Harbor Master Station

Here is a in-progress photo of the harbor master station I am building for the end of my pier. It is based on the Wiscasset, Waterville and Farmington (WW&F) pier station at Wiscasset Maine. The prototype building is covered in shingles as shown in the photos. This will be the configuration for the kit to be offered by Alkem Scale Models. I may do another version for my scene that uses board and batten siding as that seems to be what the USMRR used at Aquia.

The On2 and On30 modelers that are doing Maine will want the shingled version. The shingles are actual cedar wood with self adhesive film and laser cut to scale size. Even the thickness is scale size though the self adhesive film adds a few thou to the thickness.  I will also offer the shingles separately as they work in O and HO scale.

In the meantime, I am applying  coats of Minwax Polycrylic  Clear Gloss to the water surface in Aquia Landing. The instructions say three coats is enough for normal applications, but I am trying to simulate water and three coats is not enough to convey a feeling of depth. I am up to 5 coats right now and it looks like it is holding.  Has anyone tried using this product in 10 or so layers to simulate water on a model project?

The photos show the nice reflections I am getting with this surface. Once I get sufficient depth, I'll add the piers and docks. The final coat will be acrylic gloss gel to add some wave texture.  The reflection at the wall-flat water interface is not realistic. But once I add the piers and ships that discontinuity should be minimized.

Potomac Creek Bridge-New Photo

This gem of a photo popped up on a recent search of the US National Archive. I have not seen this one before. How many other gems are hiding out there?


I need to get a higher resolution copy of this photo. The .gif in the NARA website is low resolution.

Steamboats at Aquia Landing

These are views of two photos from the Library of Congress that show ships docked at Aquia landing.

The left photo shows members of US IX Corps under command of Maj General Baldy Smith embarking for a trip to Ft Monroe in 1863. The Corps later went back under General Burnside's command in the western theater. The IX Corps is usually associated with Burnside. Note the details of the ship, though the name is not discernible, the paddle wheel housing and walking beam engine is very clear. Modeling a ship loaded with soldiers like this would be a challenge.




The second photo shows the SS New York, a medium sized screw tug with faint markings for the Philadelphia and New York Express Steamboat Company on the conning tower. This ship is probably being leased by the US Army Quartemaster Corps for supply service, but I have not been able to dig up much more about it. The ship has a sail rigged on it's mast even though it is docked with a second ship alongside it. Even these simple tugs have interesting rigging that will be fun to model. Note the bent handrails, eagle and numerous other details. I believe the pilot house eagle was a traditional decoration for steam tugs and coastal craft, kind of like a sailing ship's figurehead.

Note the wagons, people, oil lanterns and cargo stacked on the dock. The oil lanterns provide and opportunity to add lighting to the layout. Also note the sailing barge in the background. All-in-all a scene definitely worth modeling.

His resolution versions of these images are available at the LoC website if you wish to study them in detail.

Another Version of the Harbor at Aquia Landing

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Here is another possible idea for the harbor area. This plan, version 2B, is a redesign of version 2A that doesn't expand into the main basement room. It utilizes a six inch wide pier along the backdrop to represent Burnside Wharf. A large paddle wheel steamer would be docked in front of the wharf. It's job is to look cool and hide any hole in the wall to staging (see below). A second large ship would be painted on the backdrop behind the pier. The pier would help hide the water-to-wall transition. The main draw back of this plan version is that it could be difficult to reach this track to couple up cars, especially cars all the way in the corner.

It would be possible to punch a hole in the lower wall and run the Burnside Wharf track into the closet on the other side of the wall. This would allow access to the cars if one would walk around to the closet. This plan has more operational possibilities than 2A, but not as much as the version 3.

The larger paddle wheel steamer would help hide the hole in the wall. The steamship Maple Leaf had a two deck superstructure which should be tall enough to do the "hiding" job.

I could omit the car float and assume it is on Burnside wharf in staging, since I haven't been able to find out where the float bridge really was. That would lengthen the tracks on the forward pier and make room for other ships.

I envision operations in this design to work like this. The pier tracks act as visible staging. The yard switcher in Aquia would retrieve cars from the piers and sort them onto trains to take to the various stations. There aren't any real "industry" tracks in Aquia. It might be worth trying to figure out where to fit one or two to make the Aquia switching job more interesting. Version 3 has that. Perhaps a stub siding could be fit into the area to the right of the turntable. Even without the additional length of staging in the closet, the pier is long enough to hold a full length train.

Hmmm.... here is a sketch showing what this design might look like. The track in the back pier is hard to see with the ships and buildings blocking the view. It really is just a not-so visible staging track.

Saratoga Battlefield Visitor Center

On our trip to Montreal we stopped by the National Park Service Saratoga Battlefield Visitor Center. I had never been to that battlefield before. It is a nice park that preserves a good portion of the actual terrain, which is very rough.

I was pleasantly surprised to find these two excellent dioramas depicting scenes from the battle.

The dioramas are presented as shadow boxes. The viewing window is about 3 feet square, with about 2 feet deep scenes. The figures are hand sculpted using forced perspective, so they are not the same scale.

The forest scene has some of the best model trees I've seen. Each leaf is modeled correctly.

The backdrop paintings are extremely well integrated into the scenes. The lighting used in the diorama works very well for viewing in person, but it made photography difficult.