I'm in the process of building the RGS Telluride branch from Vance Junction to Telluride / Pandora CO. As part of the initial process I'll be building the first couple modules consisting of Vance Junction CO before heading over to Ilium and ultimately Keystone before reaching the helix to the second level (more below). The track plan is based on the ~1919 track plans with a target date of 1915 across the plan. Sadly there haven't been very many models meeting this time frame (+/- 5 years) so a lot of it will be scratch built from a variety of sources and tools/supplies on my side. But onto the footprint! Overall it will be roughly 12x12ft, the outside edges on the lower level will be approximately 12-18in deep across most of the plan and similar or deeper on the top level. The plan will leverage a short helix on the bottom left corner and bottom right corner being open, top edges will be closed in with track. The helix is planned to be approximately 32-34in radius and last roughly three turns with approximately 4.5-5in spacing (to be determined closer to when I actually reach it). For the first level though, starting in Vance Junction the depth will be 18in deep for the three track section and narrowing to 12in deep for the wye at Illium (~3ft deep, will be used for turning loco only and not cars per plans, confirm if otherwise) and back to 12ish inches deep for the Anderson Bridge (39-A) and retaining that through Keystone hill (just before bridge 42-A). The Keystone hill section will be compressed but still be mostly accurate for 4% grade and enter to the helix at this point. The track will emerge from the helix coming into (roughly) bridge 45-A which is mostly 2% downhill into Telluride. Track will emerge into the Telluride wye which sits around bridge 45-CS / 45-CSS and continue through Telluride onwards to Pandora. This area hasn't been fully defined but I do have laser kits for Telluride and Pandora already covering all but the Pandora Mill (still remains today) which I picked up some pictures to this year. I'll post a couple screenshots in the next post which shows the lower level and beginning of the helix so far, the upper level is in no shape to share just yet. I'll also post a couple of the kit bits that have been built so far for Vance Junction (RPO with shed, box car shed, passenger car and speed car shed which may not be used).
This is the speed car shed at Vance Junction, it would have been just south of the eight coal pockets which are along the three track section. I do not know that I will ultimately use this but I do think the roof needs a bit more work due to the right hand side having a single area that doesn't want to accept paint reliably (any diluted color results in all color coming off!). This shows the slow assembly of the multiple parts to assemble the basic structure with no thin wood cover pieces (unfortunately, all other kits have them). This shows the final pain color for the building along with the wood pieces in the corners to cover the seams in the laser cut bits. Colors are fairly close to the accurate colors used by these buildings when they recolored them to match the rest of the line. The roof needs a bit of work to fine tune the coloring but it is close enough for right now so I'll leave it as-is for now.
This is the box car used (I think) as a bit of tool shed of sorts at Vance Junction CO. The first shots are assembly of the inner wall pieces (all laser cut) and includes installing of two lights (0805 warm white LED on 30cm wires): At first I installed the four wall parts and then added two LEDs in the back corners where they just barely stick through. Also realized I forgot to remove the white fuzzy bits on the window covers as I forgot to remove them before putting the roof bits on (last image above shown as two parts with a very light brown paint as I was experimenting with the airbrush). After assembly of the building I got to the following pictures on Friday as I wrapped up building it: This shows the windows (with covers), the small wooden deck in front of the main doors (bi-folded) and window treatments in both colors typically used for these buildings. I also covered the roof with 2000 grit sand paper to simulate tar paper and will be going in to detail it a little more as part of final finishing in place. The wires seen in the shot go to the LEDs in the back corners.
This is the rough build for the Passenger Car that sat at Vance Junction CO, this was the southern most car which showed up next to the section house. Unfortunately I do not seem to have the picture locally showing the building being built from the handful of bare laser cut pieces that made up the inner walls. However, I've included a few shots above showing the decking as individual wood planks being painted and then installed to the frames. I also included a few shots showing the layers of the exterior laser cut layers showing the colors and various layers making up each piece (and a couple binder clips holding some layers together while glue dried). These shots show the car ends / sides and lights glued to the top piece in their nearly final form until final installation. The roof lights need to be routed and trimmed to fit but are close now, the roof will be painted blackish and then covered in 2000 grit sand paper similar to older box cars and weathered accordingly. The hand railing along the end of the box car will be scratch built once I have it installed since I don't want to break it before hand. Overall colors are close and need fine tuning as part of filing any light gaps before gluing the top piece on, but it is close.
