Sunday, October 27, 2019

Trestle abutments

The Mill River trestle will need some stone abutments, so I cast them using lego forms.  The width of the narrowest legos is 26" in HO scale, which is a decent height for abutment blocks. After the plaster set I carved in block lines and gave them a dark wash before shaking them vigorously in a small container with aquarium gravel to polish the edges and give them some more color. The result may be a bit too regular for a narrow gauge road, but I figure that since the railroad's primary customer is a granite quarry, it would have ready access to high-quality stone.


EDIT (November 2):
I eventually decided that the abutment blocks were indeed too regular, in fact they looked more like concrete than granite, so I roughed up the surfaces by tapping them with the tip of a large drill bit and then colored them with weathering powders.  Here's a comparison - the one with the new treatment is on the right:


Saturday, October 19, 2019

Painting track

After masking the turnout points and spray painting all of the track brown, I tried a few techniques to paint and weather the ties. I have read that the Maine two-footers used untreated (non-creosoted) ties, which calls for a sun-bleached and weathered look. The following photo shows the steps I used: from left to right, drybrushing with white paint, then a heavy india ink/alcohol wash followed by dusting with tan weathering powder from Monroe Models. I applied the powder too heavily, but compensated by scraping the ties to give them some texture, followed by a light application of white powder to the ties to fade them, and finally applying dark rust powder to the spikes and tie plates.


Here's a closer shot of the finished section, temporarily buried in aquarium filter charcoal to approximate the cinders that I plan to use in the engine terminal area. It looks pretty good to my eye so I'll continue using this approach on the rest of the track.


Tuesday, October 15, 2019

Layout update

Installing the turntable inspired me to finish laying the track on the Thomaston section. To avoid having a section joint right in the middle of the engine terminal, I added a 42" long extension at a right angle to give a 9' long L-shaped section that will include the roundhouse, the car shed (the short spur in front of the roundhouse tracks), and a trestle across Mill River to the east of town.  I had originally imagined that the railroad would terminate outside of town to avoid having to cross this river (see August 2017 post), but since I wanted a trestle anyway, I decided to relocate the depot and engine terminal within the town borders.

Here's a photo of the full section. I took it it outside to paint the track:


The 9' length is a little unwieldy, but the layout is meant to be semi-permanent and it is a major advantage to not have the roundhouse tracks cross a section joint. This section is also light enough that I could imagine displaying it at shows as a standalone switching layout.

I am using traditional two-cab DC for this layout since it is difficult to jam DCC decoders into HOn30 locomotives, especially the forneys which don't have a separate tender, and I seriously doubt I will ever need to run more than two trains at the same time.  This section is divided into three blocks: one for the back track and engine terminal, one for the front track, and one for the track that crosses the creek.  Power to the two spurs is controlled by their corresponding switches, and the roundhouse tracks are selected by a rotary switch.

Here's a shot of the underside showing the wiring, switch machines, and turntable mechanism: