Modelling Maine Railroads

Why am I modelling the Grand Trunk's Norway, Maine branch? This is probably the most important question as regards my layout. Norway was the smallest branch line terminal on the Grand Trunk New England Lines, and perhaps even in the entire state of Maine. Its yard (if it can be called that) and terminal area contained only five switches, as far as I know. This worked well for me as I wanted to model a small branch line terminal,. I also wanted to build my layout in a small space, and make it somewhat portable, as well. In addition, I already had a six foot long by thirty inch wide module constructed. As I played around with rough designs for Norway, it became apparent that the yard arrangement at Norway would fit on the module very easily. This was appealing as it did not require the construction of new benchwork for the town. As well as having a very small amount of track, the terminal at Norway was located in a very small area. The Norway terminal was located in a roughly...

In today's mail, I received a package containing the book Trackside Grand Trunk New England Lines with John Ames,  one of Morning Sun Books excellent color photo books. With the arrival of this book I can start major work on the layout and especially the Norway terminal module.

Please excuse the wordy nature of this post, but I think it is necessary to explain the concept and ideas behind my layout. First, I will explain a bit of historical background of the Grand Trunk New England Lines (GTNE), which seem to not be very well known. The Grand Trunk New England Lines ran between Portland, Maine, a mid sized port city on the Atlantic coast, and Montreal, P.Q.. Two branch lines in Maine, one to Lewiston Maine and the other to Norway, Maine, split of the main Portland to Montreal line. Portland was the main winter port for rail traffic on the Grand Trunk System until the 1920s.  Portland was therefore a major grain exporting port, with two terminal grain elevators, each with a capacity of over one million bushels of grain. During the early 1920s, the Grand Trunk system ran into debt problems due to its Pacific extension and was nationalized by the Canadian government. It thus became part of the Canadian National Railways. However, the Grand Trunk New En...

This afternoon, I finished the initial carving of the stream banks. While the stream banks are not ready for scenery yet, as I still have to smooth them out more, I think that they are starting to look good. I carved the banks following a photo of the stream leading to the Grand Trunk bridge in Norway. The picture shows stage stream as it looked while I was carving the banks. I used a knife to carve progressively smaller strips of foam from the edge of the stream bed to eventually attain a curved and natural looking stream bank. This picture shows the section of stream located in the viewing side of the layout after it had been carved. The rail bridge will be located where the carved sections end. Looking up the stream towards the bridge, as seen from the stream bed. Looking downstream towards the bridge. You can see the stream banks on the far side of the layout in the sides of the foreground. The stream banks look the most realistic in low level photographs. ...

This evening, I started work on carving and shaping the stream banks of Bird Brook. I only carved roughly a quarter of the banks, but it gives a good idea of how the entire stream will look like when I finish carving.y regular foam board carving knife was used  I based the topography of the stream banks based on Google street view photos of the area. An overall view of the stream location before I started carving the banks of the stream. An overview of the carved section of the stream. A view of the carved stream banks from the stream bed, looking towards where the railroad bridge will eventually be located. Looking at the bank from normal ground level. Looking from the opposite bank. I think that it is showing the beginnings of a believable stream. Hopefully, I will be able to work more on this over the weekend.

The benchwork on my layout is made up of three modules, which makes it necessary to have a way to connect and align the modules. To support the modules, I first attached a one by two inch board along the ends of the modules with legs. The picture below shows the module ends after the lower board was attached. The corner module was then placed on the board. After that, I drilled holes into both module end boards. These holes then had three inch long bolts inserted into them to align the modules, as shown in the photo below. I then screwed two small screws into the module connections to make sure the modules were secure. The picture above shows the module ends with the screws in place. This marks the end of benchwork on the scenic portion of the layout. 

Yesterday, I carved out a stream bed on the corner module of the layout. This stream bed will eventually contain Bird Brook, a stream that ran past the Grand Trunk terminal in Norway, Maine. (As a side note, whenever I refer to Norway on this blog, I'm talking about the town in Maine, not the country. ) The Norway branch crosses Bird Brook on a small bridge just before it enters town. On my layout, the railroad will cross the stream on one end of the corner module. To model the stream bed for Bird Brook in my layout, I started by determining where it could be located by temporarily laying flextrack through the module. I then marked where a thirty scale foot long straight section could go without overly tightening the radius of the corner module's track.  I marked where a thirty scale foot long straight section could go without overly tightening the radius of the corner module's track. After this, I removed the track and drew an outline for the stream bed based on topog...

I added foam board to the layout q few days ago. I used one inch thick foam board to provide a layout base. The inch thick foam board is fairly sturdy and can easily support trains and scenery if it is decently braced underneath, I think.   I added foam board to two of the modules. The third module already had foam board attached to it. I started by marking the shape of the needed area onto a sheet of foam board. I then cut it out with a small kitchen knife. For the five by one foot module, I simply cut out a piece of foam to the exact size. For the corner module, I used two pieces of foam board that I cut to fit the module and then glued together using woof glue. My cat sat behind the layout and supervised everything. This is how the layout looks now with all of board attached. Now I can begin shaping basic landforms and laying track.

While I have been working on a layout of some kind or another over the last few years, I have always had a difficult time staying with a certain layout for any length of time. This should be fairly obvious to anyone who reads this blog, as this is the fourth, I believe, layout idea or beginning that I have described on this blog. As far as I can tell, these projects have always been to big or to small, depending upon the layout, to remain engaging for any amount of time. For this reason, I have never gotten a layout to anything that remotely resembles a finished state. I think that my layout that lasted the longest lived for about four months and was mostly covered by a layer of basic ground foam in most areas. Even there, though, I did not even finish ballasting the track. I think that a large part of the problem with my previous layouts were that they were all, in their own way, too much. For example, the first layout concept I described here was supposed to include a paper mill, a...

As I wrote earlier, I constructed benchwork over the weekend with the help of my father. Nothing special about the benchwork-just typical wood frame open grid. The benchwork is completely flat, and it is built in three modules. On module is five feet long and one foot wide, and another is six feet long and 18-30 inches wide. These modules both have legs. The third module is a corner module, roughly three by three feet in size. This module is supported by the other two modules and has one leg to support the rear corner. I will add a staging module at the end of the five by one foot module later. Here are some pictures of the completed modules. A side view of the completed five by one foot module. It forms one end of the layout.  A view of the same module, only this time from one corner. A view of the corner module. The rear leg supports the rear corner. The ends of the module are supported by the other two modules. I will write more about this later. The other mo...

Over the weekend, I constructed modular benchwork for a new layout. I built two sections, and attached them together. Here are some pictures of the finished benchwork. The finished benchwork. There are three modules in total. Looking at the benchwork from the other end of it. More about what all this is for later.

I added a gravel lot in Presque Isle this afternoon. The gravel lot is located between the recently built road and the future location of two potato houses. A view of the gravel lot, looking towards where the potato houses will be located.  An overall view of the gravel lot. I will add weeds and other vegetation in the future.