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!

A New Approach to Blogging... And An Update (Fascia Painting, Scenery, and Repair)

At the risk of repeating myself, it's axiomatic that there's an inverse relationship between layout progress and blogging about the layout. Unless you're not doing either, which I hope isn't the case . . .

Well, it certainly hasn't been the case here on the Valley Line - I just can't believe it's been literally over two months since I posted an actual layout update. In my defense, we had a wonderful visit with my parents and a trip to Cape May during that time, not to mention trying to wring out as much as possible of the last weeks of summer, including a spectacular stargazing cruise.

And sure, I've uploaded quick little posts showing that I chased the modern-day Valley Local, started track weathering in Saybrook, and even did some rocks around Old Deep River Road and mocked-up a photo backdrop in the Deep River scene, but progress updates per se (not to mention posts about other things, op sessions, and such) have been harder for me to get around to posting.

So, instead of just blowing them off, I've decided to take the same approach to blogging as I have to the layout itself - tackle them one little bit at a time. If this new approach works, you can expect more frequent - but shorter - posts here at The Valley Local (though not as short as the "Wordless Wednesdays" I've limited myself to lately...).

#DoOneThing

At the risk of stepping on the toes of my good friend Tom Jacobs with his #AnHourADay, sometimes I don't even have an hour to spare - but if I can just #DoOneThing, progress will add up over time, a little bit at a time.

So, in preparation for an upcoming layout open house, I figured the biggest bang for my time would be to paint some fascia and put down some ground foam and I broke each of those projects down to smaller tasks I could do relatively quickly. . .

Fascia Painting

One of the selling points of model railroading to the Missus (not, to be fair, that she needed any convincing) is that so many of the skills you develop building a layout are transferrable to working on the house. Suffice it to say, I've become really good at patching/topping, and painting...

To wit - here are some "before" photos of the fascia:

Shailerville Bridge area

Somerset section and staging yard

I forgot to take a "before" photo of the Mill Hollow section, but here it is as the first of the "during" photos.

The process is pretty straightforward: I sanded down all the rough areas, spread lightweight spackle over the holes and gaps, and sanded smooth once dry. I repeated the process 2-3 times in order to get as smooth a base for painting as possible. I then rolled-on a primer coat of latex Kilz2, and a top coat of my agonizingly-chosen fascia color.

And here are the "after" photos - quite an improvement!

Shailerville Bridge

Somerset

Staging yard box

Mill Hollow section

Base Scenery

Eagle eyes might have noticed that the end of the peninsula in the foreground of the photo above has been transformed a bit. Yes - I've been confronting my scenery phobia by "just doing one thing" with regard to scenery, "just" doing a base coat of ground foam - and it's amazing what a difference it makes!

After a few fits and starts (one of the downsides of waiting too long between scenery sessions is that you have to relearn so much), I've settled on the following process for base scenery:

Step 1: Paint full-strength white glue over the area - in this case, dry brown ground goop (Sculptamold colored with latex paint color matched to the dirt I use).

Step 2: Sprinkle on a variety of different colors of fine ground foam, meant to represent the "thatch" below the static grass which will come later. In my case, I use the different Woodland Scenic colors in the above photo, using "Burnt Grass" the most.

Step 3: Dampen the foam with a mist of "wet" water and drizzle on diluted white glue to fix in place. One of the problems I had was that the foam ended up drying much darker than it went on. You can see the contrast between the glued/dried area and some dry foam I just added.

I actually came up with two solutions to this persistent problem:

1) I sprayed cheap hairspray as an adhesive and sprinkled new/dry foam on top of that; and

2) After wetting the foam as in step 3 above, I just added more ground foam on top of the wettest areas.

I'm happy to say, both approaches work fine. And - at the end of the day - as so many folks have reminded me: "It's scenery - you really can't mess it up!"

Speaking of messing up though, I realized almost too late that I should deal with the roads before adding the ground foam. Here, I used my tried-and-true technique for making "tar and dirt" roads by applying a thick coat of black paint and sifting dirt on top. Click here for more details about this process.

And here are the "finish" pics of the end of the peninsula. LONG way to go yet, but certainly gives it a base level of "finish" and it's much better than plain brown foam or Sculptamold!

"Fixing" Scenery - a.k.a. Scenery Over Scenery

I'm learning that effective scenery has a LOT to do with layering - texture over texture. The more layers and textures, the better your scenery will look.

But it's also true that you can apply more scenery over previously applied scenery to change the look or to repair an area that's bothering you.

