North Corinna Takes Shape

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Remember when you were a kid, and you made those rubber-band-powered model airplanes? The first time you spent hours covering those spindly balsa-wood wings with tissue or silk and “dope,” weren’t you convinced that floppy, droopy thing would never fly? And, a few hours later, you saw that wing or fuselage with nice, tight, smooth contours, and you thought, “Wow! This is great!”

Guess what? Diluted matte medium and shop rags over cardboard do the same thing!

Paper towel/matte medium after setting up for 24 hours.

That was a pretty pleasant surprise, because it meant that a lot less “shaping” was going to be needed. So, in I dove, and mixed up the first batch of Cell-u-Clay to the consistency of cookie dough and started slathering it on the layout.

First section of Cell-u-Clay slathered over the paper towel thin-shell

North Corinna area with all the Cell-u-Clay in place

Base level of scenery complete, and trestle bents installed.

Some of you may have noticed the slight tactical error on my part… Yes, the trestle bents are glued in place, and the creek bed is still bare plywood. That would be classified as an “oops”, but not really that big a deal. I’ll just pour some of the dark green/brown/whatever color (it’s called “Fedora”) and let it run naturally around the bents.

I should mention here that I’ve been using this Cell-u-Clay stuff for most of my life. The first time I used it, I was four or five, and my mother and I used it to make Christmas ornaments. We mixed to cookie-dough-consistency, rolled it out, and used real cookie cutters to shape the ornaments. After they dried — hard as a rock, I might add — we painted them with acrylic paints. For those used to Hydrocal or other plasters, Cell-u-Clay is a different beast. It has a much longer setting time, and generally shouldn’t be applied in layers more than about 3/8″ thick, or it may never completely harden. Also, if you have issues with the dust from Homasote, Cell-u-Clay is absolutely not for you. It’s basically Homasote dust in a bag.

I’ll be letting this set up for a couple of days while I work on some other, non-railroad-related items. I’ll be back at it on Sunday…

Land Gains Form

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Not a lot was accomplished on the railroad today, with the exception of some spirited discussion about turntable construction and how “water” will get out of the spillway, the only other thing to get done was the first layer of “landform” was applied.

First layer of scenic forms in north Corinna

The first layer of landforms have been applied over the cardboard forms. Made from heavy duty workshop paper towels soaked in diluted matte medium, they obviously show almost every former beneath them. Not to worry — this shell only exists to support a thicker layer of something-or-another. In my case, that something-or-another will be Cell-U-Clay. Cell-U-Clay is cheap and lightweight, and easy to work with. It will be used to smooth out the “ribs” and be the actual base of the scenic coloring and texture — kind of like topsoil over fill dirt.

Stonework & Scenic Forms

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Most of today was spent on the layout, completing the stonework at the north end of the bridge and placing forms for the scenery.

Overhead view showing the area "north" of Corinna showing much of the new stonework, the bridge, and the scenic forms.

Figuring out how to deal with the south end of the bridge (left in the above picture) still left a big question about how to handle what would be a very narrow creek flowing in from the north. The space is very narrow because of the decision to make the “end” of the layout match the modules, and I was left with an improbable scenic situation. The answer came in the form of adding another mill that will eventually wrap around the corner into the back area of the basement. A mill needs a dam and a spillway. In my world, the dam will be out in the aisle, with the track running between the resulting lake and the spillway. The mill itself will be across the spillway from the railroad main line.

Stone work begins for the newly added spillway.

With that decision made, it became obvious that more stonework would be required. Between taking the picture at left and writing this post, I added a couple of scenery forms at the end of the layout section, and added some base coloring to the stonework and the spillway.

For the landforms, I decided to go “traditional” — thin-shell plaster over formers. Where I’ll be deviating from the old-school techniques will be in some of the materials. I still need to keep the weight reasonable since Corinna still has to make two more public appearances.

Chip-card forms and webbing waiting for the thin-shell covering.

In this instance, the formers will be thin chip-cardboard, and the thin-shell will be a layer of plaster cloth. Over the plaster cloth, I’ll apply a layer of cell-u-clay. Cell-u-clay is a paper mache product that is fairly lightweight, but handles a lot like plaster, except that it’s a little stickier.

Tomorrow, the plan is to start applying the thin-shell and cell-u-clay and finally install the trestle bents — they’ve still not be permanently attached.

Work Progresses on North Corinna Trestle

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A little more work was done on the trestle at the north end of Corinna this evening. The bents that were completed last night were stained and set in place (they’re not secured just yet). I may have to go back and re-glue some of the joints, and also fine-tune some piling lengths. And, the detail castings need to be installed. After my experience with the NBW castings on that Mount Blue Forney cab kit, I’m not exactly looking forward to that! Anyway, enjoy a few snapshots from this evening.

Yet another test-fit for the trestle bents.

Stained, and another "dry fit." Turns out that alcohol stains will soften Titebond glue, even when it's dried over night! I may have to go back and re-glue a few joints. And no, it's not your imagination. The stone walls are much darker in this picture -- they've received their first coat of coloring.

Even though the bridge is nowhere near completed, I couldn't resist running #4 out for a quick beauty shot...

North Corinna Bridge

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I’ve been a little paralyzed, because I couldn’t figure out how to handle the north end of Corinna scenically — beyond knowing that there would be a large creek with a long, low, curved trestle. But, the two storage tracks had ended up being longer than I had anticipated, and the turntable and engine house also wound up being farther north than I had originally wanted.

Note: There are a lot of images in this post, so the images on this page are pretty small. Clicking on them will open them in large-sized viewer.

Late yesterday, it finally came to me — I’d build a partial retaining wall from locally quarried stone. With a selection of both rigid and flexible stone wall on hand, I set to work. The area that’s shown at right will have a bank sloping down from the bottom of wall to the creek.

Of course, at the ends of the trestle, the rock-work will go all the way down to the creek bed level. But, before the abutments could be placed, the roadbed had to be cut away. To do that, I used a hacksaw blade, cutting up from the bottom until I reached the bottom of the ties. Once the roadbed was gone, there was plenty of room to finish the stone-work.

With most of the stone retaining walls and abutments in place, I started on to the trestle itself. To prepare, I removed the plastic pieces between the ties, so that there would be room to slide the rest of the bridge ties into place. One note here. Pictures of many of the trestles on the Maine two-footers show that the bridge ties look to be the same as regular ties, simply placed closer together.

To built the trestle, I started with two curved stringers aligned beneath the rails. To make installation a little easier, I pre-curved them while they were still slightly damp from being stained. I waited until the stain was pretty much dry, and then spread a very thin layer of clear Elmer’s glue along the top edge. The curved pieces were then inserted into notches that had been previously cut into the top of the abutments, moved into position and clamped. While the glue was still wet, the extra ties were slid into place between the molded plastic ties.

I’m now working on the trestle bents which, like the prototype, are of a very simple design — three pilings beneath a single support, with a pair of diagonals to provide some rigidity. There will be nine of these bents on the bridge, spaced approximately every eight scale feet. Once all the bents are in place, there will be additional diagonal braces set between each bent.

The result will be a trestle similar to this one on the Bridgeton & Saco River.

By the way, you may have noticed the “clothespin” clamps in a couple of the pictures. And, you may have thought, “I thought this was an O-scale layout. Either those clothespins are really small, or that’s one helluva big trestle!” Well, you’d be right — they’re half-size clothespins! I’ve been searching for small clamps for several months now, and couldn’t find anything that satisfied me, until now. The coin is a U.S. Quarter, so you get an idea of the size. They’ve got a decent grip, but aren’t so strong as to crush basswood or balsa parts.