This post will be more boring than usual.  It will serve as a record-keeping function for me.

The last time the bump-out was seen, in Post 112, Rebuilding the Bump Out, Part 1, it looked like this.  The original bump-out was removed so the track could be re-aligned to accommodate two freight customers.  At this stage I had completed the new benchwork, laid roadbed and track, and completed landforms.  Ballasting was underway.

Here’s another view with everything cleaned up.

I wanted this track to be buried in mud and debris and grass.  I applied matte medium with an eyedropper between the rails in many places and then applied Woodland Scenicks fine green grass mix and then static grasses.

When everything was dry I went back and added some more ground foam, a few peel-and-stick weeds, and some dirt and other material to represent spillage and mud. 

I am very happy with the results.

The last major step to completing the new bump-out was installing new Masonite fascia.  I cut it at the wood shop at the air base.  Here’s the completed fascia in the back of the Volvo, heading home.

In addition to installing new fascia on the bump out, I also cut new fascia for most of the layout.  It is amazing how much punishment that fascia takes in just a couple of years.

I cut long strips of fascia at the wood shop and then was able to cut it to fit with a box knife.  A good, steady cut and a little sanding yielded clean, straight cuts.  Here is all the new fascia cut and fitted. 

A view from the other side.

Next I removed the new fascia again for painting.

I had to put on two or three coats of paint.  It took exactly two hours to complete.  I took a day of leave from work to get the job accomplished without interruption.

After the paint was dry, installation was a snap.  A thorough floor and layout cleaning go everything looks great again.

Now we can get back to building construction.  The major industry on this branch was Carstens, a contracting company that received lumber, construction material of all kinds, and coal.  That industry is not modeled.  The branch also had–in the very old days–a second grain mill, come coal bins, and a few other industries. 

As mentioned in a previous post, I don’t have information on the mill so I built a representational model based on the mill at Carver, Minnesota, which is near the family farm in Chanhassen.

The original plan was to sheath the building in dark, weathered wood.  After I completed the sheathing, using Evergreen styrene strip, it looked to me like a bad model of a log cabin as seen below.

I quickly repainted it gray as it was seen in the 1950s…

I think the mill was gone by my modeling date–1950–so I intend to finish the building as a weary but active structure somewhat along the lines of this Tom Johnson masterpiece.

Next to this elevator I’d like to build some coal bins.  Sanborn maps show bins, but there are no pictures available to help prototype modeling.  So, I’d like to build open bins and found this aerial photo online of another M&StL station that has the kind of open bins I’m looking for.  The photo below is little grainy, but you can see 6-7 bins there, built in sort of a semi-circle, and reached by a conveyor.

After all this work…and here I am thinking of rebuilding the whole layout!  – John

In my last post I mentioned that my friends Lonnie and Mary Bathurst were visiting Europe, and last week they came to visit us in Kaiserslautern.  My wife and I met them at the Hauptbahnhof and took them to our favorite German restaurant in Hohenecken for lunch, beer and conversation.    

After a hearty German meal we went over to Ramstein Air Base for a pre-arranged C-130J tour.  There was no rain in sight until we made the long walk out to the ramp.  Despite the weather the boys from the 37th Airlift Squadron gave us a first-class tour.   They even wheeled out a power cart and we got to tour the jet with power to doors and avionics and everything.

I just happened to lose my cell phone that week so I wasn’t in charge of pictures, but the crew got one of Lon in the left seat.  Lon looks pretty good wearing a Herc.  And yes indeed, the J-model has a HUD.

After a couple of hours at the jet and a long walk back through the wind and rain, we made the short drive to Albersbach where Lon was able to run trains at Ackley for a couple minutes.  

Please note the IC Orange shirt, worn specifically for the boys on the Proto Layouts list on IO.

Before The Visit

Before Lonnie’s visit, I was able to get a little detail work done on the layout.  Here’s a run-down of the improvements.

Below.  A quick and easy project was getting new photo backdrops and some more trees installed on the north side of the layout.  The track disappearing here represents M&StL’s connections to the north such as Mason City and Minneapolis.  In addition to being a major industrial and population center Minneapolis also provided connections to all the big northwest transcons.  

