Wordless Wednesday #275 ... Decisions, Decisions

 

An Inn for Stafford Mills

For some reason I always seem to manage to find the time to complete a model over the 4th of July weekend. This year that model is this BEST Trains Colonial house with kitchen addition. I intend to brand this as a small New England inn.  

Nothing particularly noteworthy about the assembly process. I did note that all of the window openings (and there's a LOT of them!) are cut just slightly undersize - meaning I had to enlarge them just a little to get the plastic windows to fit. Also, the stone foundations on a lot of these BEST kits seem to be a just a little undersized - leaving an exaggerated amount of overhang between the wood structure and the stone foundation. In this case not a big deal and an issue that can be disguised with foundation plantings. I did a pair of Woodland Scenics carriage lamps on both sides of the front door. Other than that this was a real basic build. 

It's shown in the drone shot above in the approximate location on the Stafford Mills town area. I'm thinking on one or two more buildings for the upper street - perhaps a church or maybe a small town garage? Another option is a house or perhaps a cafe???? 

On the other hand I want this to look like a New England country lane, not a downtown Main Street!

One additional detail needed before this is planted in place - a sign:

Extra points to anyone who gets the reference ...

Framing the Picture

Compare the photo above with the one below - note how the trees help push the brick mill further into the distance and frame the building.

I haven't really had much of a chance to get down to the basement in the last week or so - bascially work was busy early last week and Stic and I headed up to NERPM where I had a great time seeing old friends and making some new ones. 

But before I left I did spend a few minutes Thursday evening playing around with the forced perspective scene in Stafford Mills. Something was bugging me about it, but I couldn't quite get a handle on what it was. 

I liked how the HO scale store and N scale brick factory looked - the forced perspective trick seemed to be working well - but the mill looked just a little too close to the store. 

I added a couple of vehicles and they didn't seem to all that effective at making the factory seem further away. I planned to replace the shorter trees (each tree about 3"-5" tall in the strip of land between the road and mill stream in front of the factory. But first I dug out some larger (7"-9" tall) "full size" trees and placed them along the road. I started with two trees to the right side of the scene. Then, remembering I'd heard along the way that an odd number of trees always looked better than an even number I added a third tree to the grouping spaced a little further to the left. I think the fact they're taller than the top of the tower on the brick mill helps make the brick structure seem further away. And I like the way the trees "frame" the tower on the building. 

Next step will be to add some leaf texture - but not a lot - the idea is these trees have gotten a gust a wind that shed most of their leaves - and then "plant" them in place. 

Speaking of trees, I also received a shipment of MBR trees. These are true foreground models. I saw them used with great effect on Tom Johnson's Cass County Railroad and ordered a few specifically to help frame some scenes in town. They really are quite nice. That's one to the left in the picture below. 

Country Lanes for Stafford Mills

This aerial view shows the basic layout of the streets in Stafford Mills

Spent a couple of hours in the basement yesterday getting the foundation for the roads installed in Stafford Mills. 

The first step was cut away the area for the country store. Since I'd installed the store on its own rectangular base this was simply a matter of determining the stores final position (It's in a slightly different spot than in the previous blog post), marking the outline of the base, and sawing out the scenery. 

Although I planned to use sheet styrene for the roads, I didn't have any larger sheets of plastic so I opted to use cardboard instead. The first step was to take the paper templates (see previous blog post) and cut them apart to arrange them on the large sheet of cardboard in order to minimize wasting any material. I ended up with four sections.

I used a saw to create a smooth path for the roads. 

When installing streets in a hilly area you need to be careful to avoid overly steep climbs and sudden grade changes. And since the basic landform scenery was already in place there were a few spots where the road climbed a hill just a little too steeply, or the road wasn't level across its width. The solution was to trace the outline of the cardboard road pieces onto the ground and then use a utility knife and a fine toothed saw to produce cuts in the scenery. 

I did narrow the roads as they got closer to the wall. 

