The Car Shop

While I've been focused on building the railroad South from Kendall, I've been ignoring the North end of the yard.  The North end is where the engine terminal is located and other than roughing in the turntable, I haven't done much. The terminal also includes a roundhouse, coaling tower, water tower and a separate car shop building.  The Southport car shop building is a three-bay, wood sided structure with full clerestory roofs and large windows running the length of the building. Through selective compression, I reduced the building from a three-bay structure to two-bays, and chopped about one-third off its length. Even at that, it's a big building.

The photo shows the footprint of the structure with two RF-16s on the near track. The track is embedded through the building and I used gray mat board to represent a concrete floor.

I have only seen one photo of the car shop building, and a its a poorly lit B&W photo. I had no dimensions to work with and basically scaled what I could from the photos.  The original structure had vertical wood sheathing sort like a double sheathed box car.  I couldn't discern any colors from the old photo, but I actually know someone who worked as a hostler at Southport in the late '50s and was told that the buildings were either painted gray or had weathered to that color.

The photo shows the visible side wall and one of the end walls temporarily supported in place. I used Northeastern scribed siding for the walls and stained them with an India ink alcohol solution. I cut repetitive end marks on the siding boards to suggest a pattern of how the boards were nailed to the side of the building. This turned out rather well. The building wall is 24-ft tall and the no single siding board would be  that long.  While the stained wood siding looked good, it needed to be enhanced to look like faded paint on wood siding.  I recently read an article in the Short Line and Narrow Gauge Gazette that used pastels to represent the faded paint, so I thought I would give it a try.

The photo shown different shades of gray pastels coloring individual boards to represent faded wood siding where most of the paint was gone. I was pleased with the end result.

I applied different shades of pastel by starting at where the siding board ends and dragging the pastel along the board the logic being that individual boards will weather differently.

The structure is far from complete but it's off to a good start.

A Visitor Comes to the Elmira Branch

I recently installed a WOW sound decoder with Keep Alive in a friend’s South Wind Harriman 2-8-0. He purchased the engine second hand and the previous owner had modified it into a Rio Grande looking 2-8-0. The Rio grande never had anything that even remotely looked an SP 2-8-0 especially one with a Vanderbilt tender. Oh well! My friend wants it back in SP livery.

I installed the decoder, keep alive unit, and speaker in the smoke box and directed the sound up the stack. There was adequate room for the electronics without having to remove any of the boiler weight. It seemed to work out really well and except for the backup light no wires extend between the cab and tender.  I was thoroughly impressed with the WOW decoder and really liked the Keep Alive feature because it requires that you actually apply the brakes when you need to stop the engine.  The sound is really incredible as well.  A bass reflex speaker would make it even better, but I was limited to what would fit in the smokebox.

While I had the smoke box front removed, I put the headlight back to where it was on the SP version (centered on the smoke box front), and removed as much of the Rio Grande Lettering as I could.

I doubt that SP 2-8-0s ever ran on the Pennsy, but this little engine sure looked good hauling a cut of reefers across Seeley Creek. As for me, any future steamers running in the Elmira Branch will get the WOW sound decoders. I’m not sure that I’ll go that direction with diesels yet.  I’m rather firmly entrenched in the Tsunami camp right now.

More Layout Progress

With the drop leaf section complete and access to the layout room facilitated, I'm now focused on extending the benchwork and trackway around the room. In this view, the section of benchwork to the right of the access way will be the Town of Columbia Crossroads. A short passing siding will be located here along with sidings serving with an elevator and a feed mil. A frame combination station is also located here and that should provide some action for the local setting out and picking up cars.  In the era that I model, no passenger service will occur here.

After coming down the 1% grade from Kendall, the grade flattens out here and drops again between Columbia Crossroads and Troy where it will descend further much of the way beyond.

This view offers a panorama of this half of the layout room. To the left side of the room is the Seeley Creek Bridge and Kendall Tower with the entirety of Southport Yard extending to the far corner of the room. On the right is the benchwork for what will be “X-Roads” incorporating my new standard for construction using a 3/4” thick plywood base.  No more Homasote! I use cork for the trackway on top of the plywood and that seems to work well.

