The Furness Valley Railroad

[ThePurplePrimer]

Liking this thread - loads of good tips - thanks

[chaz]

Liking this thread - loads of good tips - thanks

 

Thanks Rob. It's gone a bit quiet as I get my BR 7mm layout ready for Basingstoke but next week I will be giving all my attention to the FVRR....

 

WTS

[chaz]

Got back on track, on the straight and narrow (groans allowed)

 

 

Track sample with balsa ties. I am quite pleased with the look. Cutting the ties with a scalpel resulted in a few of the ends looking a bit "foxed". I removed the spiked rails and examined the tops of the ties. I was concerned that pushing home the spikes might pull down the rail into the surface of the balsa ties allowing some distortion of rail level. In fact I could detect little marking of the ties so no problem.

 

Tedious job - staining a batch of ties. I use artist's acrylics - by using two colours mixed for the washes and varying the dilution a useful variation in colour resulted.

 

 

Chaz

[chaz]

A spot of luck....

 

The code 82 rail, hand-laid on 1/8 inch balsa is slightly taller than the Peco Streamline with code 100 that I have used in my staging area. Much easier to pack the fleible track to make the transition at the join than it would be to pack the hand-laid. As the join will be on a straight section it shouldn't be too difficult to get it smooth.

 

Chaz

[chaz]

A (little) more progress...

 

First some balsa ties glued down with PVA.

 

 

I'm using my home-made tie spacing jig to space them out. The gap at the far end will be out of sight and will be Peco 00 on tapered packing to form a transition from the staging to this first scenic section..

 

I carried on laying ties round the curve using another spacing jig made for a 24" radius.

 

 

And here's the stretch from the end of the staging to the girder bridge over the river, ties down and ready for ballast.

 

 

'Orrible stains in the wall from water damage during this winter's storms. Some expensive building work has cured the problem but I will not repaint the wall (with stain-blocker paint) until it has fully dried out.

 

Next job - set up the supports for the girder bridge. Lots of adjusting needed, both up and down and from side to side to get the road-bed level and in line on either side - so loads of small G-cramps essential. This is a "creep up on it" job. Once I am sure of the alignment I will put screws into the risers and then remove the cramps.

 

 

And trying the bridge in place. It's a conversion from an HO Kibri bridge which I made into a pony truss type. The sides are skewed as it was originally going to be used to cross one track over another at a shallow angle on the aborted Mark 1 FVRR. Providing the river passes through at an angle it should look OK. I rather like the skewed shape.

 

 

The plywood pieces which support the bridge have a piece of packing between them and the roadbed so that the top surface of the ties on either side is level with the bridge ties. They will later be hidden by the abuttments - stone, I think, from hand-carved DAS over plywood formers.

 

 

The low viewpoint shows the headroom between the bridge and the MDF base on which the river will be made. I had thought about a nearly dry river bed but now I am considering an expanse of water - not rapids, certainly not white water but a smoother but rippled stream.

 

The bridge does look quite a light structure - suited well to NG I think. It has been tested and will support the weight of a Bachmann ten-wheeler or 2-8-0.

 

Chaz

Edited March 21, 2014 by chaz

[chaz]

I want to select 'Like', 'Craftmanship / Clever' and 'Friendly / Supportive' all at once; the latter for the water damage to the wall.

 

Thanks Paul. Fortunately the water doesn't seem to have done much more damage than produce these lurid stains. First thing I knew of the problem was during one of the worst storms when I was sitting at this keyboard (in one of the upstairs rooms) and heard water dripping fast, right behind me. PANIC! Fortunately the party/fire wall in the roof seems to have acted like a sponge and most of the water didn't come down into the house.

 

Chaz

[chaz]

I have started "sketching in" the landscape around the girder bridge using thick corrugated card...

 

 

 

This method is very quick and allows the shapes to be formed and if necessary changed very quickly.

