Modelling Maine Railroads

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 ...

Last night I got the legs attached to the benchwork. It was a somewhat laborious project, and was made more difficult by the distinct downward slope of the floor in the room that I am building the layout in. With that complete, I can move on to adding a foam board layout surface. One end of the new benchwork. The legs at the far end of the layout had to be shortened by about half an inch to make the layout level. The other end of the layout. This contains the Low's Bridge layout section that I posted about the other day. A panoramic view of the benchwork, ready to have foam board attached.

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. 

This afternoon, I worked on building a small becnhwork section tahy wiil eventually contain the location of Low's Bridge. Low's Bridge contained a flag stop platform and covered bridge. The location was situated on the Bangor and Aroostook's Greenville branch, and the covered bridge carried a local road over the Piscataquis river. I will be modeling this scene in a roughly one by two foot area. I had all the lumber lengths and foamboard I needed to build a basic frame and attach an initial layer of foam for this location on hand, so I decided to assemble the frame this afternoon. The frame was constructed from previously used one by threes. The dark brown patch in the center of the one board is brown paint from my last layout. Each board was connected to  another board at the corner using two small wood screws. The frame at the the end of assembly, and ready to have foam attached. I did not bother to adf any interior bracing as the frame is so small. ...