South River Modelworks Blog

Bob VanGelder, also known as "South River Model Works" is one of the most creative model railroaders I've had the pleasure of meeting. It also helps that he's a genuinely nice guy!

Bob has also been working steadily on his home layout, the HO scale South River & Millville, since he retired from making model railroad structure kits. 

The fruit of his labors is simply one of the most visually stunning miniature New England landscapes I've seen. 

To help share the layout, and his sometimes very philosophical - but always interesting - viewpoints on the hobby he's started a blog. I'll put a link to the blog in my Bloglist so you can always find it - but in the meantime here's a direct link - check it out - and be sure to tell Bob I sent you! 

https://southrivermodelworks.blogspot.com/

Wordless Wednesday #280

 

A New Addition to the Layout - Part X - Blending everything together and an unveiling

The Mid-Atlantic Railroad Prototype Modelers meet (MARPM) concluded just over a week ago. As an aside this meet is proving to be a wonderful time and I strongly suggest you consider joining us in 2025! (details for MARPM 2025 haven't been finalized, but it will most likely be in the same hotel as this year (located near BWI). Keep an eye on MARPM.org). 

I once again hosted an open house at my layout and did a "Layout Progress" clinic. This was the unveiling of sorts of the newly incorporated "Northern SNE" section. A couple of months ago my friend Bill Schultheiss offered to build something for the railroad. At first I'd planned to rework the steel girder bridge that had once carried SNE rails up in Massachusetts into a road bridge. But as Bill and I went back and forth on what he could build I mentioned the one thing every New England railroad needs - that I didn't have - was a covered bridge. So he took a couple of measurements and a few weeks later he brought a wonderful model of a classic New England covered bridge. Thanks Bill!

And the extremely short tail track at the stub end of the northern SNE section always bothered me - it was barely long enough to fit a 4-axle diesel and one car - but even my small steam locomotives with a car were too long for the siding - meaning I needed to splice a section of benchwork onto the left side of the town and add about 10" of track. At the same time I extended the road from the diner to the end of the added benchwork.

As I've mentioned before there was a 3 or 3.5 foot section of benchwork we added to connect the Northern SNE section to the existing layout. The track required some rework to get the everything to make sense. 

With the track down I used my new Proxxon foam cutting table to slice enough pieces of foam board to the same thickness as the roadbed, filled any gaps with lightweight joint compound and painted and added the initial layer of tile grout and sifted dirt. This "first layer" scenery is hardly show stopping but I was determined that no pink foam be visible! 

I showed the installation of an old structure that seemed a perfect fit for along the mill run in a previous post (HERE). I wasn't able to complete a couple of things in time for the open house. I had planned to finish a new mill building (another South River Models kit) - but frankly wasn't in the mood to work on it for a few weeks, then realized it was close to the open house and I had to get serious about cleaning up the layout room! 

I did two last minute things in preparation for the open house. The first was to roll a coat of paint on the fascia. I think this really helped blend the Northern SNE section into the rest of the layout. 

I also found myself staring at an open area across the street from Streeters Store. 

I considered placing the feed mill (that was included in the same kit as the store) in that spot - but it looked just a little too tight. Besides, the fact that the feed mill is on a slope would have required some benchwork/fascia modifications and I didn't want to make a whole new mess!

What I needed was something that was quick to build that could then either be redetailed or replaced with something else in the future without feeling like a waste of effort. A little Scupltamold to level some undulations in the ground, brown paint, and a few spoonfuls of tile grout and sifted dirt, along with a small shed and a couple of pulpwood loads, and a pulpwood yard was born. 

Still to come is the aforementioned new mill building as well as a freight house for the large open area to the right of the passenger station. And of course, a lot of grass and other textures. 

Wordless Wednesday #279

 

Wordless Wednesday #278

 

CV Shops St. Albans, CV Photo, CVRHS Collection

Wordless Wednesday #277

 

Mill stream progress and filling gaps

As mentioned in my previous blog post I needed to fill the gap in the surface of the mill stream. Turns out a piece of Gatorboard that I had lying around was the right overall size - some quick work with a hobby knife trimmed it to fit the oddball shape of the opening. This was secured in place with a healthy bead of hot glue. One side of the building has a door and windows on the lower floor so I needed to have some open ground on that side of the structure. I cut more Gatorboard and added some Chooch cut stone material. The photo shows it being rough fit in place. 

Next, I cut a thin piece of foamboard to raise the mill building slightly above the water surface. Actually, it made the bottom of the building just about even with the "water" level. 

