Adding landscaping materials to the mountains!

     Well, it has been awhile since our last post but things have been moving along.  Wiring is basically done except for the rail yard but that is a long way off.  In fact, we've been talking about either replacing the yard with a round-house or adding a round-house next to the current yard.  In any case, all the rest of the track is electronically connected and working!!  Even the reverse loops are working much to Jeff's surprise.

     Therefore, activities are now moving into scenery construction.  Our last post showed Aiden & Anthony helping to put cardboard strips down in the logging area and using plaster cloth to cover the strips.  That went very well and we have expanded that into the mountains area as well.  This past weekend Aiden was out once again and we started to paint the plaster with some earth tones and to sprinkle dirt onto the wet paint.

Aiden painting earth tone onto the mountain area

more painting

      Aiden used our 'Creeper' to lay out over the layout and paint the plaster.  The Creeper is on casters so it can roll right up to the layout and then the padded platform extends out over the layout.  You can lay on the platform and reach down to work on the layout.

A flour sifter filled with very fine dirt to spread the dirt onto the wet paint

      Jeff went to to the local Class A baseball stadium and collected up some really nice dirt in a large container.  He sifted the dirt into three categories....very fine, medium and small stones and clumps.  We used a four sifter, which is used in baking, to spread the very fine dirt over the wet paint.  When dry, the dirt sticks to the plaster as a base layer.  We will add various grades of heavier dirt, ground moss and grasses on top of this layer.

Aiden thinks he is flying on the Creeper

     The mountain area painted and dirt spread onto of the paint.  This is the base layer but you can see the rolling terrain really nicely.  Our next step is to add various other layers of ground coverings to make it look more and more realistic.   We are using very small shavings of Tiger Maple wood that come from the jointer and planer to simulate some mossy ground cover.  The type of ground cover you would see in a forest.  We will take the shavings and dye them with some Light Brown dye and sprinkle them over the terrain in a random fashion.

     

     Jeff is putting diluted glue onto the ground covering to keep it in place.  You can see in the picture that we've applied the mossy ground cover along with s mixture of different colored field grass.  We used a static grass applicator to apply the grass,  It is supposed to make the grass stand up but that didn't work to well today.  Not sure if it is machine or operator error!!  Additional glue is dripped on and also sprayed on with a spray bottle to help keep things in place.  

     Next steps:

     We will continue to expand around the curve in the mountains and continue this process.  Once the initial ground base in down we will take out the wooden tunnel portals and replace them with painted stone portals.  There is also a waterfall, pond and creek that will get painted and simulated water applied.  However, the big project now is to make trees and more trees and more trees.....you get the idea!!

     

We've Started the Scenery

It's been a while since we posted anything, mainly due to the holidays.  But we've been working on the railroad and have continued to make progress.  First off, we've now gotten all of the Tortoise switch control boxes installed.  There are 19 in all, grouped into three zones.  We also have two of the zones--the logging area and the town area--temporarily wired, so we can throw the turnouts using the NCE controller.  The yard area is not yet wired and the seven turnouts there remain in waiting.

Next up for the turnouts is to build control panels.  Our plan is to insert printed plans of the layout behind thin acrylic sheets and mount the assembly on a hardboard sheet for stability.  We will then install push buttons to control the turnouts.  Red and green lights will indicate which way the turnout has been thrown.  We will have three panels in different locations convenient for operation in the logging, town and yard areas.

The biggest news is that we have now begun building scenery on the layout.  We began with the hillside where the logging camp, forest and farming area will reside.  Several structures will go into this area--the logging camp buildings and facilities, a barn and farm-related items--but a lot of the area will be open forest with lots of trees. 

Jeff's grandsons Anthony and Aiden participated in the scenery-building.  We first laid strips of cardboard we ripped to about 1 1/2" wide on the table saw, creating a lattice.  We attached these to the plywood track base with staples and hot glue.  A word of advice: don't get the hot glue on your fingers; it will cause 2nd degree burns.  Don't ask us how we know.

With the lattice work woven into place, Jeff is stapling the joints to give the structure greater stability.

Once the lattice work was in place, we dipped plaster cloth, the kind used to make casts, in water and draped them over the cardboard, smoothing them down to fully engage the plaster and leave as seamless a surface as we could.  The boys did all the messy work of laying down and smoothing the plaster strips and had a ball doing so.  After the first round of plaster cloth set up, we put on a second layer.  When fully set up, this created a hard shell on which we can continue adding scenery.

Anthony (left) and Aiden apply the plaster cloth and smooth it down to get a seamless result.  This is messy work.  The boys loved it!

Our next job is to paint the plaster with latex paint--PPG Tobacco Brown--and then coat the area with Lou Sassi's "ground goop."  Once that base has been applied, we'll fully detail the area with trees, grasses, and the like.

The finished project, with two layers of plaster cloth.  We'll smooth this out with Plaster of Paris, then paint it Tobacco Brown and apply "ground goop" before proceeding to detail the area.  This is where the logging camp and farming area will reside.

