Construction Update #10 - Scenery Base on the Upper Level

Painters Paper Scenery Base

Over the last month or so, I have been looking at alternatives to traditional methods of creating scenery.  I needed something to protect the lower level, that was lightweight, quick and easy, and relatively inexpensive.  On the Sn3 layout a solid pink foam base covered by a layer of plaster cloth worked great.  But, the cost associated with using all that pink foam was something I really needed to avoid this time around.  One of the "you tubers" (railfan220), as my grandson Adam calls those of us who spend way to much time looking at video/s, came up with the idea of using painter's paper over cardboard webbing to create a scenery base.  As it turned out, I used one sheet of 1" pink foam, 5 or 6 cardboard boxes, and one roll of painters paper to cover the entire second level.  Total cost, less than $50.00 including the glue.  Eventually, I will probably cover the painters paper with a layer of plaster cloth and a layer of earth colored latex house paint before adding ground cover, vegetation, trees, and other details.
 
Here is what it looks like when its done.  Not bad, huh?

The process starts with drawing a ridge line on the backdrop with a black felt pin.  Then pink foam  profile supports, spaced about 6-8" apart are glued in place using hot glue.  Next, cardboard strips are glued in place along the ridge line.  These were cut, across the corrugations, using a flat bed paper cutter.

The cardboard strips are then bent down, roughly following the contour of foam profile boards, and glued to the edge of the roadbed.  The lower level is done the same way; first gluing to the side of the roadbed and then to the side of the lower roadbed. 

The webbing is next.  Since this picture was taken, several months ago, I have found that gluing a cardboard strip along the top of the webbing, next to the backdrop, is a good idea.  It helps to have a smooth service on the upper edge when applying the painters paper.

Painters paper is available in most hardware stores.  I bought this roll at my local Ace Hardware.  It comes in various sizes and it was marked "for latex paints".  This roll cost about $7.00.

Unlike the webbing, I found that it was easier to start at the bottom.  I wadded up the painters paper and then folded over the lower side by about a 1/4".  A bead of carpenters glue was put down along the edge of the roadbed and the painters paper was pressed into the glue.

I normally let the glue set up for two or three hours before trimming off the top, running a bead of glue down the sides of the painters paper and along the top of the webbing.  The painters paper is then stretched out and pressed into place.

The summit at Crockett, before:

After:

It's surprising how sturdy the end result is and now I don't have to worry about anything dropping through the bench work and damaging something on the lower level.  I spread the work over a week or so but the entire upper level could probably have done in a couple of weekends.

Note:  Since I started this process, I have run across a couple of other examples of this type of scenery base.  Several skipped the pink foam profile boards in favor of just using the cardboard webbing.  Unless you plan to use multiple layers of plaster cloth, over the painters paper, I don't recommend omitting the pink foam profile boards.  I tried it and the end result was easily deformed and not nearly as strong.

On the work desk

 

I am slowly back dating the layout into the mid to late 1980's.  As a result, I picked up a couple of  Chessie units off ebay.   Both are my preferred Atlas "Master Series" locomotives, a GP40-2 and a B30-7.  The GP40-2 was a real bargain but the previous owner had really butchered the cab by trying to attach the sun shades and wind deflectors with ACC.  By the time I got all the ACC cleaned off the cab, It needed a repaint.  It also had a 21 pin adapter for a sound deoder which was all fine and dandy until I discovered there was no easy way to install a "current keeper" along with the new 21 pin Tsunami2 decoder.  As it turns out, the "current keeper" can be soldered onto the Atlas motherboard or the Tsunami2 (Soundtraxx technical support) but the work requires a tiny soldering iron and some serious magnification.  I've ordered the soldering iron from Nngineering so I guess I will give it a try.  Since the GP40-2's were the last locomotives purchased by Chessie, before the CSX merger, it has been lightly weathered.

The B30-7 is a simpler project.  It arrived in perfect condition so all it really needed was some moderate weathering and the installation of  the sound system.  I usually sacrifice the rear lighting in order to install the largest speaker and enclosure possible and preserve the weight.  It will get a PNP Tsunami2, a TCS KA1 or KA2 current keeper, and scale #58 couplers.  Both locomotives should be ready for service in the next couple of weeks.

