Modeling Monday: The Middletown Scene - Airline Bridge over Route 9

Continuing in Middletown, as promised last time, here's how I did the Airline Bridge over Route 9. 

Always start with a prototype photo, if you can. Fortunately, I drive under this bridge every day during my commute to Hartford so reference photos are easy to get :^)

I started with a standard Micro-Engineering through plate girder bridge kit, built according to the instructions.

But I discovered quickly that I was going to have to try and "skew" the bridge in order to follow the Airline's track alignment over Route 9.  Thankfully, the bridge was long enough that I could afford to trim back a bit. Here it is mocked in place to start figuring the proper angles.

I eyeballed it in the proper alignment with the track centerline and then marked the cutting lines with a ruler.

Then used my bandsaw to cut it to the proper angle.

The bridge rested on the west end abutment fine - next I needed to figure out the east abutment.

In order for it to actually rest on the layout, the east abutment had to come in a bit closer - which required another trip to the bandsaw to cut the bridge down further.

Once it fit nicely between the abutments, I leveled it out using pieces of styrene as shims/bridge shoes.

And, of course, the bridge track required trimming too.

Once the track was installed, I weathered the bridge using Rustoleum Camo Brown paint & Bragdon powders.

Next up - doing the somewhat distinctive (or at least not at all standard or symmetrical) wing walls at the west abutment. I took the angles directly off of the prototype photo as you see above.

I made templates for the wing walls out of scrap foam core, which is much cheaper and easier to work with than styrene. Trim & fit to your heart's desire before committing to styrene.

And here are the foam core templates mocked up in place to compare to the prototype photo.

Once I was happy with how they looked, I used them as cutting templates to cut and trim the .060" sheet styrene. I used strip styrene to make the "cap"(?) on top of the walls. By the way, thanks to Bruce Wilson for convincing me to get this Ultimation sander - it's a super helpful tool, especially for this sort of work!

I painted the walls a base of Sky Grey (Tamiya XF-19)...

... and got some AK "Concrete" to try out for some concrete texture. Plain styrene certainly needs texture in order to look like concrete and this AK product - brushed on according to the instructions - does a great job.

Initially, it may come out looking a bit too coarse or larger than scale (left), but you can keep working it and even sand it down a bit if you like (right).

But there's no denying that the texture makes all the difference... as you'll see below...

Hopefully you'll agree that these "finish" photos compare pretty favorably to the prototype pics earlier in this post. I'm pretty happy with how they came out.

You may have noticed some timeline inconsistency in these photos though - we haven't yet covered (figuratively or literally) the terrain in the vicinity of Route 9 (despite what you see above :^) so that'll be next!

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!

Throwback Thursday - Starting Scenery in Middletown

I'm not even going to talk about how long it's been since I've done some "proper" progress posts, opting instead for "Wordless Wednesdays" (and I even miss those from time to time) and recurring seasonal posts . . . Unfortunately, apologies for not posting regularly tend to fall flat after having to make them a few too many times. But if you're reading this, I'm just glad you're willing to hang in there with me - and I'll do my best to post more regularly. I promise - to try :^) - if for no other reason than that I've needed to go back to old posts to remind myself how I did something - and if I don't post, there are no reference posts to reference!

So, by way of starting to catch us up a bit - and riffing off of the hint I included in a recent Wordless Wednesday - I've pivoted from operations related work (see "Ops Paperwork - Car Routing" - making waybill sorters and bill boxes) and plunged into the deep end of scenery at Middletown. I actually started way back in January, which makes this perfect for a "Throwback Thursday."

Here's what the area looked like in January:

This is how Middletown looked forEVer . . .

And this is how things look as of today. . .

The most noticeable difference is that the southbound lanes of Route 9 have been added between the Valley Main and the river (in the aisle). Terraforming and ground goop are done, but there's a lot of scenic-ing that has to be done.  Also, note that I've also started to mockup the backdrop pics.

Washington Street, looking west.

Airline bridge approach to the swing bridge over the Connecticut River (the impressive swing bridge itself, unfortunately, isn't modeled since it'd be in the aisle)

View southwest - not the mismatched concrete wing walls and stone abutment and pier.

I'll go into detail re materials & techniques in future posts - I have lots of fodder so hopefully there'll be more content here for you to enjoy (and for me to be able to look back to for future reference!).

So stay tuned!

Wordless Wednesday #531 - Did You Ever See a Mountain Blush?

 

Happy October!!

from Liberty Magazine, October 1946

Ah October! The best - or at least one of the best - months of the year. At least it's one of my favorites.

And if you live in New England, it's certainly the most colorful of months - and right smack dab in the middle of my favorite season: Autumn! It's also the shortest season... Since I only count when the leaves have erupted in full color, my favorite season lasts only a few weeks. Anything before that is "late summer" and anything after that is "early winter."

But for now, I look forward to enjoying the shushing of leaves, the smell of wood smoke in the air, the taste of a warm cup of apple cider by the fire. And it wouldn't be a bad thing if I spend some more time in the basement on the layout as well in the coming weeks - after all, it's always Autumn on the Valley Line!