1943 era model railroad layout

[willysmb44]

Thanks for posting a pic of the motor pool! I had to think of your dio when finding this new 1/48 kit today:

 

http://www.armorama.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=23227&mode=thread&order=0

 

I actually have some of that company's other resin castings, which I'll be getting to painting soon. I have a grocery bag filled with detail parts that will eventually get onto the layout. Mail boxes are next.

As for 'junk' piles and such, much of that would have gone to wartime scrap drives by 1943, so there won't be representations of excess metal lying around.

As much as I'd love to put a junked car or piles of tires behind buildings, you wouldn't have seen such things in the US in this timeframe.

To me, the layout is a direct extension of my interest in the 1940s. I look at everything on the layout with an eye calibrated to one question: "Would this make sense in 1943 rural Northeast Tennessee?"

[72psb]

Lee,

May I make a suggestion? This was common in rural W.Virginia. Place a rain barrel on the back corner of the house by the back kitchen door. Quick wash up before entering the house from the field. Also many farm homes had an outside bell to call the men in from the fields.My cousin has the one from the family farm.The frame was built in a high school shop class my uncle took. It has my grandfather's initials welded into it.

Bob

Just thought of this,Do not forget the coal pile if you heating your houses with coal.

[willysmb44]

Lee,

May I make a suggestion? This was common in rural W.Virginia. Place a rain barrel on the back corner of the house by the back kitchen door. Quick wash up before entering the house from the field. Also many farm homes had an outside bell to call the men in from the fields.My cousin has the one from the family farm.The frame was built in a high school shop class my uncle took. It has my grandfather's initials welded into it.

Bob

Just thought of this,Do not forget the coal pile if you heating your houses with coal.

Great ideas, Bob! The rain barrel wouldn't be very obvious on this farm house as it's not easily seen, but I agree that'd be a good idea.

Good call on the coal, too. I'll check with my folks how people stored coal. Keep in mind, this is the summertime I'm modeling, though. I doubt you'd see homes with coal out in the open in this timeframe.

I do have plenty of scale coal, and I even put it into the tenders of all my locomotives. They came with molded coal in plastic and it didn't look right. I think you can see it here:

[willysmb44]

I played around with my good camera on the layout last night. I still need to experiment with lighting and depth of field, but you get an idea what I'm working with here...

More photos can be found here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/53587910@N05/sets/72157668176638961

[willysmb44]

More...

Darn it, I uploaded the depot one twice and can't remove it.

[Proud Kraut]

It looks great, love the way you weathered the wooden house facade in the first pic of your last post.

[willysmb44]

It looks great, love the way you weathered the wooden house facade in the first pic of your last post.

Thanks.

It's a 2-story business with a loading dock.

 

I scratch built that one from wood strips. I put a lot of work into that one, but I think by the time I was done, even with paint and door-window castings, I had maybe $20 in the entire build before I added the loading dock. I even added signs near the doors stating that they business wasn't hiring anyone with certain draft classifications (like the ones likely to be drafted right away and the consciencious objectors).

One thing I've seen with many model railroads is that they make the signs easily readable for people looking from a few feet away, but the signs then look much larger than you're likely going to find in real life. Many of the signs and posters in structures can only be read very close up or with a magnifying glass, but they're the correct size and quite frankly, I don't think you have to label buildings as in real life, you often have no idea what a business structure is for.

As for the weathering, the depression hit Tennessee especially hard, so a business like this wouldn't have been painted for many years by the time the war came. So I decided to reflect the economically depressed tone of the area.

[BEAST]

Lee, you may have already addressed this but I am so blown away with the photos of the layout that I can't find the answer. How did you build the table that your layout is on? Is it broken down into sections? How thick is surface? For example is it a 1/2 inch board built up to allow wiring underneath? How id you do the wiring? Is everything or anything controlled by computers?

 

OK, I am going back to being awed by the photos!

[willysmb44]

Lee, you may have already addressed this but I am so blown away with the photos of the layout that I can't find the answer. How did you build the table that your layout is on? Is it broken down into sections? How thick is surface? For example is it a 1/2 inch board built up to allow wiring underneath? How id you do the wiring? Is everything or anything controlled by computers?