This is the RPO building that sits just north of the box car in Vance Junction. This was started Saturday just after wrapping up drying on the Passenger Car and mostly wrapped by yesterday. I prepainted (sooty black) the floor boards covering the outside walkway and the back shed area before I assembled them. I preassembled all of the laser cut pieces for the two story building. The rear half with the small shed is on a lower side than the front half with the walkway. Most of this was fairly simple to assemble as it just lined up without issues. These shots show the assembly and painting of the individual boards making up the siding of the shed and staircase. I need to trim the boards to length on the staircase and do some touchups but otherwise it's pretty much ready, though it needs the hand rail before installation. There is a single LED in the front left corner of the second level of the shed to give a little bit of light for that area and out to the stairs. I need to finish wrapping up the roof bits for the shed and the main car area which will be finished with a tar paper like look made from 2000 grid sand paper cut into strips. The white fuzzy bits are covering the windows still but will be removed for the final build before putting the roof on. This also shows the light yellow and brown colors that were common on these buildings as well. I have a couple more shots to include but will hold them for the next post that covers the rest of this building.
Continuing from the previous post.. I did a bit more work yesterday on the RPO building as seen below: To the left of the first image is the dual story area that hasn't changed since the photos. The first picture shows the staircase built out with the wooden steps and first coating of paint on them, I'll likely add more when it goes into place. The second photo shows the reverse side of the building with teh doors and wooden siding in place. After these I added the roof to the covered shed area, but forgot to grab a photo of it as I moved forward anyway, oops. In these photos I had added the roof to the shed and the tar paper roofing to it. I then added the slightly rounded roofing for the main part and covered it in roughly 2/3 of the roof with tar paper and taped it down. I stopped putting tar paper down as I had some tape covering the corner of the roof where it meets the shed as it did not stick quite as well as I had liked. Before assembling all of these though I added three lights in the main part of the building along the front side (shed side will face user) right at the floor line and pained the inside of the roof piece (flexible) acrylic black to soak up any light that might hit it. I glued these lights in place and now will shorten and tune the wires to reduce it to only two pairs (shed and main area) later. The blue tape will be removed shortly and the rest of the tar paper roof will be added. I'll evaluate what is left to build and sort out details for the rest at that point. I also pulled out the final kit, the section house and quickly assembled the building and boy is it huge for a multi-story building! Below are three shots showing the general layout that should be seen around Vance Junction CO with south being to the left and north to the right, the eight coal pockets will be further to the right where the three track area would be. Just out of frame to the right are an older Prodigy Advance2 unit and the Nexxt CS being used on this plywood piece for testing purposes.
I wrapped up most of the work for the roof of the RPO car, it now looks like they went over it with a bit of liquid tar to "glue" down a small leak instead of having white bits of glue sticking through (it was ugly). I'll likely go over it with a bit of a "whitewash" for weathering after sorting out it's actual place on the layout though (same/similar to be applied to other parts): Overall there are four lights in this RPO car, three in the main car and one in the upstairs shed piece. I'll likely combine the three in the car to one output and use a second output for the shed with timers on both to flicker them on/off on demand. With that I moved over to the section house to allow the above to dry a bit more. Man is this thing huge! After a very quick blue tape mock up of the "full" building I went back to the basement work and going up from there. This is the overall building height with the basement section (bottom portion) being below grade for most of it, the walls are also thrown on with no regard to how they should fit on the floors and have been fixed. After starting over with the basement I assembled the four walls and top / floor piece and gave it a quick paint job of the darker brown and brick red: The left and right sides are identical with half brick and half board/batten so I only captured one here. I also don't know why the "front" half with the door and window piece are only showing half color but they are. I gave both a second coating of paint before moving to the next step: This shows the battens in place with a similar brownish tone painted to them. Once the glue dries for the battens I'll go back over them to trim off the top/bottom halves and to length. If all is well I'll give the battens and brick some additional paint, perhaps see if I can do something for the grout on the bricks possibly. After all that I'll likely go back and wrap up the roof pieces of the passenger car since it still is pending tar paper work.
