Modelling Maine Railroads

On Monday afternoon, I finished the potato house. There wasn't much work left to do on it after what I described in part 4 of this series, and it only took about two hours of work to finish off the potato house. I would have finished it Sunday evening, in fact, but the Patriots were playing in the Super Bowl, so that was more of a priority than model railroading for me. At any rate, all that was left to do was to paint the roof and weather the structure, and neither of those things took very long. The roof was simply painted with black acrylic paint, which covered fairly well, or at least well enough so that I did not have to add a second coat of paint. I then weathered the entire structure. I did not do anything elaborate on this building, as it should look like it was well maintained and the site of a fairly prosperous business, rather than a pile of rotting wood on the verge of collapse. Too often, I think you see structures that modelers have weathered to such an extent that it...

Progress on the potato house has been fairly slow over the last week, but I've been able to get a lot of work done on it this weekend. Since the last post on this subject, I have painted the walls, windows, doors, and concrete supports, glued on two different sets of roof panels, added details, and applied masking tape to the roof of the potato house in order to represent tar paper roofing. Most of this work was done over this most recent weekend, but the potato house was painted over the week. Quite a bit of progress, especially on painting, was made in fifteen to twenty minute intervals before dinner on weeknights. I managed to paint the entire structure in these short periods of time over the span of a week, painting one or two walls each night. The structure was painted light gray. According to the only prototype photo that I know of, at least part of the potato house was painted light gray. On the other part of the structure, the paint was worn off, so I assumed that the ent...

More progress on the potato house this evening. I attached floors to the main part of the structure, cut and glued styrene strip to represent the large concrete blocks that supported the prototype structure, and primed all the styrene parts of the structure with cheap gray craft paint. The next step will be to paint the entire structure with good quality paint. The walls will be painted grey and the freight doors painted dark green based on prototype photos. Floors were made out of .020 inch styrene sheet to allow the concrete piers to be attached to the structure. The floors also provide additional stability for the structure. Half of the concrete blocks attached to the floors. The blocks are roughly two scale feet high by eight scale inches wide. They are placed roughly six to seven scale feet apart. The rest of the concrete blocks attached. All of the styrene surfaces on the building were painted with some cheap gray craft paint that I had on hand. I just...

I got new X-Acto knife blades this afternoon, so the potato house project can move on. This evening, I got quite a bit more work done on the potato house. I cut and attached freight doors to the side walls, attached corner trim, assembled the two sections of the potato house, and attached them together to create the curve of the structure. Overall, progress on the structure went quite quickly, expcept for the door that I attached in the wrong place. The potato house will hold to forty foot boxcars and refrigerator cars when completed. While it is a fairly small structure,  potato houses were often fairly small structures, and the dimensions of the model I am building reasonably match the dimensions of the prototype, as far as I can tell. The freight doors were cut from some v-groove styrene sheet. The doors are three by two centimeters, which works out to be roughly eight by five scale feet. The door runners (?) at the top are made of scale lumber that I cut from clapboard...

While I haven't been particularly active in terms of model railroading so far this month, mostly because I have been unable to settle on a plan and a particular prototype to model. Yesterday, however, I started working on scratchbuilding a model of a potato house. These structures were common through northern Maine, particularly in the county (Whenever I refer to the county, I am speaking of Aroostook County, in northern Maine. Aroostook County is commonly referred to as only "the county" in the part of Maine I am from). Potato houses were ubiquitous in towns located along the Bangor and Aroostook railroad in the county up throuh the 1970s, and I have been looking at building a small layout based on part of the Bangor and Aroostook. Thus, I need to have models of at least one, if not more, potato house for a Bangor and Aroostook layout to look credible. I decided to scratchbuild my model based on a prototype potato house located in Houlton, Maine. This potato house wa...

This afternoon, I added, carved, and shaped foam board for the Low's Bridge  scene on my layout. I first added two roughly one by two foot foam layers, each one inch thick. I then carved the rouh shape of the riverbank into the foam. After that, I used a rasp to shape and smooth the foam. The Low's Bridge area on my layout at the beginning of the afternoon. Test fitting the first layer of foam board. The first layer of foam board attached. Note the roughed in shape of the riverbed of the Pistcataquis River on the extreme left of the picture. The top layer of foam attached, making the foam board at Low's Bridge even with the foam board of the rest of the layout. The slope of the riverbank roughed in using a small knife. After initial shaping with the rasp. I then laid track at Low's Bridge and roughed up the foam board on the inland side of the track. This is how the Low's Bridge area looked by the end of the aft...

On Monday night, I cut and attached foam board to make a basic, flat, layout surface for my new layout. I used one inch thick foam board for this. Installation was fast and simple, and I did not have any problems with the foam board. I used a combination of wood glue and screws to secure the foam board on the layout. On the layout, I used a single two by eight foot piece of foam board to make up the main layout section, while I used some decent sized peices of foam that I had on hand in order to finish adding foam board to the layout. I still have to add more foam around Low's Bridge, as that area was attached to the main layout benchwork two inches lower than the rest of the layout, in order to make it easier to model the bridge. This afternoon, I'm hoping that I can build up the foam at Low's bridge so that tracklaying on the layout can comence. This is what I started out with - A large shhet of fresh foam board. This sheet is now the base for the what will be ...

I thought that I would post a few pictures of my new layout space. The new space is a medium sized fourth bedroom/storage room, of wich I have a 42 inch by 11 foot six space in which to build a layout. Unfortunately, due to the shape of the room, I cannot build the Penobscot Street Spur layout. I have however, been able to plan a different layout for the space, based on the Bangor & Aroostook's Greenville branch. I will post more about this plan sometime next week. This photo shows part of the longer wall of the layout space. Note the piles of lumber in preparation for the beginning of benchwork assembly. The other end of the layout space, showing the long wall as well as the shorter, 42 inch wall. The short wall will be the location of the Low's Bridge benchwork section that I posted about yesterday.