Free-mo-N. BC Rail Rutherford Creek crossing.

[craigolio1]

I spent four years in the PNW doing salmon habitat restoration and protection work for the Army Corps of Engineers.  The civil engineers I worked with wanted to use rip rap in every instance to "stabilize" the habitat after they built it because their world view required them to keep things fixed after they were built (and they could actually loose their P.E. license if it didn't).  I kept having to remind them that the salmon wanted the habitats to move and adapt naturally and big piles of big rocks weren't natural.  It was always amusing.

That’s awesome. I’m sifting limestone as we type and I have a pretty good pile of class 2 going.

[craigolio1]

To address your concerns about attempting scenery, I'm a big fan of Luke Towan and his Boulder Creek Railroad and thought you'd appreciate the link. His website is:

https://www.bouldercreekrailroad.com

He has lots of information on building scenery. Luke is an Aussie bloke so a lot of his scenery has a distinctly Australian look to it, but it's the techniques you are looking for.  And with these techniques, you can adapt them to whatever geographic location you're attempting to model.

Luke also has Youtube presentations also.

The guy is a scenery genius in my opinion.

Hope this helps...

I’ve seen his YouTube channel and he is very talented for sure. I’ve never been to the website and I’ll check that out for sure.

I also have an e-book by Dave Frary which is full of good techniques.

Thanks!

[craigolio1]

Some fine work there Craig... I'm following with great interest!

We both landed on the same year to model BCR!!

Thanks Philippe!

[craigolio1]

Won’t be getting much done on the module this week. But I did pick up a 30kg bag of limestone screenings for $6. I sifted about 2 kilos of it and wound up with this:



On the right is a fine/granular silt which will be great for gravel roads and such.  The next is about the size of ballast. Then two decent size ranges of rip-rap and finally large boulders.  The far left is to large to be useable.

The fourth pile from the right has some real variation in size and could use a soft through another intermediate size screen so I’m going to see what I can find.



I still have about 28 kg left so I should be good for the rest of my life.

Craig

[davefoxx]

That's neat.  How do y'all determine the proper size screens to sift materials and where do you get them?

Oh, and you might want to run a magnet over your stone to get out the stuff that will kill your locomotives.

DFF

[wcfn100]

Jason

[Angus Shops]

I'm an advocate to using real rock and sand for scenery. I model the Rocky Mountains in the area of Field BC. The rock in this area is soft sedimentary 'siltstone' and is soft and unstable terrain. When the rock is excavated or naturally succumbs to gravity if forms flat 'plates' and piles up in great abundance at the bottom of any exposed rock outcrop or fill with the larger slabs at the bottom and fine material at the top. I wanted to achieve the same texture with the slabs of rock discernible. Because the rock is naturally soft it also is easy to crush up and sift into various size gradations for use on the layout. Perfect, you would think, for modelling the area, except that it changes colour quite drastically when the diluted white glue is applied; it gets much darker. I suppose if I was modelling wet weather it would look OK, but I'm not. I suspect the limestone will also darken up as you glue it into place.
As a consequence I don't worry about the colour until later; I concentrate on getting the right texture first, and then I come back and paint the completed rock areas later. I spray bomb it with a light grey as a base and finish up with additional greys and earthy tones applied with an airbrush and dry brush techniques until I get the colour I'm satisfied with. I use the same techniques on my carved plaster rock work so everything looks cohesive.
While the 'slabby' rock is evident on the dry land, the river bed is caracterized by much harder and rounded stone washed down the river from farther east where the stone is much harder. I'm assuming the soft local stone gets ground up pretty quickly in the fast flowing Kicking Horse River. I use sifted play sand for this material. Once the CP gets out of the Kicking Horse River canyon the cuttings go from the exposed slabby rock to 'earth' cuttings of river deposits characterized by sand and silts with rounded river stone.
Rip rap needs to be angular hard stone. Rounded stone can't be compacted and won't 'lock together' and can be moved, or move on its own, quite easily. Think of a bag or marbles verses compacted track ballast. The railroads engineering crews would use this material to repair wash outs and shore up unstable river banks and protect bridge abutments and such.
So I've got three kinds of stone textures, the natural slabby stuff, the rounded river cobble material, and angular stone (rip rap) used in engineering applications. All of it is applied for its texture first and painted later. I seem to cover large areas of scenery with various sands and ground up stone, but nature does the same. Over time nature allows hardy and tough shrubs, grasses and trees to colonize areas that appear to have almost no soil to support plant growth. The actual 'soil' layer in the mountains is very thin; most of those vast forests are growing in a couple of inches of soil at most on top of rock.
Food for thought...Geoff

[craigolio1]

That's neat.  How do y'all determine the proper size screens to sift materials and where do you get them?

