This blog is about my current model railroad layout project; The N scale "Summit" layout, which is a freelanced interpretation of the Southern Pacific Tehachapi tunnels and their surroundings. Or at least, that is what it is meant to be. What it will turn out to be is another matter. The banner photo above shows what I want to recreate in N scale.
I have done some more scenery work. I tried to get the part I did earlier to looke a little livelier by adding some green scenery material. And I scenicked a few more feets, which did not have any scenery at all. Here are a couple of pictures (the background is still just a temporary piece of cork).
Click the images to see larger, higher resolution pictures.
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I did not have much time for modeling during the weekend but I had time to sneak in a scenery test of sorts. I scenicked a few inches closest to tunnel #15. I started by painting on white glue and water, on which I then spread a layer of brownish or tan sand.
Along the track I laid a string of lighter and finer sand which I tried to shape into a maintenance road. Last I sprinkled on some static grass (color: wild honey). Here are some pictures. I temporarily put a piece of cork behind the scene just to screen off all the glue bottles and stuff.
Some kind of reflection has colored the loco cab windows blue!
I have continued the work on the "foam slopes" in front of the tracks. Using a handsaw I finalized the form of the slopes. I tried to avoid all flat surfaces since in nature nothing is seldom level or flat. I also smoothed the surface with a coarse (#80) sanding paper. After that I filled out the seams and any large holes with a spackling compound. This served two purposes; 1) To disguise any horizontal or vertical seams between the foam blocks that could otherwise show through the scenery material, and look plain unnatural. 2) To stop the scenery material from sifting through and ending up under the layout. Here is a picture showing the progress that far.
Next I painted the foam with a tan latex paint.
Time for the fascia. But first I mounted two strips of the kind of rubber sealing (or whatver it is called in English) that you normally use to prevent draught from windows and doors. I put the strips horizontally on the benchwork, as shown in the picture below. I had two reasons for doing that. 1) To prevent the glue and water mix I would later use to secure the scenery material from flowing down between the benchwork and the fascia, and ending up on the floor. 2) To prevent the hatches on the underside of the layout from catching the fascia (I did not anticipate this problem and had not made sure that the hatches did not protrude outside the benchwork).
At the lumber yard I bought a board of Masonite (tempered hardboard) and had it ripped in strips roughly as wide as the highest part of my fascia to be. Home again, I clamped a strip of Masonite to the layout, as shown below.
Then I traced the scenery contour with a pen, on the "inside" of the fascia, unclamped the Masonite, cut it with a jig-saw along the pencil line, and screwed it to the layout, as shown below.
I then did the same thing on the other half of the layout. The final result looks like this. Looking good, I think.
Once I'm done with the scenery I will probably paint the fascia, the color yet to be decided.
Yesterday I started on the scenery between the tracks and the front of the layout. Using a handsaw I shaped pieces of extruded foam into the basic shapes of the slopes below the track and roadbed.
Here are the first couple of pieces, glued in place with ordinary white glue.
And here the rest of it is in place as well. When the glue has set I'll come back and do some more sawing and filing. Right now the shape is more of an outline rather than final.
A maintenance road will run along the tracks in the part of the scene that is to the right of the picture above. But right here the road will divert down and instead run further down the slope. That is the reason for the odd piece of foam in the lower right corner of the picture. That is where the road will come down.
These are the tools I used to cut and shape the foam. It is a messy job, with all the small foam chips flying around, but the whole process is quite straightforward.
All the track is now ballasted.
And I have also done the second tunnel portal and installed it.
Here is a train emerging from the tunnel.