On the left side the road climbs to a slight crest before heading down towards the rear. 

On the right side the road will disappear into the trees. 

Once I liked how the road looked I glued it in place with hot glue, using heavy weights to hold it in place. 

The one problem with cardboard roads is that can easily swell and warp when painted - especially with acrylic paints. So I sealed the cardboard with Polycrylic sealer and allowed them to dry overnight. Note the road hasn't been extended over the tracks and to the fascia. That's the next step. 

I couldn't resist positioning the camera for a test shot to see how the scene was shaping up with the various elements in place. The plan is to include some "full scale" HO trees between the road and mill river in order to screen the brick mill and contribute to the illusion of distance. The large open area to the left may (I'm still not sure) become home to a white steepled church, a New England signature element if there ever was one. 

Planning some foreground trees

See how the building and track look as if they're "floating" in the photo above? They look as if they've been plopped on top of the world and are not really part of it. What can be done to fix this? 

I've become convinced that one of the best ways to truly "set" a scene is to include some scale (or near scale height) trees. I've also found that by placing scale height trees closer to the foreground you can create the same sensation that forced perspective creates. 

I made up the base armatures out of Crepe Myrtle tips (For more detail on how I build up these armatures see THIS POST, or search the archives for "Crepe Myrtle") but haven't yet put the finer branch structure or foliage in place. But I dug those out yesterday and played around with several of them to get identify the best choice for the area around Kempinski Curve. 

I think even with the "basic armatures" you can see how it "blends" the track, and the building to the left, into the scene instead of having them stick out. I'm hoping the finished trees, properly colored with smaller branches and some leaf texture will really set the scene - late fall in New England. 

Worth It?

 Glad I didn't spend more effort than I did on the covered bridge. After I got the smaller distant trees installed the bridge pretty much disappeared from view! 

But I know it's there. 

You can see if it you look really hard - of course you have to stand on a step stool and lean in over the layout ... but if you do that you'll notice it masks the joint between the river and the wall - which was kinda the whole point!

New Video - Forced Perspective

I just posted a quick video showing the mockup planning process for a scene on the layout that will utilize forced perspective to create a sense of depth and distance. 

You can find the video by clicking HERE. 

Wordless Wednesday #244

 

"Blocking" in Atlas Plywood

Atlas Plywood in Richford is in the background. P. R. Hastings

 I've spent some time this morning gathering the information I have on the Atlas Plywood plant that once served as a backdrop to the CV's Richford yard. It didn't take long to gather the information since I don't really have all that much on it. 

I do have the Sanborn Map that shows the footprint of the building, and a few photos. I've blogged about the plant previously - mostly in the post you can find HERE. That post covers the prototype - my goal this morning was to think through how to convert the information I have into a (compressed) model of the facility. 

The brochure and Sanborn Map both date to the 1920s and early 30s. The only images I've found of the building after the war (it burned down in October 1954) were a partial view captured by Phil Hastings, and a quick snippet of the building on a DVD that was remastered from 8mm movie film shot from a moving caboose! 

Atlas Plywood - screen capture from a Central Vermont Railway in Steam DVD. 

It seemed pretty obvious that I wasn't going to find any more detailed images than I already had. Besides, a quick scaling of the map image of the facility (called Richford Mfg. on the 1920 Sanborn) revealed it was about 550 feet from stem to stern.

I'd left a large area for the model of the plywood plant - but building it full scale would completely dominant the view of the layout from anywhere in the room. 

A compressed version of the plant seemed a better approach. 

In the end I settled on a footprint about 36" long by 8" long at the widest point for the buildings themselves. That doesn't include some areas available for lumber stacks and the like. 

I drew up a footprint that seemed to capture the key elements of the building. Some of the items I wanted to include were:

1.  The two story section between the tracks in the map image

2. The walkway between it and the larger building. 

3. The portion of the three story section with the three smokestacks. 

4. The large two story area at the top of the image in the Sanborn Map. 

Rather than try to draw a scale plan of the building I blocked these key elements. 