 

Not sure yet how I am going to do the "water" in the river - I am impressed by Gordon Gravett's method so may have to buy a piece of acrylic large enough to form the whole surface. I think I need to sort the water out soon, before the bridge is fixed in place and before the river banks go in. These should (obviously!) overlap or overhang the water.

 

Chaz

Edited March 25, 2014 by chaz

[chaz]

When I built my 7mm BR(E) exhibition layout Dock Green I adapted a couple of leg-sets so that a baseboard could be supported on two large bolts and rotated on these if I wanted to work on the underside. With the staging area I could simply turn a board upside down on a workmate to do this but it's not so easy with a baseboard that has a raised trackbed and (later) scenery.

I borrowed the two sets of legs so that I can set up the girder-bridge board....

 

 

The G cramp is holding the board firmly and preventing it from flipping over - its CoG is such that it naturally "wants" to be upside down.

 

 

The second photo shows the board held on its side while I worked on a trackbed support.

 

Chaz

Edited March 25, 2014 by chaz

[DanielB]

Not sure on Gordon's method as I've never seen it, however a friend of mine does rivers by creating and painting, detailing etc the river bed, then lays a sheet of transparent plastic over the top, the covers the plastic with washes of coloured ink to get the right colouration of the body of water he's trying to represent, then uses resin to build up ripples and such to represent the flow of the river.

 

Does that help?

[chaz]

Not sure on Gordon's method as I've never seen it, however a friend of mine does rivers by creating and painting, detailing etc the river bed, then lays a sheet of transparent plastic over the top, the covers the plastic with washes of coloured ink to get the right colouration of the body of water he's trying to represent, then uses resin to build up ripples and such to represent the flow of the river.

 

Does that help?

 

It sounds very close to Mr Gravett's method. His Pempoul layout has a very convincing river at one end of it.

 

Chaz

[N15class]

I have started "sketching in" the landscape around the girder bridge using thick corrugated card...

 

 

 

This method is very quick and allows the shapes to be formed and if necessary changed very quickly.

 

Not sure yet how I am going to do the "water" in the river - I am impressed by Gordon Gravett's method so may have to buy a piece of acrylic large enough to form the whole surface. I think I need to sort the water out soon, before the bridge is fixed in place and before the river banks go in. These should (obviously!) overlap or overhang the water.

 

Chaz

A lot of rivers I saw in the Andes and some in the Rockies, were just beds round boulders with a little water shining between some with non at all until the spring thaws.

[chaz]

A lot of rivers I saw in the Andes and some in the Rockies, were just beds round boulders with a little water shining between some with non at all until the spring thaws.

 

I did consider a stony river bed with lots of boulders and the odd glint of water here and there. I also like the idea of an expanse of fairly smooth water with ripples. What will look best? What will be easier to do? And most iimportantly, what is most appropriate for Pennsylvania.....?

 

A quick Google turned up the Juniata River, a bit wide for my purposes but has the look I was thinking of, smooth river (not rapids) with trees right down the banks.

 

https://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&as_q=pennsylvania+river&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&lr=&cr=&as_qdr=all&as_sitesearch=&as_occt=any&safe=images&tbs=&as_filetype=&as_rights=#as_qdr=all&hl=en&lr=&q=white+clay+creek&stick=H4sIAAAAAAAAAGOovnz8BQMDgykHsxCHfq6-gWlJUp4SJ4hlbGRuXKAlk51spZ-Tn5xYkpmfp19aHF9ckliSalWUWZZaVCzxYvXBJ6rc_6J_Zoil9D9bvsbw3D4AKmSlnVIAAAA

 

Aren't these internet links fun.....

