Bob Treat photographs the layout!

I haven't posted many entries here recently but I have been working hard on finishing the layout.  While there is always room for more buildings and details I have arrived at a point where I am happy to show it off.  I talked my friend, Bob Treat, an award winning model railroad photographer, in to photographing it for me.  Here are a few of the photos that resulted.  We took the photos outdoors which made for some great light and nice backgrounds.  Dave Balser loaned me some rolling stock for the photo shoot from his Onion Valley.

My favorite shot.  A freight is set to leave Sausalito while the romantic couple on the swamp walkway watch. The locomotive is owned by Dave Balser.

The switcher has finished unloading the barge.  Captain Tiny will soon be parking the sternwheeler and waiting for a new load.

The train is passing the Dead Rail Hotel - a great place for recharging your batteries.

We have arrived at Duncan's Mills.

The tail track for Duncan's Mills yard crosses this creek in the woods.

There's always repair work to be done on the railroad.  Although this fellow seems to be more interested in watching the switching than getting the job done.

HO to On30 Turnout Conversion

There are fewer turnouts available in On30 than there are in HO by several magnitudes.  The difference between On30 track and HO track is in the ties.  The ties are bigger and spaced further apart in On30 -otherwise the track is interchangeable.  So what do you do if you need a special turnout at a particular spot and an On30 turnout just won't fit but an HO turnout will?  You can easily convert an HO turnout to On30 if you have some basic soldering skills.

First get some On30 PC board ties.  I got mine from Fast Tracks.  What you do is cut out a couple of the HO ties on the bottom of the turnout, swap them with a PC board tie and solder the new tie in place. I started at the 3 ends of the turnout. Then I cut out a couple of ties in the middle of the turnout and soldered on another On30 PC board tie.  Repeat the process until the whole turnout has been converted.  Be careful not to solder the moving rails on the point!  On my PECO turnouts I left the ties on that have the little spring built in to them at the points.  They are bigger and look like O scale already and I wanted to keep the manual spring action.  I found it necessary to glue this tie assembly in place to keep it from moving without the rest of the plastic tie strip around it.

It was necessary to make new guardrails as the PECO ones were plastic and did not survive the operation.  I did need to get my NMRA gauge out for this to put the guard rails in correctly.  Otherwise the gauge is preserved by virtue of replacing the ties one at a time and soldering them on as you go.

The converted HO to On30 turnout in place on the layout before painting and ballasting.  You can see where the new PC ties have been soldered to the rails.  Also note the brown plastic ties with the point mechanism have been preserved (bottom of picture) to keep the spring action.  Since I replaced the ties one at a time the whole assembly was kept in gauge.

Building the Port

 

The Sea wall at Sausalito is one of the most distinctive features of the layout.  It covers the whole front edge so I wanted it to be well detailed.  I started by getting a lot of 1/4" dowels and sawing them up in to close but random lengths.  When they built walls like this they used a pile driver and the posts are slightly different heights.  I used a razor saw to rough up the poles along the grain and cut notches and other imperfections.
To stain the posts I soaked them in alcohol with a small amount of India ink and a dab of burnt umber oil paint. the oil paint does not dissolve quickly so I wait a couple of days before using the mixture. I soaked the posts overnight by dumping them in to a jar with the mixture andthen fishing them out and drying them on a piece of wax-paper.
I glued the posts to the edge of the wharf with yellow glue. I glued strips of balsa along the front and stained it also.  On the balsa strips I glued on Grandt Line nut-bolt-washer detail parts previously painted with burnt umber.  Along the bottom of the posts I painted the posts a greyish color to represent barnacles.

Closeup of the pilings.

The water was done by painting Sap Green, black an yellow ochre acrylic paints in patches and mixing them with a brush.  I used a lot of paint and brushed in one direction and left it streaky.  Over this I put a heavy layer of thick Gloss gel Medium which I shaped with a brush to make waves.

The Gel medium is still drying.  After several days it will become clear.

Building the Creek

On the Duncan's Mills side of my micro-layout I wanted the tracks to run over a little creek. The bridge is to be concrete arch. Really more of a big culvert than a bridge.