There are no electrical connections across the drop leaf bridge. Layout power is fed overhead above the suspended ceiling and dropped down to the layout’s benchwork using the chase behind the coves formed in each corner to eliminate the 90-degree corner bend. That way I didn’t have to cut any walls or fish wires between them.

Passenger Geep No. 8551

One of my favorite locomotives is PRR GP-7 no. 8551. The 8551 along with its sister locomotive 8552 were two of only three hood units that the Pennsy ever ordered with roof top air tanks. These two units were assigned to Williamsport to protect passenger train service on the Washington-Buffalo trains, but most of the time they could be found hauling local freight trains.  As a result, they spent a lot of time on the Elmira Branch. 

In the mid-1950's they provided power for the skeletal remains of the Williamsport-Canandaigua passenger service hauling the last remnant of that service in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.  By 1956 all passenger service was eliminated on the Branch.  In the era that I model (Fall of 1956) all passenger service was gone and 8551 hauled only freight.  [Though I plan to use some modeler's license and run some form of passenger service.]

The above photo shows the 8551 on the fill slope approaching the Seeley Creek Bridge and Kendall Tower can be seen just to the right of the scene. No commercially produced GP-7 currently exists in S scale. So if you're trying to model a GP-7 you can try to find one of the brass versions imported by Sunset Ltd. many years ago (with really bad running mechanisms), or convert one from an American Models (AM) GP-9.  I chose to do the later.

The AM GP-9s are fairly good running locomotives with a proven drive system. Several years ago Des Plaines Hobbies (DPH) started producing an exquisitely detailed GP-7 long hood, which really facilitated the conversion. But rather than describe the conversion process here, it's better to refer you to the article on the conversion that I wrote for the S Scale Special Interest Group.  You can find the article here:

http://sscale.org/782/volume-1-no-11-converting-gp9-to-gp7/

I did the locomotive conversion about three years ago, and like many things I do (admittedly), its was about 95% complete. I installed DCC and it was running around the layout, but it still needed lights, window glazing, numbers in the number boards, marker lights and a crew. The glazing and the crew were not an issue, but the number boards were.  It seems that the decal set didn't include enough of the numeral "5" to letter all of the number boards. With four number boards, I needed eight 5's and the decal set only included two!  There was no way hat I wanted to purchase 4 decal sets to letter one locomotive.  So I had to consider another alternative.

I scanned the numerals from the set and created the 8551 number board in Photoshop.  When I was satisfied with the scale of the number board, I printed a bunch of them on glossy photo paper as shown below:

Next I trimmed the number boards and outlined the edge of the photo paper with a black Sharpie so that no white was showing. The DPH shell is recessed in the area of the number boards so the thickness of the photo paper fills the recess nicely.

The lights were a bit of a challenge as well.  Neither AM or DPH makes an clear plastic insert for the twin sealed beam headlights.  I really wanted to have individual bulbs anyway and they had to be LEDs if I were to insert them into the headlight openings.  Bulbs would generate too much heat and potentially melt the superbly detailed casting.  Recently, I found some small diameter clear incandescent looking LEDs that could slip into the twin headlight openings and they are called "tower LEDs" by Minitronics.   The LEDs have a small (2mm) cylindrical projection, or tower, that can fit inside the headlight housing.  It's possible to glue the two LEDs together, wire them in parallel, and mount them to the inside of the long and short hoods.  With the decoder that I used, each LED needed a voltage limiting resistor, but even with that the twin LEDs are really bright!  It will be neat to watch this unit cast its headlight beams around the layout with the room lights off.

I now consider this project complete, though if I wanted to be completely accurate, I would install windshield wipers and sunshades above the cab windows.  I may do that some day but right now 8551 has some cars to pull.

Layout Room Access

I've reached the part of layout construction where the bench work meets the access to the room.  I've been going back and forth in my mind for some time now over the various options of how folks will get into the layout room at the point where the alignment crosses the door opening.  I had one hard and fast rule - NO DUCK UNDERS!  I'm not getting any younger and neither are my guests so that option was ruled out quickly.  Beyond that there are a multitude of options and I needed to choose one that best suited me.