Here’s the north end scene with all the trees ans structures removed, ready for a face-lift.

Below.  Free time doesn’t come easy when you have a busy job and busy family–all of which come before my hobbies.  I don’t watch any television so when I have a spare ten minutes I run upstairs and try to get something accomplished instead.  Here, trees and bushes have been prepared, and new backdrops cut out.  Everything is set up and ready for action. 

I didn’t take any in-progress photos of the new work, but the shot below shows the new backdrops in place with a few trees planted in front to provide some depth to the scene.  It doesn’t look too bad.  The building at left is the Marshall Canning Co. #5 building, the major industry in town. 

The farm girls are from a Preiser “German Farm Workers” set, given to me by my daughter Kirsten a few years back.   

This photo, below, was taken with my iPhone6.  Please ignore the gaping hole in the horizon. 

Speaking of the horizon, I established one-inch as the optimal height of the horizon on my backdrops.  

I also made progress on the three tool houses at the IC-M&StL crossing.  I had completed and painted the buildings some time ago, and brought grey paint home with me from my trip to the U.S. in July.  I painted the trim, windows and details an appropriate shade of dark grey and got most of the details applied in time for Lonnie’s visit.  The shingles are from Minuteman Scale Models.

The tool houses need a little more work and some weathering, but I placed them into the scene for the visit.  The base for the interlocking tower is at right.  There’s a lot to say about this scene, but I’ll save the details for a later post.

This view, below, is the same scene last year, before I made some prototypically-correct improvements.  The view below is pretty sterile.  Above, with the more prototypical ballast contour and details, and the much-improved backdrops, it looks much better.

I built this telephone pole and breaker set using a Walthers kit.  It needs a lot of work still, but it adds a nice touch to the scene.

A few details were finished for the depot too.  The baggage cart is from Grandt Line, the dollies are old white-metal kits I’ve had around for 25-30 years, and the coal bin is another old white metal thing that I’ve had around forever.  The depot will need a lot more details.

Over at the Standard Oil terminal, I finally added a detail I’ve been thinking about for a long time.  Dan Kohlberg suggested I use solder to simulate hoses, and I ordered some solder–I think about .010-inch in diameter–from Amazon.  I pained it with a box car red and laid it under the tracks at Standard Oil to simulate a bottom-unloading hose.  It ain’t perfect but it does the trick.  I also heavily-weathered the track here, first with some artist’s oil color to get the glossy black to simulate a new spill, and then with AIM black powder to simulate old spills.  

The last thing I did was fix a pesky track issue seen below.  Down on the south side there was a spot where the track had risen slightly at a joint, producing some ugly and unprototypical bouncing of cars and engines.  I cut the rail here to provide a gap for signalling but I haven’t installed the detection system yet.  

A close inspection revealed that one of the ties had risen slightly, providing the bump.  Also notice…that despite my best efforts to model highly detailed track, I can’t get around using ghastly rail joiners like those on the right.  And when I soldered the rail joiners, it melted the plastic joint bars I used.  That joint bar looks ridiculous.

I undercut a couple of the ties on each side and that brought the rail down to level.

I spiked the rail into place, then replaced the joint bars.  I like to install joint bars over rail gaps to help hide them.  I used the old Grandt Line O scale Code 70 joint bars for this job.

Then I painted the rail and ties with my color of choice, Testors Rubber.  Unprototypical bumps: Gone.

The last scene, below, this of double-headed M&StL RS-1s at Ackley.  Consisting the engines with the NCE system is fast and easy, and the sound systems seem to differentiate just enough so you can hear both engines.

My blessings to you and your families!  – John G

I’m not a streetcar guy but I was in Milan, Italy on Monday and was surprised to see a whole bunch of old trolley cars running around downtown.  I managed to get one halfway-decent photo shown below.  I read online that these cars have been around since the 1920s and were built to an American design. 