 

Okay, I'll try to answer them in order:

• It's 1X4s with 2X2s for legs with adjustable feet, set in pockets and secured with removable bolts.
• There are 4 sections. The scenery was paid down over top of them, but the frames are bolted together with carriage bolts. If I ever have to move it, I cut down the line with a knife for the scenery, snips the rails, cut the wires, and can re-assemble in a new location.
• The table top surface is 1/4" plywood, with contours for the landscape with formed pink insulation sheets, cut with a hot wire cutter, and glued/edged with household caulk.
• Every single section of track has a feeder wire run up from underneath. They're wired in to a main bus from the Digital Control system. All track sections are soldered together.
• I use a DCC system, which sends signals to a decoder in each locomotive, so they run independently of one another (and yes, you probably could do a head-on collision if you really wanted to). The system I use is a MRC Prodigy Express DCC system, bought at a very good price at a hobby shop before the layout was built.
• The idea was to make everything as simple as possible. The track switches (called 'turnouts' within the hobby) are controlled by cable/attached pulls mounted along the fascia. That way you don't need to reach over and throw switches and there are no motors to burn out or go on the fritz.

If you scroll toward the bottom of my layout's website, you'll see a lot of detail stuff like that.

[Dirt Detective]

Great job Lee, love your web site too. Love trains..been wanting to build a garden layout for years..

[BEAST]

Okay, I'll try to answer them in order:

• It's 1X4s with 2X2s for legs with adjustable feet, set in pockets and secured with removable bolts.
• There are 4 sections. The scenery was paid down over top of them, but the frames are bolted together with carriage bolts. If I ever have to move it, I cut down the line with a knife for the scenery, snips the rails, cut the wires, and can re-assemble in a new location.
• The table top surface is 1/4" plywood, with contours for the landscape with formed pink insulation sheets, cut with a hot wire cutter, and glued/edged with household caulk.
• Every single section of track has a feeder wire run up from underneath. They're wired in to a main bus from the Digital Control system. All track sections are soldered together.
• I use a DCC system, which sends signals to a decoder in each locomotive, so they run independently of one another (and yes, you probably could do a head-on collision if you really wanted to). The system I use is a MRC Prodigy Express DCC system, bought at a very good price at a hobby shop before the layout was built.
• The idea was to make everything as simple as possible. The track switches (called 'turnouts' within the hobby) are controlled by cable/attached pulls mounted along the fascia. That way you don't need to reach over and throw switches and there are no motors to burn out or go on the fritz.

If you scroll toward the bottom of my layout's website, you'll see a lot of detail stuff like that.

 

Lee,

 

Thanks for the detailed answer. It is interesting to me to see that your turnouts are operated manually as I would have thought it that would have been one of the first areas that would have been automated. However, I never thought about them failing and the consequences.

 

Your website is excellent!

[willysmb44]

Thanks for the detailed answer. It is interesting to me to see that your turnouts are operated manually as I would have thought it that would have been one of the first areas that would have been automated. However, I never thought about them failing and the consequences.

 

Your website is excellent!

 

Thanks for the kind words, everyone!

I did operating sessions on other large local model train layouts, to get a feel for what I wanted (and more importantly, didn't want) in a layout of my own. Right away, I saw real issues with those who had motorized turnouts. If the motor, switch or wiring went south, you simply couldn't run anything.

The blue points were a pain to install as they have to placed exactly right. One or two aren't perfectly aligned, but they work okay.

This shows them in cross-section, the pulls operate the sliding lever in the center, which moves the pivot at the bottom. Piano wire flips the turnout points through a hole in the benchwork:

 

I haven't placed any ballast (crushed rock) around the moving parts of the turnout points yet, so they look a little odd right now (as you can see the cork roadbed underneath in that spot on most of them). But that'll change once the trees are done, it's something that you must do very slowly.

[Desertrat]

Outstanding layout. I can really appreciate the time, effort and talent it takes. My Dad never finished his HON3 layout, even after 20 plus years. He modeled the D&RG in 1930s Colorado.

[willysmb44]

My Dad never finished his HON3 layout, even after 20 plus years.

 

That's really common. There are a few locals here in the hobby who refused to accept I'd done all this within 2 years (had to have a mutual friend who helped me setup the benchwork in the room confirm it was nothing but wood and track at that point).

