FreemoNtario - Lake Cowichan Subdivision

[BCR 570]

Good work; will tuck away the thread cutting technique for future reference as my layout is sectional and I will be looking to create similar scenery joints.

Tim

[craigolio1]

Good work; will tuck away the thread cutting technique for future reference as my layout is sectional and I will be looking to create similar scenery joints.

Tim

Thanks Tim. FYI I wanted to use dental floss but when I pulled it out I didn’t have enough left!  The thread broke several times so it was a pain. I will try floss next time. Also because the edge is now made of a thin crust of plaster it has already chipped off in several places which will not do. I’m thinking of filing it away and trying again with auto body filler which will be rock hard. I’ll advise.

Craig.

[craigolio1]

I was waiting for the plaster to dry and I got to thinking. I have just enough material left over in my module wood pile to make one more short module. I gathered together my scraps of wood, foam, and half empty tubes of caulk/PL and decided I just enough material to build a 23.5” long module. And so this module set is now 2 x 5’ and 1 x 2’.

A little further down the line in lake Cowichan the E&N crosses under the CN ROW. CN had two pile trestles in town and this one is of the ballasted deck variety.

Unfortunately, like the bridge on the last module set, I was able to find very little material on the web to reference the prototype. Here’s what I have for pictures:

This is a great shot of the deck and some much needed detail in the bents. I actually found this one fairly late into the project and it really helped as not only did it show the details I mentioned before but it illustrates just how much ballast is up there. Much more than I thought.



This is a decent side shot and happily the train on top can be used to make scale measurements.



I also had a couple of photos in my own collection that I took as a youth.





Research did provide common timbre sizes and arrangements used on this type of bridge and by comparing that to the photos I had I was able to come up with a schedule of scale lumber sizes, which conveniently I had enough of in stock.

I was also able to put together a scale drawing. This proved to be very helpful as, being full size, I was able to use it to assist with assembly and land forming as well. Here I’m using N scale versions of the trains in the photo to ensure the positioning and spacing of the bents are correct.





On my computer I made drawings of the bents which I printed and used to build assembly jIgs for the two styles of bents.




Here are the completed bents. This bridge is skewed so I tried to make sure that the bents were offset at the correct angle to fit right when put in place.



Next I added NBW castings. So far there are 772 of them and I still need to do the side rails on the deck.

On the prototype the road that parallels the tracks is slightly elevated and tracks have some decent sized ditches. I built up the top surface of the module using two pieces of foam board from the dollar store. Once contoured it will be the perfect amount of separation.

The CN line through Lake Cowichan entered town on a missive pile trestle which crossed the Cowichan River. The ROW then continued across town on a fill. It crossed this trestle and carried on the fill for a short distance until the land came up to grade again on the east side of town. Therefore on this module the CN line would be entirely on a fill I made that by carving 1.5” foam.

With the foam fill in place and the bridge assembled. It’s time to place it on the module and test for fit.







Finally I contoured the land a little. There will be a road that parallels the ROW and hooks left to exit the module as it passes under the bridge.  On the prototype there is a church where the black paper is still intact.




And with that I’m off to a good start on this section.

Craig.

[LIRR]

looks good, nice progress....waiting to see the finished module

[craigolio1]

Work has been progressing on the three Lake Cowichan modules. A lot of it was just fine tuning landforms and that didn’t really prove worthy of photos. I also made a prototype for a turn out mech that will allow for manual facia control of the turn out that will be up on the fill near the orange bridge. That’s a bit of a tough spot as I have to translate horizontal motion from the facia, to about a 4”  vertical, and then the horizontal motion for the throw bar. Experimentation is going well but it needs work. More on that later.

I have a pile of older Midwest cork to use. It’s about 1/4” thick vs the newer product which is 1/8”. I used my palm sander to sand down the cork and now the road bed is all level and super smooth.

I got a little excited on one of the wood transition pieces at the joint so I repaired that with auto body filler.



While I had the filler out I filled the edges where the two big modules meet. These are contoured landforms vs the plywood at the main ends and the plaster I had there wasn’t standing up. So I carved out the ends and filled them with body filler. While it was setting I scored the joint with a hobby blade.



After sanding across the joint, and filling any blemishes with plaster, the joint is very smooth, inconspicuous, and most importantly, rock hard.



Both modules received a skim-coat of plaster and were lightly sanded. I then marked out where my roads were going to be and used coarse sandpaper guided by a paint stick to sand down the shoulders on either side of the road. This way my gravel shoulders won’t be higher than the pavement.






After some cleanup they received a liberal coating of latex paint.