The most interesting thing about these cars, apart from their cool early 20th Century design, was that they are loud!  Modern trams running nearby are quiet and comfortable, but these cars clank along and with every turn of the wheel there is a creak and moan and clatter over rail joints.  It’s great!  The photo below almost looks like it could’ve been taken in the 1930s, right?

The Milan cars have a pretty cool history, some of which can be read about at https://www.streetcar.org/streetcars/1811-1811-milan-yellow-and-white/.  Even if you’re not a streetcar guy the read is worth five minutes of your time.

Back to Ackley

In a recent post I mentioned that I had completed a lot of work adding new photo backdrops and trees to the south side area of my 16 x 2-foot layout.  Here are a few more photos of the work, plus some new photos of work in the center section of the layout.

Below, here is an overall view of the newly completed area.

Here’s a close-up of the layout near the M&StL-IC junction, with the new backdrop in place in the background.  The backgrounds are simply color photocopies, cut out around the tree-lines, and glued on the backdrop with Elmer’s Glue.

Here’s another view, slightly different from the view at top, with more trees added and a few more details filled in.  You may note that elevator in front.  It’s new.

In the early days there was another elevator on the stub-end spur across from the Ackley depot.  No photos of it have been found, and having just a footprint on an old Sanborn map, I went about finding a suitable prototype model the structure and provide a little business on that track.  

I focused on this elevator, below, which was on the M&StL lines at Carver, which is one station east of Chaska, Minnesota.  Chaska and Carver have a family connection.  One of the guys on the M&StL IO Groups list, Vern Wigfield, was a longtime agent at Carver.  Vern has been a great resource for M&StL historians and modelers, and a few years ago I found out that Vern and my mom went to high school together in the 1940s too.

I quickly threw together a model of the elevator, guessing at the dimensions.  I used Evergreen Models Novelty Siding for the job, and planned on sheathing the entire model with styrene strip to simulate wood.

I built up the basic superstructure first…

…then added the roof and elevator (below).

Above.  I think it’s too big.  The elevator part of the structure is too tall.  But I’m going to finish it and even though it might not be the final building on that site, it’ll work for the time being.

Meanwhile here’s another photo of the road at the center of the layout.  I shot the photo in downtown Litchfield, Illinois—does it look familiar, Lonnie?  I still need to match some colors and add a few details but it’ll work.

I also added about 30-40 new trees to the layout.  My daughter Kirsten and I built three different types.  We built some puffball trees on Woodland Scenics tree armatures, we built some puffball trees on Swiss weed armatures (more on that later…) and finally we made some trees using Super Tree material.  They all turned out well.

Below.  Here’s a view at the center of the layout where the road backdrop was installed.  There are several types of trees here, but the best-looking one in my opinion is the tree just to the right of the highway at the backdrop.

I made the tree using a cutting from a bush I came across in Switzerland last June.  The armature looked nice and I painted it lightly using a mix of dark brown and light gray paint, and then covered it with Woodland Scenics fiber and coated the fiber with Super Leaf material from Scenic Express.

My funny, funny daughter took a photo of me harvesting the weeds last year.  We stopped at a local grocery store to pick up food while staying near Lake Geneva, and I spied the bushes and grabbed a handful of weed cuttings.

Here’s a view of a freight car with the new backdrop in place at the center of the layout and some new trees in place.  To my untrained eyes the “back-scene”, as British modelers call it, looks perfectly natural.  Definitely not perfect, but the background and trees fit together and compliment the foreground scene where all the action is.

Progress is good and continues this week. 

Meanwhile, this photo, below, is added for all the guys on the Proto Layouts list on IO.  I posted a similar picture and one of the guys said “Looks good…now go straighten that crossbuck!”

Until next time.  – John G

I came home from St. Louis RPM full of motivation to finish up some important things on the layout.

The primary area of concern was the south side of my 16 x 2-foot layout.  I was unhappy with the photo backdrops I was using so while I was in St. Louis I took a couple of hundred pictures out east of the city in the farm country around Litchfield, hoping that some of those photos would work for backdrops. 

Below.  Here’s what I started with when I came back home.  I removed all the trees, buildings and detail parts from the layout and got to work.

