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Lots of progress! The most obvious is the installation of the finished custom profile fascia board, made of 1/8" hardboard. Not only does it provide a finished edge, but also doubles as the structural anchor of the mountains. I am very pleased with the results, as I had my reservations on whether the hardboard would take a bend this severe. It worked great and is tough as nails.
My facination with a snazzy profile fascia board following the rolling contours of the terrain stem from my childhood. When I was young, our train layouts were flat as Kansas... built on 3/4 plywood atop shop horses, there was NO topography (with the exception of the perennial pre-formed Styrofoam mountain.) With a massive sheet of grass paper lying under track and all, if you wanted a river or roads, you were happy to paint said grass paper. And that was that.
Then one day I spied a photo of a truss benchwork layout with rolling hills,dipping streams, with no regard to a "flat surface" and an amazing profile board that followed the contours of the topography all the way around. I thought that was the coolest thing - like someone simply "cut" the landscape out like a cake slice. I vowed I would do the same someday.
There's a lot of finished screws, but believe me, you need them all to subdue that hardboard. I don't want to be standing nearby if it blows!
At eye level the topography really becomes apparent and a flat tabletop is hard to detect.
I think little details, like this culvert, pull the viewer into the scene. But there is still so much to do along the profile.
Here you see how the "slice-through" of the mountain is the support for the cardboard strips that flesh out the landmass.
An opening at the back river gorge also pulls the viewer into the scene. Makes the precarious height of the stone arch bridge even more dramatic.
This is a good view of the fall-off at the edge and the slice-through effect on our beloved Old Dutchman Highway.
Just an update on an earlier angle I photographed to show progress. I learned a valuable lesson regarding Steam Engines. It seems most steamers have nickel wheels, and nickel wheels and nickel track and steep grades equate to massive wheel slippage regardless of how many or powerful your wheels are. The answer (I found out to my expense) is purchasing a quality engine with traction wheels on the drive wheels. I went from a 4-8-4 that couldn't pull a caboose let alone itself up the mountain... to this marvelous little 2-6-0 that can pull up to 11 cars (at slow scale speeds to boot) up the airy mountain with easy silent resolve. At the moment, I'm a ROUNDHOUSE Brand fan. However, LIFELIKE Brand, to which I had an ill-informed childhood loyalty, can take a wheel-slipping leap into my gloss medium river!
The Ol' 32 rounding the bend over our new authentic wood plank RR crossing Old Dutchman Highway... Or was that Route 209? Or State Road 739? Ah, the clarity of Pennsy roadway markings. Guess we better ask that guy in the shack for directions.
This is an interesting comparison of the initial plan, and how the reality has changed by design or necessity. Most of the changes I don't mind except for the inability to fit a turnout for that right side spur. So I settled for a "derelict spur" cut off from the main line.
Tunnel work and mountain building has begun. Hydrocal poured into rock molds produce the sheer NE Pennsylvania strata geology I need in these tight fit areas.
Yes. Tunnels look silly without mountains over them. I fashioned the immediate inside tunnel walls from foam board covered in black coal for texture and a little black glitter for that oily anthracite rainbow sparkle- ummm, should anyone bother to look that close.
I wanted to work a stand of tall pines into the layout and thought they might frame the seemingly large-for-scale Apple Valley Station House nicely- perhaps beating it down a bit. I made the pines from plastic armatures, sculpted better trunks from plasticine, painted and added the branch work by hand. My better attempts are towards the front... the not-so-much's fill in behind.
Apple Valley Station really came alive when I added the people. I also installed an amber LED as a lamp by the freight doors. Very moody...very Casablanca-like. Where's Bogie?
You will also notice that they use black cinders for ballast at the station. No, I don't know why.... ask a conductor.
Here's the first pine stand in detail. Note that nothing grows under their thick shade and blankets of needles. Heck, pine needles have even accumulated on the station roof.
An update of the Yoder Farm. Note I removed the hay-stands for a hay stack. Yes, I modeled each one of those pumpkins from plasticine, ribs and all. I halved them twice to get them down to scale and they are still award-winning monsters...just compare to Yoder's tractor!
This is the new Yoder Farm House. Nice porch. And, no, old man Yoder is not arc welding in his bedroom.
So here's the addition of derelict track that was cut off from the main line some years ago. Those good ol' boys, Don and Ray lucked-out when they found that abandoned oil tanker car still on the tracks and rolled it up behind their heating oil business as an extra storage tank. So let's get this straight. Don drives their oil truck up to the next town where there's an active rail spur that delivering oil from western Pennsylvania by rail tanker; fills his oil truck; drives back to their heating oil business and fills up the derelict rail tanker until they need to deliver oil by truck. Did you get that? Truth is truly stranger than fiction.
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