My first obstacle was the fact that the track alignment is on a curve at this location, and there was no way around that.  Plus I wanted to have some scenery on each side of the track so that it blends in well with the adjacent segments of the layout.  The first option that I considered was a roll in/out section.  It would resemble a rolling cart and would slide in and out and roll out of the way when access to the room is needed.  This option would enable me to fully scenic the top of the cart and when in place it would look like it was part of the layout.  This idea really appealed to me but the drawback is that it would be supported on casters rolling on an uneven concrete floor and alignment at track level could be challenging.  Besides, someday I may want to install carpeting and further adjustments would be necessary.

I then considered a swinging gate.  These have become quite popular and I really gave it a lot of consideration, but the curved track alignment was what convinced me to look at other alternatives.  Next, I considered a lift out section, but with a 26-in. span the section would be quite heavy and I wasn't sure where the section would go when it wasn't in place.  Most likely it would just stay there and it would by default become a duck under.

So that left the classic hinged drawbridge.  I first considered a bridge that would lift up, but that would require something to hold it in place when it's in the upright position.  In addition it would need some counterweights or locking mechanism so that it didn't swing down with all its weight and possibly hit someone.  I ended up with a hinged drop leaf section:

The bridge section is hinged and drops down to clear the opening.  It's constructed from 3/4" cabinet grade plywood and secured to two sections of 2x2's underneath to give it plenty of rigidity.  When hanging down all of the weight is supported by the hinges and when its raised two sliding dead bolts lock it in place and provide sufficient indexing to keep the rails in alignment.  A curved facia helps the section look less like a bridge and more like a piece of the layout.

Here's a photo of it in the raised position:

The photo shows the sliding dead bolt that holds the bridge section in place.  This is the second set of dead bolts that I installed.  The first set was a cheaper version called a barrel bolt.  It seemed that the barrel bolt housing had a lot of slop to it and didn't provide enough indexing to keep the rails in alignment.  I quickly removed them and installed two of the dead bolts shown in the photo on each side of the bridge and when locked in place, the bridge is very secure.

This photo shows the gap at track level:

I secured the track to the roadbed and then cut the gaps in the rails.  Next I'll remove the ties on each side of the gap and install PC ties with the rails soldered to them for a little better protection at the ends.

There's no power on the bridge section yet but I did back a train over the gap and alignment was very smooth.  I'm really please with how well this turned out.

Video a Train Crossing the New Seeley Creek Bridge

 

The attached video shows a short train crossing the the new bridge. From this perspective you can see Kendall Tower and Southport Yard beyond.

The Alco PA

This is a first for me - two posts on the same day. Now that Seeley Creek is well in hand, I turned my focus back to rolling stock revisiting a project that I started years ago. If you go back to my February 2013 post, you can read about my exploits of trying to create the perfect Alco PA in S scale. Without rehashing my previous post, the short of it is that neither of the two commercially available versions of the PA are even close to accurately representing Alco's famous passenger locomotive. But if you combine the best features from both, a reasonable model can be created. 

This is a photo of the PA after the transformation. It's crude but a far cry better than either of the two as manufactured versions.  The model is attached to an Omnicon PA conversion mechanism (long out of production but available from time to time on Ebay.

After some consultation with my friend Bud Rindfleisch, and perusing literally hundreds of PA photographs from every conceivable angle (as well as one trip to Portland, OR to see the sole surviving PA), we concluded that the AP nose was too angular and needed to be rounded on the corners both vertically and horizontally on the top of the nose.  The other area that needed help was the front cab windows, as they were were too rectangular.  Photos revealed that the top of the windows were gently arched and the lower edge was curved downward.  All of this would require modification.  The American Models skirt between the trucks was also a big problem as it extended vertically down from the car body instead of curving inward. 

The big challenge was rounding the corners of the nose because it meant that a good amount of cast-on detail would have to be removed.  The number boards would have to be removed as well as the front anti-climber and buffer plate. Fortunately for PRR modelers the Pennsy replaced the as-built number boards with their own design angled number boards (though in my case that meant more scratch building).  The anti-climber and buffer plates were not quite right on the AF version anyway, so that meant an opportunity to correct another flaw.