Oh, and you might want to run a magnet over your stone to get out the stuff that will kill your locomotives.

DFF

Mine uses highly specialized equipment:



On the right is a sieve I found in the kitchen which has roughly 1/4” holes in the bottom. Anything larger is discarded. There’s another kitchen sieve with about 1/8” holes. Then a piece of metal window screen followed by a mesh strainer and smaller tea strainer, both of which I found at the dollar store.

The metal one on the right happened to be the more intermediate sized one I had mentioned unneeded earlier, and I also put some masking tape partially across the bottom holes of the plastic one and so now I have an additional two size ranges. I have a very good variety now.

And I forgot about a magnet!  Good call!!

[craigolio1]

I'm an advocate to using real rock and sand for scenery. I model the Rocky Mountains in the area of Field BC. The rock in this area is soft sedimentary 'siltstone' and is soft and unstable terrain. When the rock is excavated or naturally succumbs to gravity if forms flat 'plates' and piles up in great abundance at the bottom of any exposed rock outcrop or fill with the larger slabs at the bottom and fine material at the top. I wanted to achieve the same texture with the slabs of rock discernible. Because the rock is naturally soft it also is easy to crush up and sift into various size gradations for use on the layout. Perfect, you would think, for modelling the area, except that it changes colour quite drastically when the diluted white glue is applied; it gets much darker. I suppose if I was modelling wet weather it would look OK, but I'm not. I suspect the limestone will also darken up as you glue it into place.
As a consequence I don't worry about the colour until later; I concentrate on getting the right texture first, and then I come back and paint the completed rock areas later. I spray bomb it with a light grey as a base and finish up with additional greys and earthy tones applied with an airbrush and dry brush techniques until I get the colour I'm satisfied with. I use the same techniques on my carved plaster rock work so everything looks cohesive.
While the 'slabby' rock is evident on the dry land, the river bed is caracterized by much harder and rounded stone washed down the river from farther east where the stone is much harder. I'm assuming the soft local stone gets ground up pretty quickly in the fast flowing Kicking Horse River. I use sifted play sand for this material. Once the CP gets out of the Kicking Horse River canyon the cuttings go from the exposed slabby rock to 'earth' cuttings of river deposits characterized by sand and silts with rounded river stone.
Rip rap needs to be angular hard stone. Rounded stone can't be compacted and won't 'lock together' and can be moved, or move on its own, quite easily. Think of a bag or marbles verses compacted track ballast. The railroads engineering crews would use this material to repair wash outs and shore up unstable river banks and protect bridge abutments and such.
So I've got three kinds of stone textures, the natural slabby stuff, the rounded river cobble material, and angular stone (rip rap) used in engineering applications. All of it is applied for its texture first and painted later. I seem to cover large areas of scenery with various sands and ground up stone, but nature does the same. Over time nature allows hardy and tough shrubs, grasses and trees to colonize areas that appear to have almost no soil to support plant growth. The actual 'soil' layer in the mountains is very thin; most of those vast forests are growing in a couple of inches of soil at most on top of rock.
Food for thought...Geoff

Geoff that a wealth of good info there. This module will be mostly stone as well, partly because a lot of it became a construction site with in the last 4 years of my modelling period.

 I have some excellent rounded river stone which I collected from a beach on Lake Erie this summer.  I was so excited when I found it as it's not your typical granular beach sand.  It was layered with beach sand on top and then about 12" down, there was about a 6" layer of perfectly polished little stones the size of sand, with minimal glass.  Obviously there was larger stone too but there was enough smaller stuff to make it worthwhile bringing it home.  I've since sifted it in to the same 5 or six sizes I have here and I am good to go for river stone.


Craig

[Angus Shops]

Craig, I really had to laugh at your comment about being "so excited" to have found just the right sand on a beach. I'm the same way. Years ago (it must be 35 or 40 years now) I hit the jackpot in my brother's back yard when I was doing some garden work and I dug up a pocket of very consistent, very fine grained sand. The previous owner was apparently in the iron foundry business and I assume I dug up the remains of iron mold. I've still got some and use it judiciously. I'm always on the lookout for useful materials.

