Rocks and Roads at Pearson Curve
(NOTE: The August 19, 2007 Progress Report has been
delayed because of other priorities preventing me from posting this report until
December 27, 2007.)
While much of the work done on the Shenandoah Division in 2007 is not visible
to the eye, I did manage to find some time this summer to continue working on
the scenery in the Pearson Curve area. The basic plaster cloth shell had been
installed in this area for some time (see the 01/31/2007
Progress Report) but other projects had my attention in the mean time. With
some out of state railroad friends coming for a visit over Labor Day weekend, I
decided I wanted to have some new scenery work to show them. :-)
As a result, I decided to focus my scenery work on the area around Pearson
Curve. I had previously cast a variety of rocks using Woodland Scenics rock
molds, so I installed several of the castings in the cut just north of Pearson
Curve. This area was originally supposed to be a tunnel. However, we've been
operating for quite a while with no scenery, and one of my crew members
commented how the train coming out of a cut as it climbs the grade southbound at
Pearson Curve would make a neat scene, so I decided to model a cut there instead
of the tunnel I had originally planned. Earlier in the year, we had installed
the plaster for this area, so now it was just a matter of installing and
coloring the pre-cast rocks in the cut (which still needs a name).
Since the scene at Pearson Curve is modeled after the Western Maryland's
Helmstetters Curve, I needed to model the road coming across the track near the
farm. I had previously cut and installed some cardboard to serve as the base of
the road. I covered the cardboard with Sculptamold to build up a base for the
road.
After installing the rock castings, I also used Sculptamold to provide a base
for scenery on top of the plaster in all the areas not covered by a rock
casting. I smoothed out the Sculptamold with a wet paint brush, and I made it as
smooth as I could for both the road base and the area of the farm pond and
creek.
I spent quite a while coloring the rock castings with Woodland Scenics
pigments. The thing I like best about these pigments is how easy it is to
correct mistakes. I make washes using various of the pigment colors and apply
them to the castings until I get a color combination that looks like the rocks
of the region I'm modeling. Using these pigments in washes makes it easy to
change the color by applying a lighter or darker wash. I would get the color
almost to where I would want it, then make it too dark, then correct it by
making it too light, then too dark, then too light, then too dark...well, you
get the idea. I finally stopped because of the impending visit by my friends.
I'm still not sure I like the "final" color, but several of my crew members have
said they like it. For now, I'm leaving it as is.
I had hoped to get some basic ground cover installed prior to my friends' visit,
but I ran out of time, so I decided to simply paint the exposed ground area
green to represent ground cover; Cherie helped me with this project as I found
the white plaster and Sculptamold absorbed a lot of paint. I also painted the
road a dark grey, and I painted the farm pond and creek a sandy color in
preparation for future coloring there before pouring water in those areas.
The scenery that is done in the Pearson Curve area is what I consider
roughed-in scenery. At some future time, I'll go back to bring the scenery to a
more finished level.
Tunnel Liners
During the time I was working on the scenery at Pearson Curve, I was also
casting liners for all the tunnels on the layout. I used the Woodland Scenics
Tunnel Liner molds and cast the liners out of Woodland Scenics Lightweight
Hydrocal. These molds are made to cast HO scale tunnel liners, so I modified the
molds with styrene dams to correct the dimensions for N scale. I have two of
these modified molds, so I mixed a batch of plaster and poured two liners each
night over a period of a couple of weeks until I got the required number of
liners.
I also started working on coloring these liners with a mixture of Woodland
Scenics pigments in preparation for installing them at some future time. Each
tunnel portal will receive 2-4 liner castings to represent blasted rock for each
tunnel.
Fascia Schematic Diagrams
After the July 21, 2007
operating session, I decided to create a schematic diagram for each town and
installed them along the fascia. Each sign shows the location of all the
tracks in a given town area. The diagrams help operators know which track is the
main, which track is the passing siding, and which tracks serve a given
industry.
I created my fascia schematic diagram signs in Microsoft Publisher; the signs are approximately 4"
x 10" in size, so I can get two diagrams to one piece of paper. I simply printed
these signs on regular paper for now and installed them temporarily with tape.
If I need to make changes, I can modify the diagram and print a new one. When I
get the final diagrams made, I intend to print them on photo paper so they look
a little nicer. In the meantime, my operators now can consult these diagrams
whenever they have a question about the location of a particular track.
I got the idea for making these diagrams after viewing some on the
Layout Design SIG (LDSIG) wiki page for Mark Lestico's N Scale UP Cascade
Subdivision.
(Note: All of the scenery work in this report--including work that was not
photographed--was done between 05/06/2007 and
08/19/2007. The posting of this report has been delayed until 12/27/2007 because
of time constraints.)
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