I started on the top half of the section house since I still had some yellowish and brownish paints remaining, I started by giving all of the clapboard siding a coating of yellowish paint and got all of the interior walls in place (except the center one) and taped all of the walls and clapboard in place. Front (single door) and back (track side, double door) with the center wall taped in place. The top sections of shingle wall were also installed, I later found that I could have left them blank and put shingles over them later oops. This also shows the center wall taped into place while the glue dried, I also have the top piece of shingle wall installed but will handle that after the roof, windows and doors are installed. I was curious how tall this building would be when completed and man is it tall! If we exclude the basement piece (red/brown) it's still tall! All of the roof sections are taped as pieces and held in place by gravity only. I've since removed and glued all of them with the spacers that hold them to shape, these are seen as slots in the photos. This shows a couple shots of the JTT plastic sheet shingles cut down to size (roughly) and the trim piece (not painted yet but will be yellow) in place. I need to remove the three walls that have shingles to give them a coating of paint and the bits of trim a coat of paint since they are plain still. Once all of this is done I'll get back to the doors/windows which I've primed with tie red and box car brown so they can be stacked and installed along with the above bits. But before that all goes in I'll sort out lighting for the lower level, so far thinking four lights on lower (main) level and then a couple in the upper level (two story section) with a bit of false floor that wasn't included with the kit. More on that over the weekend.
Thanks! I'm thankful that I ordered most of these as kits as it makes it a lot simpler than scratch building most of it. I'm on the fence for the coal pockets or if I can/should scratch build them since I have a lot of materials around here for them. The only place I've found the kit is here but there hasn't been much activity since they bought the product line. But for the section house, I've got all of the shingles cut for the walls and roofs. That took nearly three sheets of JTT shingles and should be close to the speeder car shed once completed. I'm thinking give them a coating of grey acrylic spray paint to tint them and have something on them, then I can hit them with the air brush I think and get something a bit better.
Going to be a slightly short post today but a ton of progress has been made all the same! Yesterday after stripping off all of the blue tape, clips and roof bits I was left with this: A no frills glued up bit of all exterior walls except for trim boards/bits. Those are up to be painted though, I might skip some of the bits that should be white as they may not look good against the roof shingle pieces on the top part. So I'll need to check that before painting and installing them. this shows some of the trim pieces for the top/bottom floors rough painted and staged together (door pieces). I forgot to glue the door pieces together as there is the main door (shown) and a trim piece that gets glued on top of them. These will all likely get a fresh coat of box car brown shortly after installing since it looks a lot darker and better than this mix of Tuscon Brown (works great as a primer and first coat of paint). As of now the windows and front door (faces user) has been installed and virtually all white pieces that covered the clear glazing has been removed. The two track side doors have been glued up and white bits are still on the glazing while it all dries. I did a very quick check of our shed where all extra paints are stored and I have plenty of clear and black available but nothing that will work for the roof so I'll pick up a can of grey later today when I go to town. I'm also expecting an order next weekend of additional paints to arrive, most of these are 2oz bottles and replenishing some of the ones I've used up. Later today the plan will be check lighting options, I'm leaning towards four lights in here, two on each side and two per level. I'll need to craft a foor/roof piece for both sides since the kit didn't come with one but that shouldn't be a major problem (I've got plenty of 1/16in wood for my laser). I'm going to sort out the lower lights today and test them with small holes drilled in the corners to run wires up to the "roof" of the main level and confirm they look good. Then I'll drill a couple holes for the second floor and mount them on the roof and see how it looks. Tomorrow I hope I'll have the shingles ready to sort out and get installed, I'll also need to straighten the outside walls so they are square as part of this process.
