Taking the overnight steamer to Washington...

See you in a few...

Pump House and Lineman

I continued working on the final details punch list for Falmouth. I resumed sculpting the climbing telegraph lineman for the pole, added some grain sacks, installed some guard rails and built a pump house.

The telegraph lineman is based on the photo from the Civil War. It shows a soldier at the top of  pole doing maintenance. Actually, in the photo it looks like he is hanging on for dear life as he poses for a picture. I can't see any tools.

I cut and modified a locomotive engineer figure from Cannon Scale Models so that he looked like he was climbing the pole. These figures out of production now. I found them at a train show for a good price,

 I replaced the Cannon loco engineers head, that had a typical RRer's hat, with a head from a 28mm Old Glory ACW soldier wearing a flat wide brim hat. The heads on Old Glory figures are overscale (they should be about 1/58 to 1/64th scale) and work well with 1/48 scale figures. I also converted a second figure that would be leaning on a tree watching the action.

Unfortunately, both these figures were damaged as I heated them to speed the cure of the two part modelers putty, in this case it was Andrea Sculpt. The metal in the figures actually melted. I used my hair dryer to speed the cure as suggested by the Andrea Sculpt instructions. Normally I use a small foil lined box with a single light bulb for heat. But I noticed the putty was taking a long time to cure with this arrangement, so I tried the blow dryer. Oh well.  Two little metal puddles later...

Unfortunately these two figures melted during
the conversion process. Note the very effective
backdrop and foreground integration  in
this view.

Here is the second pole climber with
 a coat of black primer and
dry brushing with white.

Fortunately, I have duplicates of the base figures.  So I redid the pole climber. This time around I used thick CAA to reshape the joints and Andrea Sculpt to make the jacket. This went quicker. I primed the figure and test fit him on the pole. So far, so good. Now I just need to finish painting him.









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As I mix up small batches of putty, I usually have some left over. With these bits I made grain sacks. I will need several hundred of these so it might be worth my making a mold and casting them.





























The pump house is a quick scratch build using scribed board and batten siding and scale lumber. The door is a Tichy casting. The stack is also a casting. I made a sign for the house, although I don't have a prototype to go by. It makes sense that they would have a pump for the tank. The small triangular area by the water tank looked empty, so I added the pump house. Once I decide on final placement, I'll glue it down and run a pipe to the tank.

Also visible in this shot is the guard rail I added to the turntable lead. This curve is very sharp and a guard rail helps keep the wheels on the rails. I also added  guard rails to the other sharp curves behind the tank.

Trimble Splices and Pole Line

The Falmouth and Clairborne Creek areas are now getting some final details.

Pvt McGuirk guards the newly installed pole line
and splice bars.

Wooden splice bars are now installed
every 28 feet.

I added wooden splices to simulate the rail joints (later these would be known as Joint Bars). These 48 inch long wooden pieces use 4 square headed nut and bolts to hold sections of rail together. I cut a batch of splices on my laser using 1/16th inch think basswood. The laser engraved the nut detail saving me the tedium of applying hundreds of NBWs.

Sections of rail in this era were 28 feet long. I filed small groves in the top surface of the long rail sections and then glued a splice bar on the outside of the rail. In the prototype the inside did not get a wooden splice, just the opposite end of the bolts and a small iron bar. I did not add these as they are practically invisible under the web. I touched the nut heads with a rusty red color pen.

This work went fairly quickly. The result is subtle as the laser cut wood splices blend with the ground color.

Next I added the telegraph pole line. This will start at the engine terminal shed and will extend all the way to Aquia Landing.  The pole line will require a wooden poles, insulators and wire.

I used 1/4 inch dowels for the poles. I roughed up the surface to simulate bark texture as these were basically logs.

Brass insulators with a stub protruding from the bottom helps strengthen the final
assembly. The ACW era insulators were secured to the pin with tar
or linen, but not screwed.

ACW era "hatpin" type
insulator

Next was the insulator. The photos of the telegraph poles at Stonesmans Station show the "hatpin" style of insulator being used with a wooden pin.


I made a trip to the local craft store to find some glass beads that would make a suitable insulator. I didn't find anything that would work. So I made insulators from brass rod using my Dremel mini-lathe.  I used square tooth picks for the pins. I drilled a .030 inch hole in the center of the toothpick and then glued the stub from the brass insulator into the hole. Then I glued the wooden pin to the pole. I drilled a hole through the wooden pin into the pole and then added a NBW to help secure the pin.

Poles waiting to be installed

The pole line without the wire 

Typical installation.

The telegraph desk is in this shed.

I painted the poles dark brown, dry brushed with grey and tan. The insulator was painted a light green while the pin got a light wood color. I installed the poles about every 18 inches. I used lycra thread to make the telegraph line.

Next I want to make a figure climbing the pole like the one in the photo. I started modifying a suitable lead figure. I'll finish him in a later post.

This shows the cut lines to reposition the figure

Busy Day at Falmouth

The Falmouth area of the layout is fully operational and almost completely finished with scenery. There are just a few small details left like the roof of the tool shed, installing the telegraph line and finishing the figures at Battery Schaefer.

I though it would be fun to make up a switch list, build a train in the yard and take it out. This is a harbinger of what operations will be like on the model railroad. I am pleased to say that everything worked very well. The new coupler magnets work very well. They are smaller than the previous ones and don't inadvertently grab both pins. The McCallum ran well. The extra weight helped. It had no trouble working the Falmouth yard.

This positive result provides motivation to continue work. Here are some iPhone snaps depicting the action.

Stacking wood at the wood rick. This is a SMR fireman figure.

Two box cars at the freight depot in Falmouth. John Drye painted the two figures, named Doctor Franke and Mr Drye.

This is a first generation switch stand that uses a laser cut base. The new ones are photoetched.



Seeking Freedom

Refugee freed slaves near Fredericksburg, VA.

My research shows that many former slaves sought freedom via the USMRR Aquia Line. See this post for more detail about slave experiences on the Aquia line. To try to depict and commemorate the experience I created a scene showing a family of freed slaves at Falmouth.  The figures  are from the Knuckleduster Women and Townsfolk sets that I painted as African Americans. I muted the colors added heavy mud weathering to simulate that these folk have been walking quite  a distance to get to Falmouth. My daughter looked at the figures and said, "Dad, you made them really muddy." I was thinking about the characters Coalhouse Walker and Wilma from E.L. Doctorow's, "The March" when I was planning this scene, though they didn't have children in the book.  By the way, "The March" is a great book that takes a personal look at Sherman's march to the sea.




The mule carries all the family's worldly possessions. I made the sacks on the mule with two part epoxy. I also made a pot and skillet to hang off the mule. The mule color is a dappled gray based on a color scheme I saw in a photo I found on the web. It just occurred to me that me looks like Eyore, of Winnie the Pooh.

The blanket on the box is also two part epoxy. The crate is one of my hard tack boxes.

I was going to hang the box on the mule too, but it was too much.

Here is the completed scene. The father gestures to the agent to show where they came from. 

Maybe the father will seek work on the USMRR construction corps.