I've been a model railroader all my life and never remember not having trains. I started out with an N-scale layout when I was five, moved in to HO until I was 30, switched to S scale for another few years, then to On30, HO and then On30 again!
"And just how are you going to build an adobe trailer park?" - Pedro
It is now time to add the structures as the track plan is pretty much completed and the grades checked. I'm really liking this railroad! Let's start with the mine. I always like to add mandatory structures first, then ancillary ones. That way you make sure your priority buildings get their fair share of real estate. In O scale, you can run out of room fast. Just some CAD tips here. I draw my drawings in layers. A layer meaning all like components are drawn together and saves as a separate and distinct group, and usually all one similar color. These layers can be turned off and on so that you can either focus on them or move them to work on other areas. Not sure if I really explained that well. So here I'm starting a structures layer and making it brown. I do this with every layout. I'll leave it on as I work with them and turn the Grade layer off.
The mine complex needs several buildings. I'll start with the main power and machinery building. Power is generated from a oil fired boiler. We'll put double doors on it and make it a machine shop. Its the largest mine building at one foot long and six inches wide. This is so that the interior can be detailed if we want it to be.
The powerhouse can move around so I just kind of sat it in the middle. Then I drew the tipple, which is nothing but a two car length trestle over a ramp that dumps the ore into the awaiting hopper. We'll deliver the ore by Bachman's V shaped skip dump ore car. The tied track drawings are starting to get in the way, so we'll convert them to hidden trackage as both are socked away under the scenery. The top mine loop is under the rock of the mine face. The ore car track goes right to the edge of the layout and we'll put about four inches of mine tunnel and a portal there so a person can feel like they are in the mine looking out onto the mine complex. Neat, huh? Bachman's V Dump Ore Car
The first thing I did was add the timber tunnel portals. These things are huge in On30, so be sure to make room for them. Timber portals are hard to come by in On30, but you can get them from Dr. Ben's website. These will work nicely and we'll need a ton of them. I also drew in the mine cribbing section and the trestle work to get the mine track over to the tipple. Looking good!
That's all for tonight. We'll pick it up from there on the next post. Meanwhile, use the comments section and let me know what you think!
"Be it every so humble, there's no place like a square box made out of mud bricks in the middle of the hot sun. Wait, is that rain coming?" - Peppy
I love adobe structures! That's one of the main reasons I wanted to look at modeling the Mexican railroads. While I've never built one I'm thinking they would be fairly simple to construct.
Here are some photos... The smooth and curving sides...solid wood doors... Large wooden supports over windows and doors, thick and rugged bricks... Teh ubiquitous wooden roof supports and the earthen colors... The broken away stucco and the arches... Oh...and the bullet holes.
Such character these buildings have! I'm thinking I'll start with a small square house. It can be the jump off place for several structures as the are all cubic in shape for the most part.
Here is a sketch I've made of a simple home using the key features that I find so attractive in adobe buildings. My thought is to cast plaster sides and then assemble and round off the corners by sanding. I'm open for other construction ideas.
Ok, my daughter wanted to draw, so I sat down with her and sketched a few more using her watercolor pens.
I decided that the town of Agua Caliente needed a bar. Why not use Rose's Cantina?Greasy Gonzalez's Oil Depot will need to stand out a bit more than this, but its a start. The enginehouse needs to be a focal point on the back side, so it may include some interior details. I'm going to use Colin Claxon's fine "garage" model as a design base for this structure.
The "barn" is 3/16 foam core with Durham's water putty over it. Some of the structures are 3/16 balsa. The exposed adobe brick are Fimo modeling clay. It was painted with washes of acrylic craft paint.(painted wet on wet) If you build one, the vigas go over the shortest distance not like I did it.
Thanks for the nice words.. Do check out Tom Yorkes models. They are quite good.
I'm really been torn about which way to go with scenery media. There are a lot of choices and each has limitations. So I used the power of the internet and got this input.
You have much more ground to cover than I have in a long time, so my methods may not work for your layout. Ho0wever, you could use it in some areas where vertical surfaces might be difficult in other methods. I carve rock faces from extruded polystyrene (extruded styrofoam). Don't use regular bead board foam, it doesn't work nearly as well. I generally look at a rock face I like and then try to carve something similar, or if I want to do a "cut" through a hill, so I look at a similar area in real life. I don't use a hot wire cutter, I work with steak knives and X-acto knives and even sometimes just dowels or whatever will make the shape I want. Sometimes it doesn't come out quite the way I envisioned it, but since nature is so random, it usually works out anyway. As to colors, I tend to use light grays and light browns. (Always use water based paint on foams.) I "seal" the foam with the brown and then add gray in "washes" of paint. Once the colors are right, I use thin washes of black to highlight cracks and shapes in the rock. Different types of rock break into different shapes and colors, and these colors change as the rock is exposed to weather, so my colors may not work for you. Check out the area you want to model and let nature be your guide. Stumpy Stone...Micro Layout builder in Appalachia
From Bill Neilson in the FloridaOn30 Group
Hi Scott,
You didn't mention whether this layout is to be portable, in which case weight & durability is a major concern, but even if it is a permanent layout, I think stacked extruded foam is probably the best method yet, as long as you don't have any trouble locating the foam, especially in larger thicknesses. Unfortunately, it's not the cheapest way to go, unless you have some nearby construction sites that will allow you to dive in their dumpster for scraps, and shaping the foam produces messy dust and chips, but a good shop vac takes care of this.