When I added the fascia the "Upper Road" (former roadbed on the Northern SNE) ended up with a gaping hole between the fascia and the plywood subroadbed. I trimmed several pieces of pink foamboard and used them to fill the gap. 

Putting the mill stream back together - and a farewell too soon

 After a couple of weeks of not wanting to do anything having to do with model railroading (see below) I forced myself down to the basement this weekend. After about 45 minutes of "puttering" - defined as wandering about the basement trying to figure out exactly what to do - I settled on trying to plant a structure I salvaged from my previous layout into the new river/mill scene. I have plans for another mill building alongside the upper mill pond but wanted another element between the two falls and this old BEST kit seemed to fit the bill. 

Of course the first step was excavating the plywood and foam I'd installed a few weeks ago to make room for the structure. The result was a cavernous hole in the earth - which I promptly filled and patched with a "box" made from Gatorboard hot glued in place to the underside of the layout. The lead photo in this post shows how the building will fit into the scene. 

When the building was pried out of my old layout there was some plaster and other scenery materials that got stuck on the foundation blocks - and some of the blocks popped out. I replaced those blocks, soaked the leftover plaster with alcohol for about 10 minutes and carefully scraped it off the surface. 

I never really liked the coloration of these block so I took the opportunity to repaint them with a variety of Vallejo shades of gray and earth-tone paints. And it looks like some scenery material got on the clapboard siding at some point - I'll do something to cover that up or minimize it. 

Farewell Too Soon

Almost two years after loosing our Basset Hound Beau we once again had to say goodbye - this time to his sister Molly. You'd think this would get easier - but it never does. When we adopted these two clowns we thought Beau was the outgoing one and Molly didn't really have much of a personality. Boy were we wrong! Molly was an endless source of amusement and truly brought joy to our lives for almost 16 years. And, like her brother, she was truly a perfect dog. They never destroyed anything, obeyed every time we told them to do something, and greeted everybody who came through the door with a mixture of unabashed joy and unbridled enthusiasm! 

The photo above of Molly was taken the day our new furniture was delivered to the new house. The movers unwrapped the plastic from the ottoman and within seconds Molly decided this was her new throne. And it remained so until a year or so ago when her legs were just too weak and stiff for her to jump up there. 

When my dad was sick we made a lot of road trips to South Carolina - here's Molly on one of those trips. One stop to stretch her legs between Virginia and SC - and then she'd sleep the rest of the way. 

She was, and always will be, our sweet princess. Rest easy girl until we meet again. 

A New Addition to the Layout - Part IX: An upper mill pond

When we removed the Charlton Branch section from Jason's layout we had to cut through the river. Although it went pretty well, the water did chip slightly and a couple of "chunks" of scenery separated from the subbase. I suppose I could have tried to blend it and add a new layer of Envirotex to blend everything together, but I wasn't sure that would even work and if it didn't work I was concerned it would mess up the remaining section of river and falls near Martin Machine that was in good shape. 

A logical - and easier - solution is to not try to patch the river but instead add another fall and a mill pond at a higher elevation. This has the added advantage of allowing for another mill building/complex. 

I did some rough measurements the other night and mocked things up. That seemed to go well enough that last nights "30 minutes a night" was spent cutting a mill pond surface (the leftover fascia piece - hence the color!) and the "land" - currently some 1" pink foam. 

Wordless Wednesday #276

 

Wordless Wednesday #275 ... Decisions, Decisions

 

Yes, I'm still here

I realize it's been a long time - from March 20 until now - since I've posted anything to this blog. I'm not certain, but that may be the longest hiatus ever. 

There are of course the usual excuses I could offer - I was sick for a week or so (back in April, so I'm not sure how valid an excuse that actually is!); I've had some more significant health issues that I've been dealing with; we had out of town visitors for several weeks, etc... 

But the real issue is I simply didn't feel like doing much model railroading - and therefore didn't have anything to share here. 

But on reflection I have done some stuff over the several months - they just haven't lent themselves to interesting blog posts. 

For example, I got the CV boxcar decals completed - although I have to cut the large sheets of decals apart before officially offering them for sale. 

I've also managed to get make progress on the Autumn scenery book ... I'm still hoping it will be done sometime late this year. 

On the layout, I've completed the vast majority of the track - and have even gotten most of it ballasted. The one spot where I still need to ballast the track is in the paper mill complex (which will be rough ballast at best) and the track connecting the main layout to the Northern SNE Charlton branch section (see photo above). 