Below.  With everything out of the way, I decided to install new concrete blocks that held the control rods for the mechanical interlocking system.  The mechanical interlocking was gone in 1940–I model 1950–but I thought it would be interesting to add the blocks.  I used Evergreen styrene strip for the job, measuring six inches by 12 inches, and then cut a whole bunch of them using a NWSL Chopper.

Then I made a little jog to install them at the right height and distance from the rail.  It would’ve been much easier to do this before applying any scenery.

Below.  Nevertheless, I was still able to install them all at relatively the same height and distance from the rail.  I continued installing the pads on all the tracks within about 200 scale feet of the interlocking.  I painted them with Tru Color Concrete.

You can also see the photo backdrops I was using originally.  That was my first-ever try at using photo backdrops.  They were an improvement, but I wasn’t happy with them.

Next I re-ballasted the IC mainline track per the 1940-era photo below.  The ballast profile on my layout as seen above just wasn’t prototypical.  The steam-era ballast profile is very prominent in the prototype photo:

• Ballast up to the top of the ties in the middle
• Exposed tie ends 
• Shallow ballast profile out to six feet

Isn’t this a great shot?  You’re looking down the IC towards Chicago.  The IC – M&StL transfer (interchange) track is just to your right.  This photo was provided by Doug Harding, courtesy the Ackley Historical Society.

The ballast used on the IC line on my layout is Woodland Scenics N scale light gray ballast.  I don’t know if it is prototypical but I wanted to create some contrast between the IC and M&StL lines.  

I simply added more ballast where I wanted, wetted it down by spraying it with a fine mist of rubbing alcohol, and then applying ballast glue.  My ballast glue formula is about 25% Elmers Glue All, 25% rubbing alcohol, a few drops of dishwashing soap, and the rest water.  This formula works good and doesn’t leave behind any white residue.

I also touched up the scenery a little bit here and there, and added a little more ground foam and static grass in a few places, and in general cleaned up a lot of minor problem spots in this area. 

New Backdrop Photos

The photo above shows some of the new backdrops photos I’m using after some of the IC line details and a few trees were reinstalled.  Here are three of the photos I used in this area, all of which were taken around Staunton, Illinois (near Litchfield).

When I was shooting the “backdrop photos”, I tried to follow a simple set of guidelines that I learned from the first round using backdrop photos:

• Take photos of an entire scene from end-to-end.
• When possible, include in photos an area that include a transition, such as foreground trees with a corn field in the background.
• If taking pictures of trees or other tall features, include the whole tree–don’t chop the top of it out of your photo. 
• Take some pictures that have diagonal land features.  We railfans tend to take pictures that are always nicely boxed in, or 3/4 views.  Note the photo above–see how there’s a diagonal transition at the bottom right?   Those features break up vertically-stacked scenes, and come in handy for creating backdrop transitions, so “think outside the box”.

To use the photos, I simply printed them out on an 11 x 17-inch sheet of legal printer paper, in landscape model, and that was it.  Then I cut out all the sky around the trees, test-fitted them, and then glued them on the backdrop using Elmer’s Glue-All.

Because I took series of photos I was able to easily match up different photo prints end-to-end.  The photo below is much improved!

I worked my way around the entire south end of the layout, slowly adding the photocopied backdrops. 

Below.  This is one of the three road crossings in downtown Ackley, Iowa.  This picture was taken in downtown Litchfield, Illinois.  It worked out nicely.  The large black line in the left center is a separation in the Masonite backdrop; this is where the two major benchwork sections separate (for moving and transport).  I needed to cut the backdrop photo several times to lay it over that break in the backdrop.  I also need to match the road color to the photo. 

Below is another photo of the new backdrops.  Behind the cement dealer there is a transition from foreground trees to a background soybean field, hidden by a couple of 3-D puffball trees. 

I added the dead tree to attract the eye away from the backdrop.  That tree was cut from an ornamental bush I found alongside a highway in Switzerland.  I got a giant handful of them before the family knew what was going on.  I dried it and painted it gray and that was it.

I’m happy with the new backdrops so far.  They are not very “Iowa Cornfield” but this area did have quite a few trees in the 40s and 50s, so the backdrops are prototypical although not quite representative. 

