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About one quarter of the overall layout
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I went to Charles Bassing’s DRGW layout today to participate in a work session. I had not been to his layout before. I only knew about it from Mark Gionet. Well, turns out I was really in the dark as this is probably the largest layout in Northern Virginia. Charles has been working on it since 2008. It’s pretty far along with benchwork and track. Now a crew of folks are helping build scenery. The railroad covers the Tennessee Pass and Royal Gorge regions from Pueblo, CO to Minturn, CO in the 1930-40s including standard and a fair amount of narrow gauge. This is an area that I am somewhat familiar with as I modeled Tennessee Pass in N scale about 20 years ago.
I was assigned rock carving jobs. First I helped add rock castings to some of the many vertical cliffs. They were using sculptamold as a means to “glue” the castings to the cliffs and to carve the areas between castings. Believe it not, this was the first time I tried sculptamold. I found the my regular carving techniques didn’t work as usual when I use Water Putty. But, we made it work.
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After lunch, Charlie asked me to finish the rocks around a tunnel portal. For that I used lightweight hydrocal. My usual carving techniques worked here and it came out nice. After that I went back to sculptamold on the cliffs.
Meanwhile, Nick Kalis was painting structure mockups, Steve, Mark and Charles worked on staining and painting the huge cliffs. By the end of the day, the cliffs looked great.
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Mark making some last minute corrections to rock castings
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| Mark begins staining rocks |
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| Steve, Mark, Charles and Nick painting rocks |
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| Pueblo yard |
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| Looking good. |
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| Great rockwork |
After lunch, Charlie asked me to finish the rocks around a tunnel portal. For that I used lightweight hydrocal. My usual carving techniques worked here and it came out nice. After that I went back to sculptamold on the cliffs.
Wow!!! What a great looking layout! Those mountain sides and sheer cliffs look great just in plaster/rock casting form. That layout will be be even more impressive as the scenery evolves. How big is that layout as it looks like a pretty big basement! Have a Merry Christmas!!
ReplyDeleteI don’t know the exact statistics but I’d say somewhere between 2000 and 3000 square feet with three decks, one of those being staging.
DeleteI remember your foray into the Rio Grande over Tennessee Pass in N scale, Bernie. I was sad to see you move on from it, but truthfully the Royal Gorge Route offers limited potential if local switching operations is a priority. Frankly, the same can be said for much of the D&RGW, which is what steered me to focus on the Joint Line through Colorado Springs.
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting these photos, it was nice to see someone modeling Pueblo, which was quite a railroad hub in its prime.
Regards,
Jim Eager
modelingthejointline.blogspot.com