Basic Terrain and Backdrop Coloring

The Muddy Creek bridge is a forested and swampy area. 

I painted the scenery today. Since we are using wood ties for the track, the terrain under the ties must be painted before installing the ties. So using a mix of burnt sienna, golden brown, brunt umber and trusty C&O Mountain Sub green, I gave the terrain a basic coloring. Before I did that I painted the blue sky with a few clouds as I didn't want to drip blue paint on the painted scenery. C&O Mountain Sub green is a grayish green color I have used on many of my previous modules and layouts. It works very well with the scenic materials from Woodland Scenics and others.

The overall layout depicts a scene on the Tennessee River, so I used some photos from that area to get ideas for the backdrop. I painted a distant ridge line on the backdrop. I haven't decided how the foreground of the backdrop will be painted. Much of it will not be visible once the structures are installed, so I may wait until they are done to see what works best.

It is amazing what a difference the backdrop makes. I also noted that the LED lighting is very effective with the brighter backdrop. They are working out just fine. It is starting to look like a layout!

I placed a depot from my home layout on the Road Show to get an idea of how things will look.

Testing one of Brian's backdrops behind the depot. This building is also from my layout
and is a stand in for now. The water battery is in the foreground.

Road Show Terraformed

The revetments for the water battery can be seen in this photo

With the terrain forms carved I added a layer of light weight patching plaster to smooth out the carved terrain. Before I did that, I made sure all the pink pieces were securely glued to the plywood surface and backdrop. I used yellow glue along the perimeter in places where it was needed.

I carved a trail heading down to the waters edge on the shipyard scene. Most of this slope will be covered with a marine ways showing a barge under construction.

The bottom photo shows a mock-up of the through truss bridge planned for that section. Also visible are some bluffs and slopes I added to give that section some vertical relief. This will add some variety as the other sections are essentially flat.

Road Show Work Session and Visitors

With the rail guns complete it was time to get get back working on the road show. Gerry stopped by on Saturday with another chocolate cake to energize us as we laid the sub-road bed for the layout.

Modifying the track plan

As we laid out the turnout mock-ups to see how the track plan looked in full scale, we decided to make some tweaks.  There would have been a nasty "Ess" curve in the three-way turnout in front  of the ship yard, so we removed it and simplified the whole design a bit.

With a finalized track plan, we cut strips of 1/8 inch aspen plywood for the sub-road bed. We glued this to the foam with yellow carpenters glue. We placed weights on road bed sections so they would dry flat and smooth on the pink foam.

River bank taking shape in front of the ship yard

With the glue drying on the road bed pieces, we used knives, key hole saws and Surform tools to shape the foam terrain.  In some places we glued small sections of foam back on the layout to make the river bank look more varied. The yellow glue on pink foam can take a long time to dry, especially in areas where the pink foam abuts pink foam. In some cases, the glue will never dry as it makes an airtight seal. But as long as it dries on the perimeter, we should be OK.

Mike, in his secret mission as a rebel spy,
is  plotting how to sabotage the Aquia Line.

Later on Saturday Mike Garber from Richmond and Peter Sefton from Alexandria stopped by to visit.

Mike is a HO modeler from Richmond, VA. He works for VDOT. He has relatives that fought in the ACW for the CSA.

Peter Sefton and I discuss the burned station at Falmouth

Like me, Peter is native New Yorker, but unlike me, is now retired as a census official. He  is very involved in historic preservation of structures in the Alexandria and Washington area. He lives in Alexandria. He has an interesting web page here 

New Maps of USMRR Aquia Line

I recently discovered the Historical Map and Chart Collection of the NOAA Office of Coast Survey. After some searching on their site  I found two new maps (to me at least!) of the USMRR Aquia Line.

The first one is quite interesting as it shows the HQ locations of the major units. It also shows many of the structures that occupied the area.

The second map shows the USMRR Aquia line in the upper right corner of a fairly large map. It is interesting as it shows a lot of woods and stream detail. Many of the farm houses are also identified.  You can find that map at this link http://historicalcharts.noaa.gov/historicals/preview/image/CWEVA

B&O Ironclad Car -- Take 2 (or 3 or 4?)

I was not happy with the earlier model.  So I tried again. The armor should be railroad iron. So it should have a "Tee" rail profile, not a rectangle. I was using code 55 rail to simulate the armor, which is close to the scale size, but is very fine.

I tried several techniques to secure code 55 rail to the sides of the car to simulate the iron armor. On the fourth try I decided to use two-sided transfer tape. That make sticking the iron bars easier to position and reposition if necessary. It also prevented glue globs from showing between the rails. I used the laser to engrave a set of lines to help in the spacing. Even with that the rails did not line up perfectly, but I think it helps the model.

The two finished cars compared. A couple others ended up in the trash.

The transfer tape is quite permanent. The rails are secure enough, especially for a static model.

As for colors, we don't know what they actually were. The dark gray armor on freight car red looked good to me.

So this is the version that will go to the B&O Museum. The earlier version will go on my layout for escort duty.

A slightly revised rear end.

The business end with the gun port cover. The cover was operated by a lever inside the car.