John Allen used to use corrugated cardboard forms overlaid with Kraft paper soaked in glue, which is cheap and can be very lightweight, but can be attractive to roaches and silverfish unless you mix in some form of insecticide or can seal it well on both sides. It is also very easy to re-contour later on, should you desire to. Rock outcroppings are easy to do using Sculptamold or Molding Plaster. This method probably would be my second choice over stacked foam.
Screen wire & plaster requires that you make a "buck" (framework) to support it all, forming the screen to get the proper shape without having to lay on 6" of plaster can be a PITA, and mixing the plaster and applying it is just too messy. Also, in it's powdered form, the plaster has a limited lifespan because it absorbs moisture out of the air (Hydrocal is the most sensitive to this), and after it has cured it develops cracks and chips easily, which leave white white plaster exposed. Carving rock faces into plaster can be very effective, but also produces dust & chips for the shop vac to deal with.
The Bragdon method is strong and light, and seems like it's the highest-tech method, but it's also the most expensive, it's components can be very hard to find, the liquid foam has a limited shelf life and produces potentially hazardous gases, plus it seems to be an overly involved process compared to simply stacking & carving extruded foam.
Just my opinion, the final decision is yours. Please keep us up to date on this project, as well as your swamp...
Regards, Bill Nielsen
From Don Culbertson in the FloridaOn30 group:
Scott,
I really like your track plan for the new project.
I have made a lot of mountain scenery using extruded styrafoam. One of the most rewarding aspects of working with foam, was discovering how easy it is to make inclined ramps for multi level trackage using the foam. I use hot wire and hot knife tools and produce no foam dust. I made a demo module for a clinic I gave on foam carving. The demo unit was made entirely of foam, (there is no wooden frame) and only a small amount of lightweight patching plaster to hide some of the joints. The module uses two 2x4' pieces of 2" thick form, and one piece of 2x4x2 inch thick form. From the lowest track level to the peak is 16". The foam material removed to create the canyon and hollow out all of the tunnels, was flipped upside down to create the mountain.
To see a video of my Fire Ant Hill module in action check out:
or just go to youtube.com and type in Fire Ant Hill.
Regards,
Don Culbertson
From Paul Fischer on the Yahoo Scenery group:
Scott: I, too, favor the idea of Hydrocal soaked paper towels for scenery shaping. In "0" gauge , you can have a lot of vertical depth, (my layout has over 30") and you really would use a lot of Styrofoam to make those mountains. And when you are working in an area of over two feet, vertical, you should probably support the scenery structure with plywood, cut to the contour that you're trying to achieve. Then, fasten down fiberglass screening to support the hydrocal/paper. I find that I need two to three coats to achieve the desired strength. Finally you will probably want to pick up some rubber rock casting molds and make rock outcroppings where it looks right. You can hold these in place with Sculptamold and that will blend the base of the rock in with the scenery you have made with the Hydrocal.
I, personally, like to color my Hydrocal with some brown plaster dye that I found. This way you can evaluate your scenery easier than you can with stark white plaster, and later on, after the scenery is completed, should you bang a tool or something against it and chip out a piece, the color won't jump right out at you. You can also blend in carved foam, with the Hydrocal/paper towels to create varying effects in scenery texture.
For rock strata, outcroppings I have used broken ceiling tiles, roughened and painted , placed in a row with the broken edge out, and have had success with a western looking landscape. Some Styrofoam produces an interesting edge appearance if broken, placed and then painted properly. Looks rather rugged and has a varied texture.
Hope this helps.
Paul Fischer
Guys, thanks so much for the input. While I really like the control and affect of Hydrocal, and the lightweight and easy of Bragdon, I'm thinking the FROCKIN' the layout is the way to go. Let's go do some lab experiments and I'll get back to you.
"2,000 feet of elevation makes me dizzy. More tequila!" - Peppy
The Ojuela mine is about 2,000 feet in elevation per the topo map. This fairly flat plain on top of the mountain made for a good place to shuttle rail cars.
Click on this photo to enlarge. You can see the detail of the operation. It appears that many of the structures are still in good enough shape to figure out what they are. The bridge is in good shape. It will take a while to figure out what all the items are in the photo, but we won't go to deep because we won't have the room to model them on a small layout.