This is a photo of the completed model nearly ready for the paint shop:

You can clearly see the difference with the rounded  corners and the new side skirt between the trucks. In this view you can also see the new Pennsy number boards and anti-climber/buffer plate. You can also make out the other Pennsy specific details such as the air intake grills added to the nose and the train phone antenna system. I added new fairing above and behind the cab side windows and above the front windows as per the prototype.  You may also notice that this is a non-dynamic brake version of the PA. I removed the DB's on the car body roof and replaced them with a smooth sheet of styrene. I have a few more details to fabricate before painting, such as the coupler cut levers above the front corner steps and grab irons above the front windows and other places.  I'm really pleased  with the way this turned out.  Here's a photo of a real PA (though not Pennsy) for comparison:

Seeley Creek Crossing Complete

My last post ended with painting the base for what would become Seeley Creek. Now it's time to add the glossy medium that will represent the water's surface. This view shows the first application the acrylic gloss media to the painted stream bed. The  media dries clear and the blue tint shown in the photo will disappear when the acrylic material is dry.  This is the first of several coats and I quickly learned not to introduce air bubbles into the media.  If that occurs on the first coat, it can be corrected on the second and any subsequent applications.  The acrylic  gloss media is best applied with a small round tipped paint brush.  I like using this stuff because it dries clear, has no odor, and clean up is simple with just soap and water.  When dry the surface texture is very glossy and has gentle ripples in it that nicely represents flowing water.  Since I model the Fall, most streams are in low flow conditions, so I didn't need to introduce any rapids or "white water" conditions.

The next step in the process was to extend the tree line down the hillside in the background and  blend it with the photos in the backdrop.  I began by painting a tree line on the backdrop along the ridge line of the hillside with dark brown paint.  It's not important that the painted area look like trees, because it will be covered by foliage.  It's there so that the light backdrop doesn't show through the understory of the forest.

I also used a foliage color palette that was consistent with the trees that were in the photo backdrop, and placed smaller trees in the back and larger ones in the front to create the effect of distance.

Here's a close-up of the trees showing a variety of foliage type.  The edge of the forest includes smaller bushes and vegetation to fill the gap between the ground cover and the tree canopies. (More on my tree making process in an upcoming post) The green florist foam that formed the base of the hillside made for easy planting of the trees. I use an awl to make a tiny hole, and then push the base of the tree into it. That's all there is to it. This view also shows the ground up leaves that form the base of the forest.  In retrospect, I probably only needed the ground up leaves in the foreground of the forest and not over the entire hillside.

This view shows the tree line extending down the hillside.  Note the smaller trees to the left and larger, closer trees to the right.  Also note how the brown painted ridge line disappeared, but allows no blue sky to project through the tress.

In this view the tree line extends all of the way to the water's edge and opens up just enough to show the field in the photo backdrop.  I added some static grass on the right which will extend under the right bridge abutment.  I still have more trees to plant on the hillside, but wanted to complete the area behind where there bridge will go as the rest of the scenery can placed once the bridge is set.

I then set the bridge on its abutments and shimmed the bridge bearings until the deck was level and at the proper elevation.  I connected the track to the adjacent ties but otherwise did not secure the bridge in case it ever had to be removed. The fill slopes on the approaches were covered with cinder like material and static grass was applied under the bridge.  Work on the foreground details has begun under the near abutment and much work is still needed to complete the scene, but for now the bridge is serviceable.

This is my favorite shot of the completed scene taken from under the bridge.  It appears as if the stream continues on, but in realty it ends a short distance away.

Back to the Bridge

I've really been pushing myself to complete the truss bridge especially now that the stream bed and surrounding scenery is taking shape. Both trusses are now complete and attached to the bridge deck. I was pleased with how well the painting of the lattice work turned out.  I was concerned that the interior portion of the lattice beams would be the color of the white Evergreen styrene, but that wasn't the case at all.  I was able to angle the tip of my airbrush sufficiently to paint mostly all of the interior space.  A few hard to get places will need some touch up with a brush, but overall I was pleased.

With the trusses installed it has become quite an impressive structure and incredibly strong. I don't think there'll be an deflection to worry about and all of the joints appear to have bonded well.

It still has a bit more work especially on the upper sway bracing. Fortunately Plastruct makes a diagonally braced styrene joist that is the proper dimension for the sway bracing.  That being said, it'll still be a challenge because the they not only extend perpendicular to the panel points, but diagonally in an X pattern between them.