 

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Construction Update #9 - Preston Miller (Bowling Green) Yard & Rolling Stock

Preston Miller Yard

 

The last two weeks have been spent working on Preston Miller Yard in Bowling Green.  All the track and electrical is in on the east end of the yard and the engine facility.  The west end will have to wait for additional materials due to arrive next week.

 Looking west.   

Looking east.  The Southern Kentucky Feed & Grain elevator (red structure) is new.

As each section of the layout come online, I like to run a train.  Not only does running a train insure the newly laid track is bug free and functional, it's fun.  And, the satisfaction of seeing something move inspires me to keep building.  Noticing that the yard was pretty full, I decided a eastbound BGC-1 was in order.

BGC-1 is a eastbound Bowling Green to Chattanooga general merchandise freight.  A quick survey of the engine facility revealed that plenty of power was available

Two recently shopped U30-C's and a CSX B23-7 are the power. The "Bigs", as the U30's are refferred to by MBG&C crews, will be required for the 2.25% ruling grades between Westmoreland and the summit at Crockett.  Coupled on to the first half of their train, the units are about to double over to the adjoining track and pick up their remaining cars.

Ex Chessie System bay window caboose brings up bottom of the train as BGC-1 departs Preston Miller Yard in Bowling Green for Chattanooga.

Rolling Stock

 

In the last update, I included several pictures of my rolling stock.  Those cars, for the most part, were higher end rather delicate models from Intermountain, Athearn Genesis and Atlas.  For an operating layout, where rolling stock is likely to get handled, I like many of the more entry level cars with cast on details.  Walthers Mainline. Accurail, Stewart/Bowser, Atlas Trainman and some Athearn/Roundhouse cars fall into this category.

Norfolk Southern 17734 is a old Roundhouse car.  The stirrup steps have been replaced and it has been weathered with Bragdon Enterprises powdered pigments and some light airbrushing.  Kadee #58 couplers and metal wheel sets have also been added.

Southern 557 is a Walthers Mainline car "right out of the box" RTR car with replacement Kadee #58 couplers and metal wheelsets.  It was lightly weathered using Bragdon pigments and a airbrush.

Here is the Accurail version of the same car.  I had never seen a picture of the prototype with green doors so I fired off a email to Accurail asking about the doors.  It turns out, the prototype doors were originally unpainted aluminum which appeared green in the photograph Accurail used as a reference to paint the doors.  To their credit, Accurail painted up some replacement doors and sent them to me.  I kind of liked the green doors so I decided to leave them on the three cars I had already built.  I have several more of these kits so any future builds will have the correct color doors,  Again, the original wheel sets and couplers were replaced.

Penn Central #888248 is another Accurail car.  Again, all that been done is to change out the couplers and wheel sets and add a little weathering.

And finally, here is a Athearn Genesis car that was weathered by a young friend of mine, David Howland.  Its really nice to see young modelers this talented.  Fortunately, David has the support of both his parents when it comes to pursuing the hobby.  Dave and his father Roy prefer more modern equipment so you probably won't see one of these rolling around on the new layout they are building in their basement.

Construction Update #8 - Westmoreland & State LIne Track, Developing Bowling Green & Weathered Rolling Stock

The Track Gang Through Westmoreland & State Line

 

Lots of progress has been made over the last ten days.  All of the track is installed and wired in the town of  Westmoreland.  I set up a train and spent about 45 minutes switching out the CEMEX redi-mix plant and the team track in the right foreground.  I'm still trying to decide how scenic the east end of town (to the right) and the entry into the helix.  At this point, it's either a tunnel portal or a road crossing over the tracks on a single lane wood bridge; I'm leaning towards the latter.

The west end of town. The Polyseamseal holding down the track was till curing when this photo was taken.  The siding at Westmoreland holds about twenty five cars, 2 locomotives and a caboose.

To the east of Westmoreland, tracks have crossed "No Name Creek" to just east of Preston Miller Yard in Bowling Green.

The first train over "No Name Creek", under it's own power, was an eastbound lead by Madisonville Bowling Green & Chatanooga #8000.  The backdrop has also been extended westward.

Preston Miller Yard, Bowling Green, KY

The MBG&C shops are located on the east end of the yard.  The noise of up to a dozen sound equipped locomotives can get old pretty fast so I decided to install some on/off switches for the tracks in the shop complex.  Currently, none of the structures on the layout are complete.  Right now I'm doing a basic build to get a feel for how things will look.

