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 #274

 

Blending Williams Creek II

The first image is a horribly unrealistic angle "helicopter view" to give some context to how all these pieces fit together on the layout. It's an overview of the area between Williams Creek (you can see Thresher's Mill to the left of the photo) and Stafford Mills. 

I've added the first coat of Minwax Polycrylic - my go to water surface - to the blended river in Williams Creek. This will be followed by at least 3-4 more coats throughout the day. Hopefully this area will be ready for final textures and trees shortly. 

Blending Williams Creek and Threshers Mill

After I got my talk basically pulled together for the British Columbia Modelers Meet I looked over the slides and decided what it really needed was another "almost finished" scene to illustrate one of the key points in the talk. So I decided to get the "forced perspective" scene to the point I could use it to illustrate the talk. This is all in the "open country" running area between the Junction and Stafford Mills. I probably bit off more than I can chew, but the result will add to the talk and allow me to have another area of the railroad to photograph! 

Before I could finish that forced perspective scene I really needed to complete the scenery between it and the Junction - otherwise the result may end up looking cobbled together when the goal is a cohesive landscape. That meant I needed to finish Williams Creek and the area inside the mainline curve between the creek itself and Stafford Mills. 

Williams Creek is comprised of two segments constructed at different times. The first is the creek and bridge itself, which is the one piece salvaged from the old layout in our former house. The second segment is the Thresher Mill building and associated falls that were built when we were renting an apartment between houses. 

One problem was the thickness of the base for Threshers Mill and that of the river are not the same - it's not too much difference, but enough that the surface of the water didn't line up. I considered cutting the Williams Creek water itself to make everything fit but the water is Envirotex - not the easiest stuff to saw through - and I was concerned there'd be an weird joint that would be difficult to hide even if the top surface of the water ended up level. 

The edge of the Masonite base for Threshers Mill compared with Williams Creek. 

So the mill sat alongside Williams Creek for more than a year with the edge of the Masonite base clearly visible. After a while I stopped seeing it - until I took some photos. At that point I decided I needed to do something about it. 

First step was to paint the Masonite edges and surfaces
without Envirotex black.

The fix was so easy that I'm embarrassed I didn't take care of this problem months ago. I painted the edge of the masonite and the river bed along the gap where there wasn't any Envirotex with black paint. Then added a slope to the river, and painted that with a mixture of black, burnt umber, and tan to come close to the gravel and sand riverbed. I deliberately made the surface a little rough here, and drew a brush in the direction of the river current to make it appear as if the water is rushing over a submerged obstruction.  

Sculptamold blends the mill stream surface
down to the level of Williams Creek. 

The new Sculptamold "water" was painted to
blend it into the creekbed. 

Next step is to finish the backdrop painting and add a gloss surface to the riverbed. After that dries I'll add a gloss coat to the entire creek to blend everything together and "rewet" the water. 

While I was at it I carved the hillside behind the river to shape, and added a base layer of chopped up leaves and dirt. 

Down By the Old Mill Stream -2

Before an update on the mill stream proper - 
In Other News….
Stic came by Saturday and we got quite a number of "small, but annoying and necessary" projects ticked off the "to-do" list. This included some work on the fascia, fastening the sub roadbed and homasote in place in Bethel and filling in a few sections that needed plywood to support track. 

The stream gets some color

On the mill stream project I got some time in this weekend getting the rock outcroppings added to the stream bank and finishing up the landform shaping tasks. 
A quick coat of flat black paint in the "watercourse" and some tan paint on the plaster patches between the foam sections help with visualizing the scene. 

The rocks are a combination of Cripplebush rocks and traditional plaster castings. The plaster rocks got a first coat of color in the form of Hunterline stains (Blue Gray, Light Brown, and Sepia Brown) in an effort to cover the glare of the plaster. 

This whole thing looks a little like a hot mess at this stage, but have faith, things are going to start falling into place with the next couple of steps. 

Down By the Old Mill Stream - 1

I'm working on the last section of "open country" on the layout - essentially it's the narrow shelf along the wall just south of Randolph. 
At one point, I was planning to add a really long girder bridge on tall piers, but I have at least two other places on the layout that will require such bridges, and frankly wanted something a little different. 
A water-powered mill seemed to offer a nice scenic setting and a chance to include some additional water features. 
Inspiration for this scene came from two places - the Historic American Buildings Survey web site - specifically this listing for Ben Thresher's Mill. The other source of inspiration was from the N scale Androscoggin Central  RR layout I built for the second edition of N Scale Railroading (a book I wrote for Kalmbach). That little layout included a scene with a mill building and falls. Although that was a brick mill building I liked the scene enough that I wanted to include it - or something similar - on this railroad. 
The mill building is an under-construction pre-production kit for the Ben Thresher's mill. Incorporating a water-powered mill into a scene is a bit of a chicken/egg process. You have to have some of the building done before starting the scenery, but you can't get too far along on the building since you have to plant it into the scenery. Essentially, the structure is such a part of the landscape that it's essentially a hill or rock or some other scenic feature…hopefully with square walls! 
I plan to walk through this project in a series of blog posts (it's actually further along than shown in these photos, meaning it will hopefully be easier to update) so if the building suddenly disappears from the scene it doesn't mean I've changed my mind - I've simply moved it out of way!
Before: The scene included a roughed-in stream with the water surface simply painted flat black. I'm glad I didn't spend too much time on the water back when I built the scene, as in the end I found I had to reroute the waterway. I also needed to raise the height of one end of the stream to create a small retention pond area and provide the needed vertical drop for the waterfall. I briefly considered placing the mill building on the aisle side of the river (below left), but that meant the building was too close to the edge of the layout - I wanted this to be set back into the scene. 

After putting the mill building in different positions, I managed to lock down the final position of the structure and mill falls  Putting the mill building alongside the "rough draft" stream meant the structure ended up too close to the front edge of the layout and the falls were simply too narrow to look right.

So I removed more of the riverbank (you can see the pencil line showing the section I removed in the photo above) in order to get rid of the sharp bend in the stream. 

Here's the one-piece foundation
 for the mill building embedded in the ground. 

With the stream rerouted and some new foam hills added to build up the river banks, the scene is starting to shape up (above). 
More updates to follow. 

Wordless Wednesday #116