The first draft of how this could look is shown below. I started by drawing the overhead "footprint" view. Then I carried the lines where the building went from two to three stories and the like and blocked into the basic shapes. It looks like this will fit well and produce a convincing impression of the complex. 

Before committing this to styrene I need to mockup the building in three dimensions. 

"Blocked in" sketch of how the key elements could be combined into a convincing compressed model of the prototype. 

 

New siding for "Stafford Mills"

The fact that even the "first coat" of the backdrop painting stops
here is a clue that the Stafford Mills area of the layout is unresolved. 

As originally planned, Stafford Mills (essentially my freelanced version of Sheldon Springs) was the location of a major single industry - in this case a paper mill complex located at the end of a dedicated stub peninsula. But as I built the layout I realized there would be room for a siding with one or two very small industries at opposite the junction switch on the passing siding (the junction switch with the mill lead forks off from the mainline). 

In this case I didn't have to remove anything so this wasn't so much a "rework" as it was an addition or an enhancement. I could even make the argument this didn't add any additional track to the layout since I'd removed a turnout and a siding from the junction area as part of the rework of that trackage I described a few months ago. 

I was out of Micro Engineering no. 6 code 70 turnouts - as is everyone else. So I decided to handlay the necessary turnout. Although this added a couple of evenings to the project I'm glad I did - the turnout works perfectly, and cars and locomotives (even brass steam locomotives!) pass through both routes without so much as a click! I'm not wishing any additional work on myself, but if any of the Micro Engineering turnouts on the rest of the railroad fail or prove troublesome I'm simply going to replace them with handlaid ones.  

The buildings shown in the photos are strictly placeholders and may, or may not, end up in these locations permanently. I kind of like the idea of a station in between the mill lead and mainline, so that will likely stay (I may build a different station for the spot. The one shown is a model of the Richmond, Vermont station - although that perhaps the closest to a "standard" CV small depot design as the railroad had. But there are a couple of Grand Trunk (NEL) stations I've always liked and may well scratchbuild one of those for this spot. 

The freighthouse is a Walthers cheapo model that I painted and lettered in "close enough" CV colors. It's not bad .... but the weakest point is the platform - despite my best efforts it's still too bulky. I should have replaced it with a scratchbuilt wood one. I do have a BEST Trains kit that may work better in this spot, if I decide to stick with the freight house. 

The red rectangular building is simply there to fill space and see how a larger industry would look in that spot. I'm not convinced it's going to work there - especially with the freight house. The answer is looking like (1) freight house and something that isn't a large building - a coal yard for example or team track OR (2) a larger building industry with no freight house. Since there's going to be plenty of large buildings in the mill complex I'm leaning towards option #1. 

My ultimate plan for the area with inside the mainline curve (with the yellow building) is to ultimately have a mill river with one or two larger wooden mill structures over a mill stream, complete with mill falls, etc. ... But that sounds like it may take months/years to get completed. This may well simply end up as some open fields and a tree line "for now" to get a large portion of the landscape to look finished with the idea I could revisit it at some future point. 

Explaining Staging

Over the last few evenings I've completed the basic landforms for the area where trains will emerge from the staging tracks onto the scenicked portion of the layout. As mentioned previously, the staging tracks aren't hidden from view (since hidden from view in this case would also mean "difficult to access"!). They will, however, be screened from view by a low rise in the ground, and perhaps trees and bushes. At the point where the staging tracks emerge from hiding trains will round a bend and appear from behind a more dense stand of trees. At least that's the plan. We'll see how effective it is in practice. 

Some questions and comments indicate a little bit of confusion with what exactly is going on in this corner of the layout. Really, it may seem complicated or confusing but when you see it in person it makes perfect sense. 

I will try to clear this up with a couple of labeled photos. 