There's a group that puts on a layout tour day each spring and last year I signed up for it. One layout I went to filled a basement but it was all open benchwork (which looked like a set of bleachers made of 2X4s that was hit with a IED and re-screwed together where it was). Track and bridges were missing in several sections and trains could only run on a few short isolated segments. I asked the guy when he got started and he said the early 70s!

40 years later, and it looked like he'd done maybe 5-6 months work. I didn't ask what I was thinking (namely, what the heck have you been doing all that time?) but I noticed a few raised eyebrows from other people when they heard him say that.

Kind of like the guy who is 'restoring' an old car and you could measure his progress in geological terms. Maybe I'm way too impatient, but there was no way I would have taken that long. The build wasn't the main thing I liked, I wanted to run trains where it looked like they belonged!

 

[Desertrat]

His layout fills a 10'x18' room and is 75% complete. All track was hand laid (including individual ties through out the majority of the track) and the turn outs were hand made as well. The only thing not finished was the scenery.

 

He would work awhile on scenery, buildings, rolling stock etc., then stop and concentrate on his other passion, collecting railroadania. then back to the "toy trains".

 

My Dad passed in 2005. We still have not figured out what to do with the layout...

[willysmb44]

My Dad passed in 2005. We still have not figured out what to do with the layout...

 

I'm sorry for your loss, and also for him that he never saw the layout finished.

Sadly, there's next to no secondary market for model train layouts, for many reasons:

• The layout rarely (if ever) is the same concept that another modeler would have built on their own.
• The layout has to match the space the buyer has, which hardly ever happens.
• Most layouts (but not mine) are built insanely sturdy and are difficult/impossible to dismantle without destroying them in the process.
• Most modelers will accept help from others in their layout builds and while their own layouts might have locomotives/cars/structures someone sold/gave them, they generally want their layouts to be what they built, to live up to their personal standards.

I wish you luck with it. I would assume you could sell the rolling stock, maybe track and structures at train shows if you have the patience for that (model train shows are far more scary than military collectible shows, something you might know already).

 

[Desertrat]

We have given some rolling stock, locomotives and models to my Uncle in Kansas. The layout itself was made to take apart, except for where the mountains (made with hydrocal plaster) overlap the tables, so we would have to cut them in order to move them out.

 

My Mom has suggested taking some stuff to a model rr show but the closest of any size is Dallas.

 

Sorry to hijack your post... I look forward to seeing your progress, it really is a great layout and I love your backstory

[willysmb44]

 

Sorry to hijack your post...

 

Don't worry about it. If anything, it supports my concept of a layout that is totally moveable and can be taken apart without destroying very much. All my scenery is made with formed sheets of pink insulation foam, covered in latex paint (color matched to actual soil from Stoney Creek, TN) and then ground foam and other stuff. The contours don't overlap any of the seams on the 4 sections of the layout.

It's made to be very light and durable. I built it only slightly more sturdy than what you'd find with a modular group where members build short sections and hook them together at shows and gatherings.

[willysmb44]

I experimented with some long exposure (25 to 30 second) photography to get the depth of field better looking in my shots and I think they didn't turn out too bad. I didn't even use any special lighting. The 'smoke and steam' effects were done with a rolled up paper towel, waved in the correct spots for a few seconds.

For the photos I'll be shooting for a planned article for a model train magazine, there's be:

Far more detail stuff and the figures will be facing the trains.

Longer trains and more interesting cars.

Smoke/steam with the same technique, but with a dowel covered in cotton, in a conical fashion, blurred for a few seconds like you'll see in a couple of these shots...

Shot # 1

[willysmb44]

Shot # 2

[willysmb44]

Shot # 3. I really liked how this one turned out. I'll for sure be re-creating this shot for the article.

[mikie]

Simply amazing!

Mikie

[BROBS]

It looks great but to create more depth have bright lights shining at 45 degree angle on it and the shadowing will be much more dramatic.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[willysmb44]

It looks great but to create more depth have bright lights shining at 45 degree angle on it and the shadowing will be much more dramatic.

Yeah, I know, hence this in the post with the first of the photos in this series:

I didn't even use any special lighting.

Also, that it was a test shoot for long exposures. I also didn't dust anything...

[Proud Kraut]

Great pictures. # 2 is my personal favourite so far. Thanks for posting!

 

Lars