On the smaller add on module I finished contouring and a skim-coat of plaster. I also fit track and feeders on the main line ( It’s yet to be glued down), and cut a piece of C40 for the bridge line.



On the bridge the track has to be a certain height in order for the ballast slope to look right. It’s thinner than cork so on the bridge I used styrene to raise the toad bed. On either side of the bridge I used cork which I then sanded down until the track I had cut was laid smoothly from one onto the other.



Finally this module got a coat of paint as well. I should have sanded the toad shoulders down but I forgot. Oh well. That’s easy enough to do still.



That’s all for now. Thanks for following.

Craig.

[craigolio1]

I haven't updated this in quite a while but a fair amount has happened.

I finished the track using C55 flex from Micro Engineering.







All module joints are soldered to PC board ties pieces. The name of which escapes me. I’ll edit this when I remember.







Turnouts are hand laid C55 Fast Tracks. This curved one was made for me by @CNR5529



It was a skeleton and I added the ties (and they need to be fixed…. It was my first attempt). I probably also need to replace the frog as I did some filing to accommodate a slightly narrow wheel set, before I learned that the guard rails were the actual problem (apparently Fast Tracks has a tendency to make them tight?). It tracks well now but could be smoother.

The other end is a #10 C55 which was purchased from eBay many years ago. On this one I reset the guard rails to meet the NMRA gauge and it tracks very well.



The main line track has a touch of super elevation on the curves.  It’s very subtle but you can see it during opps.



Each turnout is actuated manually using a home made mechanism. Brass tube with music wire in the end sits in a fulcrum made from a ring terminal. The bottom of the brass tube flips a DPDT switch to control frog polarity (with the other terminals available for panel lighting in thr future). It’s thrown with a long dowel that protrudes through holes in the facia so the turnouts can be thrown from either side of the module.  The dowel throws a bell crank which changes the throw direction so that it’s the same as the direction you are moving the dowel.





Initially the modules were aligned with hard wood dowels but the fit became loose and a better means of alignment was needed. I made these little L shaped wooden brackets that have T nuts in them and the bolts sit under the end plate of the adjoining module.



Now I can set a module in place and true up the alignment very quickly. Just a couple of minutes. And they are held in place by carriage bolts and T nuts through the end plates.



So at this point the modules are performing well and have been proven with travel to a couple of shows.

The next step is to get some scenery done. 

More on that soon.

Craig. 

[craigolio1]

The first thing I need to do is figure out structures as the land has a lot of sloped features and many of the houses are nestled into these slopes. So to finalize the lay of the land, I need some houses.

In this photo you can see an overview of the whole module set with several houses in place as place holders to give you idea of how things will look.



I’ll be starting at the far end by the bridge.

Here we have a house on the river front:



Beside it are a couple of smaller cabins. In my era it was a lot with 5 or six cabins that vacationers could rent. They have since been converted to individual freehold tiny homes. I have room to model two of them.



Both of those lots are easy to work with as they are fairly flat leading up to the river bank. So I’ll leave them for now.

Across the street is another on a corner lot on a downward grade to the river. This is the first one that needs to be addressed.

Here is the lot from google maps.



And a few views from the street.







For this house I decided on a kitbash. I’m aiming to catch the flavour of most of these homes so close enough is fine. For this house it’s the way it fits in the lot and the landscaping that really make the scene.

I started with a couple of these as the base model.



I removed the garage wall and replaced it with and end wall from another one of the same model. This gave me the top floor of the house that I could use as the footprint.



Using this structure and the google maps photo I was able to sketch the property. I started with a tracing of the property from my module and placed features based on the google maps image.



Next I set to work building the bottom storey. I used more walls from the additional house model. I used a sheet of .050” styrene to make a foundation and carport roof piece to put under the top story.





The inset about cutting pieces of house for the bottom story. For the front and side I was able to use single pieces cut to fit.





The back wall required combining a couple of pieces.





The three pieces were assembled and placed under the main floor.





To make the model stable the right side was filled in with sheet styrene. This portion will be under ground.



Finally I built the car port and added some trim pieces to cover seems.







The model comes a part for painting and so I can access the interior should I like to add lighting in the future.

The last step was to build a base that the model can sit on. There will be many extra details that need to be added to the landscaping like the rock walls and stairs. These will all be added along with basic land forms, to the model base and then placed on the layout. I did not take a picture of it as it’s just a simple square of sheet.

I used the base to make a level base for the model, cut into the scenery at the appropriate place.







There is much to be done for this house still but with it appropriately set into the land scape I can now move to the next house up the hill, which sits beside a retaining wall at the edge of this property.

Craig.