Nonetheless, I'm pleased with the progress and it looks rather different than it did a few months back.  Here's a photo from my September 11th blog post.  I never thought that it would ever progress this far considering all of the exhaustive scratch building.

Detailing Seeley Creek

With the Seeley Creek bridge nearing completion, I now need to focus on completing the stream bed beneath were the structure will ultimately be placed.  The stream bed started out as a flat piece of Masonite and now it's time to make it look like flowing water.  The first step is to paint the bottom so that it will look like a stream.  For this I used acrylic paint and started with lighter shades of tan and gray near the shoreline and gradually added darker color until it became pure black near the center of the creek.  Ultimately, I'll simulate flowing water by coating the painted stream bed with acrylic gloss matte medium.  That's still a ways off as I have to line the banks with rocks and finish adding the ground texture on the adjoining slopes.

Here's a photo of the painted stream bed.  The lighter lines flowing into the dark area represent a bit of turbidity form water flowing around rocks and across the shallower parts of the stream.  Also in this view you can see both abutments of the truss bridge.  The abutments are made from mat board and 1/32" plywood covering the wood risers that are part of the original benchwork.

The stream bank needs more rocks...a lot more!  Much of the geology in this area is made up of glacial till.  Huge rocks that were moved thousands of years ago during the ice age and deposited  along stream beds or areas there were eventually  eroded by streams.

This photo shows the completed rock lined stream bed.  The rocks simply came from my backyard. I tried to select stones that were flat on one side and glued them randomly to the painted Masonite. I used smaller stones and fine beach sand behind the larger stones as a transition to the embankments on the bridge approaches. Once all the stones are secure, I'll brush on the gloss acrylic medium to represent the water.

I can't take credit for the process.  It goes way back to the early 1980's and Dave Frary's book - Easy to Build Model Railroad Scenery published by Kalmbach in 1982.  I've used this method on many occasions and the results are quite spectacular.  I personally prefer it to pouring resin to represent water, especially moving water.  We should be able to see the results in my next post.

One more shot of Seeley Creek looking back toward Southport yard. You can see Kendall tower sitting on it's foundation on the approach embankment to the bridge.  Next steps include extending the photo backdrop and planting lots of trees on the far hillside.

Kendall Tower

Kendall Tower was located just north of the Seeley Creek Bridge.  It controlled all movements through the yard and trains coming off the Erie at Elmira.  The tower was a prominent feature at the south end of Southport yard. It was located on a fill slope, and unfortunately on my layout, the rear of the tower is visible instead of the more ornamental front view.  The tower is a scratch build in any scale as nothing comes close to representing its Victorian era architecture.  I found plans for Kendall on the Elmira Branch Yahoo Group website.  When comparing the plans against the photos of the actual structure, they appear to be quite accurate.  

My version of Kendall began with the base structure using mat board as a sub structure and 1/32" scribed siding.  That was the easy part.  The structure has a significant amount of Victoria era detailing with lots of corbels and ogee moulding, a challenge in any scale but especially in S.  The above photo shows the front of the building with the upper level bay window.  In this view, the roof corbels can be seen.  They extend all around the upper part of the structure .  Mine were scratched from 1/16" basswood.  I used a pattern of the curve cut into a piece of styrene and used that as a guide to carve each corbel by hand.

The above photo shows all of the corbels installed and the second story walls painted a medium brown color prior to building the roof structure.  I cut the roof base from 1/32" thick model aircraft plywood. The notch is for the brick chimney that extends up the rear wall of the building.  You can also make out the small second story rear portico entry where the exterior stairs will eventually lead.  The windows are modified Tichy HO scale injection molded castings with some of the mullions removed.

This will certainly make an unusual and interesting structure on the layout.  Stay tuned for more photos of the roof and upper eave details.

Back to Working on the Seeley Creek Truss Bridge

After quite some time I returned to working on the bridge over Seeley Creek.  From my earlier post you may recall that the bridge floor system is made entirely of white Evergreen styrene.  This week I painted the floor system black and weathered it with Bragdon weathering powders, and I must admit that it looks rather striking. The photo shows it just before adding the bridge timbers.  I cut the bridge timbers from 5/32" x 5/32" basswood (10" square in S Scale)  the bridge ties were then stained in a solution of India ink and denatured alcohol to give them a nice weathered look.