 

 

Chaz

Edited March 26, 2014 by chaz

[keefr2]

Just googling Pennsylvania rivers shows a mix of all types Chaz - broad quiet flowing;

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/Middle_Delaware_River_above_Walpack_Bend_crop.jpg

 

rocky white water ones;

 

http://pawatersheds.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/YB-sojourn-2011-300x199.jpg

 

& small sylvan streams that look like somewhere in Hampshire (but maybe not this year?! Sorry...!) ;

 

http://www.jjsjigs.com/_staticProxy/content/ff8080811fee7bcf011ff2f4a99302b3/P4191747.jpg

 

The funny thing was when you mentioned it, my mind immediately went back 30+ years to my A level geography, & I imagined they'd all be black & choked with coal dust & debris from the mining industry - I seem to recall a lotof images back then seemed to show that, or I may just be remembering wrongly. But they certainly don't seem to look like that anymore! 

 

keith

 

Edit: oops, sorry, I missed your link - I was replying to the e-mail notifiaction of your post & hadn't read it again.

Edited March 26, 2014 by keefr2

[chaz]

Just googling Pennsylvania rivers shows a mix of all types Chaz - broad quiet flowing;

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/Middle_Delaware_River_above_Walpack_Bend_crop.jpg

 

rocky white water ones;

 

http://pawatersheds.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/YB-sojourn-2011-300x199.jpg

 

& small sylvan streams that look like somewhere in Hampshire (but maybe not this year?! Sorry...!) ;

 

http://www.jjsjigs.com/_staticProxy/content/ff8080811fee7bcf011ff2f4a99302b3/P4191747.jpg

 

The funny thing was when you mentioned it, my mind immediately went back 30+ years to my A level geography, & I imagined they'd all be black & choked with coal dust & debris from the mining industry - I seem to recall a lotof images back then seemed to show that, or I may just be remembering wrongly. But they certainly don't seem to look like that anymore! 

 

keith

 

Edit: oops, sorry, I missed your link - I was replying to the e-mail notifiaction of your post & hadn't read it again.

 

Pennsylvania is a big state Keith, and certainly has room for a large variety of landscape types (and rivers) - that's good as it gives me a pretty free hand with my scenery. I don't want to model polluted watercourses - although some of the traffic on the FVRR will be coal - I already have some Bachmann hopper cars for this.

 

Chaz

[chaz]

Having glued down the ties for the first stretch of handlaid track the next step was to add ballast. Before I did this I painted the plywood roadbed with artist's acrylics so that any small gaps in the ballast should not show as bare wood. On reflection it might have been better to paint the roadbed before adding the ties (memo to self for the next stretch).

 

 

I use a piece of square section pine to control the spread of the ballast as it is added. A soft brush lets me spread the ballast evenly, making sure that it doesn't protude above the level of the top surface of the ties. The pine "fence" does tend to leave the edge too neat and straight but a few gentle, vertical "dobs" with the soft brush softens the edge.

 

On curves I use a shorter "fence", here a small plywood offcut, and tip the ballast in shorter sections.

 

 

having spread the ballast I wet it with a water spray bottle. To prevent the surrounding area being unnecessarily soaked I lay four pieces of card (cut from cereal boxes) so as to leave a window onto the section of ballast to be glued. I find it best not to do too large an area at one time.

 

 

Providing the spray bottle is not held too close the ballast is undisturbed. You could use an airbrush to spray the water but I find the spray bottle answers well enough. Once the ballast has been well wetted I dribble on a 50/50 PVA and water mix from a dropper bottle. Any cheap brand of PVA will serve for this job.

 

 

Here's the first section glued up...

 

 

The last inch or two has been left to be done later so that both sides of the baseboard join can be done together. Once the PVA has dried I can start spiking the rail down....

 

Chaz

Edited April 3, 2014 by chaz

[chaz]

As I need an awful lot of trees for the FVRR I bought Gordon Gravett's excellent two books on making model trees. Having seen his Pempoul layout I would be more than happy if I can get even half way to the quality of his trees. He suggested that for the most detailed tree models you should use the really fine paper-covered florists wire. I found a supplier and ordered up a quantity - it comes in packs of 50, 14 inches long. he also suggests that the best way to get convincing models is to research the real thing so I went out and about with my compact digital and took some tree snaps. A good time of the year to do so as the trees are still bare and you can therefore see the structure.

