JSRR : Juwair Sajour Rail Road

The road crew moved in today and started to pave a road across the twin lines into the yard, allowing freight to be transported around the locality.

I used the Luke Towan method of lining the road side with thin strips of balsa would, held in place with superglue on a bed of clear selo-tape. This was relatively easy to do and I was surprised that the glue didn't eat through the tape !

Above, The proposed route was rough up so the cornice plaster could grip the foam and the tape and balsa was firmly put in place.

Below, after the plaster had been poured and smoothed out.

After letting this dry for 3 hours I removed the balsa and tape (below).

Once all the tape and balsa was removed, it didn't look too bad. It will require sanding, but I'll wait a good 24 hours before doing this.

Another little project that I hadn't done (and I'm glad I hadn't otherwise the changes that have occurred would not have happened) was to lay the code 83 rails and wider sleepers over the bridge girders.

This track comes with the kit and I just had to measure, cut, remove sleepers, fit code 100 joiners to the code 100 track then slide the code 83 rail into the other end of the joiner. Yes the code 83 track is lower in profile so with a little tap here and there from the pliers, I managed to get a crimp/bend in the rail joiners. The pair of rails were firmly soldered together resulting in a permanent join and no 'step' in the rail head.

Next job is to file off some of the rail spikes in the sleepers and reinstate where the centre rail joiners are on the code 83 track, then do teh same with the code 100 sleepers, filling in any gaps elsewhere on the layout.

Oh yes, a bare forest has started to grow around the wood chip sidings !

Cheers, Gary.

 

I ended up using 46 tree armatures around the river and mill scene, but I need more. Another 72 armatures have been ordered from the United States. I shall have enough now...

Something that has plagued me for a while is I have no off track storage/fiddle yard on the layout. This means the rolling stock and locos on the layout is all you get to play with, without the need for the great hand from the sky swapping out locomotives. So I jumped onto Anyrail 6 and placed a few points onto a small baseboard and printed these out at 1:1 scale. What I found was the Peco set track curved point and the Atlas left hand point (#850) fitted my existing curve that is already laid down.

The gap between the road and the factory will be where the branch to the main line exits.

Like this, running parallel to the road...

I have the three road fiddle yard that I use with the Jay Dubyew module at exhibitions, or I can quickly knock up another fiddle yard as I have a spare baseboard measuring 60" x 11.5". I also have the track and a Peco three way which will make this a lot easier... This fiddle yard will be bolt on/bolt off.

Whilst I was out picking up the Atlas point from Alco World (Ingleburn), Russel had a box of US rolling stock on the floor. I had to ask what price he had on the wagons...!

I ended up coming home with 6 x wagons, all fitted with Kadees and metal wheels. The point and the wagons were a good bargain at $130.00..! A few pics of the new rolling stock...

A Soo Line liveried 3 Bay Grain Hopper... (possibly Bachmann.??)

A Roundhouse 50' ACF box car...

...and 4 x Athearn P2-2 Hoppers in a variety of liveries...

from the other end...

Well, things are slowly taking shape on the extension. I just got to get myself a 'jobs list' and do them in order, rather than going two steps forward, one step back !

Cheers, Gary.

 

Your not wrong Dave ! This should add a lot more operation to the layout, not just back and forth, but some inter-change now.
Those wagons were a bargain. I know the Athearn hoppers retail for $33.79USD ($48.25 AUD) each brand new !

Cheers, Gary.

 

Here is a video update on the layout...



I have also been working on making my own Sculptamold. More on this later.

Cheers, Gary.

 

I said I would be back with my version of Sculptamold...



Cheers, Gary.

 

The Atlas points I had bought recently for my layout has no centre spring to hold the points in position, as the Peco points do. I had asked about the Caboose Industries manual ground throws previously elsewhere and decided they were too large and you could say, intrusive.

So today I decided on adding slide switches, too which I will conceal/camouflage the knobs on top of the switch with scenery material or some other static item, like Ian (ianvolvo46) has done on some of his small layouts.

The foam has been cut up to the black Atlas point with a scalpel and then into sections where I can remove the pieces using tweezers.

