Durango & Silverton RR Shots |About Me
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| Construction shots: | Benchwork | Scenery | Finished Scenes |
| Layout: | Trackplan & Specs |
| Misc: | The
Road to MMR | Articles
I've written Durango & Silverton RR Shots |About Me |
In the original BVrr plan, this area was to contain another town. But the more I thought about it, the more a "no buildings" area appealed to me -- especially since it's directly across the aisle from congested Colfax Yard.
So I decided to make this area a wetlands -- boggy, swampy, a bunch of defoliated trees. It was pretty clear in my mind. But I got to thinking: this railroad is supposed to be in an agricultural Midwest area, so where are the farms? This seemed like the perfect place for it. And the fact that my wife grew up on a farm meant I had a great resource close at hand.
I documented building this area and the farm buildings in an article that ran in the February, 2008, issue of Railroad Model Craftsman, entitled "Modeling a classic Midwestern farm." One of the shots I took for the article made the magazine's cover. You can see that on my Articles page.
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Whoa, now here's a sexy picture! This will become the farm area. In the background you can see the mainline coming from Colfax yard and passing through the backdrop on its way to Westcott. The track in the foreground will pass through a tunnel portal and continue on to hidden staging and the lower return loop. This is the way this area looked until late 2006. |
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In early 2006 I began building the lake scene, which is in the immediate foreground here. In mid- 2006 I added fascia around the entire layout. And because I tend to build scenery in a linear fashion, the next area to be added was the farm. Here's the way it looked before I started. Although it looks like I made the curve on the track broader, it's just an optical illusion. (December 2006) |
| First order of business was to add a surface, so I used 1.5" thick extruded foam board. In the background you can see the cardboard lattice I built to hold the hillside that runs from Colfax yard (upper level) down to the farm. This is the first time I used cardboard lattice construction, and I can't say that I like it. I used a piece of copper wire in a Weller soldering gun to "carve" out a little stream down the center of the farm (the pink area). (December 2006) |  |
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It's plaster time! I decided that having perfectly flat farm fields was just a little too boring, so I added some wadded up paper towels as a base, then put Hydrocal-soaked paper towels over those. I also added a road to parallel the tracks, made from painted foamcore. (January 2007) |
| Here's the way things looked after the tunnel portal was installed. I added a rudimentary cardboard cutout of a barn that helps me visualize things. The railroad bridge abutments have been added and the road is plastered in. (January 2007) |  |
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Time to plant. I covered the painted plaster with real dirt, then added a chunk of a grass mat, which will become a hay field. Then I started planting soybeans, using a technique I learned in a clinic given by Patrick Lana, MMR ("Enjoying the Rockies, Modeling the Midwest"). He uses chenille yarn, coated with fine ground foam. Instead of laying it into cardboard box corrugations as he does, I wanted a curve to my field, so I just eyeballed it and stuck it to the ground with Elmer's glue. (February 2007) |
| Next, I scratchbuilt two bridges. The railroad bridge was built using plans I found on the internet. I beefed up the lumber from the plans based on the amount of weight the bridge would be carrying. The concrete auto bridge was scratchbuilt, based on bridge photos I also found on the internet. The stream was poured using a new product, "Magic Water." (I used that because all my EnviroTex rivers, elsewhere on the layout, are gradually yellowing.) After the Magic Water had cured (took 2 days), I stippled on a heavy coat of artist's gloss medium, seen here. However, I overdid it and hated the effect (raging river!), so I peeled off the gloss medium, which I describe in a caption later on this page. You can also see the windrowed hay in the background, made from short pieces of Woodland Scenics golden tall grass. (March 2007) |  |
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Not apparent in the above photograph is the mirror. Hey, the stream can't just end at the backdrop, can it? Unlike most others which are virtually hidden, I got pretty bold with this mirror, putting it right out in the open. Once its edges got covered with trees and foliage, it worked great and is completely hidden. (March 2007) |
| And because I love the mirror illusion so much (these are the 6th and 7th mirrors on the layout) I added one at the point where the road meets the backdrop. This, too, was covered with trees and other camouflage This one's a big hit with visitors because it's really not very obvious. I've had several people tell me they assumed the road passed through the backdrop to the other side. Surprise! (March 2007) |  |
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One
additional detail was the cornfield. I'd bought a package of Busch
corn at the National Train Show in 2006 and was very impressed with it,
so I had Santa deliver two more. Turns out three wasn't enough for
this space -- which is only 2-feet long by 10" deep (at left) and
3" deep (at right). It took four kits... at $13 each.
