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:

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.

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:

Turntable mechanism

A while ago I posted a series of photos showing the construction of a turntable for Thomaston. I installed the pit on the layout but ran into “analysis paralysis” when I couldn’t decide whether to motorize the turntable or rig up a manual control mechanism. I finally decided on manual, since my preference is to use manual controls wherever that would have been the case in real life (turnouts, uncoupling, etc.). The breakthrough came when I found a set of gears and a rotating turntable brick in an old box of legos:

The lego turntable brick has a 1/8” bore, so I epoxied some eighth-inch brass tubing into the bottom of the turntable, making sure that it was perfectly perpendicular:

The gears have a 3/16” bore, so I bent some 3/16” steel rod to make a crank. The white gear is attached to a 4x4 lego brick bored at 11/64” to give a press fit on the shaft in case I need to adjust it. In the photo below you can also see the pin that runs through the vertical turntable shaft and engages the nubs (the official lego term is “studs”) on the blue gear. The baseplate is still taped in place because I’m still adjusting everything to be centered and level – a surprisingly finicky process.

The mechanism turns smoothly with very little slop, but can be disassembled in seconds if I need to remove the turntable in the future. And the total cost was $3!

Freight car roster

There is now a link in the upper right corner to the St. G. R. R. freight car roster. So far I have built 10 of the 24 cars on the list. Here is the general lineup as I currently imagine it:

10-14: Non-revenue: Cabooses 10 and 11, plus three slots for future additions.
15-22: Short (20') flatcars from JM Concepts, now out of production. I believe they are freelanced. Two have been built and six are in progress.
23-26: Boxcars.  The only one that is already in service is #25, which was originally numbered 35.
27-32: 24' and 28' flatcars based on Maine prototypes: the Monson RR (Stevens Creek Models, re-released by RS Laser Kits a few years ago but I believe they are again out of production), Kennebec Central (Railway Recollections), and SR&RL (Mt. Blue Model Co.).  The SR&RL flatcars will have sides for coal service.  #31 is under construction; the rest are in service.

The single digits are reserved for locomotives and passenger cars.  I will update the roster as I finish more rolling stock.

Flatcars 29 and 30

I took a break from the forney project to build a couple of Railway Recollections flatcar kits. These cars are based on Kennebec Central prototypes.  Flatcars 12 and 28 are in the background (as well as #27, temporarily missing a truck).

The kits came with Grandt Line trucks that lack brakes, whereas I had used 3D-printed trucks with brake gear from Marsh Creek Miniatures for flats 27 and 28.  Interestingly, some of the Maine two-foot cars, such as on the the B&SR, had brakes only on one truck, so I swapped one truck between the new cars and numbers 27 and 28 to imitate this look.

More forney details

July was a typically slow summer modeling month, but I found some time to detail the rear deck of the forney.  In addition to the stirrups and other details, I added 1x2 trim around the top edge to make it look like the deck overhangs the frame, as on the prototype locomotives:

In the model, the housing on top of the deck is the mechanism that allows the rear truck to slide from side to side to accommodate sharper curves.  I made sure that the details won't restrict this motion, although with my relatively broad curves it wasn't likely to be a problem.  The wires are from the Kato passenger truck used to provide extra pickups for the motor.  At some point in the future I might replace the truck with something more prototypical, but for now I will keep it as it's hard to see anyway.