[dem34]

Thats pretty cool. My paren't house is like that. Standard ranch but part of the embankment is cut for a single car garage. Not something you see a lot on layouts despite the commonality of it in hilly places.

[craigolio1]

Thats pretty cool. My paren't house is like that. Standard ranch but part of the embankment is cut for a single car garage. Not something you see a lot on layouts despite the commonality of it in hilly places.

Thanks!  I agree that it’s not something you see done often…. Which is why I’m so excited that this road is on a long hill. There’s so much going on. Which leads me to the next house….

Craig

[craigolio1]

The next house on the to do list is the one at the top of the hill, pictured below.



Unfortunately this one doesn’t have any pics that I could find from any realty listing and so again, in limited to Google Earth and Streetview. That said with just those tools I can see quite a bit.

Here’s a nice street view shot.



A couple more that aren’t great…





You can see that is a two story however it appears to me that at least some of the lower floor is below grade.

I love the car port which is partially below grade.



We can see in those photos that the door ways to the house are actually at the sides when looking at it from the street it’s addressed off of.






This build is a kitbash as well and again I’m going for a close enough flavour vs an exact copy. In this case the finished product actually ends up a bit smaller but that’s ok with me. I started with two of these, and roof parts left over from the previous house:



The roofs on these houses are two pieces, I found so I opted to modify the roof on the structure to hold it all in place…..













….and then work on the structure around it, adding and removing walls as needed.

With the main section of the house done, I needed to add on the intersecting portion. For this I built the walls, And installed them on the model….



And finally added the roof to that.











As with the other house I used a large piece of styrene as a base and also the car port roof.



Under that I added the lower floor visible through the car port.




I’ll need to add more side and rear walls but I’m out of those parts for now. I’ll have to assess some other houses I have for suitability before I move on. However this leaves me in a place where I can put the structure on the layout and see how it “fits”.

Here it is in place.




One of the first things I observed looking at this photo is that the street in front of the house needs more of a grade.



I used a left over piece of wedge to fix that. This is why I never throw anything away!



At the front of the house and in the carport there is a concrete retaining wall. On the left side of the house it ends at a fence. I see now that I actually have to raise the plastic for the fence base as I have it at the bottom of the retaining wall and it needs to be at the top.



Following the fence along the street we can see by the changes in height of the fence what the grade of the yard is.










 It drops quite a bit at the back of the lot with the rear fence on a short concrete retaining wall at the property line shared with the previously built house.





Figuring the fence is 6’ high and the panels are 8’ I replicated this by stacking styrene sheet along the fence line, rising and then dropping something close to the appropriate amount as per the photos.



I then carved out a trough and laid this section into the scenery.






Turns out o have a pretty good eye for estimating the grade on the land. The ruler in this photo is where I had sloped the land to meet the property next door.



That’s where I am for now. I plan to tackle the river front house next. I found it on House Sigma so I have a ton of photos and an accurate floor plan!!   

[craigolio1]

I added two layers of styrene to the base for the fence which raised it about 18”. This will look better with the retaining wall and also means the years will in-fact create a partially below grade basement as I thought. It’s all coming together.

[craigolio1]

I added a bit of foam to the property around the house so we can have a better idea of how they’ll look in place.

The house at the top of the hill really needs its bottom story.

[craigolio1]

The house on the hill got its basement. I decided on a walk out, cause… why not.





And I got a good start on the river front house. This is an important one to me as it’s a key scene the viewers will likely spend alot of time looking at.

Until recently this is the why I had for reference material.





A friend hit me on to a realty website (the name escapes me but I’ll post it here when I remember) and I was able to get many more good photos…













And a floor plan!!



I started looking for features to could use on my kitbash fodder. These two brick houses would provide some decent picture windows for the river side.







These houses would provide various windows and doors. (And also the basement walls for the house on the hill.



And some DPM modular walls would provide brick sections.

The river side of the house with the picture windows has wood panels on the top of the walls and brick on the bottom. The rest of the house has wood panels on the top of the walls and siding on the bottom. I’ll use styrene siding and sheet to make those walls.

I started with the river view side of the house. Using portions of window/door wall panels, DPM bricks, the windows from the brick houses , and styrene sheet.









The windows will get more details, but with this important section of the house complete, I went on to add the rest of the walls of the house based on the dimensions in the floor plan. I used styrene sheet and I’ll add siding and detail after cutting in windows and doors.









That’s all for this week.

Craig

[craigolio1]

Here it is in its home.

[craigolio1]

Today the house on the hill got a back stairway, carport, and retaining walls with stairs.









And the next door neighbours house got some stairs for the front yard, and forms on to which I’ll build a stone retaining walls from real stone.