A few months back I described how I added a couple of new staging tracks to the layout. There are actually two stub-ended "screened" tracks along the right hand (short) wall if you view the track plan in the Richford Branch layout description tab above. 

These represent the originating point of the Richford Branch in St. Albans, Vermont. These are labeled St. Albans (west) in the image above. As you can see in the photo above there are two other double-ended siding tracks visible in the foreground. These tracks serve a dual purpose. First of all, their primary function is to represent the interchange connection with the CPR in Richford at the other end of the branch. But since these two tracks are double-ended they could also provide additional "surge" staging capacity for another train originating in St. Albans. And their third, and perhaps most important function, at least to me, is to provide a continuous run connection. 

The second photo shows the other end of the staging yard. This is the point where trains coming from St. Albans will first appear "on scene." This photo also shows the other end of those double ended Richford CPR interchange tracks. I've built up the basic landforms out of foam board and florist foam to create a scene with a slight slope to the foreground between the track and aisle and a slight hillside between the track and wall. I'm hoping this will prove to be a good place for "roster shots" of rolling stock. 

Since all this "staging" is really integrated into the rest of the layout visually my intention is to scenic it, ballast the track, etc... 

To the casual observer it will just look like a few more tracks - perhaps with a train or cut of cars spotted on it - but won't be a visually jarring distraction from the rest of the layout. 

Hope that clears things up!

Pulling together the Junction Scene

 

The Junction scene can have some structures - but the prototype scene that's inspiring it was really in the middle of nowhere, with a few buildings clustered around the junction trackage proper. Temporarily arranging the structures shows the open air feeling of the prototype can be maintained with three or four buildings. More than that and it will quickly fall apart visually. 

With the freight car catch up project completed, I've redirected my efforts to finishing up the Junction/River scene, based in spirit, if not entirely in fact, on Sheldon Junction, Vt. 

I've been making good progress on South river Model Works Streeters & Clear Brook kit, and have managed to get the store walls assembled, meaning I'm at the point in this project where I can start locating an appropriate spot for thing. One nice thing about this particular store is the fact that there is little or selective compression, meaning it's the size an HO scale country store should be, and not, as is often the case with a craftsman structure kit, more like an N scale building with HO windows!

A logical place for it seems to be some place between the bridge and St. J & LC crossing. 

Here's the prototype inspiration for my scene. Note the bridge to the left, behind the darker structure. 

I have seen numerous references to a store being located at Sheldon Junction - and though I'm not modeling the prototype exactly, including the South River Streeters Store doesn't seem like much of a stretch. I don't think the building in the b&w photo is a store - I think it may be an old creamery that has been converted to a residence. 

My plan was to place the feed mill that's part of the SRMW kit on the siding in the foreground (the one that dead ends in front of the St. J track by the crossing). 

Three issues: 

1. One of the neat things about the kit's feed mill is the way the rear shed addition is slightly downhill from the main part of the building. While the structure is designed to be built on either or a slope or flat ground, the slope adds a lot of character. Problem is the rear of the building would be at the St. J. track - meaning the ground would have to slope UP sharply to the meet the track. I think it could be done, but there's a river to the right - and the feed mill may very well end up below water level.  At best, the whole thing may look forced. 

2. I haven't assembled the walls on yet, but placing the foundation in position looks like to me like the building will just seem, well, small. 

3. This last one is really more aesthetic than practical, but the store and feedmill are shown arranged on a single diorama on the SRMW kit box. In other words, they go together. And that might not be a good thing. While most people won't know the difference, people familiar with these kits will instantly look at the scene and say "hey that's Streeter's from South River - I have that kit also...!" Not something I want to hear either from visitors - or from myself in my head. Seems the best way to prevent that is to not use the kits next to one another in a scene. 

This last item is of course the bane of kits when it comes to a prototype model railroad layout. You really do need to scratchbuild most, if not all, of the buildings if the goal is to get something realistic, and not merely artistic. 

