Slow Bridge Ahead

[Zox]

In the hopes of showing some progress at the October Timonium show, I finally got glueshell down on the northeast bank of my Kankakee River module:



And grassed it:



I'll need to find some way to deal with the gap between the concrete erosion-control and the water near the bridge, but fortunately this is the "back side" of the module, so it's not readily visible under train-show conditions.

Here's the current live-to-Memorex comparison, which is rather spoiled by the fact that I have to have a solid hill to match levels at the end of the module:

[John]

a thin bead of clear caulking

[Philip H]

What John said!  And seriously, we need to designate the brodge as a photo point of the LV hopper run-thru!

[wm3798]

Ooh, I forgot about MARRS being there, too.  If I can't work in a run on the Bantrak schedule, is there a chance we can slip a 100+ car coal train on the MARRS rig?

Lee

[sirenwerks]

Rob,

Are you planning on adding those weed patches on the erosion control bevel? And the iron fence behind it? They're nice details.

[Zox]

Ooh, I forgot about MARRS being there, too.  If I can't work in a run on the Bantrak schedule, is there a chance we can slip a 100+ car coal train on the MARRS rig?

Lee

I think we can work you in. You say you expect to be there somewhere around 12-1 on Sunday? We'll probably be more than happy to have something new to play with by that point...

Fair warning, though--that will be by far the longest train we've tried to run on our layout. But dang if it wouldn't be cool to see the train meeting itself as it goes around the end loops.

[Zox]

Rob,

Are you planning on adding those weed patches on the erosion control bevel? And the iron fence behind it? They're nice details.

The fence, yes. I've got enough BLMA fence for the job, although I'll have to trim it for height.

The weeds, I'm not sure about. My version of the bridge is in a lot better shape than the real one--more like my memories of it from a couple of decades ago. So I'm still debating how much "weathering" I'm going to include in the surrounding landscape.

[bigford]

very nice work now it just needs a little graffiti (N scale rules) ;D

[Zox]

Well, I tried the clear caulk idea (actually Weldbond glue, which is what I've been using for any water that's not plastic). It filled in most of the physical gap under the wall, but didn't do much for the appearance:



So I decided to let the Squadron fly:



I masked off a clean, straight line on the water, so that should be okay. The rest will be cleaned up with files and touch-up paint tomorrow night.

If it works, I'll give the gap between the erosion-control and the bridge a similar treatment.

[Philip H]

Actually Zox, you might want to leave the gap between the bridge and the shoreline armor.  Such gaps develop over time in the real world - its one of the principle reasons that civil engineers have jobs.

[Zox]

So after some painting, scraping, shaping, and repainting, I think it turned out okay:



Although I really do need to get a better locomotive for the "beauty shots":



Philip, you've got a good point about the gap between the bridge and the "armor," so I'll leave it as-is for now. If there were a gap like that, though, it would probably have vegetation growing out of it, and there is some growing in that area on the real bridge. So the "am I going to leave the gap" question actually folds into the "am I going to model the weeds" question that Sirenwerks brought up.

[GaryHinshaw]

So after some painting, scraping, shaping, and repainting, I think it turned out okay:

Me too.  Excellent!

-gfh

[Zox]

Turning to the northwest bank, here's the best image I have of the wall near the dam:



(Believe it or not, I have good evidence that these are the foundations of buildings which date from before 1882.)

The upstream portion of the wall is made of rather large, dressed (or possibly precast) stones, while the downstream portion is almost a rubble foundation, and apparently parged over with concrete at the bottom (presumably to prevent erosion by the water rushing over the dam).

Here's a quick mockup of the pieces I've selected to represent the wall:



Note that this picture, compared to the one above, makes it really obvious where I compressed the scene to fit the dam on the module.

The upstream panel is Plastruct HO-scale "Dressed Stone."

The downstream panel was a bit of a project its own right. It's Plastruct HO-scale "Random Coursed Stone," but straight out of the box it looks like it's mostly slate--there's an awful lot of horizontal nature to the stone:



So I used a cheapie engraver from Harbor Freight ( http://www.harborfreight.com/micro-engraver-98227.html ) to break up some of the rocks and make it look a bit more random. I think the results are acceptable.

[Zox]

Now that I've looked at the photo of the mockup for a while, I've decided that the "Dressed Stone" just isn't going to fill the bill for the upstream portion of the wall. Which means that I'll have to scratchbuild something, which means it won't get done for this weekend's show.

Oh well. In this case, I suppose I'd rather have it "right" than "right away"...  :-\

[Zox]

I think I'm ready to throw up now.

The road on the front side of the module started wrinkling up just before the October Timonium show, and as of tonight was a lot worse.

It looked like the paper was delaminating from the styrene underneath, and it was--but the styrene itself was delaminating from the foamcore underlying it, which is apparently what started the problem. It seems that the foamcore shrank, which caused a weak point on the styrene (between the straps I'd put under it to "crown" the road) to buckle, which cause the spray adhesive holding the paper down to fail around that area.

I've just spent the evening trying to tease the layers apart and make them lay flat again, but I'm not sure I can salvage the road surface--it may have stretched too unevenly during the separation.

I swear, I'm going to have my next module CNC'd from billet aluminum...crud.