Construction Update 3

In this report, I don't have any extra little things to display, so we'll jump right into construction progress of the module:

Construction:

Over the last week, rains have continued to be a problem, but I'm starting to get more sunny days to work with outside.  To start, the small rock wall I had planned in one corner of the module proved to be a weak point in the design and the glue gave hold.  From experience, I know that if something is falling off this early in construction, it's not worth it to try and keep the piece of foam attached, as it will simply break off.

However, the module itself seems to be holding up well, and everything should be a lot more secure once I put on the end plates and fascia.  I am not doing either of those yet because I want the edge of the layout to be clean, so until I have the dirt and grass on the module, the edges will remain foam.  I found time to make some progress on the module this last week, and the result is the first coat of paint.  Lacking a paintbrush, I decided to waste no time and went ahead using a kitchen sponge as a brush.  The results aren't the greatest, and the foam will need a second coat of paint, but it is progress anyhow:

 Here is the module as it stood last week.  I applied fiberboard ceiling tile (the type with all the tiny holes) to the top of the foam to serve as my road bed.  I did this for two reasons, to support the weight of the trains and to provide an additional layer of sound deadening material.  The board was secured with Elmer's wood glue, but any foam safe adhesive could be used for this  A great benefit to fiberboard as roadbed is that it can be shaped and beveled to get a slope that is prototypical, whereas foam might take a lot more time.  TO sand the fiberboard, I used a sanding sponge with what appeared to be 80 grit sandpaper surfaces.  One trick is to keep the fiberboard edges rough after the 80 grit sanding, as the surface will hold ballast better than if it were smooth.

 The first thing I painted was the dirt.  The kitchen sponge an be seen on the right side of the photo, and in the middle of the picture is my paint bottle.  For this, I used a tan color, although umber mixed with white and a slight amount of yellow would do the trick just fine.  Actually, paint color is more of a personal preference, any type of brown would work just fine.

 Next, I painted over the still wet tan paint with burnt umber, which has a lot more red to it and thus is a bit more 'rusty' and darker.  The result is a mix of the tan and the burnt umber to create the river bed.  Why the different color?  Next time you walk along a gravel path and notice a puddle, take note of the different colors around the puddle.  Wet surfaces are usually darker than dry surfaces, especially dirt.  And so, since I have a river bed, the river's bottom will be wet and thus requiring a darker color than the tan.  Again, this is just personal preference.

 Lastly, I painted the fiberboard flat black.  This will give the ballast some depth when ballasting is done.  Grey, or some color similar to the ballast used will work as well.

And there's the result of my day off (that also happened to be sunny).  Next progress update, I will begin to lay railroad ties, talk about rail height, and perhaps some structure construction!  The first module is starting to come together!

Side Note

Seeing that I have limited space, I will be unable to have more than a few modules in the foreseeable future.  These first modules I am trying to get the construction down to a tee, and so this railroad is more of a large experiment.  However, as railcars and locomotives accumulate, more and more demand will arise for a larger layout.  Once a permanent (or suitable) home for such a railroad is found, then this railroad may grow to a decent size.  But for now, I am focusing on three things:  Fn3 trains on a small layout, portability, and ease of construction.

--James

Construction Update 2.

Okay, this took a bit longer than I had hoped to put on the Internet, but construction was hindered by rain and cold temperatures.  The weather should start to warm up any day now, and should stay that way for a good amount of time, so hopefully I can make some progress!

However, I have managed to get a couple things done:

Building Research

I have been researching buildings that I want on this first section.  I've settled on Forks Creek for the setting due to an extremely tight canyon.  In real life, this was a junction where the north and south branches of Clear Creek joined together.  The railroad had a wye which used two bridges (three?) and later on, a tunnel, to make the junction.  While I won't model the full wye, I will be 'modeling' the Forks Creek Concept with a heavy dose of artistic license.  Forks Creek had a water tower, station, freight shed and a couple of smaller supply buildings.  It appears to also have had a siding down the tracks where the water tower was and possibly a coal bunker.  Below is a map that I quickly drew to describe the scene:

While not to scale (or proportion), this illustration provides a rough idea of Forks Creek.  The grey are the canyon walls, the brown is the flood zone, black consists primarily of structures (including the two buildings, water tower, and the bridges), and the red which is where the tracks went. I will be focusing primarily on the track with the structures, and the water tower.  Bridges may come later, and if this railroad ever gets big enough to warrant a junction, Forks Creek May expand.

So then what sort of buildings am I looking at?  Lucky enough, the railroad up Clear Creek is well photographed, and a great online collection of photos is narrowgauge.org.

The photos below come from the website's Ted Kierscey Collection of photographs from around Forks Creek.  Photos belong to Mark L. Evans.  If wishing to comment or ask questions, please go directly to him at his website, I do not own these photos and I am only using them for education purposes.  Again, I do not own these photos.

This photo shows the two main buildings I am concerned with for this first module.  The building in the foreground has "refreshments" written on it, which must mean it is a building intended for tourists, and is likely part of the station.  The building behind appears to be the actual station, stationmaster's quarters, and freight shed.  Both buildings would have regular trains of passengers, and both would receive frequent shipments of food and supplies.  

In this photo we can clearly see the station/freight shed/crew quarters building.  While it might be a cool thing to model in the future, I will be not having a turnout right in front of this building so that I can park cars on the siding without fouling a turnout.  This is the first bit of artistic/modeler's license I've taken out for this project.  In the right edge of the photo, just above the last passenger car, is the water tower and freight/coal shed which I will have on the second module.  For now, the whole scene will be compressed into two, 6 foot modules.  In the future, I can add about 6 more modules to make the full wye.

So there's a look at the buildings I plan to model.  I don't plan to take any more photos from the archive out or respect of copyright laws  However, I will reference this web collection in the future.

Construction

I did manage to make some progress on the first module before all the rain hit.  So below is a summary of my module progress up until now:

I have managed to sand down the rough edges, and I have also added ceiling tile (update 3 coming tomorrow or next day) as road bed.