Back to the Curve

The new access road for Kittanning Point Station. A pair of Cornerstone crossing gates guard the crossing.

Overall view of the valley. The brown area at left will require going through the access hatch to finish.

Note the reservoir spillway at left.

After what seems like months, oh wait, it has been months, I got back to work on Horseshoe Curve. Anyway, I was in a mad rush to get the area around the Curve done before my son was born. And I came quite close. But towards the end the "I wanna do something else on the layout" bug bit me hard. As a result I ended up doing some work at the Altoona Shop (which I am currently redoing) and started the switch to DCC. 

At any rate, I started things off by painting most recently installed plaster in preparation for turf. I have to say, it was nice to see the area look a bit more natural after looking at grungy white plaster all this time.

The next thing I did was finish the road from the Curve to the front of the layout, along with a short access road for Kittanning Point. As usual, I used Woodland Scenics paving tape and patching plaster. Now, here's where the fun starts. I grabbed my cheap poster paint and mixed some white with the black to create a nice dark grey color of a faded road. But not only did I not get an opaque coat, I got a weird blue color! I tried going over it with straight black, still the white bled through. 

Eventually, I tossed in the towel and went downstairs for the night. Today, however, I went out and bought some acrylic paint, and that was the ticket. For my next trick, I went about applying the Woodland Scenics turf. I stared with green fine turf, then moved on to patches of yellow and finally coarse turf. For application, I brushed the area with a coat of matte medium, applied the turf and sprayed it with more, diluted matte medium. 

While the glue was drying, I went ahead and added some grade crossing gates to Kittanning Point station. Next, I have the whole tree issue to ponder.

Earthworks Complete at Horseshoe Curve

I found myself faced with an increasingly-rare bit of free time today and decided to tackle the last of the major earthworks at Horseshoe Curve. Essentially I used a hot knife to cut valley into the styrofoam and used plaster-socked paper towels to attain the proper depths. When that was finished, I tacked the hillside in front of Kittanning Point station.

All that remains at the Curve is roads, painting the base coat, turf and foreground trees. Wait, did I say "all?" That's a lot. Who knows when I'll actually get to it but I hope it's not too long.

Fixed the Grade Crossings

I managed to get the grade crossings fixed. I took the center pieces and hit them with my Dremmel until they were just about paper-thin. Now all the trip pins clear them. On the downside, I snapped two of them in half and chipped one of them. But hey, they're installed. Thank God the rest of the line is grade-separated.

Oh and while I was at it, I went ahead and stained the pedestrian crosswalk. I used Minwax "Special Walnut."

Failing Grade, Crossing That Is

Well, it turns out the Blair Line grade crossings ain't gonna fly. Last night, I fired up the layout for some much-needed playing of trains and all seemed fine until a long frieght encountered the newly-installed grade crossing. Sudenly I noticed train had decoupled right at the crossing. When I went to investigate, I discovered that the coupler trip pin on the first car of the decoupled consist was striking the crossing.

At first I thought I'd simply trim the trip pin so it would clear the crossing. But then I realized if one pin was causing problems, there were bound to be others and I was setting myself up for an ongoing battle. I'd used these crossing on my last layout with no problems but said layout was also laid with Code 80 track instead of Code 55.

So what to do? The best solution I could come up with was to remove the portion between the rails and sand them down so they don't sit too high.

Sanding seemed like a good solution in theory. But in practice, the sanded pieces started warping like the were auditioning to be a modern art masterpiece. I tired using glue to fight the warping to no avail. First I tried foam tack glue, then CA and finally hot glue, nothoing would hold the end down low enough for the trip pines to clear.

So it looks like I'm going to have to go with plaster grade crossing, which kind of sucks because I think the wooden ones look so much cooler. But I'll trade asthetics for operational reliability any day of the week.

More Work at Kittanning Point

Well, I certainly got a lot accomplished over the past two days. I got the remaining grade crossing installed and stained. I plastered the road in between said crossings. I added the wooden crosswalk to the eastbound platform installed. I also built the remaining platform section from my Atlas station kit to serve as the eastbound platform. For my last trick, I added some blended turf around the outside of the station.

Now this little Atlas station looks nothing like the real Kittanning Point station, which was a glorious old stone structure. However, the real station was also torn down long before 1956. So yeah, more of that impressionist approach I was telling you about. You can see pictures of the old station here (link).

Progress at Kittanning Point

I've finally gotten back to work on the Kittanning Point station area. I paved a small parking lot and installed the first of four Blair Line wooden grade crassings. I can tell you right now I'm not looking forward to putting plaster between said grade crossings. But I might as well suck it up and get it done.