Next the ties were glued to the bridge deck with Walthers Goo adhesive.  I spaced them 9" apart and every fourth tie or so I used a square to make sure that there were square with the deck. I then used a notched file card to gauge the overhang distance from the deck beams.

I also used a 7" x 9" switch tie as a spacer to gauge the distance between ties.

Here's the completed bridge deck.  The blue tape marks the center of the bridge and the location of the base of rail for spiking down the first running rail.

Static Grass

The next step in the scenery process is to add some grass.  By late Fall most grass has turned golden brown with some grasses still holding on to a bit of green  I chose rather long strands of static grass in yellow and pale green colors to add to the area between the background and the tracks.  I use shorter length (6-8mm) light green grass material and longer strands of yellow (10-12mm).  The effect turned out rater well.  From the above photo you can hardly make out the Chapel Lumber siding.  The grass texture covers the siding track in most places and the ties are barely discernible.

I  built my own static grass applicator from an electronic fly squatter available from Harbor freight tools and an ordinary kitchen strainer.  It's rather easy to do and only costs a few dollars.  Here's a photo of my completed applicator:

I won't go into detail on how to make one, but if you search Youtube for static grass applicators, several instructional videos will show up.  I was overall pleased with the result.  It could be a little more powerful and some folks suggest adding more power than the two D sized batteries that fit the device's handle, but mine worked just fine.  Now time to plant some grass in that foreground field.

Photoback Drops and Scenery

Up until now all the photo backdrops that I've done have been experimental.  After looking over several series of photos that I took back in the Fall, I chose some that would work at the south end of the yard where the wall is very close to the yard ladder.  This is also where the wall juts out around the utility chase.  Because the wall is so close to the foreground, the perspective had to work well.  The above photo shows the finished background and how it blends into the foreground trees and ground cover.  Compare this scene to the one in my previous post.  The Chapel Lumber building is sited in the same location, but looks completely different with the backdrop and surrounding foliage.  

Here's a view looking the other way.  Compare this view with the one from my March 18th post.  It's essentially the same view.  In the above view you can hardly tell where the reverse curve is along the background wall.  The tree cover helps hide the location where the wall juts out.

Here's a close up of the tree cover in front of the backdrop.  All of my trees are made from natural plant materials found locally or in my garden.  From left to right, the first tree is made from a sea lavender armature covered with stretched fiber foliage material.  The bare trees are from a boxwood shrub that had some bad winter damage and lost all its leaves.  The low shrubs are dried sedum that turns a reddish brown color in late Fall.  The yellow trees are from a house plant called dwarf cypress.  The plant is bright green when healthy but turns golden yellow when it dies. My wife was upset when we lost the plant and set it in the garage for me to dispose of.  After a couple of weeks of sitting there (sometimes I'm glad that I procrastinate) I noticed that the foliage turned a golden yellow color and I knew it would make nice material for a Fall tree.  The spiky branches were gathered into a tree shape and wrapped with florist tape at the base.  Some yellow ground foam was sprinkled over it and was held nicely by the spiky branches.  The large tree on the right was also made by gathering sedum plant stalks and taping them again with florist tape into a tree shape.  The tree was then covered with the reddish brown fiber foliage material.  Woodland Scenics green clump foliage material was used to make the short evergreens and low ground cover.  The floor of the forest was covered with ground up oak leaves that were processed in a blender.

This photo shows a close up of the finished weather track.  It clearly shows the variations in the ties that were being painted in the previous post, and the use of powdered weathering material to create the rusty appearance on the rails and tie plates.  This is the process that Mike Confalone uses in his "Scenery Outside the Box" DVD series available from Model Railroad Hobbyist's on-line store: http://store.mrhmag.com/index.html  I highly recommend it.

More Work on the South End

Since my last post I painted the curved backdrop corner, completed the Chapel Lumber Spur and finished the ground contours in this area.  Before I place the ground cover, the next step is to paint the track and weather the ties before spreading the ballast.  This is a time consuming process but well worth the effort.  