The track was laid over the 1/2" gatorfoam sub-roadbed and ballasted.  The creek bed was roughed in with pieces of foam. The two sides of the arch were made out of a sheet of 1/4" balsa.  The balsa was painted a concrete gray and weathered with an ink wash.  A cap of 3/8" balsa was added.  There actually is no bottom to the arch but since the viewpoint is restricted to head on it is hard to see this. I carefully trimmed the sides of the subroadbed so that arch would fit. I cut slots in the foam scenery of the creek for the balsa side to slot in to and then glued the balsa pieces in place.  The sides of the creek were coated with light-weight spackle to blend in the arch.  I embedded a some real rocks in the spackling and added a layer of gravel to form the creek bed.  The creek was painted with daubs of grays and browns of craft store paint when the spackle was dry. Some sand was used to fill in the spaces between the rocks.  After the paint dried over night I saturated the whole creek bed in dilute matte medium to glue everything together.  To make the water I used gloss medium with a tiny amount of green paint mixed in. Over several days I built the gloss medium up to form several layers to give it some thickness.

To finish the scene I painted the backdrop to show a river valley for the creek receding in to the distance. I added a few bushes and some grass and then finally planted some fir trees from Canyon Scenics.  The effect of the creek and trees is to make it feel like the railroad disappears off the scene and really does a nice job of making the 12" tail track seem a lot bigger.

The completed creek scene.

The creek scene from above to show how it is constructed.

Painting a backdrop

Putting up the divider

I built a divider down the middle of the module to separate the two scenes on either side.  One side is Sausalito which was the southern terminus and the spot where ferries to San Francisco left.  The signature backdrop scene for Sausalito is the vista of Mt. Tamalpais with the town of Mill Valley nestled in its foothills.

On the other side is Duncan's Mills (how could I resist given my name is Duncan too). It is where the deep redwoods give way to the drier coastal golden grass hills.  I wanted to piant a scene that reflected that.

First I put on a coat of white gesso in to which I had mixed a very small amount of blue.  The gesso gives the surface some tooth to make it receive paint better.  Before this was dry, I put a thin line of blue across the top and then mixed it downwards with X strokes.  You can see this technique by the master of quick landscapes, Bob Ross.  Just search his name on YouTube.

Over this I painted with acrylic colors. I mixed in some slow-drying media to give me some time to blend the colors.  Otherwise acrylics dry too fast to blend. As the colors recede you want to mix in some light blue sky color and some Payne's grey to represent the depth of the atmosphere. on the side of the hills in shadow you can add some blue and some Payne's grey to represent the bluer, darker light of the shadows.  Similarly add yellow and white to the lighter side.  Distant hills get very little color added so that the highlights and shadows are just a little different from the basic blue-grayed base color.
this kind of painting is complicated by the fact that as the acrylics dry, they will become darker and while wet you cannot always clearly see the difference in color that will appear later. So some faith that the differences are there is needed while painting and some experience is needed. However, you can always paint over wiht a new color so I try to get the forms right first in a close color and then change them later with a second coat to something I am happier with.  Finally, accidents are your freind in this kind of painting.  Often just daubing colors from a pallette in the general places gives you a really nice effect and is more successful than trying to carefully paint "within the lines".  Release your inner Guagain and go impressionistic!

A divider down the middle was added and some carved foam scenery.  Then I got out the paints and had fun. First I covered the layout with building paper and just used this as the palette to mix the paints right on the paper.  I didn't take any photos of this colorful mess. Oh well.

 

Mt. Tamalpais as seen from the Sausalito direction scene.  Tamalpais means the sleeping maiden in Miwok.

Dunca's Mills scene is more made up as there really is no signature scene like at Sausalito that I know of.  Its been a long time since I was there and I couldn't find many photos on the web of the scenery in the area.  I painted a woody gorge leading up the bridge on the right and some grass-covered hills on the left.  the bridge was made from a piece of balsa wood painted to look like concrete.  The rocks are all carved foam to keep the weight down.  they are then painted by stippling on various grays, umbers and siennas of craft-store paint.  the trees were painted from green craft-color paints using a fan brush and dabbing the colors on - not stroking. Use a dark green for the body of the tree and then add some lighter green highlights.