A series of industries will line the yard on the far side.  For the most part, the structures will be built form kit bashed readily available plastic kits.  The one on the left was built from some Great West Models components.  I picked these up used off ebay.  I had to separate and strip the paint off the various pieces.  Since this picture was taken, I decided to remove the short section on the right.  The next structure was built from a Walthers modern cold storage kit and the one in the distance was built from Heritage Furniture kits with a scratch built addition.

Here's a shot from the other direction.  At this point, the locations of individual buildings are subject to change. 

Here is the same scene with the backdrops installed.  Note the buildings have been changed around a bit.  Looks pretty good with the backdrop.  It will look better when my friend Kurt Boyd comes over to paint on some clouds.

 

 

Rolling Stock

 

I am always working on locomotives and/or rolling stock. I don't care much for detailing, painting and decaling freight cars but I like to weather.  And, you won't find any graffiti on my rolling stock

Construction Update #7 - Finishing the Helix & Laying Track

The Helix

 

I finally got back to Lowes and purchased another sheet of plywood in order to finish the helix.  When I got to the top of the grade, several adjustments had to be made.  First, it turned out that the roadbed I had initially installed at Grundy was about 3/4" higher than the top of the helix and second, the location of the turnout motor (Tortoise) for the west turnout at Grundy was sitting right over a lower track.  The turnout was moved east about 2 feet and the roadbed between the turnout and the top of the helix was lowered the 3/4" at the helix's ruling grade of 2.25%.

Once all the track and wiring were in place, it was time for a test.  I rounded up about 20 cars, a caboose, and two locomotives at Grundy.

The helix is about 110' long or 2-scale miles.  The downhill run took about five minutes at track speed.  The sound of  the GE and EMD locomotives in full dynamics on the 2.25% grade was pretty cool,  The initial run down the helix was a success as was the shove back up the hill.

Here is a overall picture of the upper level after 5 months of work.  The helix is in the left foreground, Grundy is in the center left and the summit at Crockett is on the upper right.  The company town of Grundy will be in the center of  the helix on the left.  All of the track shown in the photo is fully tested and operational.

Westmoreland

 

Westmoreland is at the bottom of  grade (helix).   This is the east end of Westmoreland.  I draw the track centerlines with a Sharpie.  The cork is glued down to the pink foam with yellow carpenters glue and the track is put down using Polyseamseal.  Track feeders are soldered to the bottom of the rails and dropped through the foam to the bus.  Soldering the feeds to the bottom of the rail eliminates the possibility of some blob of solder showing up in a photograph and ruining an otherwise perfect composition.  The feeders are 18 gauge wire, the bus is 12 gauge.  Most rail joiners are soldered but not all.  Some are left with a small gap in the rail to allow for expansion and contraction. 

All of the turnouts at Westmoreland are trailing point moves for an eastbound train.  The track in the foreground is the team track followed by the main, siding, house and two spurs leading into CEMEX.

Construction Update #6 - CEMEX & Upper Level Scenery Base

More Stay Home, Stay Safe & Social Distancing

 

Its getting more difficult to work on the layout due to a lack of materials.  I haven't been to the hobby shop in about a month but I did get to my local hardware store to pick up a few things.  In the meantime I have been jumping around from one project to another in order to keep things moving forward.

 

The CEMEX redi-mix plant at Westmoreland

 

In the last update, I mentioned that I had ordered additional backdrops from Trackside Scenery.  They arrived last week so I got busy and got a couple of them up before I ran out of Super 77 spray adhesive.  Here are a couple of pictures of the CEMEX plant in it's final configuration.  Originally the shed for unloading concrete was in the back behind the large storage bins. After a couple of days of moving things around, I realized that moving and uncoupling cars behind the fragile conveyor was going to be a real problem,  As a result, it is now out front.

Here are two more shots of the plant.  Its readily apparent how much depth the backdrop adds to the scene as compared to the photo in Update #5.  The LED rope lights also got installed this last week.  These pictures were taken without the room lights turned on; only the LED's.  I bought the rope lights off ebay... twice.  The first batch, labeled "Daylight White" were way to cool.  The second batch were labeled "Natural White" 4000 to 4500K.  Each waterproof rope, about 16 feet long and had 300, 5630 "Super Bright" LED's.  The "Natural White" LED's are just about perfect.   Four ropes and a 12 volt power supply cost about $50.00,

The small corrugated warehouse came from a Walther's kit.  I cut it in half, long ways, and placed it up against the brick structure printed on the backdrop.  There were four of these great little warehouses in the kit and I used three of them on my recently dismantled Sn3 layout.   This was one of them.  Two more small structures are on the work bench for the CEMEX complex as are several more tanks for additives and two more silos for concrete and fly ash.

