Some Detailing ...

So, with the trough made and the hole cut into the foam I had to deal with the track.  Below you can see that I cut out most of the ties between the rails of the track that would service the trough.  This is a 5-inch straight from Atlas.  I tried doing the same thing with a piece of Peco track and the whole thing fell apart.  You can see that the Atlas ties stay in position even after the center portion of the ties are removed.  Peco couldn't do that.  The straight fits as close to perfect as I can get it, sitting on top of the trough which will be inserted into the cut out in the foam.  Later I painted the foam in the trough with a heavy coat of raw umber and then used some of the dust created by sanding down the Mold-a-Scene to coat the bottom of the painted trough, as if with grain to be milled.  Frankly, I don't think anyone (other than me) is going to see that, but I like that bit of detailing.

With that settled, it was time to work on the mill.

Again, this is the Walthers Sunrise Feed Mill kit in N Scale.  I'm not a great model builder, and I've been having some problems with these kits lately.  What I discovered -- besides my bad eyesight and the fact that I have 10 thumbs -- I don't really like those instant glues; the cyanoacrylate (CA) glues.  They just run like crazy on me and they smudge windows.  So I've really limited my use of such glues.  Instead I've been using Testor's model cement.  This requires that you hold the pieces together for half a minute.  But the glue stays where you place it.  And even after it has set for a while you still have a little wiggle room to square up the model if needed.  Of course the Testor's only works on plastic, so I keep a bottle of CA around for other projects.

While the model was now easy enough to put together, I was disappointed in it.  I don't think a lot of care went into its production, at least for N Scale.  The picture on the box shows supports for the dock roof, but the model does not include any.  Nor are the pictured drain spouts, ladders, and other small building details included.  The chimney is pictured as brick, but the actual piece of plastic is not molded in a brick design; in fact the sides are kind of concave rather than square.

Now, of course, I can add the details with scratch pieces, and I probably will (most of them, at any rate).  And I'll paint the chimney so it's concrete and not brick because it just will be easier, and it fits the type of structure, too.  But the warehouse doors are not made to open, which is really restrictive when putting together a scene.  Someone much better than me could, no doubt, cut those doors away from the model and put other ones in that slide.  I don't have that level of skill.  Another problem was that the model actual broke as I was holding a couple of pieces together as the glue dried.  You can see a crack where I had to glue the wall pieces back together just under the unsliding warehouse door in the concrete base.  I really wasn't squeezing that hard.

For the first time I used an airbrush.  Couple of problems occurred but all-in-all it turned out fairly well.  I've got some mistakes to take care of, some little places I missed, and then some weathering to do.  The model should be ready by the time I'm ready to set it in place.

Before that, though, come the hill building and then the cattle pen projects.

More on that soon ...

Just Had to Make It Harder ....

When using the Sunrise Feed Mill base (2 pieces) to position the industry track I made one discovery and had one crazy idea.

The discovery was that the foam pieces on Module 2 were not as level as I had originally thought.  There was a slight dip from the main section to the extension.  Of course, I had to fix that.  So I took out my Mold-a-Scene and mixed up a small batch and troweled it onto the uneven surface.  It was really crumbly, even after I added a tablespoon or so of extra water.  After working with it for a while I got it into the shape that I needed.

You can see some of the Mold-a-Scene under the base of the model after I sanded it down.

One thing I learned about Mold-a-Scene (that even my guys at the hobby shop couldn't be sure of) is that it will adhere to foam.  But it takes a long time to dry.  Five days.  Of course I'm building this in my garage and it's winter and it's the Northwest so it is cold and damp.  But 5 days?  Well, at least it dried and it sanded well.

Then the crazy idea hit.  Feed mills like this take delivery from bulk carriers, like a car-load of corn or something like that.  Then the corn is taken by the feed mill and ground and bagged.  So how do they get that corn or whatever?  Hoppers pull up and dump their load into a trough, which leads to the mill underground.

You can see the trough being cut out of the foam.  I used a small, flat-bladed wood cutting knife I had, taped up at a place above the point of the knife so that each incision I made would be the same depth.

I'm sure there's a company out there that makes a trough that I could use but I didn't want to go looking for it.  I wanted it right now.  So I built one on my own using plastic dock parts from Walther's foundation and loading dock parts kit.  The difficult part was cutting the narrow sides to the right length.  It seemed that in the prototype the rails would need to sit on the long edges of the trough in order to support the rails.  And as we know prototypical rails are 4-feet-eight-inches apart.  That's fairly narrow in N Scale.

You can see the the finished unpainted model in the photo above and below.

There's more to do on the trough ....

Getting Serious

The framework sat for months without me doing much.  Then the bug bit.

In the photo below you'll notice that I've done several things, not the least of which is place the foam base and painted it.  You'll see that Modules 1 and 2 are painted.  Also, Modules 2 and 3 have picked up another extension.  This is the 8-inch extension discussed in the last entry.

Every journey begins with a single step.
And strangely enough, the width of this module equals the length of one of my steps.

I chose foam for a base, rather than the open-lattice-work style, because a fair amount of my layout is going to be relatively flat.  Hills and water features and rising mainline and even a planned-for mountain for a timber industry scene can be added by cutting into the foam, adding to it with more foam, or using the old newspaper and Hydrocal plaster-soaked paper towels, all to great effect.  In the end, the flat areas will be flat, but all around them will be rising and falling topography.  Maybe not perfectly prototypical, but good enough for me.

I decided to start modeling with Module 2.  I haven't done this kind of work in a while and need lots of practice before I head into the tougher modules (the town and the timbered mountain).  This module will give me practice on a lot of things like laying track, creating tunnels, building hills, working with water, and building roads.

You will see some spray foam filling some cracks between the 2-inch foam base on the main part of the module and the extension.  My hand is none to steady with the hot wire foam cutter. Remarkably, though, the foam between the modules is relatively level, allowing for less futzing around to get the tracks to line up when I power and run the whole layout.

This module will have two tracks converging into one and two turnouts for industries: a Feed Mill (the Sunrise Feed Mill kit from Walthers Cornerstone) and across the tracks a cattle pen and loading dock kitbashed from N Scale Architect's inaccurately designed model.  They use a tab-and-slot method for building the kit (which makes kitbashing difficult, even if it makes kit building easier), but their chute design is very different from most cattle pens of the era I'm looking to build and fixing it will take some doing and maybe some extra fence building.

Also, the piece of cardboard you see standing up between Modules 1 and 2 represents the ultimate placement of a hill that will rise on either side of the break (unconnected to each other so that each module can be moved independently) and will run front to back along the entire length of the modules.  These hills will only be about 4 inches high, but will provide a visual break between the wide-varying designs of each module.

This was a major step forward for me.  Actual track planning has been a goal for several years but has mostly existed in my head.  That I'm already starting to lock down the cork and track is a great victory for me.