One thing I need to decide is what to do with the fairly large open area across the street from Streeter's Store in the photo above. It seems to be begging for an industry (and I have allowed for a siding there) - but what should that be? 

I've considered putting the Clear Brook feed mill in that spot. Or a different feed mill I have a kit for. The advantage of the Clear Brook mill is that it's already built! Another option is a propane dealer or a pulp wood yard or bulk material yard - that would of course be the easiest approach to getting some that looks "finished" in that spot. 

Wordless Wednesday #274

 

A New Addition to the Layout - Part VIII: Setting up the Connection

Hit another bump in the road in the process of incorporating the Northern SNE's Charlton Branch into my layout. Luckily this bump was not the same as the literal bumps in the road I experienced driving the Northern SNE section from Massachusetts to Virginia last summer! (see my blog post: https://centralvermontrailway.blogspot.com/2023/07/a-new-addition-to-layout-part-2-voyage.html for more on that part of the adventure. 

In this case the latest challenge was an intermittent short somewhere in the track or wiring. In the end I traced the issue to one or two of the turnouts - and/or their switch motors. Attempting to fix the issues with the turnout would require working under and over all the detailed power lines and the like I opted instead to simply replace one of the turnouts. The turnout I really think had an issue was simply removed and will be replaced with a section of straight track. The turnout led to a very short stub-ended spur - I'll heavily weather the "cut off" spur to make it look like the industry is no longer rail served. 

Removing the two turnouts wasn't easy. After soaking the track in an alcohol and water mixture in order to soften the ballast and ground foam I worked a putty knife in and around those overhead power lines and managed to carefully work the turnouts loose. 

While I was in a track prying mood, I went ahead and removed the track that had crossed the bridge over the river - after scraping off the ballast I used to a sanding block to smooth the area. I plan to use the roadbed this track was on as a basis for a street - more on that in the future. 

The next step is one I've been dreading - cutting a swath out of the finished scenery on the main layout to accommodate the track connecting the mainline to the new layout section. That is going better than I anticipated. 

And although not shown in these photos, I've essentially replaced all the original wiring for both the track and the switch motors. All in all, these it's been a lot of effort integrating this section into the railroad. 

But I keep telling myself I've rounded the corner on "destroying" things and can finally start putting stuff back together - I truly hope that's the case! 

Maryland and Ohio - My First "Railroad of Lies"

I came up with the idea for my freelanced Southern New England Railway in conjunction with Iain Rice during one of his visits to Wisconsin. But not many people know that I had a "railroad of lies" long before the SNE named the Maryland & Ohio Railroad. I created the M&O when I was 10 or 11. As the name implies it was an Appalachian bridge route with lots of coal traffic. It had blue first generation diesels, and a lot of coal hoppers … I’ll let you guess which railroad may have heavily inspired the M&O… they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. 

With the news that Jim Hediger recently passed away, I was digging through my box of freelanced railroad cars looking for an Ohio Southern (Jim's railroad) car and came across what I believe is the one surviving example of M&O rolling stock. Note the use of Champ "word" decals - an alternative at a time when I certainly didn't have the resources to get custom decals made! 

A New Addition to the Layout - Part VII: Hills and trees

Work continues on connecting the Charlton Branch from the Northern SNE* to the main layout. In previous chapters of this seemingly never-ending saga I mentioned how I planned to use several sections of the large mountain that had concealed a helix on Jason's layout - meaning these were large, heavy plaster mountains! I placed the large mountain chunk in a place I thought looked good and would work - and there it sat for at least a month or more. I've learned over the years that if I run into something that stops progress on a project it usually means I'm not taking the right approach. It became obvious that reusing the big mountain chunk was simply not going to work. It was taller than the adjoining hill on the main layout, and would have required altering the existing finished scenery to effectively blend it into place. It was also going to be a challenge to route the track around the thing. So I removed it and replaced it with the salvaged piece that had been the very top of the original mountain. Immediately I could see this was a much better solution. Since the space on the layout was longer than the salvaged hill I sawed it in half and built up a new section of hill in the middle. I also used some of the loose rock castings salvaged from the original layout. 

In addition to the rock castings I was able to salvage a lot of Super trees from Jason's mountain. I did dip each of the armatures in dilute matte medium before coating them with a variety of Scenic Express Super Leaf fall colors. You can find more on what flocking I use and the color combinations in my blog post HERE.

