The Middletown Scene - Route 9 & Fascia

As I mentioned in my last post, I finally started filling in the Middletown Scene. First order of business was to fill in between the Valley mainline and the aisle by adding the southbound lanes of Route 9. Details in the captions...

As I mentioned, I started by adding Route 9 between the railroad and the "Connecticut River" (aisle). The road surface is foamcore board with the paper peeled off (my favorite material for doing concrete roads). The rest of the terrain is scrap pieces of foam board, hot glued in place.

View looking west on Washington Street. I wish it wasn't necessary to have there be such a steep grade in the road, but it was necessary to get the road from the grade crossing to underneath the Airline Bridge further north. Luckily, the foamcore is just the right thickness for the grade crossing to match my MicroEngineering Code 70 track.

You can see the Airline coming out from under Main Street (the wall - click on the pic to embiggen). The bridge over the CT River will start right here over Route 9.

Looking further north, you see the approach to the Arrigoni Bridge roughed in (it's the yellowish foamboard) and the Miller Street neighborhood mocked-up further north on the right.

West end bridge abutment mocked up in place. I'll be doing a photo series on the abutment, pier, wingwalls, and the bridge itself in a future post.

I needed to trim the foam back to make room for the fascia extension (to cover the foamboard ends) - and I wanted to make sure that the face of the foam was perfectly vertical. So, I clamped a level onto the hot wire tool. I know BillS would be proud (as soon as the hives calm down...)

Fascia extension in place - finishes off off the foam nicely. I made this piece from scrap & cut to fit.

I used a combination of hot glue and PL300 foam-safe construction adhesive to mount the extension. Here, I'm razoring off the excess hot glue that squeezed out.

I used a strip of masonite to help guide the hot wire tool cut a nice slope (though, now that I think of it, the northbound side of Rt. 9 should be here, or at least in the aisle, so there shouldn't be a slope. Oh well, nobody should know that or notice . . . and I don't have to do another long fascia extension)

Here are a few overview pics of the Route 9 area, prior to painting the fascia...

Next step was to patch the screw holes . . .

and add topping to the seams & sand it all...

As you can see, the fascia extension seam needed a LOT of hiding!

After the topping dried, next step was to prime . . .

. . .  and then paint to match the rest of the fascia. Just the first coat here, but already makes it look more finished!

Finally, I needed to add back all of the ops stuff that I had to remove to paint the fascia.

Next up - The Airline Bridge over Route 9. Stay tuned!