The first thing I've been working on is planning the track work, scenery, structures, etc.. I haven't actually laid any track yet because I'm waiting til the next module up so I can make sure radius' and turnouts will fit properly. Despite this, I did plan the scene. I decided to model one of the few curved wooden pile trestles along the Columbia River towards the town of Northport. My plan is to have the track snake along the river and cross the bridge and jut back out to the edge of the layout. Hopefully this will make a 'shadow box' effect to chop up the scenes. Please excuse the crude drawing!
Prototype by: Bill Hooper
Model
The next thing I did on the layout was actually start painting my backdrop. I had always been scared to even try backdrop painting, but one I just thought I should go for it. So I did! I got a few photos off of the internet and planned what I was going to do. After that I started painting. I painted the background hills and trees. The only thing left to paint is grassy, rolling hills which will in the fore-ground of the backdrop. I like the result, but it doesn't match the prototype photos as closely as I had hoped. I can always repaint it! Please give me any suggestions you might have.
Prototype/ sorry about the quality
Model
The other thing(s) I did on the layout, was work on building a few of the structures for my locomotive facility in Kettle Falls. This included a sanding tower and a fuel tank. I could of bought these as kits from Pike stuff or Walthers, but I was striving for more of a backwoods/ branch line look. By the way, I have no prototype info about these structures in Kettle Falls, so they are completely 'proto-freelanced', since they are built after BN prototypes, just in a different location.
The sanding tower was built with styrene 'I' beams, strip wood, brass wire, and a tube that solder comes in.
Sanding Tower:
Prototype by: Martin Duwash
Model:
For the fuel tank, I unfortunately lost the prototype photo. Anyway, the model is made from a 3/4" PVC pipe, wood for concrete pillars to enhance the appearance of layered concrete, and various other little details mainly made of sprues and old freight car parts. The weathering turned out REALLY bad in my opinion, so I still have to fix that. Once I finalize where I'm going to put the model, I'll build a concrete pad, but until then, there isn't one.
The last thing I did on the layout was add speeder tracks to my speeder shed and build a speeder from a Durango Press kit. This was a fun, yet very simple kit to build. I still have to do some touch-up paint on it, but overall it turned out well.
So, that's about it.
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