But the effect is just spectacular, and the corn really does look like
corn! I positioned it, as you can see, right next to the aisle, to
imply that the field is much bigger... bigger than my hobby budget would
have allowed.
I then started thinking about farm buildings and found a barn photograph which I glued to a cardboard mockup to get a feel for the size. (May, 2007) |
| Here's the same view as the opening two shots on this page, showing the progress thus far. The cornfield is the brighter green area in the upper left. You can see how the lake area (lower right) blends into the farm area. I think it turned out well. (May, 2007) |  |
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Here's the view from the other direction. The lake area is just beneath the trees, and that's LaPointe you can see across the aisle. The cornfield is in the lower center. (May, 2007) |
| When it was time to build a barn and silo, what better place to start than the farm my wife grew up on? Here's a photo of the barn on her childhood home, a farm in Elk River, MN. My sister-in-law and her husband still live there and raise beef cattle. (June, 2007). |  |
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Using
the basic dimensions and photographs of the real barn, I built this
model, showing the way it looked in the '50s with the cedar shingle
roof. Since the real silo had been torn down several years ago, I
found one close to my house that I used as a guide. The small
building is the chicken coop, also still standing near the real barn.
This is the barn seen in the background of the Railroad Model Craftsman cover and article. (July, 2007) |
| Here's the barn, silo, and chicken coop in the finished scene on the layout. That red piece of equipment is a manure spreader. To the right of the barn is the pasture. (August, 2007) |  |
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Here's a closeup of the chicken coop, complete with chickens and a fenced-in area outside of it. (August, 2007) |
| Next to the barn is the pasture area, which is surrounded by a barbed wire fence made of my favorite material, EZ Line. Just beyond the cows in the shot is the stream. You can see how the trees are hiding the mirror that's at the backdrop (see shot earlier on this page). (August, 2007) |  |
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Moving
to the right just a little, here's the stream area, showing the
transition between the pasture on the left and the windrowed hay on the
right. If you compare the water in the stream to the shot
earlier on this page, you'll notice that there are no longer any waves
on it. I decided I wanted a much calmer stream than the one I had
modeled earlier, so I spent an evening with a wood chisel (literally)
and alcohol, taking the Gloss Medium waves off the top of the
Magic Water. Once the waves were gone, I poured another 1/8"
layer of Magic Water over the top to smooth things out.
Thankfully, it worked well.
The truck has a "Surge Milkers/Babson Brothers" sign on it. Babson was one of the accounts I wrote advertising for in the mid-'80s. (August, 2007) |
| And finally, here's the finished scene nine months later, taken from the same general place as the first two shots on this page. The hillside at the back of this shot transitions up to Colfax Yard and the roundhouse area. The gray barns up there are leftover mockups of the real barn at the right of the shot. You can also see I added a Lucite elbow guard along the left of the cornfield -- I can't tell you how many times I flattened my own field with my stomach as I was adding details to the barnyard! (September, 2007) |  |
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I added a classic Van Dyke windmill next to the pasture. This is a Walthers kit, and has great detail. (August 2007) |
| A couple of little finishing touches were added a few weeks later. Here's one of the farm hands tossing some hay bales out of the beat up old pickup truck. (August 2007) |  |
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Back down Rt. 102 (now the official name for the road) near the bridges I added two billboards. This one is for Earl's Country Kitchen, just 3 miles ahead. The billboard is scratchbuilt from individual scale lumber, but the ladder, painter, and paint cart are all from a Walthers Mini-Scenes kit. I later moved the billboard and painter to the town of Eureka on my reverse loop. (August 2007) |
| At the very bottom of the photo above, across the road from the Earl's billboard, is another one. This one's for Patty Lou's Bakery, which you'll find in my town of Glen Oaks. The bakery is named for my late mother-in-law, and hence the slogan on the board, "A little slice of Heaven in Glen Oaks." (August 2007) |  |
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Here's a closer shot of the "continuation" of Rt. 102, past the farm and off into the distance. This is the finished treatment of the mirror mentioned in the shot near the top of this page. The road actually ends just below the point where the shadow on the road turns light (look for the darker horizontal line just above a white stripe). (September 2007) |