Greendale Ladder Build

 A couple of shots from the ladder build.

Shot of completed ladder.

More pictures are posted in the gallery at richmond-terminal.org

Nor gloom of night

 Had a power outage in August and couldn't let that stop me from making progress.

Interesting effect, don't you think?

Custom Turnout Build Finish

 The turnouts that were custom built and mentioned in a previous post [insert] have been installed.

Ties were placed singly with plain old Elmer's white glue, sanded and then the turnout was spiked down.

I ended up having to redo the ties for the turnout closest to the aisle when I mis-installed ties and cut them too short. A round of "WWKD" made me pull the ties and fix it.

Working alongside a Christmas gift - new light to go along with my new driver/drill set.

The back track is a stick of Code 70 ME flex, but as the front spur is too short for a full piece, I refrained from cutting a stick of 70 down for it as I'm into my last bundle of it. Got to keep my eyes peeled for a sale in the future.

Backdrops

 Some shots to better illustration this item being checked off the list.

More photos in the gallery at richmond-terminal.org

Roadbed to Staples Mill Station Control Point

 Old hard drives are a great thing to hold down cork that comes off a roll.

Greendale Track Planning

The Staples Mill Station area's station name on the RF&P is Greendale.

To make the track fit my space, I pulled the industrial spots north of where the station will be, putting them on their own side of the peninsula.

I worked out a couple of potential track layouts on paper to get me close and once cork was done, finalized with turnouts and track, and if I didn't have a particular turnout handy, a printed template.

Here's a snapshot in the progress - note the ladder being test fit into place.

Custom Turnout Build

 As I am following the prototype track layouts and industries, trying to fit what happens over miles and miles of real world into 20' to 40' blocks of space is a bit of a challenge, as you can imagine.

Coming into the Greendale area, I had a couple of spurs to fit in; complicated by where I had placed the Chickahominy River crossing.

I decided to scratchbuild two curved turnouts, one left and one right, each of them on the 40" radius inside curve.

To the immediate left, just out of frame in this picture is the river crossing so not a bunch of room to work in.

The closest to the camera is a number 10 frog, while the one in the back ended up as a number 8, after I realized that a 10 wouldn't have the departure angle I needed to fit it without significantly changing the track layout.

I used my ME track gauges to keep the rails in gauge as I soldered, as there wasn't a jig or other template that I could crib from. Of course, I was able to use the point and frog forming tools from my Fast Tracks stuff to help me along.

These turnouts have been installed with the rest of the track in this area, so keep your eyes peeled for an update later on to show the finished product.

Cork for Greendale

 As the bridge scene was moving somewhat slowly, but it's physical place was established enough for me to move down the line and start on putting roadbed down in the Greendale area.

Here are some views of the work, in progress.

And let's finish up with a shot of it all down, but before any ramps are sanded in or other touch ups are done.

Fascias - Adapting

 In a couple of the newer shots, you might notice the black fascia that's been installed on the upper level.

I'm using the same 1/8" masonite that I used for the backdrops, cut into a 5" wide strip and painted a flat black. (I've had a gallon of flat black for over 10 years since I bought it for version 1 with the intention of painting the benchwork to better minimize it visually, but that never happened.)

To mount it, you have to have a fairly smooth plane to do so, meaning any sort of protruding benchwork needs to be trimmed.

If you are a better planner and executor of your plans, you might be able to avoid the illustration shown here.

Backdrops Done

 All the masonite backdrops are done and painted.

My eldest helped by putting primer down and then I followed with my blue.

I had to remind him to let the roller roll and not to scrub it across the surface. Kilz is pretty forgiving and cheap to boot so it's a great way to get him involved and have him contribute without worrying about the end result too much.

Lower Level Benchwork at River Update

 These are much older shots so as I update the blog and site, progress will seem very quick but don't worry, we are still plodding along here at Richmond Terminal HQ. An earlier blog post shows a somewhat newer than this, but I wanted to show progression so here we are..

The railroad crosses the Chickahominy River so I decided I would actually make it more than just a strange plywood shape - actually use scale structures and some *gasp* scenery.

The prototype bridge doesn't have a pier in the middle but I didn't want to try to kitbash a structural piece so it ended up being sized to fit the Micro Engineering 85' deck kits.

Overview Shot from early 2020

 I didn't fully realize how far behind I was on my photo intake process until this evening when I started looking through memory cards - yikes!

Anyway, here is a good overview shot; I'm standing inside the Doswell/Staging area "pit", looking towards the rest of the railroad. At right, the turnback curve between XR and Hamilton, in the distance at center left is Milford. To the far back left is North Doswell.

The Doswell bridge area in the foreground is MUCH cleaner than it is in this shot now.