Basic Scenery on the Upper Level

Grundy is directly above Westmoreland and things can and have dropped through the bench work to the lower level.  In order to protect the CEMEX redi-mix plant I decided to install some hard shell on the upper level.  On my Sn3 layout, I used about 15 4s8 sheets of 2" pink foam for my basic land forms.  But, at nearly $30 a sheet at Home Depot, an alternative had to be found.  
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I saw this method demonstrated on several You Tube videos.  I thought I give it a try.  1" Pink foam profiles were cut and hot glued in place about every 6-8"  The entire upper level will probably take two 4x8 pieces of pink foam.

The pink foam was followed up with cardboard strips woven around and over the pink foam profiles and hot glued in place. 

The next step requires a layer of painter's paper hot glued in place.  That will have to wait since I don't have any of the paper but that's OK.  I have enough pink foam and cardboard to keep me going for at least another week.

Contruction Update #5 - The Helix, Bridge, CEMEX, Hills & more hoppers

Stay Home, Stay Safe & Social Distancing

 

The Helix

 

While the coronavirus lock down has effected millions of people, its hadn't really impacted progress on the MBG&C until last week.  Once all of sub-roadbed and cork roadbed were in place on the upper deck, with the exception of the staging yard and reverse loop,  I decided it was time to work my way down or better said up the helix.  It ain't all that pretty, but the transitions are smooth, the grade has worked out to be a near perfect 2.2% with little or no variation and  each loop includes provisions for expansion and contraction.

 

Unfortunately, I underestimated the amount of plywood needed and ran out about two thirds of the way up.  On to another project.

The Bridge over "No Name"creek

The bridge over "No Name" creek was built with Walthers bridge kits.  They include a 90' deck bridge, a 50' deck bridge and a pile trestle.  The piers and abutmunts are also Walthers kits.  Building the deck bridges was pretty straight forward.  Each of them took less than hour to put tegether.  I had to measure and cut down the wood pilings so that portion of the crossing took several hours.  The most difficult part of the process was cutting down the piers and the abutment.  Everything went according to plan until I placed the 50' span on the abutments; it was warped.  I tied straightening it out by heating it in boiling water and then clamping it between two blocks of hardwood; it didn't work.  It came out of the clamp just as it had gone in... warped.  Then I tried applying liberal amounts of Tamiya extra thin plastic cement to most of the joints.  Luckily, all of the glue joints are on the inside of the girders.  After a couple of hours clamped between the hardwood blocks, warping was no longer a problem.

Here is an overall view of the scene.  It is about 20' long.  I have the backdrops for this entire scene.  One of these days I'll get up the courage to wrap the next one around that corner.

The CEMEX redi-mix plant at Westmoreland

 

Work was also started on the CEMEX redi-mix plant at Westmoreland.  Again, a Walthers kit was used as a starting point.  In addition, my stash of  kits provided some large silos and conveyors from an old gravel plant kit imported from Revell.  A kit from Kibri, will provide some additional storage for cement and fly ash.  Another backdrop, ordered from Trackside Scenery will be used here at Westmoreland.  I pasted together three low resolution scans and taped each of them to the backdrop to get an idea on how they would look.  I decided on the one shown in the photo and ordered it and another from Joey and Trackside.

More coal hoppers

Like the hoppers shown in Update #4, these 70 ton coal hoppers were purchased from the Southern (Bowser).  Since these pictures were taken, the cars have been lettered and had metal wheel sets and Kadee #58 couplers installed.  Five of these were added to the fleet..

 

Not sure who made this car but it got the same treatment.

 

Hills Pet Nutrition (Maybe)

 

I don't think I have previously posted a picture of Hill's Pet Nutrition.   Getting a structure to this point doesn't take a lot of time and can easily be moved back to the work bench for details, paint and weathering.  Hills is another combination of four kit-bashed Walthers kits and a few scratch built components.  Its about seven feet long and sits next to the Bowling Green GM assembly plant shown in an earlier post.