Modelrailroader.ca

It’s been a while since my last post – life is good, but VERY busy!

I mentioned in an earlier post that I had been struggling with roads – I didn’t want them to appear as an afterthought. In many cases, roads seem to be ‘eyeballed’ into place with little regard for the landscape topography, and are oftentimes  given a lesser purpose then they deserve. I’ve decided to build the WGR’s roads much like you might lay track, building the shoulders and hardtop first, and then defining the scenery around them.

I decided to use foamcore as my road-base as it would elevate the road three scale feet and allow me to build properly sloping shoulders. I was surprised to find that after factoring in shoulders, lane widths etc., that roadways are much wider then imagined. I’m modeling a 2-lane highway and the width is equal to many 4-lane models!

After securing the foamcore to the baseboard with hot glue, I filled in all the seams with successive light coats of drywall mud (spackle) – sanding between coats. You need to be careful when sanding as you risk ‘pilling’ the paper surface of the foamcore.

Once the spackle had dried I built up the shoulders around the road using white sanded grout. I’ve never used grout as a scenery material before and I’m already thinking I should have used a coloured grout as I risk churning up white dust if I need to drill through the shoulders. That being said, I’m quite pleased how the results turned out. The texture is a little course for gravel shoulders, but I’d rather have the texture too course than too fine. As well, a few coats of paint should help smooth the surface somewhat.

I’m interested in using grout more throughout the layout as it allows you to work slowly and creates a fairly hard surface – albeit somewhat brittle. I’m not convinced that it adhered well to the foam, but the addition of some adhesive to the mix may remedy this.

Progress on the WGR has been noticbly slow as late – life has a tendency of getting in the way of our hobbies.

I finally found a bit of time to finish the concrete overpasses. They needed a little filling, sanding and several coats of paint. I lightly weathered them with my airbrush as well as successive washes of diluted India ink. Most of the details I added aren’t visible – such as the ribbed beams on the underside of the deck – but I know they’re there, and they made the building process more interesting.

Truth be told, progress has been slow because I can’t seem to figure out how I want to approach road construction. Roads seem to be a afterthought on many layouts I’ve seen – snaking around the landscape contours on impossible grades with little attention to detail. (I did the same thing on the NES.)  One of my goals is to improve my modeling skills, so I’ve challenged myself to do a better job of roads and I’m still not clear how what process I’m going to use. (I’m far more interested in sprinkling some ground foam and planting some trees!)

Progress has been steady and I’ve completed the basic structure for the first bridge.  As mentioned, I’m attempting to pay better attention to non-train details – thus I’ve put a little more thought into this simple bridge then I would have in the past.

I’ve decided to freelance the bridge design based on local examples, as I haven’t any references for the ‘real’ bridge.  Likewise, I’m not interested in building retaining walls brick by brick, so I’ve opted to model poured cement.

The deck and stringers for the bridge were built using styrene.  I included all the stringers for prosperity’s sake, but didn’t worry about adding any details.  As for the retaining walls, I decided to use balsa wood.  While balsa does have a wood-grain texture that requires sanding, its bulkier dimensions simplifies the wall building process.

I built the wall off-site on a scrap piece of foam – affixing each of the walls to a sheet of paper taped to to the surface. I then braced the walls with some scrap balsa, again gluing everything to the paper base. I also reinforced each of the seams on the wall with bits of paper.

This technique is surprisingly strong, and once the glue had dried I was able to cut around the base of  the walls without effecting their placement.

I did a quick test fit and everything looks good. I’ll need to bring the landscape out to meet the bridge, and I still need to finish wiring the track.  I believe that I’ll apply several coats of paint and putty to the retaining walls to remove the ‘wood look’.

Before I can proceed much further in the layout I need to finish the wiring, weather the track, and install the concrete bridges for the highway. My last layout taught me that while trains are number one, it’s important to give roads/houses/industries and their elevations equal thought. I have seen (and am guilty of) adding roads as an afterthought – creating little more then a cow path through an unnaturally undulating landscape. Therefore, I’ve been making every effort to shape the roads and embankments as realistically as possible – or as realistically I can imagine.

This past weekend included a great deal of driving, so I had an opportunity to take a close look at the bridges and overpasses along the highway. While I couldn’t stop to measure each bridge, I was able to get a sense of the proportions and estimate the basic dimensions based on some known measurements.

For example.

• basic car-lane width: 12′
• sidewalk and shoulders: 4.5′
• minimum width/clearance from centre of rails: 14′ (28′ total)

With this I was able to draft out the following guide. I haven’t bothered to finish it as all I really need is a basic reference. I’ll spend the next few evening building the first bridge based on this guide. As the basic dimensions are there, the end result should be fairly convincing. Here’s hoping…