Likely to be a short one today as I'm waiting for glue to dry and needing to sort out some options for the shingles. So to start off, I started with painting some additional pieces of the porch and side bits This shows the (mostly) completed porch and wrap around bits, it also shows the staircase in a similar state. It also shows some roof pieces in place but I'll get back to that shortly. I gave the chimney pieces (two of them) a quick blackening coat so they don't all look like simple grey bits, it brought out a lot of the grout lines so I might keep this for now. The two track side doors also got completed and installed, there are three layers on both of those (outside trim, interior window and glazing). They need another coat of paint but are not too bad for now. After all of the above I test fit the two track side doors into the frames like most other parts were. I also realized that I didn't install the top halves of the windows and need to get them glued into place, they are all similar to the bottom halves but cover the top half of the windows so it is also two smaller panes (left and right) similar to the bottoms. And now the fun part, roofing... I gave all of the roof pieces a coating of flat grey primer and it mostly looks good to go. I still need to get the top caps made up but will get to those with part of a sheet of shingles shortly. So, this is a test painting with the grey primer color in the middle. Both sides have the same paint on them but the left side started with Engine Black and the right Tuscon Brown, otherwise the color order was (primer) grey, black/brown, reefer white, reefer red. One thing I noticed though was the reefer white seemed to strip the color off the left side that started with black but did not impact the right side as much. I still have no clue on that yet, but I'm leaning towards a thin coating of brown as the base color for the shingles and then build up from there and use some weathering powders on it once the color is close. And I can't show the roof without a test of two lights on this half. The lights are powered with two AA batteries so it's close to 3v which is near ideal for these (I should be able to go slightly higher with resistors). It looks almost perfect with the two 0805 warm white LEDs taped to the side walls (right side and back/left side) just below the cut line of the two parts. The wires run down the corners and out to the basement. I'll swap the tape for glue and then glue wires into the corners to retain them and then give them a light coating of paint to hide them. I also need to seat the roof into place properly (it slides on the back edge) and then "glue" it down with the LEDs inside. I'm holding off on this until it's fully done though since I may add more details on the inside. The right side of this picture would face the user and be visible when the lights are on. I'll connect these to a timer that kicks on around 5pm (fast clock) and runs until maybe 8pm, there will be some randomness in the left (single story) and right side (two story). Also on the right side I need to add a section of flooring just below the window height so I can have two sets of lights over there, one on bottom floor and other set on top area. I don't think the the top area was as used so it will definitely be randomized and go perhaps beyond 8pm. More tomorrow as I sort out the roof pieces a bit further and lighting circuits. Until then I'll tidy these wires up and join them in the basement so there is a single set that goes to the lighting controller (likely custom and LCC based).
I posted some of the updates to the group thread on Monday and so far today I haven't had many other accomplishments on it just yet. But for this morning I wrapped up the gluing of the inverted floor/roof piece that splits the short side of the building into three parts, one for each "bedroom" and one for the loft. I don't recommend gluing it like this though, it is a bit flimsy and doesn't sit well. I added the two short pieces today to give it a bit more structure than just the inverted T shape which helped but didn't fix everything (which is fine). So, with the new piece glued and ready to install I went ahead and installed it and tested the lights to confirm they are working correctly. Thankfully everything seems to work on battery power for the three sections. It does show there is a slight issue on the background for the lower area having the two doors there so I'll need to put something in their place likely. I may also go through and add some wallpaper or bed/desk in these rooms as well. Haven't decided yet! I also modeled the walkway that shows up in pictures of the area in 1910 and 1915 timeframe. This wasn't included with the kit so I cut two 24in 1x6in O scale wood bits in half (12in) and glued them to some scrap pieces which will be underneath this walkway. To the right of this building would be the passenger car (depot) and there is a rough 16ft section with very short walls, maybe 2ft tall and just wire based. The uprights were started roughly 2ft to the south of the section house and were placed at roughly 3-4ft apart. I will need to craft a few more of these side walk porches in the near future as they extend well beyond the section house. The depot (box car) has them already but was roughly 1/2 car further forward than the section house. The walkway also extended further north to the RPO boxcar / shed which was roughly 20ft further to the north of the section house in 1915. Also of interest, the 1910 picture of the Depot box car has only four windows on either side and is mostly dark color with lighter top half on the ends only. I'll likely modify the box car a bit to add some paneling on the front/back sides had ~4in horizontal slats similar to the section house and went from the center point to the top (roof). There was also a lantern mounted track side which I may need to source a small model for.