I do have a feed mill leftover from the old layout. It's based on a structure that once stood across the tracks from the Waterbury, Vt. station. It's prototype size, which means it looks like it can handle a car or two of feed a week. It's also finished, which is a rare commodity around here, and not one to be taken lightly. 

After playing around with several arrangements, the photo below seems to include the essential elements. The white house in the center of the photo is a stand in for the structure in the prototype shot. I plan to build a new model for this scene. Besides, I want something that's painted a color other than white - even if that "other" color is some form of barn red!

Snapping Into Focus

The unpainted foam is a dead giveaway that the scenery isn't finished in the junction corner. 

But there are enough of the basic elements in place that I can tell the scene 

will meet my original vision for this area.

All model railroads start with a vision. Then there's the construction - when saws, drills, plywood, screws, and wires replace all other aspects of the hobby. This phase can be disheartening, and seemingly never-ending when a large layout is involved. The more artistic side of the hobby is put aside in an effort to get the railroad operating. 

Sometimes the modeler tells all who will listen he is so interested in operation that he's having too much fun to build scenery. Frankly, I think it's often not a lack of interest but . instead their enthusiasm for more construction - of any kind - has sucked the fun out of the project and they simply don't have the heart to press on. 

But someone once wrote that scenery is the "the most critical 1/16th of an inch." After all it's what everyone sees in the end. But it's too often the last thing that's done - which is why so many railroads never make it past the plywood pacific stage. 

The background hills are nothing more than painted foam with some ground up leaves added as a forest floor texture. Next step will be to plant the trees. The trees will be fairly dense on the hillside in the center - mostly to mask the unnatural steepness of the slope. But I need make sure the trees don't completely hide the backdrop painting. 

But for those who feel that scenery is at least as important as operation know there's a magical moment - when the layout starts to look less like a "train table" and more like the railroad scene we first envisioned. It snaps into focus. And it often occurs before the scene is "finished."

It's been a busier last few weeks than I had planned - a trip out of town and a couple of intense work projects made more onerous by the current remote working environment have left me feeling like a hollow shell by the time the dinner bell rings. But I have managed to get some puttering done in the basement. I didn't have the heart to install (more) Tortoises. Perhaps I was looking for a project where I, and anyone else, can immediately see that progress has been made. I'll get back to the Tortoise installation chore, but in the meantime I've gotten most of the base scenery landforms roughed in for the junction scene. I even managed to get a car shed and ball signal built up to protect the junction. Was there ever a ball signal at Sheldon Junction? I don't know. I've never seen any proof that there was. I've also never seen proof there wasn't. But a ball signal between a branchline and a shortline hardly seems to out of place and frankly seems a necessity. For the record the ball signal and car shed are a BEST Trains kit. An easy couple of evening build. 

When did your vision for your railroad, or even car, locomotive, or structure build first start to realize your vision? In other words, when did it snap into focus? 

Here's a higher view of the in-progress scene. I find it's easier to complete the scenery on the far side of the track before starting on the foreground scenery. 

Scene Planning

The landforms for the inside alcove curve area are complete and everything has an initial coat of "Bargain Bin Tan". Doesn't mean there won't be "tweaks" but it's time to move on to the backdrop as well as the background tree covered hill areas. 
Scenery includes several elements. Color is likely the most critical, but composition - how the elements are positioned relative to one another and the viewer - is also important. So before going any further I wanted to play around with some of the key elements of this scene and make sure they're working.  
I dug out the barn from the last layout - it has some damage that will need to be repaired. Actually, the gutter hanging off doesn't look all that unrealistic! This is a fairly high (a little above my eye level) view of the barn in a position that seemed to look best.  It was quickly obvious that if I'm going to use this particular structure I need to add some additional land under and behind it. I might build a new structure for this spot and use this barn elsewhere. But since any new structure would be about this size I wanted to see how a "box" of this size would look in this position. 