Making the roadbed from gatorfoam

Making the roadbed from Gatorfoam

I built the module out of 1/2" Gatorboard which I got from foamboardsource.com.  It is a truly excellent material to work with - strong and light.  I cut it with a utility knife.  For straight cuts I use a straightedge to guide a light cut and then cut it fully with a couple more strokes.
I put the pieces together with deck screws and yellow glue.  The pieces I used were smaller than my 4' x 6.5' base size so I laminated 2 layers of overlapping pieces held together with glue and 1" screws. The whole thing is light and strong.  I can easily pick up and carry the module by myself.  Since we put our modules on folding tables, there was no need for legs.  If I was to put on legs I think I would use some aluminum channel on the bottom to support them.  Also this being a dead-rail module, there is no wiring to put underneath so I didn't make a space for wires.

The tools I use to assemble the sections of 1/2" gatorfoam together.  I bought the gatorfoam in smaller pieces so they could be shipped UPS and saved considerable money.

Glue is spread where the sections overlap. I use Titebond II, a yellow wood glue.

The overlapping sections are screwed together to hold them while the glue sets.

The base is all glued up.  I made up the subroadbed which will be raised up over the base with risers by laying it on the base.

The plan has been printed out full size on paper sheets. These are carefully trimmed and then taped together.  For easier handling I made the plans in to 3 subsections - each town and the connection between.

The taped together plan is laid over subroadbed and the smaller sections taped together to make the final plan.

With the plan laid over the subroadbed, we are ready to punch holes about every inch with a sharp awl to mark the centerlines and the edges of the subroadbed where we want to cut it away.

Ready to lay track. It is hard to see but there are centerlines narked for the track in order to lay it accureately.

  

The track has been laid and we are running trains!

Construction of a Dead Rail On30 Module

My fellow Dead Rail Society members (especially Justin) have been after me to build an On30 module.  The main requirement for the module is that it not have any track power - all the locomotives run on it will be battery powered.

Here is the track plan I chose.  the dimensions of the module were dictated by the size of my SUV with one of the seats folded down. That gave me 4 feet by 6.5 feet with a cutout to go around the seat left up.  This way I can transport 3 people.  I also wanted a module that I could operate in stand-alone mode.

The module consists of 2 towns, Sausalito and Duncan's Mills, roughly, following the North Pacific Coast as a prototype (to make it prototype based to keep Tony happy). All of the turnouts face in one direction so there is never any need for a runaround move. This saves a lot of turnouts and track.  The turnouts leading to Cazadero and San Anselmo are for connections to other modules.  San Anselmo doubles as a siding for an interchange in stand-alone operations.  Cazadero faces the wrong way and the siding is just a little too short for a car in any case.

Sausalito has a 2-track ferry that can hold 6 cars.  This acts as an off layout destination and as a fiddle yard for adding removing cars if desired.  The ferry won't actually leave.  It will stay docked.  The first track is the arrival/departure track.  Trains arrive and leave from here.  When making up a train to Duncan's Mills it will be assembled on this track.  The next track is a yard track for car storage. The back track consists of 3 industry spots.

Duncan's Mills has 3 tracks.  The challenge here is that the lead only has room for one car plus the locomotive. To switch it, the train is left on the arrival/departure track and shuffled one at a time in to the Duncan's Mills. Cars for the departing train have to be switched out one at a time. This will mean thinking ahead in order to get these cars positioned to be removed and not blocked by the arriving cars.

I am going to be using colored tabs for directing operations. This is a scheme used by John Allen on his famous Gorre and Daphetid and taught to me by Don Mitchell, a former G&D operator. I regularly operate on Don's Southern Mountain layout using tabs and have become impressed by the flexibility of the method and the endlessly varying patterns it produces. I think the latter feature will be important in keeping the operations on a small layout like this interesting. I will have more on using tabs in future posts.