Finishing the turntable

The last task on the turntable (other than installing it, of course) was to add the nut-bolt-washer castings and the truss rods with their turnbuckles. Attaching the 96 NBWs was tedious, but after losing a couple dozen of them I finally got them all installed. Stringing the monofilament to make the truss rods was a piece of cake by comparison.

It took some experimentation to get the coloring right on the turntable pit. It is molded from a cream-colored plastic that I guess is supposed to look like aged concrete, but is way too yellowish for my taste. I tried a series of streaky black washes, but that just made the yellowish color darker. Applying light grey powder on top of the washes gave a pretty good concrete effect, though, especially as it also toned down the rust streaks I had applied where the approach rails meet the pit.  I may eventually add some weeds to the dirt floor, but otherwise it is ready to be installed on the layout.

Turntable progress

Continuing with the turntable build, I made the king posts and bracing out of stripwood instead of styrene, both because I found it easier to shape the wood to form the tapered posts, and because that's what I had in stock. The center posts are scale 12x12 stripwood tapered to 9x9, and the side posts are 10x10 tapered to roughly 8x8.  The braces are 4x6 stripwood. Here they are installed:

I colored the turntable before adding the hardware, using the same combination of weathering powders and India ink/alcohol wash that I used for the deck: after masking the deck, I sprayed the turntable with grey primer, and then gave the entire thing an I/A wash.  I then painted on weathering powders with a soft brush, using Monroe Models' (formerly A.I.M.) "grimy black" with a little "medium earth" brushed on top.

After the entire turntable was "painted", I brushed on another I/A wash to smooth out the texture and introduce some variation in color. The neat thing about this technique is that you can control how much of the color you remove - for example, on the bracing I removed most of the powder to reveal some of the grey underneath, as if the braces were made of untreated wood while the other timbers were creosoted.

I added the pads that the truss rods will run over, but still have to add the truss rods, turnbuckles, and something like 68 NBW castings. But that's for another day...

Scratch-bashing the Thomaston turntable

I need a turntable to complete the trackage in Thomaston. The Peco N scale turntable is the perfect length but doesn't have the look I want, which is similar to the wooden turntables found on the SR&RL and WW&F. I bought one anyway, and it looks like it would be relatively straightforward to scratchbuild a new underframe and superstructure.

Thankfully, the good people at the On2 FAQ had uploaded the plans from an old On2 turntable kit. After some experimentation, I found that printing the plans at 42% gave a good match to the diameter of the Peco turntable, meaning that I could take measurements directly off the plans. The resulting turntable will be 11'6" wide, which is slightly narrower than the prototype. I can live with that, though, especially since that my layout is freelanced.

So far I have attached new side girders to either side using two lengths of scale 14"x14" with a spacer between them, and added scale 8x14 and 14x14 cross-girders (probably not the right term!) across the bottom.  I also weathered the pit and coated the bottom with dirt.

The most tedious part so far has been notching the cross-girders to fit around the underside of the Peco turntable - not prototypical, but it won't be visible in the final installation.

I still need to build the superstructure, paint and weather everything, and add the NBWs, truss rods, and other hardware.

Caboose

Here is the finished caboose:

I'm happy with how it came out, although I messed up on the final step and forgot to mask the windows before hitting the car with matte finish, so they ended up covered with cloudy spots. After reading some tips online and experimenting with some scrap plastic, I found that the best way to restore them was to burnish each window with a piece of stripwood until the window was evenly hazy, and then apply three or four thin coats of acrylic floor polish to the windows. The result isn't perfect but it's definitely acceptable. Lesson learned...

Expanding the roster

A couple of months ago I picked up a bunch of HOn30 equipment from a very helpful member of the Yahoo HOn30 list, including some flat cars, a Railway Recollections caboose kit, a railbus, and a forney.  The railbus and forney are sure to make an appearance here at some point, but I am currently concentrating on assimilating the freight cars into the St. G. R. R. roster.  Here are two Monson-prototype flats now lettered 27 and 28, with #32 (A Mount Blue kit) for comparison. They still need cut levers but are otherwise complete:

I have also been building the road's first caboose, a Railway Recollections kit for an early Sandy River caboose.  I'm about 95% done, and just waiting for a few detail parts which are supposed to arrive tomorrow.  Meanwhile I have been debating how to arrange the lettering. My initial inclination was to spread the letters across the width of the car, but I'm not sure that's the right look so I mocked up a more compact formation on the other side;

The decals are not firmly set on the model yet, so I will give it a few days before making a decision.

The smoke jack is a length of 1/16" brass tubing inside 3/32" tubing, with a thin paper cap solidified with CA.  The grabs are bent from standard staples with NBW castings added.  I use staples a lot for grab irons and cut levers, since they are easy to bend and come pre-bent with right angles. They are a little thick, though, so I may switch to 0.010" or .015" wire in the future.