Typical wire in tube set under the opposite lines. Not the easiest thing to do as the point in the foreground is soldered done to a copper clad sleeper at the toe end...

The small slide switch I used. There are two Atlas points on the layout, this one and the wye on the bridge approach. The wire through the switch knob has been bent back and trimmed so that it doesn't snag anything.

I have to paint the rails and sleepers on this Atlas point as it stands out compared to the rest of the layout !

Cheers, Gary.

 

Had a box full of goodies turn up today, well, half a box of goodies and the rest were those damn pink foam beanies....

72 x tree armatures
2 x vehicles
3 x packs of foliage/undergrowth
1 x shaker container fine turf (for foliage)
3 x sets of bogies to upgrade some older rolling stock.

Oh, in another envelope I received another 60 x magnets for uncoupling. Of course yesterday, whilst I was looking for my corrugated card, I came across another tin container of 90 x magnets... So, now I have 150 magnets for uncoupling...

I guess this weekend I'll be busy twisting more tree armatures, removing any flash from them, painting them accordingly and adding foliage. Then I'll fix a few wagons, plant some buildings in place, add soil profile to the work I have completed getting it ready for static grass...

Well, maybe not in that order !

Cheers, Gary.

 

Thanks Daniel, I had kept that in mind. With the armatures that I have already twisted into shape, and the lot that I had ordered, I think that is close to 130 or 140 trees in total !

So, I had started on the tree armatures over the weekend. Twisting, bending and shaping takes a lot of time... I then followed this up with a few coats of acrylic paint. The Woodland Scenics armatures are a deep brown colour, not very natural in my opinion. These were treated to a grey/tan paint and allowed to dry then a wash of brown was applied. This was allowed to dry overnight until this afternoon/evening where I have started adding poly fibre and foliage.

Stretching the poly fibre out until it is very thin seems to work the best and stretching this over the branches. As I wish to have a variety of trees, some will have a full canopy, some will have part canopies whereas the foliage is more condensed on the end of the limb/branches.

I am using a few different colours for foliage but I have found that fine turf works best, not too heavy, but just nice giving the tree an airy look about them. This is something I noticed whilst watching several Pennsylvania short line videos on you tube where the lines run through soft wooded forests. I have chosen three colours, but unfortunately I don't have the tags on the containers that I keep the turf in...

Anyhow, here are some pics of how the process is going. The bases will be removed once the trees are complete and ready for planting.

I have completed 10 x trees so far and another 30 odd full bodied trees and the 80+ conifers...

Cheers, Gary.

 

On Wednesday night I decided to glue down a good layer of fine sifted soil to the landscape. With Thursday being a day of 46*C, it dried up pretty good and on Saturday night I managed to vacuum up the excess and apply static grass. Usual colours were used, Noch 6mm wild grass (yellow), Noch 12mm wild grass (summer green), Heki 6mm spring green, Woodland Scenic Burnt Grass, Wild Honey and Light Green, all 6mm. This was applied in three different grassing sessions. With the warm weather last night and today, the PVA went off pretty quick, securing the grass in place.

A few of the larger tree armatures were foliated, along with some of the narrow conifers. The end result, although not finished is shown below...

Soil on the scene...

First few layers of static grass. The taller Noch grass were just pinched into place to represent taller grasses where there is much more moisture in the soil. The Yello Noch grass mixed with Woodland Scenics wild honey and light green was chosen for the tp of the ridge.

...and a few shots of the trees in place. A prerequisite of this layout is to have the train roll through a forest scene and to also divide the branch to the wood chip loader.

...from the opposite end...

...and the driver's view...

You may notice that I have not yet ballasted the track. I will do this after the scenery is complete. More trees and ground foliage will slowly be added to complete the scene, before moving onto the next board that has the grain elevator and siding.

Cheers, Gary.

 

Thanks Pete.

I have done a lot more scenery on the layout, but no photos yet as the PVA is still wet and white in places. What I do have is one short video of a train passing through the forest area I have made over the last few days...



Cheers, Gary.

 

A few more pics of some scenery that has been done over the last 48 hours...

The area around the grain elevator has had static grass and weeds applied, but the glue was still wet when I took the above pics. Will post up a few more pics later.

Cheers, Gary.