I continued to touch up grass, ballast, plant trees and add details as I worked my way down the layout.  I don’t want to install too many trees, but rather use a few trees here and there to provide a 3-D effect. 

Speaking of trees, Jim DuFour explained how he made trees in one of our many conversations at St. Louis RPM.  I finally got a new box of Super Trees shipped so I’m going to give his methods a try soon.  Jim told me he wasn’t happy with puffball trees.  I’m not either, although there are a couple still on the layout as you can see in the photos. 

By the way, if you ever need motivation to do better scenery work, look no further than Jim DuFour.  The photo below on Jim’s layout is an example of how Jim mixes model trees, photo backdrops and ground cover into a perfectly natural scene.   It was photos like this from Jim’s layout–and meeting the master himself at St. Louis–that got me motivated to get to work.

A few additional details and trees later, everything was back to better-than-normal.  There’s more work to be done but I really wanted to get some trains running again.  The work can wait.

One last photo–down by the depot–just for fun. 

I hope you guys have a blessed week!  – John G

The final light fixtures for the Ackley layout were installed last weekend.

You may recall that the layout is built at sit-down height under a sloped ceiling.  I placed LED lights in a triangular-shaped valance and installed the fixture on the sloped wall above the layout.  Then I installed a 4-1/2-inch Masonite fascia in front of the valance to clean everything up.  I still want to paint the fascia green to match the rest of the layout fascia and will get to that as time permits.

Looks like I’ve got a little bit of “mission creep” above the fascia on the valance at left.  

INSTALLING THE VALANCES

Below.  I went to out neighborhood Lowes-look-alike, called Obi, and bought a thin piece of Masonite and had them cut it into 4-1/2-inch slices.  No muss, no fuss, and no charge for all the cuts.  They were happy to do it.  Gotta love that about Germany.

Below.  The valance for the center section of the visible layout is seen below.  I made a triangular-shaped fixture and screwed it into the wall, installed the LED light inside, and ran the wires down the sloped ceiling with conduit.  This center section of the layout is hidden behind a chimney and it’s very dark back there without lighting.

Below.  Here is the valance with the new 4-1/2-inch fascia installed.  It looks a lot better.  I decided to run the fascia all the way to the skylight window at left.  I did not install lighting across the window opening, however, hoping that enough ambient light will get in from outside to keep everything well-lit.

Then I installed the last fixture, below, on the left side of the layout.  The south side staging yard is to the left.

Below.  Here’s a general view as you enter the room.  I get a little extra light during the day.  I get a whole lot of extra light during the summer months.  We’re up at 52 degree Latitude and the sun comes up at 0400 hrs and goes down after 2200.

Below.  This is a whole-layout view from the other end of the room.  You can see the entire visible layout, the chimney (which I have surrounded by cabinets) the lighting valance, and my workbench at far right. 

As a reminder the sloped wall is 21-1/2 feet long and the “visible” or scenicked portion of the layout is exactly 16 feet.  At each end of the layout is a 2-1/2-foot “curve module” that is covered by fascia; the main track curves behind each of the curve modules to reach a small staging yard on each end.

I did not intend to run the fascia all the way to the wall–just to the edge of the visible layout.  However, I ran it all the way to the wall on the left side and I think it looks pretty good.  So now I have to run it all the way to the right wall as well to satisfy my OCD.

Below.  This is the South Staging Yard.  There’s about 12 feet of wall space here, and I’m thinking of installing a small city-themed layout above it.  I’m thinking of a British-style traveling layout with a valance on each side, just small enough to fit into the family van.  More to follow on that later.  Right now I’m thinking of an industrial layout…somewhere in St. Louis…

I spent the rest of the week working on freight cars and made some significant progress and finished three cars and got a few other weathered.  Here’s a photo of my P48 WP car, below, which just needs Dullcote and couplers to be “done”.  I’ll cover all this as soon as I can get some computer time.

Looks like I need to re-install the grab under the placard area before we’re ready for Prime Time…

Hope you all have a blessed week.  – John G