The Middletown Scene - Route 9 Terrain

Towards the end of the last post, you saw that the Airline bridge had been "terrain-ed in" (to coin a phrase), but that was getting a little ahead of ourselves... Follow along in the captions for the process I used for the terrain around Route 9 (and the Airline bridge) - as you'll see, I use a variety of techniques depending on what's needed.

The foam board base had been here for YEARS, acting mostly as a shelf for tools and such, but it provided the foundation for Route 9 itself - which was made up from foam core (foam core posterboard with the paper peeled off makes for great concrete road texture).

We can't avoid at least a little compromise when it comes to scaling things down from the prototype - and, unfortunately, and the distance from the Airline bridge to the Washington Street intersection had to be severely compressed, resulting in an unprototypical hill/grade. But it at least conveys the sense of the area I'm modeling - it's impressionistic - and would you have noticed if I hadn't pointed it out?

The area "south" of Washington Street to Sumner Creek is totally open here and will get the cardboard lattice treatment.

This is a good view of the two major methods I use to cover & fill in terrain - it's typically some combo of foam board/scraps and cardboard lattice.

The cardboard lattice technique is pretty easy and straightforward - just hot glue (or even staple) vertical strips...

... and "basketweave" horizontal strips. It's incredibly versatile and can be squished and manipulated to get the rough contour you're looking for.

It's an especially effective and easy technique for quickly covering large, open areas. How would you go about covering this with foam board?

It's super easy and quick with the cardboard lattice.

Unlike foam though, it does require the extra step of adding plaster-impregnated gauze (or plaster-soaked paper towels, which are way too messy IMO).

Back to the Airline bridge area, I used more cardboard - and my foam core wing wall templates - to rough in the terrain around the abutment. There's no "right" way to do this - just keep gluing strips in as supports for the plaster cloth & Sculptamold/ground goop layers (so be sure to allow for those).

Plaster cloth layer applied

Ground goop layer applied

As you can see, the "terrain-ing" (aka "terraforming") stage goes very quickly and provides a HUGE bang for the time, vastly improving the overall look. The next step will be to start adding color and texture in the form of ground foams, grasses, bushes, etc.

But that will come a bit later. One of the perks of having a large-ish layout is that there's always something different you can do, depending on your mood. Not ready to start adding ground cover yet? How about we do something with Washington Street?

Next time we'll try to make some Walther's city streets a bit more realistic . . .

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!