It's going to be a rather short post for today with only a single picture since I'm having some issues with a bloody nose while trying to build this building (I think it's too dry in my office space but not 100% certain yet, going to keep at it for now). I have glued the roof sections to these four pieces (left side is three pieces, one covering two sets of windows and the others covering single sets). I need to make a small adjustment on the right side (single story) so that the roof going over the two doors is lifted along the wall so it goes up to the double windows (slight curve for this). I also need to glue the two triangle halves (left and right window sections) to the main roof on the double story section. I'd like to do this before finishing it fully which will involve trimming the main roof slightly. Once glued together I'll take care of weathering all of the bits. I am also considering dropping the window covering trim and doing it by hand with smaller trim boards as it should give a better look. This is partially delaying the applying of shingle pieces near the double windows (second story) since the shingle sheets I have are not quite 100% right but are better than paper. I'll also be assembling one more 12in section of walkway which shows in various photos around 1915.
Just keeps getting better sir. Really like the look of the roof shingles. Nice Hope the bloody nose issue clears up. I have the same issue if it gets too dry in my train room.
I'm hoping for similar here, I moved the AC unit to the opposite side of the room to help with noise and hopefully reduce the chance of nose bleeds due to dryness. I ended up spending the entire day yesterday inside relaxing and doing anything but trains for a bit, but I did a little bit of research on trestles which will be one of the next areas to tackle after some track work and a couple wye turnouts (stub style, joy!) I'll try and post something later this afternoon/evening if I have something to share though. Current TODO list for the section house building: Recolor all shingles to look more accurate than flat grey color they currently have. This grey color is a possible solution to the issues related to not having colors dissolve with new color layers. Trim the two sided roof piece so the triangle pieces can sit flush with that section for gluing. Install the slight ramp in the roof section that is just above the two track side doors so that the top edge is just below/right of the windows Join up the short wire bits with larger AWG wires so they can go to lighting solutions (TBD still but I have ideas). Add some sort of trim pieces to all shingle pieces. Add custom trim pieces to all upstairs windows instead of using the 1/32in bass wood templates since they won't sit well with shingles. Possibly trim window side shingles to match trim pieces and fit better than trim on top of shingles (which just won't work). Add another coat of all paints to the building since it is thin and there is a piece that has a color difference that isn't quite right. Up next will be starting the first module piece that will have the starting point of a single track followed by three tracks, the second section will have these return to single track and then split to two tracks (Telluride and Ophir). This second module will use the section house, passenger car (depot, with some changes) and RPO car with shed. The second box car and speeder car shed will be set aside for review if they need to be included. I'm expecting the first two modules to be ~8ft in length and cover most of Vance Junction.
It's been a few days since I posted here, sadly not much has been done over that period as life has been busy. But some progress was made in the last few days at least. Up first is a quick test of a station manager and a couple barrels, one of which will be used on the opposite side in front of the double doors as seen in ~1910 as fire suppression: I'm thinking the barrels should get some weathering and/or removal of the blue color in the grey and maybe a bit more darkening on the man and glue him inside looking outwards possibly. Another area that was mostly wrapped up is this: I've installed the windows, trim and basic shingles around the top windows. A very small triangle of shingles should go just above the window but it is very tight and may not hold much more than a partial shingle. The trim work needs a bit of wood filler and repainting after install looking at the photo now as the area above the window isn't quite a tight fit and around the window looks a bit sloppy, so those will go on the list to be fixed as well. And lastly I cut and partially painted the roof section over this weekend (left side, front corner): It needs just a bit more of the red tone and possibly another coating of black to tone it down further before weathering but I think it looks reasonable. Still to do will be cut some trim pieces to go on the edges (scale 2x6s painted redish) and across the peaks will need a piece of shingles to cover as well. The valleys (recesses) won't need much more than a dark undercoating (mostly there now) and wrap up the roof colors. Just out of frame in the lower right is a piece of pink foam that was used for priming the shingles a grey color and currently drying is the RPO building which got a coating of dull coat this morning (man that stuff kinda stinks!). I'll likely need to give it all a bit of weathering to coat the roof/walls/etc just a tad more but it's mostly ready to go on the modules. The modules didn't get started this weekend as planned but I did pick up a stiring device for the drill and will give the plain white primer paint a mixing and then coat everything on the modules before assembly. I hope to assemble the modules this week and then get buildings into place for sizing the ~3in of foam on the surface with ~1in below fascia levels. These modules will house Vance Junction and cover from the beginning to end of the three track section. From some review of pictures it looks like it is mostly a mix of two way stub switches stacked on the three tracks where they meet between the RPO and section house buildings, the other end though might in fact be a three way switch but track plans differ in both directions around the same period.
