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...

Last evening, I added some terrain to the area around Norridgewock yard on my layout. I added a small rise in front of the tracks, following topographic maps of the area. To add the rise, I first attached some scraps of one inch thick foam insulation board that I had on hand. The foam was then attached with screws. I then cut the foam to eliminate the sharp corner in the center of the image and to make the foam parallel the track. I then shaped the foam with a rasp, shaping the foam to get a realistic variety of contuors I saved the foam shavings generated by shaping the foam. I put the shavings in a mall plastic container and then used the shavings to fill in the gaps between the sheets of foam that I used to make the rise. A view of the finished rise by the Maine Central Tracks in Norridgewock. I got more work on the rise done at the same time, and I will post more about that work soon.

I know that I haven't posted much recently, but I did not get to work on the layout much last week. I wasn't particularly busy, it being summer vacation, but I could not get any layout work done for various reasons. However, this morning I was able to make good progress on the layout. I carved and shaped one side of a rise in the land of the third, countryside module and part of the corner module. This rise will eventually cover the entire countryside module except where the track passes through a shallow cut. One of my pet peeves about many layouts is that they are either far to flat or have exaggerated  topographical features, like very steep slopes or deep ravines, when most land areas are dominated by rather gentle topography. I have been guilty of this many times- Most of my previous layout attempts were completely flat. In Maine, however, most of the land is rolling terrain with countless slight rises and depressions in the land, so I have attempted to simulate this on ...

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.

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...