Model railroad layouts plans

John’s been back in touch – this time with a model railroad quarry! He’s been busy adding to his fab layout:

“Hi Alistair,

Well, the ‘new’ WV Energy railroad is still slowly coming together.

This time I’ll document the quarry stone handling building (quarry pit to come) and the town of Craig, WV.

The quarry. Staying with mining and mining type industries, I decided to add a stone quarry to the layout.

I’ve added the stone processing part of the quarry and am working on the quarry pit. It turns out that the quarry pit is more complicated than I thought.

I’ve been carving foam for a few days and have enough magnetic foam pieces stuck to me and my clothes and tools to make several Styrofoam coolers.

Anyway, the pit, once carved out of foam will be glued to the underside of the layout deck. I’ll document that foam adventure separately.

The quarry rock processing structure is a complicated model with a lot of operational possibilities, and the tracks to it will be a separate DC analogue block with it’s own power-pack.

I still have to add more trash and old stuff as well as a building or 2, probably some kind of office structure for the business end of operating a quarry.

Now to the town. The research I’ve done of the towns of Appalachia coal country proved sometimes to be depressing. These little coal towns prospered in the 40’s to 80’s with some coming to life and remaining alive, and others passing into history. Of those that have managed to survive, shall we say, the blush is well off the rose.

My little town is somewhere in between likely desertion and unlikely renewal. It’s based on 500 towns in Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky. The closest I have visited is Laeger West Virginia, next is Thurmond, an actual deserted town also in West Virginia. I plan to add the Thurmond portion across the main line tracks, like the real town. These will be ¼ deep against the backdrop.

My town is called Craig, and is a simple place where a few businesses are open, the only real buildings in reasonable shape are the Court house and the Blue Barrister building where lawyers have part-time offices for the 1 week a month when the Circuit Court is hearing cases. Road repair and general upkeep have fallen away. About 1/3 of the businesses are closed, some of the buildings boarded up.

In my travels through many such towns I noticed a depressing lack of people on the sidewalks and in the businesses. Many have just the business owner waiting for a customer. (sigh) I always stop in and buy something, mostly stuff I don’t need, talk to them and get their history…they need all the help they can get.

Anyway, before this gets to morose, some good news – I can now run trains from the lift bridge all the way around to the other end of the bridge, and most of the time back the train all the way around the other way.

I say most of the time because I have found that the best way to check track and how well cars work is to back a train, the physical dynamics of backing cars will find every rough spot, and help pinpoint where track repair is needed.

One last point and picture. At the end of the big valley bridges in several previous articles I added some tunnel openings and a part of the mountain. This helps mask the workbench lurking just after the big valley.

Take care miniature world creators all over the world, and again thanks Al for all you do!

John From Baltimore”

A huge big thankyou to John.

I think John’s layout is another fine example of how picking a theme really makes a layout stand out.

There was one line in his narrative that paints a vivid picture:

“My little town is somewhere in between likely desertion and unlikely renewal”

You only have to glance at his pics and see he’s nailed that. It really made me smile.

If you want to see John’s last post, it’s here: HO scale coal mine

That’s all for today folks.

Please do keep ’em coming.

And if today is the day you get started on your layout, the Beginner’s Guide is here.

Best

Al

PS Latest ebay cheat sheet is here.

PPS More HO scale train layouts here if that’s your thing.

Dean’s been in touch with a very good ‘how to’ on model train mountain scenery:

“Al, greetings from Dean in New Mexico.

After a long winter of time off, I am finally getting back to construction of the Conejos Valley Railroad.

With the table and supports built and the track laid down and tested, I am now moving on to scenery.

This is a tutorial on one of my two construction methods, building up hills and mountains around layers of Styrofoam.

I know that lots of modelers use the more expensive blue construction foam, but when cut with a hot knife, the Styrofoam gives nice smooth surfaces.

Today, I want to show how I built and put down scenery for a small hill in the left front corner of the layout.

Before proceeding I added fascia boards to the four sides. This gave a line for the top of the hill.

Then I started cutting, with a hot knife, four layers of the Styrofoam to build up the hill.

I then glued the cut layers together with Liquid Nails.

After the glue dried, I sanded off the rough surfaces to make a smooth hill.

Then I coated the base form with plaster cloth. Incidentally, the cloth sold for body casting (sold by Amazon and others) is much cheaper than, and works just as good as, that sold for model railroads.

I painted the dried cloth with a mixture of acrylic paint. I used Apple Barrel brand paints from Amazon (cheap) and varied the recipe until I got the effect I wanted; a slightly reddish-brown color like that found in my neighborhood. (16 oz Nutmeg Brown, 2 oz Yellow, 2 oz Khaki, diluted with 2 oz water.)

Here is my recipe for scenic cement. Many modelers use ModPodge instead of the white glue, but I bought a gallon of white glue several years ago, and still have half of it left.

The scenic cement is painted on

Then I covered the wet cement with Woodland Scenics scenic turf: lots of Earth, less of Yellow Grass and Burnt Grass, only a little Light Green, only a little black Soil, and very small bits of darker Green.

Finally, I use white glue to attach clump foliage (Light Green, Medium Green. And Dark Green, small amounts).

Since I am a sloppy worker, I always get spots of plaster on the track and roadbed. I treat it with water, and it is sucked up into the rubber roadbed. At that point I ballast the track. (Subject of a later discussion.)

And here is a photo of the final results

A big thanks to Dean for sharing his way of making model train mountain scenery – it’s a really clear ‘how to’.

That’s all for today folks.

Please do keep ’em coming – I know I keep saying it, but it’ still jolly quiet.

And if today is the day you stop dreaming and start doing, the Beginner’s Guide is here.

Best

Al

PS Latest ebay cheat sheet is here.

Tom’s been back in touch with his stunning On30 layout.

I think you’ll recognise it as soon as you see it.

Well, have a look at what he’s done now:

“Thank you all for the great comments you have made.

Will have shot of my On30 layout soon, while not complete it is now 99% done and I will try to post the latest sections on this site.

Should anyone be traveling in the Syracuse NY area please look me up and you can have a tour of the layout.

This I’m afraid is the last of the Narragansett RR, age has caught up with me, I’m proud to say that I have been in Narrow Gauge Gazette 3 times, twice in MR, twice in MRC and many other publications.

Tom Pres. CEO and mostly Janitor Naragansett RR”

A huge big thank you to Tom for sharing his stunning On30 layout.

Some layouts just have bags of character and this is certainly one of them.

Hope you enjoyed his pics as much as I did.

That’s all for today folks.

Please do keep ’em coming – it’s still jolly rather quiet this end.

And if today is the day you get going on your own layout, the Beginner’s Guide is here.

Best

Al

PS Latest ebay cheat sheet is here.