 

 

The A4 print gives a height of about ten inches, which in 1:48 scale comes out at 40 feet - not that tall for a real tree - but quite big enough to be impressive on a model. I think a compromise is going to have to be made - a scale model of an eighty foot tree would completely dominate the model, reducing the trains to insignificance.

 

Chaz

Edited April 3, 2014 by chaz

[chaz]

A bit of experimentation with the florist's wire...

 

 

My basic "building bricks" for trees - from left to right - 2 strands, 4 strands and 8 strands twisted together.

 

And this is how I was twisting the strands together...

 

 

And finally a pack of 50 wires twisted up into 25 "two-stranders" ready for use in my first go at a tree.....

 

 

More later...

Edited April 3, 2014 by chaz

[chaz]

I did try using my Dremel to twist the wires but it was just too fast even on its slowly setting. It tied the two wires into a mangled knot. 

 

However putting the pin chuck in a hand drill sped things up a bit.

 

Chaz

[chaz]

Back from a two week bird-watching jaunt (Norfolk and Suffolk) so took on a task to get me back in the swing....

 

I decided to use white faced hardboard for the back sceen. Here is a piece fastened to the frame of the girder bridge section.

 

 

I had to make a sort of bracket extension to support the curved end as the frame doesn't go right into the corner.

 

I wanted to cut the top of the backscene to represent distant wooded slopes.

 

 

I cut the shaped edge with this fret-saw. I had hoped to use my Hegner power fretsaw but the hardboard was just too big and unwieldy so I had to resort to doing it the slow way. To make the cut easier I took the majority of the waste away with some straight cuts with a tenon saw. Time taken to cut this four foot piece?

Three hours!

 

Last photo shows the hardboard re-attached to the frame to see how it will look.

 

 

Once the wall has been repainted with white stain-blocker (a job to be done soon - now that the wall has dried out) and the white hardboard has been painted in various shades of green (shading to blue/grey) it should look the part.

 

it is my intention to have a lot of trees, both full and half-relief, standing in front of the backscene so that it is largely obscured and therefore just glimpsed here and there. Adjacent sections of backscene can be allowed to overlap, with the vertical edges similarly shaped to look like trees. That way there should be no need to try and disguise the joins. However if this doesn't look right a lot can be achieved with some big half-relief trees, strategically placed. 

 

You can see how little space there is between the trackbed and the backscene - I will put trees both in front and behind the line to try and "spirit away" the river, as in this mock-up....it's supposed to look like the river curves round behind the track and disappears into the trees.

 

 

Chaz

Edited April 23, 2014 by chaz

[chaz]

Chaz,

 

It may have taken three hours to cut that backscene, but I think the result will be well worth the effort.  I'll go further than that and say that it is an inspirational idea!

 

How many more do you have to cut?

 

Thanks for the encouragement Paul.

 

How much more? Well, about six feet (4.5 hours?) to complete the end wall which will incorporate another curved section to avoid the problem of a square corner - which IMHO never looks nice. I will need fourteen feet of backscene along the side wall although this will be of limited height due to the pitch of the roof and so a shaped top edge might not be needed. I also need three feet or so for the stretch to the right of the bit in the photographs, the short section which leads to the staging. I am really grateful that there is no need for a backscene behind the staging tracks!

 

I am planning to cut the backscene sections as I put each new section into place. This will avoid them becoming too much of a chore but it does mean that I need to keep careful mixing notes and colour samples to avoid obvious mismatches at the overlaps.

 

Actually the work (and time) needed on the backscenes will be insignificant compared with what I will have to spend on trees......scary...

 

Chaz

Edited April 24, 2014 by chaz

[chaz]

There was an article in MRJ 34 about how Pendon simplified the tree making problem for areas of woodland.  The ones at the back of the woodland were more impressionistic than the detailed ones at the front.  Do you have a copy?