We reported earlier that we are now running trains.  We have the "outer loop" pretty much debugged and track problems corrected, but the "inner loop" has a number of issues yet to be addressed.  We're happy to report, though that we've tested the reversing loops and the electronics seem to be working as intended.  We've tested the track with several locomotives.  Most are still set for the default cab number of 003.  We will soon reprogram them to their locomotive numbers so we can run multiple trains at once, something we've not yet tried.

So, while we've made a lot of progress in building the North Fork & Crooked Run Railway, there are still a lot of opportunities and challenges left for us to take on.  Stay tuned for updates.

We are running trains!!

December 1st was a big milestone for the North Fork & Crooked Run Railroad....we ran our first train around the logging area outer loop.  This was the first run of a train on our layout!!

Here it is!

We've tested the logging area outer loop, the logging area itself and the track around the city area.  Each area was tested independently since the control electronics have not been setup yet.  We have all the electronics mounted on a shelf and will install that this coming week.  Once the electronics are installed we will test the circuit breakers and reverse loop controllers.

We are excited to have trains running!!

Working on the electronics

Norm, Aiden and I were back working on the layout this week.  Norm finished up laying track and I helped Aiden drill holes for feeder wires.

drilling 1/8" hole for feeder wire

Aiden cut wire into 12" lengths for the feeder wires.  We made a mark on the bench where 12" was so that he could stretch the wire and then cut it.  

Measuring off 12" length of wire

cutting it to length

Once we had the wires cut Aiden pushed them through the holes.  He was just the right height to see the holes from the top and the bottom of the layout.

stringing wire from the top

and pushing them up from the bottom.  He also pulled them down from the top once in the hole.

Finally, a little playtime and getting a ground view of the layout!!  Aiden is a character!!

Back from vacation and back to work

     Norm and his wife Betsy and my wife Ellen and myself went on a three week vacation to the New England states and into Canada.  We toured the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY and visited the King Arthur Flour company (and store) outside Burlington, VT.  Both Norm and I like to bake so we enjoyed walking around and buying a lot at the company store!  From there we went up into Canada and visited Montreal, Quebec City, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia.  The highlight, in my opinion, was seeing low tide at Fundy Bay.  They have a daily 50 foot tide swing each day and we were able to walk on the ocean floor during low tide.  After Canada we drove along the coast of Maine and visited some lighthouses and finally stopped in Lancaster, PA on our way home.  It was a long trip but everyone had a good time and a favorite place to see.

     Now that we are back it is time to get back to the train layout.  On the trip I started a new FOS Scale Model called 'Tower Gas'.  I stained the walls and did some initial painting.  The final weathering will be done once the walls are all glued together.

     My grandson Aiden is visiting this weekend so he helped paint some of the parts.

Aiden helping to paint a small roof part

He takes this work very seriously!!

I glued the lower level walls together this morning.  I'm using a metal square to make sure all the corners are square.  This was an issue with my last model so I want to make sure everything lines up correctly this time.

The back wall and left side are glued and set in the background.  The front and right side are being glued using the square for alignment.

Here is the current state of the model.  The four lower level walls are glued together and the three walls for the upper level steeple are glued in place.  The fourth wall for the steeple will go on once the roof is in place.

More to come on this build.....

Aiden wires the layout

Just a quick post to say that we've started to wire the layout and Aiden was a big help.  Norm was working on track bed and laying cork so Aiden helped me install some bus wires.

We first measured how much of each bus-wire was needed and cut it too length.  We are using 14 gauge wire for the bus wires.  Norm pitched in and held one end and Aiden used a drill to twist the wires together.  A lot easier than twisting the pairs of wires by hand!!

Aiden used a drill to quickly and easily twist wires together

Once we had a bus pair of wires twisted together, Aiden crawled under the layout (he could almost stand!) and put the wires in the plastic clips that we had screwed to the bottom of the layout.

Aiden could almost stand under the layout!

He was a big help because I would have to have crawled under the layout on my hands and knees!

Putting the wires into plastic clips

We have started to lay track so future posts will focus on the track work and installing feeder wires onto the track sections and connecting them to these bus wires.

Readying the Layout for Track

In our most recent work session, we finished laying down the cork roadbed.  Then we sanded it to assure that it was level and free of bumps and any extruded silicone sealant.  We started sanding by hand with a 220 grit block, but found that to be hard going.  So we put a finishing sander to work with 180 grit paper installed.

Sanding the roadbed with the finishing sander was just the trick!

 Once the roadbed was sanded, it was ready for installing track.  We laid out the turnouts in their intended positions, then beginning at an arbitrary point on the layout, began to install track.

The layout with turnouts positioned at their intended locations

We drilled holes in each piece of track and all turnouts to allow nails to be driven through without splitting the rails.  Then we started the process of fitting the rail sections to the turnouts.  We were able to get track laid around about a third of the "outer loop."  We staggered the rails in each section by about four inches so there would be no kinks on the curves.

We've got a long way to go to get the rails fully installed.  We'll pick it up again when we're able to get together for another work session.