"Prototype" tour, part two

Continuing from the last post, thus far my imaginary StGRR right of way has paralleled what is now route 131. Continuing south down the St George Peninsula, the track hugs the shore around a large cove before moving across the peninsula toward Tenant’s Harbor (or “Tennants” as it was apparently spelled in the early 1900s). At this point route 131 turns east to take a broad S curve into town, but this route is too hilly for a railroad, so I looked for a different approach.

From what I can surmise from topo maps and my tour of the area, the most practical path for a railroad to reach the town would have been to head south from this point to follow a stream that runs into town from the north. This stream broadens into a marsh before emptying into the harbor. This area, which the locals appropriately call The Marsh, is shown in the following photo which is looking north from Main Street. The cutting shed shown on the track plan would be to the right of this photo - a bit outside of the town itself.

The marsh passes under Main Street and empties into a cove on Tenant's Harbor, shown  in the next photo.  The StGRR would have run along the side of this cove before turning to the left to its terminus in town.  That curve is included in the track plan, and leads to the railroad facilities and granite wharf.

That's it for the tour.  It should give you a sense of the landscape the railroad is supposed to run through.  I will return to modeling in the next post!

"Prototype" tour, part one

I just returned from a two-week family vacation in mid-coast Maine, including a week spent along the coast north of Thomaston and St. George. On the drive back we detoured off Route 1 to drive the length of the peninsula, so I had a chance to take a lot of photos that will be helpful when (and if!) I get to the scenery stage.

At least for now, I imagine the Thomaston yard and engine facilities as being situated just east of town, across a stream called the Mill River. They would be located in the meadow to the left of the tracks in the following image, which was taken looking west toward town. (The bridge in the distance is the Maine Central bridge over the Mill River.) The narrow gauge tracks would curve left (south) just before the point from which this photo was taken.

Placing the terminal in this location would mean a hike into town for anyone traveling up the peninsula to spend the day in Thomaston, but my rationale is that the St. G. R. R. was built primarily to serve the quarries, and that the founders decided it was too expensive to build a bridge just to accommodate the relatively small amount of passenger traffic. If I get more space in the future I might add a bridge to enable direct access to the town.

From Thomaston, the line turns south to run along the Saint George River, passing farms as well as undeveloped land. The next section of the layout (the narrow section along the side wall) will reflect this scenery.

I will also include a road crossing in this section, and one or two small streams, but this stretch of the layout will be mostly free of structures.

Freight cars for the St. George R.R.

In last month's post you can see two of the first freight cars I have built.  Both are Mount Blue Model Co. laser-cut kits based on SR&RL prototypes.  Here's a closer shot:

I built the kits basically as suggested, but added sides to the flatcar so that it could be used in coal service.  The cut levers on the flat car are standard staples, and the trucks are Marsh Creek products ordered from shapeways.

The paint is Americana craft paint: two parts "Deep Burgundy" to one part "Georgia Clay." I tried a number of mixes before settling on this one.  The flat was lettered with dry transfers but it was hard to place them accurately on the thin sides, so I bit the bullet and ordered custom decals before lettering the boxcar.  Early-20th century railroads that had a "Saint" in their name (M&StL, CMStP&P, etc) tended to place the "T" above the period, so I replicated that practice. 

I am 80% done with the road's first caboose, and am also working on converting the Peco N scale turntable to a model of an SR&RL wood turntable.  More to come soon...

Initial progress

The switch machines are now installed on the first section and I am working on the wiring. In the meantime, I’ve been testing out various layout and fascia arrangements. I’m using shelf brackets which makes it easy to alter these heights. In this photo the track height is 56.5” and the opening between the lower and upper fascia is around 10.5”.

Once I finalize the heights I will install the backdrop and the lighting. The backdrop will be pretty simple, probably just a blue sky with a hint of trees.  

Concept and track plan

Welcome! This blog will document the construction of an HOn30 layout based on the two-foot gauge railroads that were built in Maine in the late 19th and early 20th century.  I have always liked the look of these railroads, with their narrow equipment running on even narrower tracks.  Paradoxically, they required large radius curves, which rules out an On2 layout in my 8x13 layout room.  I could theoretically build an Sn2 layout in this space but the track plan would be limited, so I am trying HOn30 for the first time. Here's the track plan:

The layout is a freelanced railroad called the St. George Railroad, after the town and river in Knox County, Maine. The primary customer is a granite quarry in the middle of the St. George peninsula, but it will also haul coal, seafood, and general freight.  There is an interchange with the Maine Central at Thomaston, and the other terminus is the seaport at Tenants Harbor, with a cannery and a pier for loading stone onto ships. 

Currently I have the quarry located in an adjacent space in my basement, but I'm considering ways to keep it in the same room as the rest of the layout.  My current thought is that the quarry's primary product will be paving stones, cut and loaded at the quarry, and that the cutting shed outside Tenants Harbor will be for larger cut stone products.

Track will be Peco's code 80 "mainline" track. The switches are 18" radius, and the minimum radius elsewhere is 21".

Feel free to leave comments and suggestions!