Your screen collection is identical to mine, but I share the collanders with the kitchen. Boy, does that create some dirty looks from the bride! Dollar store tea strainers are a godsend.

And the magnet is a important tool, but I dump so much white glue on everything I can't believe anything would get loose.
Geoff

[craigolio1]

Craig, I really had to laugh at your comment about being "so excited" to have found just the right sand on a beach. I'm the same way. Years ago (it must be 35 or 40 years now) I hit the jackpot in my brother's back yard when I was doing some garden work and I dug up a pocket of very consistent, very fine grained sand. The previous owner was apparently in the iron foundry business and I assume I dug up the remains of iron mold. I've still got some and use it judiciously. I'm always on the lookout for useful materials.

Your screen collection is identical to mine, but I share the collanders with the kitchen. Boy, does that create some dirty looks from the bride! Dollar store tea strainers are a godsend.

And the magnet is a important tool, but I dump so much white glue on everything I can't believe anything would get loose.
Geoff

We are all the same. I always have a tub in the car.

The only strainer that goes back to the kitchen is the big one that I can pick the rocks out of.

Was going through “The Store” (my basement shelves) and found a couple of Micro Engineering Tall Steel Viaduct kits which I forgot came with bridge track. Jack pot. C55!  And long enough for this bridge by about an inch. I’m in business.

Since this is such a short module, that could be done with a single piece of track, I removed the ties and slipped on the bridge ties over the bridge , then reinstalled the original ties order to keep the track to a single piece.

[craigolio1]

I got into the Sculptamold a bit yesterday and I have to say,  First time using it and boy is it fantastic stuff. Gap filling, light weight, leave it rough, smooth it out. Love it.



I wanted to fill in around the abutments but not permanently install them yet, so I covered them in electrical tape because it’s what I had at the time. I also modified them by removing hidden parts o the castings that would prevent them being removed. After the Sculptamold stiffened up I removed them. Now once I place them permanently I’ll only have to fill in small gaps.





Next up I think will be to decorate the abutments and paint the surface with my base colour.

I’ve also been thinking about the river bed and am considering shimming the upstream side of the bench about 1cm, damming the down stream side, and pouring a nice thin mixture of plaster to create a graded river bed with which to start.

Craig.

[CNR5529]

I’ve also been thinking about the river bed and am considering shimming the upstream side of the bench about 1cm, damming the down stream side, and pouring a nice thin mixture of plaster to create a graded river bed with which to start.

Is that backwards? If you want upstream to be higher than down stream, you will want to shim downstream and dam upstream... then when you take the shim and dam off, upstream will be higher.

[craigolio1]

Is that backwards? If you want upstream to be higher than down stream, you will want to shim downstream and dam upstream... then when you take the shim and dam off, upstream will be higher.

Yeah, that! I want to create just a wee down stream grade. I promise I understand the physics of gravity.

[craigolio1]

A little more progress was made yesterday. The road on the end of the module has a gentle grade sloping up to the rail heads. Following a technique I saw used in one of Luke Towan’s videos, I made forms for the sides of the road with the correct slope I wanted. For my forms I used .040” styrene. To the sides I glued .080” rod that is about 1” long and then drilled corresponding holes in the foam/wood. I settled on a 23ft wide road. It’s a logging road and I searched around a bit in line and found an engineering document that made reference to the maximum width of trucks and allowances for this on rural roads. The number I found was 3.5 meters. So I made my road 7m wise. The prototype hooks to the left after it crosses the track. I didn’t have room for this but to add a little variance I made it bend gently leftward to meet the corner of the module. This was easy to do with the flexible styrene forms.



Once I had the road where I wanted it I made a slightly stiff mixture of Sheetrock 20 and applied it with a putty knife.  I went a little stiffer as  I didn’t want it to flow off the sides of the module.



The finished road is amount 2mm higher than the railhead. I did this so that I could sand it flat and have a gradual transition from the grade to the level crossing instead of two motor cycle jumps meeting at the track. Once that done I’ll sand a slight crown on the road.



In this scene I’m planning to use these laser cut wood crossbucks and wooden level crossing from Osborn Models:

https://www.osbornmodelkits.com/copy-4-of-blank-35

https://www.osbornmodelkits.com/copy-4-of-blank-24

... and this logging road will be a great place to put the GHQ Peterbuilt logging truck that I’ve wanted to build ever since I discovered it.

http://www.ghqmodels.com/store/52007.html

Craig