korex true to its size, but as a background building. The prototype has four siding tracks and at any given time there can be up to a dozen hoppers at this industry, including the off spots. I may have to crunch that down a bit, but I don't like having all small industries, even on a small layout. Here's an aerial shot of Korex:

This is an aerial of Korex from the west. You can see it's a large industry that takes plenty of plastic pellet hoppers. 

Here's a shot from the ground level where the tracks diverge:

This is Korex from ground level. This is where the tracks diverge: off-spots on the left, unloading tracks on the right. The fact that it's a big, busy customer makes modelling this industry appealing to me. 

Adding a hill to the "back turn"

The hill begins to take shape. I'm considering adding a drainage ditch between the track and facia you see at the left. 

While I was waiting to get some lumber to re-jig the peninsula, I decided to fill the area between the back turn of the "U" and the backdrop. I used left-over foam insulation and covered it with Sculptamold. 

This is the start of the hill. The south wall is to the left, the west wall is straight ahead. 

This is the first time I've done any scenery but I'm fairly happy with how it turned out. I found the Sculptamold a bit dry at the suggested mixing instructions, so I added more water. Upside: it spread more smoothly. Downside: it took forever to dry. Next time I'll stick to instructions. I think it's supposed to be that dry.

This is the hill after the Sculptamold was applied. The camera light meter wasn't set right here so it's hard to see the detail in the white Sculptamold here. 

I worked left to right and the first effort was much lumpier than where I finished up on the right side. Next step is to cover it with some tan latex paint and ground turf, foam, etc. I'd like to add a shallow drainage ditch between the track and facia in this area. 

What's next?

Here's a brief list of what I hope to accomplish in the next few weeks.

• Build the scenic divider for the peninsula.
• Figure out where the buildings and road will go on the left (non staging) side of the peninsula. 
• lay track on the peninsula, wire and test it. This will mean the entire layout (aside from the east staging) is operation.
• Cut and contour the shape of the drainage ditch.
• Get the facia attached to the layout. 
• I may also paint the foam all over the layout, with plans to scenic it later. The pink is driving me nuts!

I love to get comments. Come back for future posts, in which i will introduce the layout's motive power.  

Happy modelling.