To the right of the paved parking lot, I created a small gravel area. I took a while deciding exactly which color gravel to use. Eventrually, I setteled on black after consulting several prototype photos. I sprinkeled on a little bit of Woodland Scenics "Yellow Grass" fine turf to give the impression of weeds. 

I also felt the area needed one more structure. So I added the small shanty just to the right of the grade crossing. It came from a Cornerstone "Shady Juction Structures" kit. I salvaged it off my last layout. I did decided to go ahead and repaint it to match the depot and give it more of a Pennsy look. I used Floquil "Depot Buff" for the walls, Floquil "Tuscan" for the windows and doors and Floquil "Grimey Black" for the roof.

The PRR Maintainance Truck is a Classic Metal Works model. To round out the scene, I will probably add a nice pile of old ties and a few lengths of old rail.

Other than that, all that remains is to build the remaining platform section from my Atlas station kit and place it adjacent to the eastbound track, install the remaining grade crossings and a Blair Line wooden crosswalk between the platforms. I'll also put down some turf for the non-paved or graveled areas and paint the parking lot dark gray.

Mountains Around the Curve Contiue

I spent a bit of time last night building some more mountains. The mountains are now in place most of the way around Horseshoe Curve.

I also added some more trees near Kittanning Point. Unfortunately it really doesn't disguise the popup as well as I'd hoped.

More "Trees" at Kittanning Point

I had a coupon for 20% at Michael's, so I picked up two more bags of lichen. The layout did a pretty good job of swallowing them up. I've found Elmer's Craft Bond spray adhesive makes for much faster and easier application.

Finally Got Around to Staining the Last Batch of Rocks

I don't know why I took so long getting this done. But at least they look like they came out nicely. As you can see I planted some more background trees on the mountain. The next project will be a parking lot for Kittanning Point Station.

In other news, I felt the road's president deserved a private car so I picked up this old Atlas/Rivarossi observation car and used some Woodland Scenics dry transfers to christen it the "Stars Hollow." How'd I come up with that name? Well, one of my wife's favortie TV shows is Gilmore Girls, which is set in the fictional town of Stars Hollow, CT. So yeah, the name would be better suited for a New Haven car. But hey, I've got it running in the NS era, so maybe it found its way here via the Penn Central merger.

More Work at Altoona, More Houses and More Scenery

I spent a good portion of the day working on the railroad and got a few projects crossed off the "to do" list.

First and foremost, I got the tracks laid in the roundhouse. This project was somewhat complicated by the fact the the Atlas turntable has a tighter diameter than the roundhouse. As you can see, the outermost tracks have to curve a good bit to connect to the turntable.

I used some Atlas Code 80 track since I had a bunch of it laying around and it would be largely hidden. For the four outside tracks, I actually used sectional curves.  All told, I think this project turned out nicely.

I also knocked out another Model Power house kit. This time is was their "Haunted House." I had some fun with this one. Other than the fence, which I painted Floquil "grimy black," I left the rest of the kit in stock colors. Once assembled I hit it with coating of dark weather wash, Dulcote and chalks to really give it an abandoned look.

With the house kit done, I turned my attention to the base. Each of the house kits comes with a gray plastic base molded to look like concrete. Model Power also supplies a fairly unconvincing looking grass mat. Rather than use the grass mat, I masked out the areas I wanted to be concrete and kit the rest with some Elmer's spray adhesive. I then sprinkled on a coating of Woodland Scenics fine turf. The I scattered on some yellow turf and coarse turf on the lawn to further cement the look I was after.

I used a WS tree armature sans foliage to simulate a dead tree. I glued the fence on last. I may add a green LED for lighting. It definitely looks like haunted house. But hey, I ain't afraid of no ghost!

With the pop-up hatch in place, Scenery has been advancing westward towards Horseshoe Curve. I placed an Atlas station on the straightaway just before the curve. This will serve as Kitanning Point station. The real Kitanning Point Station was torn down in the 1930s, but I wanted to find a place for this particular structure and like the idea of including Kitanning Point.

When I desinged the track plan, I goofed and set the main line through Gallitzin too close to Horseshoe Curve (the line doubles back on itself). To separate the two scenes, I cut a 1' x 4' piece of Masonite and glues some cloud-pattern bulletin board paper to it to create a view block.

The mountains are in place as far as the right side of the curve. I painted them by diluting raw umber acrylic paint and spraying it on with a spray bottle.