Instead of poking holes for the trees I use small spring clamps to test tree placement. Again, these may not be the trees that get used in these locations - and if you examine the photos carefully you may notice the trees moving around. 

I wanted to check  the angle of the barn compared to the road. I normally would have use a strip of cardstock to represent the road, but didn't have one handy so I used a couple of Sharpies instead to mark the edges of the road. 
More to the point, you can see the difference (and improvement) made by angling the barn slightly between the top and bottom photos. I prefer the bottom one since I think it will offer better photo angles with a train in the distance. 
This scene is actually visible from two spots - inside the curve, and then from the family room side looking at the layout from outside the curve (see the trackplan). So I took a test images showing how the scene might look from the "outside" aisle. 

Terraforming II

Quick snapshot (apologies for the rather odd lighting) of progress to date. 
I've put a couple of layers of plaster cloth and a skim coat of plaster over the open areas that will eventually be farm and pastureland with a few scattered trees. The background hills are the green florist foam. The tan splotches are Sculptamold patches and fills - this hasn't worked as well as I wanted, so I'm going to use a Sculptamold/Celluclay mixture to try and fill some of the unnatural low spots in the plaster subsurface. Then everything will get a coat of flat latex paint. 

Quick (very quick) Progress Report

I've been spending time trying to locate the structures I do have into logical places on the railroad. Getting water served mills located correctly (so they look right, and fit the layout!) can be a considerable challenge. My admiration for Bob Van Gelder and Dick Elwell's abilities to do this on their railroads has increased ten fold as I try to do the same with mixed success. 
Short work session yesterday led to determining the logical place to locate Ben Thresher's mill. I like how the model came out, and want to use it on the railroad. I've plopped it down in a number of locations over the past few months, but in the end the most logical place to locate it was between the track and backdrop by the Williams Creek Bridge. Not only does it seem to fit here, it will also give a different look to the scene which has been photographed and featured perhaps a little too much!

Williams Creek, stripped of its landform, trees, 

and even some of the riverbed. 

After determining the best position to place the building, the footprint served as a template to trim a piece of foamboard to fill the somewhat odd-shaped site of the building. 
The piece of vertical black foamboard is a stand in for the dam. It needs some tweaking but I think the final location looks pretty good. I've included a test shot to show how the various elements will (hopefully) work together. 

Wordless Wednesday #207

Essex Junction Backdrop update

Bernie came by for a short, but productive session on Sunday. His main tasker was to complete the Main Street backdrop scene in Essex Junction.  As you might recall, back in January, he came over and started to do a computer drawing of the buildings along one side of Main Street (essentially south east of the trainshed). Before he left that day we printed out a size test version of to make sure the scale and perspective would work and he finished up the drawing at home.

Yesterday he showed up with the final drawing and his bucket of backdrop paints and an assortment of brushes. He dove right into painting the background foliage and distant treeline. We’re keeping the horizon line fairly low in this section of the layout since it represents a relatively flat town.

Instead of cutting out the buildings entirely, he actually painted the sidewalks, and some bushes and grass texture onto the paper.  This proved pretty effective.

Then he cut out the printed sky from the upper portion of the printed buildings, sprayed the back of the paper with photo adhesive, and placed it on the backdrop. 

After blending the road coloration, and adding some leafless “foreground” trees, I think the finished section of backdrop looks pretty good (the 3-d structures shown here are strictly stand ins!)  Next step is on me to finish the three-dimensional scenery in the foreground, and add the “real” structures to both sides of the street to not only get the right look but to hide the edges of the backdrop section, and add the foreground foliage.

That has to wait until I finish the tracklaying/wiring in this area. While Bernie was working on his art project (and after he took off), I managed to get the track complete from north staging to the trainshed.  Over the last couple of weeks I’ve handlaid a half dozen or so turnouts in Essex Junction, so it should be a simple matter to “connect the dots” with the rest of the track.