The Very Last White River and Northern Railroad

[Chris333]

By chance I made some 3D parts for a fellow and he mailed me back a bunch of photocopied pages out of books for ideas to model. One was a small railbus called a "hummingbird" that was used by the White River Railroad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_River_Railroad_(Vermont)

It looks like a short trolley with a clerestory roof, but no pole. It was 4 wheeled with an engine.

[DKS]

Yes, if things had worked out differently for me, I think I'd like to have modeled the White River Railroad. It was only 16 miles long. What made it even more interesting is that it connected to the Bethel Granite Railway, which was only 6 miles long.

https://de.zxc.wiki/wiki/Bethel_Granite_Railway

[DKS]

This morning I animated the fuel oil column. It took about 90 minutes.

[glakedylan]

you have certainly thought of and found ways to animate things that make your MR so remarkable.
each post is an adventure in possibilities!
thanks for sharing.


sincerely
Gary

[OldEastRR]

Since you are building small layouts, have you ever thought of adding a track going off-layout that could connect to another small layout? Each layout would be complete in itself for roundy-round, but the option to have a longer run appears. Or even two off-site tracks to join 3 mini-layouts together?

[DKS]

Since you are building small layouts, have you ever thought of adding a track going off-layout that could connect to another small layout? Each layout would be complete in itself for roundy-round, but the option to have a longer run appears. Or even two off-site tracks to join 3 mini-layouts together?

I have thought of that, but each layout I've built is so totally different that it would make no sense to connect them. Different settings, different seasons, different eras--doesn't make for much congruity.

[DKS]

With the addition of the picnic table and cooking paraphernalia, the campfire scene was pretty much finished this morning. The tents, incidentally, were made in 1987 for the campfire scene on the White River & Northern II. I've no clue how I made them or what inspired me to keep them, but I'm glad I did.

[DKS]

I've debated with myself over trees for quite some time: build or buy. I practiced some builds, and ultimately decided I wasn't going to live long enough to get what I wanted, so I went with buy. The problem with buy is that virtually every model tree manufacturer--even the very best of them--make the same mistake: they model the trees the way they'd grow at a nursery or in a suburban yard. They don't make forest trees. Forest trees--at least deciduous ones--are quite different. With only a few exceptions, they look nearly all the same regardless of species: tall and relatively scrawny, with narrow, upswept branches mostly at the top of the tree, and quite often bifurcated (or even trifurcated) trunks. Also, model trees are always much too small for their stated scale, although modeling in N Scale offers the advantage of buying HO and O Scale trees.

Recently I discovered a (relatively) new product from JJT Trees--one of the better manufacturers--called "woods edge" trees. These are simple, generic (not species-specific) trees that have a more natural woodland shape. So I ordered one set each in N, HO and O Scales to evaluate.

Pros: much more natural woodland shape compared to other commercial trees; economical, a good value compared to species-specific models.

Cons: foliage too dark in color for my taste; trunks too light in color for my taste; trunks too obviously just twisted wire; N Scale trees vastly different than the HO and O Scale ones.

Most of the issues were easily addressed; for instance, colors could be corrected with spray paint. The twisted wire trunks would be less noticeable when the trees were packed together in realistically tight stands. And the very different N Scale trees would be used to flesh out a large stand of paper birch. Here's the first batch after tweaking:



I lightened the dark green foliage with Rust-Oleum Eden Green, sprayed mostly from above, and darkened the trunks with Rust-Oleum Weathered Wood, sprayed mostly from below. I also shortened the very tallest O Scale trees to be more in keeping with the HO ones. Even though the HO trees are a bit small for N Scale, they're proportioned well for a compact layout, where truly scale trees can look a bit absurd. I could see ordering many more of these.

Conifer trees would be a very different challenge. I addressed part of that problem by keeping the number of pines to a minimum.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

So which scale ones are those in your photo?

[DKS]

So which scale ones are those in your photo?

They are mostly HO, with a couple of cut-down O Scale.

Here's the first batch planted:



I like their proportion compared to the fishermen.

[DKS]

In other news, I got the post office mostly done. It's scratch-bashed from various kit parts.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Those are the HO ones? Sheesh...

But I agree, they look GREAT in that scene!

[DKS]

Those are the HO ones? Sheesh...

Yeah, and the N Scale ones are pathetic. They'd be useful for T Scale... maybe.

[davefoxx]

I like tall trees, too.  SuperTrees were great on my N scale layout, as the trees towered over the trains and structures.  On my HO layout, SuperTrees are barely tolerable to me, because they're too short.  They work okay for background trees in HO, I guess.  I'm too lazy to start handbuilding individual longleaf pines for my layout, because I would need hundreds of them.

DKS, your trees do look nice, though.

DFF

[Carolina Northern]

But, Mr. Fox, you can build a few of them every night. Where have I heard that before?