These past few nights I've been busy slicing and dicing pink styrofoam and mocking up the two ends of Gallitzin.
The first area I worked on was the area around the tunnels. I started by taking all those Model Power house kits I've assembled and cutting some foam steps for them to sit on. In Gallitzin, many of the houses are set into the hillside. While I'm trying to take a more impressionistic approach, this was something I definitly wanted to recreate.
At present, I'm not sure if I will keep the two rows of houses coming down the hill or go with just one. But that's why I do a mock up first. After I live with it a while, I can change things.
The slab of pink foam in the foreground of the above photo will be raised up so the buildings are about two inches aboove the tracks and a Rix "Early Highway Overpass" will carry the road across the tracks.
The second area I started working on was the western end of Gallitzin, where PA Route 53 crosses the tracks on an overpass. Aside from being a popular railfan location, the bridge provides a very nice scene transition.
Rather than try to model the prototype bridge exactly, I used another Rix kit, well two of them actually. The bridge itself is still a work in progress and needs to be weathered. However it's a very nice fit for the area and even mocked up looks great in the setting. The Rix kits themselves are quite nice. They go together in about five minutes, the pieces have very little, if any flash on them and they are quite flexible. You can build a bridge to just about any length.
My next project will be to get the rails painted, ugh. Then I will start making things permenant.
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