After "planting" the trees I stepped back and admired my handiwork. (Forgive the plaster dust visible in some spots - obviously that will get covered with some ground texture!) I think the renovated hillside nicely compliments the structures on the Charlton section. Next step is to add the track connecting Charlton to the main layout. Then I can do something about that stretch of track to nowhere that runs over the bridge. 

* Jason sent some photos showing the progress he's making  rebuilding in his new digs in Florida. So does that mean mine is now the "Northern SNE"? 

Wordless Wednesday #273 - downtown inspiration

 

A New Addition to the Layout - Part VI: Basic Background Scenery

Test fitting the background scenery foam panel. I think the road "extension" blends fairly well. 

I haven't touched the northern SNE branch section for almost a month or more since I've been focusing on background scenery on the mainline "loop" around the room. But I'd made a bunch more trees, and I was getting sick of tripping over the two chunks of the mountain that we'd recovered from the helix move disaster - but the mountain chunks were useable even if looking a little dusty and faded. 

We'd built a box framework section to fill the space between the main layout and the branch. I took two of the mountain sections and test fit them in place as seen here:

Obviously there's a need to fill the gap between the "chunks" of mountain! The roof of Charleton station is to the left. I grabbed a quick test shot from the "normal" viewing height looking over Martin Machine as well. 

Mostly to avoid working over the finished portions of the branch I cut a piece of foam board to fit the space between the wall and the finished portion of the branch. I added a couple of small hills to break up the pool table look and added two roads after marking where they connected into the existing roads on the branch section. One road runs straight across the addition (lead photo above) while the road by the station curves and goes up a slight hill. I'll show how these blend into the wall in a future post. I test-fitted the piece (below) before adding the initial scenic texturing in the workshop.  

This time with a Train

 

Lots of snow this week. And lots of tree making. 

Flocked a bunch of Super Trees - most of them using a variation of one my favorite tree color blends:

These will be getting "planted" (hopefully) this weekend. 

Wordless Wednesday #272 - My typical railfan shots - no train ....

 

2023 Year in Review

 A quick review of 2023 on this blog. 

Total unique page views (all time) sit at 1,124,248. 

For 2023 there were 148,000 unique page views. 

There were 748 posts in 2023, and in case you're curious here are the top ten posts for last year in terms of total views:

IKEA Ivar Benchwork - User Report

Posted by CVSNE

406

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A couple of upcoming projects

Posted by CVSNE

354

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New Addition to the Layout - Part IV : Back on its own two (four) feet...

Posted by CVSNE

279

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Farewell to the "northern" SNE

Posted by CVSNE

277

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Wordless Wednesday #269 - Need to get the grass applicator going!

Posted by CVSNE

270

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Canadian Pacific E8 in St. Albans

Posted by CVSNE

262

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Factory painted Southern New England power (sort of ...)

Posted by CVSNE

213

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A New Addition to the Layout - Part III - A New Home

Posted by CVSNE

209

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Wordless Wednesday #263

Posted by CVSNE

208

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Wordless Wednesday #268

Posted by CVSNE

204

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As far as progress (or lack thereof!) on the layout. By far the most significant project last year was the still ongoing incorporation of the "northern SNE" section. I suppose it should be no surprise that posts about the whole process accounts for three of last year's top ten posts. 

The other major project (also still ongoing) was the structures and basic landforms for the Stafford Mills area of the layout. 

As a rule I don't make New Year's Resolutions since I rarely, if ever, keep them - but I didn't accomplish as much in the basement as I'd hoped in 2023 so I'm going to set a few broad goals so if I'm blessed enough to see the end of 2024 I'll at least feel like I've accomplished something. 

So what's ahead for 2024? 

Goal #1: Get the scenery completed on the main "loop" of the railroad - with the possible exception of the Enosburg Falls Main Street scene. I'm going to treat that as a separate project from the open country running that predominates on the rest of the layout. 

Goal #2: Finish integrating the Northern SNE section into the layout. 

As mentioned above, these two are ongoing and actually are being worked concurrently. 

Goal #3: Rough landscape (to include building mockups as appropriate) on both the paper mill and Richford yard peninsulas. 

Goal #4: Get the steam roster out of the boxes and operational. 

And I want to get the Autumn Scenery book complete, and be well on the way to getting the Rolling Stock book finished by the end of the year. 

There is another possible large project - reworking the shop area in the basement - that may come to fruition in 2024 - but that waits to be seen.