Case in point: This "hole" in the scenery at Shailerville Bridge:

I don't remember whether the fascia was added before or after the scenery here, but I wanted to fill in this hole behind the bridge abutment and the gap behind the fascia. I'd already painted the fascia here (see earlier in this post :^) so first step was to mask it off to protect it.

Another view of the hole/gap. I suppose I could have passed it off as erosion - or just cut the fascia down to match, but the solution ended up being easy peasy.

First - just like the prototype would - I backfilled the area with "fill" - in this case, some of my handy dandy ground goop.

Next, I daubed some white glue on the area between the fascia and the poles and added some static grass.  By the way, the Woodland Scenics Static King is the BOMB - especially when used with the AC adaptor.

While the goop was still wet, I blew on some dirt using a folded index card to help direct it.

And here's the result - MUCH nicer, I think.

Of course, this is only a meager attempt to gild the lily - BillS is responsible for all the rest of this amazing scene. But hey, I filled in the hole! And painted the fascia . . .

I've made some additional progress on the layout since these photos were taken, but - in order to stay true to my new approach - I'll stop for now and will post more soon.

In the meantime, thank you for your patience with my spotty posting. In addition to more-frequent posts, there are some cool new developments coming in the next few weeks/months. So I hope you're able to stay on board The Valley Local - having you along for the ride makes this journey even more fun!

Skirting "New London" Staging

To those of you in the US - Happy Thanksgiving! And no matter where you are, here's hoping today - and every day - you're able to enjoy some quality time with your family, despite the current crazy circumstances.

Speaking of crazy, the crazy long work hours I mentioned in my last post may finally be calming down from "crazy long" to just plain "long" :^) so I hope to be able to get to the layout a little more often than just a few hours on Sunday afternoons. But even a small block of time can be very productive if you have a specific project in mind, and the materials on-hand to do it.

By way of quick background, "New London" staging represents Fort Yard in New London, Connecticut, where trains from the east (Providence, Boston), and northeast (Worcester, Maine) will originate on my layout. Also, as on the prototype (though not modeled), there's an interchange with the Central Vermont at New London as well. The staging yard itself is - and will remain - "off stage" to support the illusion that the trains coming from there are coming from "the East or Northeast." As such, it's located in my workshop (an unfinished portion of the basement) - WAY offstage from the rest of the layout. Unfortunately, that also means it's subject to dust and such.

Thus the "boxing in" which was the subject of my last post. And here's where things stood at that point:

Like many/most layout owners, I take advantage of the area beneath the layout for some storage. In this case, I gathered all the random construction materials (foamboard, cardboard) from around the rest of the layout and put it all here. That certainly decluttered the rest of the basement, but now I had all that clutter here.

And what's the best way to deal with clutter? "Get rid of it" you say? Well, I suppose you COULD do that. But what if you're convinced you'll need it "someday?"

Just hide it!

And that's what I did, with some super simple and inexpensive skirting . . .

I started by hot gluing clothespin "clips" on the back of the fascia.

Then it was just a simple matter of rolling out and clipping up some landscape fabric. I had 3' width on-hand, but depending on your layout height, you may want wider/taller fabric. To secure the end of the fabric at this door . . .

. . . I just used some duct tape. See what I mean? Easy peasy - and inexpensive!

But, despite the inexpensive nature of this approach, you can see it gives you all the visual benefit of more elaborate (and expensive) skirting. And it literally took me about 30 minutes to do - start to finish.

Now, admittedly, my standards for a staging yard in an unfinished portion of the basement are a bit, um, "lower" than they might be on the rest of the layout. In other words, I haven't decided yet whether I'm going to use landscape material for all my skirting. But given how quick and easy it is to install - and given how outrageously expensive curtain material would be for a large layout like mine - I may just figure that it'll do just as fine a job and blend into the background.

If folks are paying any attention to my skirting, the layout isn't as compelling as it should be. And we can't have that. :^) 

One final step I took - and which, unfortunately isn't really easy to notice in the photo above (so click on it for a larger view) - is that I "filled in" all the open areas (except the access hole in the back left corner) with cardboard. Not only does that cover the remaining benchwork, but has the practical benefit of keeping things from falling to the floor. And that's a good thing.

What's not such a good thing is discovering a switch point that has come unsoldered. UGH! I don't know whether all my vacuuming of the yard pulled up this point, or how it might have happened, but fixing it is now at the top of my to-do list for the next time I have a spare 30 minutes or so to get back to the basement.

Here's hoping you're able to get to your layouts as well - whether today (if you have the day off) or sometime during the upcoming weekend. In the meantime, here's wishing you and your families health and happiness today and during the upcoming holiday season!