Ophir scenery work continues

As I think I mentioned before, I'm using drywall shims purchased from Menard's for my cardboard strips.  A box of 5 of these bundles costs about $32 - fast, pretty cheap, and far easier than collecting and cutting up old boxes.

After lots of hot glue, photo references of the prototype, and head-scratching, here's what the area looked like before the plaster cloth went on.  It's a complex area - in that first shot you can see the 3-track staging yard under the Elmer's glue - it'll remain accessible from the access hole (which is framed out here).  That track is at about 52" high.  Below that, at 47", is a return loop running under all of this.

Then there's the creek, coming into the scene near the speaker (yes, I know, perhaps I'll move it much later when this scene nears completion).  I had to figure something interesting to do w/ it, while evoking the prototype's sense.  Using the actual creek's route, I copied that and also managed to route the creek around the access hole, twisting and dropping below the town and eventually under the big 45-A trestle.

 And here's a number of shots of the scene after the plaster - where you can see the landforms emerging from all that cardboard.  I'm playing with a number of variables here - blocking nearly all views of the access hole from normal viewing angles, adapting the prototype's landforms to my space, and giving the eye lots of interesting nooks and crannies to follow.  The creek will - I hope - really draw the eye into the scene.   And the fact that parts of that creek will be hard to see to only add to the visual interest.

These first couple of shots are from really high viewing angles - which you can't see in real life without a ladder.  But they show how the creek, access hole, and everything else fits together.

Here is a view from slightly below normal viewing angles.  The hill behind this bridge is higher than on the prototype, but it's hiding the access whole.  And I think it'll work pretty well - evoking the very rugged terrain as you move away from the town of Ophir slightly and down under this bridge.

The bridge, btw, is about 65% of the prototype's size.  The creek twists down and exits between the two right-most foundations.  These are the three heavy footings for the lower bents of 45-A - they support their own set of heavy stringers over the creek - then the actual trestle bents for the bridge above were built on those stringers.

And another fairly high-angle view, showing the creek meandering below the town.  There's also a dirt road coming up the left side of the creek, crossing narrowly thru a couple of bents of bridge 45-A.  There's timber retaining walls supporting this road above the creek.

If you'd like to see photos of the prototype town and bridges, I have an extensive set of details & links on my Route Summary page - just scroll down to milepost 45 or so.

Enterprise scenery begins

Starting another mountain area... this is a steep switchback (the old Enterprise branch).  The main line here is curving below, and eventually entering a hidden area.  Above, the switchback leaves Rico and leads first to the Blackhawk mine, then continues climbing & reversing to reach the Enterprise mine.

Yeah yeah... I know... this branch was long gone by the time period I'm modeling, but switchbacks are really cool, both visually and for operations, and provides a great operational focus out of Rico that doesn't interfere w/ the main line.

There's an access hold in the middle of this (since that's a 30" radius curve on the main, making this scene almost 6' deep).  I plan to create the scenery to both break up the switchback visually, and hide the access hold from normal viewing angles.

There's a river running to the left of the mainline, which is already partially covered in plaster cloth (hard to see in these shots).  First step for the rest is some lumber framing to support the cardboard web.

These photos show where I'm starting from.

Galloping Goose history

A nice article on the history of the Galloping Geese - with a bunch of photos.

http://www.cortezjournal.com/article/20130822/LIVING01/130829959/-1/Living01/Galloping-through-history-

Big Boy is a movin'

UP re-purchased a Big Boy from a museum, and has plans to restore it to operation.  Big Boys are the largest steam locomotives ever built, and there's a only a few left.  None are operating.

The locomotive recently began it's trip to UP's shops... have a look!

Photo backdrops !!!

So - three new photo backdrops are installed now, and I am really pumped about them.  All are from LARC Products, who's quality and service is superb.

Here's the first area.  It's a tiny little open in the bathroom, giving a view and access to a 3-track staging yard, the main, and the yard lead.  It was small, and seemed to be begging for a little something.  I decided to start here w/ the photo backdrops, and see how it went.  Just for yourself, but I'm pretty pleased:

Before:

After:

Then it was time to move onto the Ophir area.  I was happily building rock walls in the area (lots, and lots, and lots of rocks!) and realized that right behind the loop, there was literally no room at all, and that photo backdrops would be needed.

To size the backdrops, I created a large 'ruler' and photographed everything, then sent it all off to LARC Products, who were able to photoshop and customize an image to fit, then printed it off.  I opted to not include the sky, so I did need to remove the area above the photo - a few evenings of very delicate scissor work.  Not hard; kinda relaxing actually.

So here's the before and afters of this area (complete with one of my helpers!):

And finally, the largest and most complex of the backdrops - behind the Ridgway yard.  This area is below the basement stairs at one end, and has a cutout entrance into a bathcloset & staging at the other.  Here's the before shots:

For the cutout into staging, there's actually the yard lead and a cross-over in there - visible (with the LED lighting I added) through the opening.  That's important for operation.  But how to handle it scenically?  My idea was to overlap and extend the photo backdrop right into it.  Here's some details of that little area.  As you can see, I extended some masonite over the switch machines (just screwed in place, thus removable if needed) - to provide a surface for the backdrop:

From there, it was tape the backdrop in place, then slowly remove the backing and roll it into place.
Results:

And finally - a hearty thank you to my helpers!  These backdrops really require three people to install, and these two were amazing: