Tray staging.

After reading Bob Wheelers "Piedmont Division Cartridge Loading System"   in Southeastern Region NMRA Vol. 50 I knew that was what I wanted.  The biggest change was I used pegs mounted into holes in the wall (and studs). But how to support the 42 inch long trays? Finally i decided on a removable bracket, mounted on the door frame. Good thing I had just finished talking to my brother about how he hung his mail box using a French Cleat. A French Cleat is made by cutting a piece of wood at a 45 degree angle and mounting one piece on the wall with the angle out. When the other piece is set on top of the one screwed to the wall, it slides in behind it, locking it there.
After reading Bob Wheelers "Piedmont Division Cartridge Loading System"   in Southeastern Region NMRA Vol. 50 I knew that was what I wanted.  The biggest change was I used pegs mounted into holes in the wall (and studs). But how to support the 42 inch long trays? Finally i decided on a removable bracket, mounted on the door frame. Good thing I had just finished talking to my brother about how he hung his mail box using a French Cleat. A French Cleat is made by cutting a piece of wood at a 45 degree angle and mounting one piece on the wall with the angle out. When the other piece is set on top of the one screwed to the wall, it slides in behind it, locking it there.

This is the removable part of the tray support. Circled in red is the bottom support. The blue circled part is to hold the tray from sliding off the support. The green circled part is the one half of the French Cleat.

The picture above shows the support mounted to the door frame. Again the blue circled part holds the tray from sliding off the support, the red circled part is to keep the support straight, working along with the support sides that overlap the sides of the top and bottom of the cleat. The green slash indicates the slope of the French Cleat.
Below the picture shows three trays, pegs for two more and the bottom of the cleat circled in green.

The next picture shows a tray being loaded into place and the guide pin.

The last picture shows the rolling stock being unloaded.

The trays are made with a slotted board, sided with hardboard and a back stop at one end. The stop also has a stationary coupler to hold the rolling stock in place. My forty two inch trays hold six to seven pieces of rolling stock.

Retaing walls

 

All the retaining walls have been installed at Port Dover. Most of them are wood but behind the pier it is metal. The metal retaining wall was made by spray painting rubber stair runner rust colour primer and cutting it to the height required. Changes in industries location were made after much thought. I wanted a large fish processing plant so the red barn, right side of this picture, was added to another, smaller white factory. Adding the unloading dock to this factory required moving the boat repair building to the left side of this scene. I also decided to put back the pier instead of having a car float terminal. Anything on the water is just sitting in place so they can be removed to dust the water. 

The Harbour

 The harbour received its final rework, I hope.

This side of the harbour had a corner filled in, behind the green boat, to make way for a small road. The station was moved next to the lighthouse. You can see the picture mockup on the backdrop, which will be Norwich. 

This side of the harbour had a little corner added to the left of the boat repair building. The red barn was added to the green building to form a large fish plant. A large corner of land was added there to make room for it.

Easy, basic clouds.

 Even though these clouds are easy, they can be dramatic! Most of the time the backdrop should not over power the layout itself, so no dramatic clouds today. These clouds will be made in a few easy steps.

Put a blob of white paint (I use to me paint) in one corner of your paint holder. Load a round brush by pushing one side of the brush into the paint.

Use the heavily loaded edge to create the upper, rounded top of several billowing clouds. Use light pressure for this step. Make each arc, of a bank of clouds, a little different. 

You will notice your brush is running out of paint at which point start under pinning the clouds with smudges of paint, using hard pressure until you have exhausted all of the brush's paint. If you press even harder you can create the little, fluffy clouds like the ones on the right. You will see in the above picture that this application seems darker and less defined, and your cloud already looks not to bad. You my notice, at the top right I have two parallel rows of bright cloud lines, don't do that! These bright edges, caused by the sun shining on that side of the cloud, should curve down, as you see below. You should let some of the blue sky show through in some areas, to give the next bright layer a darker backdrop. 

Curries Station backbrop.

 Started thinking about the backdrop between Curries and Burgessville. I know 59 highway continues straight as it travels south of Burgessville. Going back to the article about continuing your scenery into your backdrop I picked another picture from that article. It had the straight road but it had fall type foliage, a pole and railroad crossbucks in the foreground of the picture. So I used yellow, on the grassy area, and a couple of shades of green to cover up the areas of orange tree leaves and the pole and crossbucks. The painted picture will be glued to the backdrop and further blended into the scenery.

A road out of Burgessville

 Editor's note ( yes Norwich was moved and Curries Station and Burgessville, were added to the layout, mostly for visual effect.)

I started with a picture I cut out of Model Railroader, in a article called "Continue your roads into the backdrop" by Tom Johnson. He went into great detail showing various ways to make them look real. In this picture, Tom had already added a building on either side to frame in the road. This left a cutoff building on either side of the picture which I covered with a cutout picture of a store on one side and a house on the other. 

But first I had to paint in some clouds to blend the sky in the picture to my backdrop. Then, after temporarily taking away the house and the store I painted lots of trees, not only around but also over some of Tom's trees, hiding most of the fall colours. I also had to hide the bottom, right side of the store, which unrealistically slanted up, so a small garage (from Full Steam Ahead) did the trick. In fact this whole project is designed to trick the viewer's eyes into seeing more there than there really is. 

A few more added touches, like bringing the lines on the road onto the layout and grass areas will finish it up.

Hills add interest.

 

Added hills, circled in green, around Woodstock. They were made by carving down 1/2 inch thick ceiling tiles. I used a band saw and a rotary rasp, in a drill, to shape them. (Too bad they do not show up in the picture.) One spot, in front of the white station, has a small area of two thicknesses. These hills, or drumlins as I call them, surround the real Woodstock area. They will be covered with trees. These, forested hills, with roads snaking over them, will add needed visual interest and also separate Norwich, on the right from Woodstock on the left. A good use of an open area.

I also previously made 10 wooden crossings, that's 60 planks, with 120 scribe marks and 600 nail holes. This were stained dark grey and hot melt glued into place. Some roads were painted a dark grey, visible along the curve by the silos. I experimented with covering the crossings with masking tape after I stained them. Then adding plaster to bring the road level up to them, which I let dry. Then I painted the road up to the crossings on some. When I pulled off the tape it also took off some of the painted plaster, so I had to repaint back up to them any way. By taking the tape off before painting you can sand the plaster where needed and then paint.