My trackwork is a combination of flex-track and hand laid turnouts on pre-stained wood ties.  The turnouts look great as built and could be considered finished, but they join section of flex-track that look like, well "flex-track."  I could have just painted and weathered the flex track, but since I want it to all look homogeneous, I decided to weather it so that it looks like it's all part of the same track structure.

For track weathering I once again turned to the scenery Guru, Mike Confalone, whose process is quite realistic.  Mike spray paints all of his trackwork with a base coat of dark brown paint.  He uses Krylon brown Camouflage paint applied from a spray can.  That makes easy work of covering a lot of track very quickly.  For me, I used the same principle only I use thinned brown acrylic paint that I applied with my airbrush simply to avoid the paint fumes.  Same result, different method.

Next I used Mike's process of weathering individual ties using diluted washes of lighter colored acrylic paints.  This is a very effective means of making plastic ties look like the real deal.  The above photograph shows some of the flex-track ties weathered in this manner.  The results are instantaneous and will look even better once the ballast is applied and the rail is weathered with weathering powders.  

As I mentioned above, the individual ties are painted in a random manner with varying shades of gray and yellow washes of acrylic paint.  There is no right or wrong here as long as you maintain the randomness of painting the ties varying shades of the base colors.  I use a piece of card stock as a pallet and mix shades of colors together and add some water to the brush to make a thin wash.  Occasionally, I'll paint a tie a dark gray color to represent a new tie.  The first 3 tracks in the photo have had their ties weathered and it's starting to look like a yard ladder.

I also started building the structure that makes up Chapel Lumber Yard.  It will be a series of buildings featuring two connected warehouses adjoining an office/showroom building.  My version is more representational than accurate, but should help capture the feel of the original structure.

The South End of Southport Yard

It occurred to me that before I get too far down the line, the area at the south end of the yard needed some attention.  First, I needed to cove the corner where the utility chase juts out into the room.  On this side of the chase the wall sets back about six inches.  On the other side of the chase the setback is nearly a foot. So, at this location I chose to bend the corner material in an "S" curve to soften the corners.  It's easy to see in this view, but once the edges are tapered with drywall mud, and it's shaded and painted, the effect will be much better than two hard edges that previously existed here.

The box car is sitting on a short siding that will eventually be the Chapel Lumber siding and the buildings will further help disguise the corner.  Extending the ceiling lighting in this area will also help.

I used the green florist foam to shape the ground contours in this area.  I really like working with this stuff.  It's easy to carve and this transitions are easy to form.  On the rise is the distance, I planted one of my scratch built trees.  For this particular tree I used dried sedum from my garden.  The dried stalks are easy to arrange into a tree shape, and the brown color is great for late fall.  More on my tree making process in a future post.

Round the Bend and Down the Hill

The benchwork has progressed beyond Seeley Creek and now proceeding around the bend to the other side of the room.  This is the narrowest portion of the layout room so the trackway forms one continuous curve to reach the opposite wall.  To break up the "horseshoe" effect, I'll use some scenic dividers to disguise the 180-degree bend.  In this view you can see the Seeley Creek crossing in the distance and the coved corners on the left and right of the facing wall.  Just to the left of the bridge the track grade starts to descent, and though the grade looks more dramatic, it's actually less than 1%.  This wasn't meant to be the ruling grade (that will come later), but just a mild descent to Columbia Crossroads.

The angled edge of the benchwork in the foreground is where the lift out section will go.  The photo was taken at the entry point of the layout room.  To the right of the opening is where the Town of Columbia Crossroads will go.  There will be some industry sidings to switch and a public delivery track.  Columbia X-Roads, as it was spelled out on the station sign, had a GLF (now Agway) elevator and a feed mill.  A short passing siding will also be there.  It should be easy for the local to switch X-Roads because all of the switches were trailing point southbound.

The curve radius is 48" which is my design minimum for mainline tracks.  I tested all of my equipment on the curve and found no issues including my rigid frame, all-wheels flanged, 2-10-0 with the long tender.  The curve has some slight superelevation built into it and it works well with everything, including coupled 85-ft passenger cars.

Beyond Columbia X-Roads will be Troy with more industries to switch and then the track grade will drop again this time at 2% around the tip of the peninsula as it drops toward Canton and eventually Williamsport.  This is where the coal trains will get those Alco PA helpers added to the cabin car's rear knuckle.