 

In his book, Gordon Gravett's trees are very detailed with ivy etc. OK when they are at the front, but possibly too detailed when behind other trees?

 

Thanks for the reference Paul. Yes, I do have a copy of MRJ 34 and will dig it out later. I have seen one or two excellent models of woodland on layouts at shows - a 2mm FS layout depicting Ashburton and a 4mm club layout of Romsey spring to mind.

 

Gordon Gravett does deal with this in his book labelling his examples "basic", "semi-detailed" and "detailed". He also covers half-relief trees for backscenes and shows dense woodland effects where individual trees can't be made out - the viewer sees only a mass of foliage.

 

The "mass of dense foliage effect" is one I may well use to hide the lack of depth, reserving fully detailed trees for the foreground. I want my railroad to look like it runs through dense woodland so I will certainly want trees both behind and in front of the trains.

 

Chaz

[chaz]

Two more sections of backscene cut (but not fitted yet - just plonked)....

 

 

First the stretch of line that leads away from the staging area.The overlap is very obvious but I intend to hide it with a tree or two. That area of shadow above the tree-tops (well they will be when they are painted!) is a bit disconcerting. I think a piece of plain white added to the back to close the gap might well answer.

 

 

Second photo shows the section to the left hand end of the girder bridge board. Although I have shaped the overlapping piece I intend this join to be largely hidden behind trees. The gap in the trackbed is where the bridge span will be but this can't be fixed in place until the river and the abuttments have been made.

 

When I think about the amount of time and effort that I anticipate spending on this section of the layout I am glad I decided to develop the layout a step at a time.

 

Chaz

[chaz]

Looking good Chaz, well worth the effort (keep telling yourself that!!). 

 

The plain white paper sounds an excellent idea.

 

Thanks Paul.

 

"well worth the effort" - As I found with Dock Green tasks that seem to take an age (the setts and the planked platform surface for example) do pay off later. I am about to start working up the stone abuttments for the girder bridge. The stonework will be hand carved into DAS and should be a really satisfying feature - fingers crossed.....

 

"plain white paper" - I think it will be thin white card rather than paper. The dilemna will be whether to fix it to the back of the backscene or to the sloping ceiling - I can't fix it to both as this would make it impossible to remove the baseboard for attention without tearing the card.

 

Chaz.

Edited April 28, 2014 by chaz

[chaz]

I have started making the bridge abutments. I am using black foam-core and some quick-drying PVA which makes for a pretty speedy job.

 

The left hand is the easy one as it's flat....

 

 

The right hand abutment has an angled wing wall.

 

 

No problem to make if the inside of the corner is creased - I used the wrong end of a scalpel (the handle) to form a deep groove. However the natural springiness of the material means that the corner angle needs holding. I don't want to fix the shell until the DAS work has been done and if the angle changes with the DAS in place the stonework will be cracked....

 

 

So I have used a couple of G-cramps to hold the shell in position whilst I glue a couple of webs on the inside. With any luck when I take the cramps off tomorrow the angle will be held so that the DAS can be added with no risk of cracking.

 

And here is how the bridge will look in place on the abutments.

 

 

Chaz

Edited May 2, 2014 by chaz

[chaz]

Took the cramps off the abutment this morning and the webs are holding the angle of the corner quite rigidly - so the DAS can be applied across the corner with no risk of cracking.

 

I put some extra strengthening strips across the back.....

 

 

.....it looks a bit of a mess but all this will hidden later inside the scenery shell. It should help to stop any warping when I add the DAS.

 

I also started forming the slope down from the front of the roadbed.

 

 

A combination of thick corrugated card for the formers and woven strips cut from cereal packets. Hot glue-gun speeds things up - rather like soldering cardboard.....

 

Chaz

Edited May 2, 2014 by chaz