I was able to get a small bit of work done on the section house roof and windows over the last couple days. I still need to straighten the walls slightly, it's only likely going to be three walls in the upstairs section that need help. But on with some photos! Both of these side walls got their sets of trim installed and the left one had the trim pieces installed like the right one, just waiting for glue to dry on them now. The shingles are also now glued in place after all trim work was "done". I still need to hit the joints with some wood compound so they all look smooth, so that is a next step (need to pick some up, mine dried out). I cut the majority of the roof piece and glued this chunk in it's place since it will ramp upwards. It's far from perfect but it's not bad for setting it in place and seeing the massive color differences. It's kinda odd that there is that much color difference when it used the same paint but a different day, go figure. It's also supposed to be flat but shows as shiny, I gave it a very light dull coat spray and it improved it some. I'll likely need to give it another coat once the roof pieces are 100% done and ready to be installed. The right side of this roof panel isn't quite sitting all the way down in the photo as the sill pieces (shown in the window) still need to dry a bit more and I'll need to trim the new roof piece just slightly so it lines up correctly and place it with a screwdriver to have it line up 100% correctly. This shows the roof that goes on the upper section, can you see which triangle piece was added later and painted with the same odd grey color? I can't and I think it looks fairly good in this light. I need to add the caps for the top roof joints but otherwise it is mostly done, maybe a dull coat on it and some weathering though. And finally, this shows both sections of roof mostly in place, I realigned the lower roof slightly to have it line up just a tad better but still needs a little more work to line up with the windows better. Overall I think the roofs and walls mostly meet up but will need to straighten walls for better alignment and then wrap up lights for the sections. I'll need to sort out the interior on them as well, I have cut a couple pieces of card stock to go inside and divide this into five sections (lower side is split horizontally and vertically, higher side is vertical only). I'm debating on adding wall and floor covers inside the "rooms" and maybe a 3D printed bed and dresser of some sort. The taller side is mostly going to be office space and storage (above) so I'm not 100% certain yet what I'll add there yet. As for placement, the single door side (first photo) will be facing the aisle and looks mostly correct now, some filler between the upstairs windows will help along with a fresh coating of paint on them, maybe similar on the stairs. I also need to install railing on the walkway which is up once the walls are straightened. The side with two doors will be at track height (or slightly above with a walkway just below) and face the trackwork, away from the user. I'll add a fire barrel by the track and extend the walkway in both directions as to the left will be the RPO building with shed and to the right will be the passenger car / depot. I will also need to reevaluate the depot and add some woodwork on the upper section to cover all but a couple windows on each long side to match roughly the 1915 era per photos. So that will go on the short list for that part once I have everything in place. But overall the list is now: Wrap up the lower section of roof recoloring. Install the slight ramp in the roof section that is just above the two track side doors so that the top edge is just below/right of the windows Join up the short wire bits with larger AWG wires underneath. The Passenger Car / Depot roof will be slightly different as it will route to one end and then down to below the floor on the track side so it is mostly hidden. RPO car has a couple lights which will join up behind the shed area so it is fully hidden. Add trim pieces to all roof sections once the final bits of roof are done. Rework Passenger Car / Depot in Vance Junction for upper section of window coverings. Wrap up Passenger Car / Depot roof section to not be plain plastic. This needs the sand paper covering like the RPO building. Almost everything else should be done now
