XR Rebuild

 One of last summer's efforts were related to the Crossroads (XR) control point.

This area has been plagued by various issues over the life of the layout that I trace back to the crappy plywood that I used as subroadbed here. This plywood had separated plys and inconsistent thickness over its run, which caused phantom uncoupling and other operating annoyances over the years.

When I went to put in scenery, I realized that it was going to be just about impossible to add in any structures.

So, the obvious solution was to rebuild from the ground up.

I made the area wider, matching the width of the lower deck, across the entire area. I also updated the track layout to better match the prototype.

I moved the crossover south around 6 feet, and angled it, to make sure that I could make the mainline match the curve to Hamilton smoothly.

This has been in place for the last 6 sessions and I have gotten good feedback from the crew, so I will put this down as a success. In a future post, I will talk about the structures that I've installed in this area.

A few more photos can be found on the gallery at richmond-terminal.org.

Crossroads Rebuild - Structures - Owen Steel

 Longtime readers will remember that historically, the Richmond Terminal eschews scenic vistas and related stuff.

Some trees have been planted, and there are some profile boards glued to backdrops, and even some ground foam here and there.

Structures haven't been any sort of focus, and until one of the crew built some kits up for me to keep him busy, the railroad was structure-less.

With the rebuild of Crossroads, I planned to have the space for a couple of structures, based on the stock of building kits that I had.

We will dive into one of the builds in this post. This is based on the "Armstrong Electric Motors" background kit. For the Walthers' webpage on this kit, click here. 

This is a 3 story, brick building that suggests a WW2 or just postwar style of construction with a loading dock for railcar spotting.

Walthers offers what I will call "standard" structure kits that let you build a "3-D" standalone building, and they also offer background kits that are a "2.5-D" building that is made to snuggle up to your backdrop. The backdrop versions are generally the full kit that is missing a few sprues of parts. This means that you can kitbash or customize what you are going to build fairly easily.

As many building kits don't have the size to properly represent an industry with rail service, combining a few kits lets you illustrate the "mass" of industrial buildings in a space that is less that 2" deep.

Out of the box, the kit is molded in gray plastic, which is pretty dull, but fairly realistic as most industries aren't exactly pretty looking. You can build it to 3 different sizes, width wise, a 2, 4, or a 6 column. If you combine 2 kits, you can get 12 columns, which is what I ended up doing.

I decided to paint the window frames a nice green (Vallejo Air 71-), and then shoot the walls a brown-red (Vallejo Air 71-) mix to make it feel more traditional masonry.

Cutting the frames off the sprue. I dialed the airbrush to "thorough"

Note the 2 different sizes of frame.

The kit does include clear plastic to be used for windows. I have to say that getting good results from kit building is somewhat dependent on the tools and techniques that you use. I used canopy glue to glue the windows in, which is the ONLY adhesive you should use for stuff like that. I didn't learn that canopy glue was a thing until I was well into adulthood.

You can see the still wet canopy glue in the corners.

Once it was all assembled on the bench, I did a QA check and realized that I missed some spots with the airbrush, so I had to use a brush for some touch ups.

Here's the structure on the layout. I need to add the decaled signs to finish this, but this is a huge upgrade from the little cardboard sign and bare track.

Timonium Train Show, in a few pictures

I wanted to share a couple of shots with the audience from the train show in Timonium, MD, the first weekend of February.

I had to do a bit of shopping, and after I finished, I took my camera through a bunch of the layouts and took some photos of things that struck my fancy.

Enjoy!

This would have been better with a tripod and a different lens.. And yes, that bridge is VERY long.

PRR style signals and catenary. Looks great!

RF&P Car spotted!

An RF&P wide nose unit? Sign me up!

I just wish this wasn't under the coaling tower!

More photos can be found in the gallery at richmond-terminal.org

Tidying Up

 Got tired of looking at it, so out came the white glue and a acid brush.

Maybe there will be paint and grass and trees at some point..

Backdrops, again

 During a work session a few years ago, the crew and I repositioned the backdrop on the upper level, on the inside of the XR & Hamilton peninsula.

As I had filled in screw holes and painted, it required a bit of deconstruction before we could move it down to eliminate a gap between the subroadbed's homasote, and the bottom edge of the backdrop.

We then refastened the backdrop and went along with the rest of the work session.

I came behind later, and filled in all the new screw head holes with joint compound and did a first pass of sanding once it dried.

I had left it like that for probably a year before I got sick of looking at it this past May, and finished the patching, and then painted.

Before. 

This also gave me the opportunity to better blend the backdrops on this run with the backdrop that is on the turnback curve, as you can see to the left in the photo above.

I had also decided that I wanted the lighter sky color to go higher up, as the sky gets dark much farther above the horizon in real life than what I had originally painted.

After.

A few more photos can be found on the Richmond Terminal Gallery.

Scenery?! Well, landforms at least..

 For a total change of pace earlier this fall, some landforms were built up.

I'm using the cardboard strips and glue shell method, using red rosin paper as the top layer of shell.

The cardboard strips are hot glued together, so management has been saving corrugated cardboard boxes for recycling into the strips.

I started in the corner near Quantico, with the thought that there are no plans to change the track in this area, signals are already installed and the sharp corner is pretty obvious.

I used my normal brown latex paint to go over the red paper. Some additional tweaking will be necessary, but for a first attempt, acceptable results were obtained. 

I put another of these in Hamilton, to help hide the gap between the backdrop and the homasote that serves as subroadbed.

Some painting touchup is needed..

And here is an overview shot of the area south of South Milford. You can see the cardboard peeking out from the form closest to the camera.

As the hot glue is very stringey, I recommend covering you track with paper masking that you will find in the painting tool aisle at your local home improvement center. Makes clean up simple as the paper that protected you track can just be thrown away or recycled, depending on your desires.

A key consideration is using enough cardboard strips to support the overall landform shape you want.

A few more pictures on the website gallery - richmond-terminal.org

Eventually, there might even be some ground cover and trees planted, but let's no go crazy.

Structures? Inconceivable!

 I am building many of the kits that I salted away over the years for installation on the railroad. Certainly, I am not the world's best structure builder, but you can only improve by doing it.

I know this violates my "not a pound for air to ground" mantra about scenery, but as the layout presents significantly more finished than raw, unlike version 1, I think I should embrace the change.

 

Here's the concrete plant on the North end of Acca. Prototypically, this should be more towards the center of the yard, and on the opposite side of the tracks from where it is here, but as model railroading is a compromise, it sits here, on the end of what will be a long spur using smaller than mainline rail.