"Those that do not study history are condemned to repeat it. Those that do not study history are condemned to repeat it." - Pedro
Hola, mi amigos! History es importante to building model train layout. Yes, you can "freelance" and make up your own history. But for me it is harder to make up a plausible history than to just copy the history from the real thing.
Since Senior Hoke was so kind to give us a history in good detail for such a small and remote railroad, we can learn a lot from it and guess at the rest. In this case we know the mine is at Ojeula, Mexico. We also know that the smelter was just outside Mapimi.
With the incredible power of the internet, let's go find our key locations on the map... By using Google Maps we can easily find Mapimi and Ojeula. Here they are in central Mexico. Basically, the middle of no where, and hang a right. I hope you have gasoline... Spock, increase magnification. Here you can see that our two points are located near Torreon. Ok, now we know where to get gas. By shifting to satellite view, we can see that not only is this a barren place, but that it may be on the moon. Nothing but rocks. Looks like a silver deposite to me! By zooming in even further we can see that the kind folks of the town of Mapimi were gracious enough to leave the bridge abutments for the railroad standing in the river. From careful examination of the cuts, fills and old pilings we can figure out where a railroad that is 100 years gone might be located. Or maybe its still there! A mine makes quite a mess, and here is our mine. Notice the really nice right of way that snakes up the mountain! We'll have to include that in the layout for sure. I'll be damned! The Suspension Bridge is still there! How is that for research!
So, we know what the terrain looks like and the locations. We even have a feel for the scenery as well. By walking through the photos piece by piece we can trace most of the right of way and figure out what kind of toll the railroad had to pay to get all that silver!
"My philosphy of railroading? Get it from here to there as quickly and cheaply as possible. That leaves more time for tequila!" - Peppy
When you are planning to build a layout, planning is a key part of the process and one that should be given the utmost importance. For the Penoles Mining Railroad (PMR) we need to start with the first and most important question:
What does the railroad do?
For the answer we must go to the prototype. The Penoles takes silver ore from the mines down steep inclines to the smelter where it is processed and shipped out by rail to the cities who use it. There! We have a purpose. Moving silver ore. We have an origin (mines) and a destination (smelter).
Time and place are important for many reasons. While we don't want to be too prototypical (which takes lots of our modeling time and oh so many pesos) we do want to capture a snapshot in time so that our modeling can be targeted to the time period, which adds realism. For this layout we'll need to use 1900, plus or minus a few years. The place, why Ojeula, Mexico of course!
Once you have a time and place, the next thing is to look for key features on the prototype that you want to represent on the layout that make the layout feel like the prototoype. Notice I didn't say look like the prototype. There is a difference. In this case the mine alone is large enough in O-scale to consume an entire basement. The suspension bridge is over 1,000 feet long, which is over 20 real feet long! What we want to capture is "flavor".
Flavor in this case will mean sleep slopes, inclines, the suspension bridge, the rocky countryside and the mine.
So our layout will have a mine and a smelter. Also a suspension bridge. That was easy! In order to maintain locomotives we'll need some kind of service buildings. We'll also need a town where people live that work in the mines and probably some miner's homes.
Summary:
Purpose: move silver ore from the mines to the smelter
Just some CAD tips here. I draw my drawings in layers. A layer meaning all like components are drawn together and saves as a separate and distinct group, and usually all one similar color. These layers can be turned off and on so that you can either focus on them or move them to work on other areas. Not sure if I really explained that well. So here I'm starting a structures layer and making it brown. I do this with every layout. I'll leave it on as I work with them and turn the Grade layer off.
The mine complex needs several buildings. I'll start with the main power and machinery building. Power is generated from a oil fired boiler. We'll put double doors on it and make it a machine shop. Its the largest mine building at one foot long and six inches wide. This is so that the interior can be detailed if we want it to be.
The powerhouse can move around so I just kind of sat it in the middle. Then I drew the tipple, which is nothing but a two car length trestle over a ramp that dumps the ore into the awaiting hopper. We'll deliver the ore by Bachman's V shaped skip dump ore car. The tied track drawings are starting to get in the way, so we'll convert them to hidden trackage as both are socked away under the scenery. The top mine loop is under the rock of the mine face. The ore car track goes right to the edge of the layout and we'll put about four inches of mine tunnel and a portal there so a person can feel like they are in the mine looking out onto the mine complex. Neat, huh?
The first thing I did was add the timber tunnel portals. These things are huge in On30, so be sure to make room for them. Timber portals are hard to come by in On30, but you can get them from Dr. Ben's website. These will work nicely and we'll need a ton of them. I also drew in the mine cribbing section and the trestle work to get the mine track over to the tipple. Looking good!
