The Burlington C&I Sub

[w neal]

  "anyone want to spend some freetime ballasting my layout for me?"  

Sure. But you being in Houston and all... Besides, you need to paint your tracks first.

[PAL_Houston]

  "anyone want to spend some freetime ballasting my layout for me?"  

Sure. But you being in Houston and all... Besides, you need to paint your tracks first.

...actually, I no longer live in Houston, but half-way between Ft. Worth and Dallas.  The PAL_Houston moniker is a holdover from my original Yahoo account of the (can you believe it?  ) early '90s.

And  you can come help me paint my tracks first....I need all the help I can get !!!!!

[w neal]

No worries. Just spent three 3 hours prepping, vacuuming, and painting a 25' or so stretch of track last night. Maybe I'll get some of that ballasted tonight. And when I feel like taking a break, I can ballast some of my 9 track yard. For a change of pace, there is static grassing (is that a word?). Now how far is D/FW from say Chicago? Be right there... Hee Hee Ha Ha...     And my co-workers wonder why I never see any movies!

[PAL_Houston]

No worries. Just spent three 3 hours prepping, vacuuming, and painting a 25' or so stretch of track last night. Maybe I'll get some of that ballasted tonight. And when I feel like taking a break, I can ballast some of my 9 track yard. For a change of pace, there is static grassing (is that a word?). Now how far is D/FW from say Chicago? Be right there... Hee Hee Ha Ha...     And my co-workers wonder why I never see any movies!

Well, after you get all that practice on YOUR layout, you will be exactly the kind of expert ballast-er that I need to help me with MY layout!

DFW isn't all that far from Chicago:  you can fly, drive, or take the Texas Zephyr!!

[PAL_Houston]

So with grave reservations about the time & effort involved, I have broken down and started ballasting the C&I Sub.  Besides, it is hot outside, and it's a good opportunity to soak up air-conditioning, baseball, beer and model railroading all at once!

The issue is that the trackage in and around Savanna had been repeatedly repaired owing to episodic flooding of the Mississippi River.  The alignment charts I have on CD courtesy of the Burlington Route Historical Society show that Savanna was ballasted with cinders prior to World War II, but increasingly was repaired with other materials including crushed rock (in 1945, 1946, 1948, 1950, 1957 and 1958), slag (1959) and limestone (1958, 1959, 1960, 1962).  So what I am doing is ballasting in layers.  The first layer will be either black cinders or dark brown (dirty crushed rock), and the dirty brown will be used on (depressed) yard tracks as well as the lower strata of the main right-of-way. 

Here is the spur and outer yard tracks so far:





This will be followed by a layer of lighter brown ballast representing newer crushed-rock repairs, as around these yard swithes:



Working upwards, I will eventually get around to ballast the mains with gray ballast to represent the most recent limestone grade repairs.

[MichaelWinicki]

Looks good to me so far Paul.

I like the ballasting in layers technique.

[GaryHinshaw]

I like this shot.  Ballasting makes such a difference -- if you can stand to do it.

[PAL_Houston]

I like this shot.  Ballasting makes such a difference -- if you can stand to do it.

Thanks Gary for the encouragement.  Ballasting takes a lot of time and patience. 
I have only so much of the former, and am working on developing the latter. 

I did something over 30 feet of ballast this past weekend. 

I am NOT going to do the math to figure out how much more I have to do or how long it will take. 

I AM going to think of it as FUN, deferred until some future date of my own choosing!

This is what's known as "developing a positive attitude". 

 

[PAL_Houston]

Thanks Gary for the encouragement.  Ballasting takes a lot of time and patience. 
I have only so much of the former, and am working on developing the latter. 

I did something over 30 feet of ballast this past weekend. 

I am NOT going to do the math to figure out how much more I have to do or how long it will take. 

I AM going to think of it as FUN, deferred until some future date of my own choosing!

This is what's known as "developing a positive attitude". 

 

I have just noted that it's been over a month, and despite consuming copious quantities of air-conditioning, baseball, and beer, my attitude towards ballasting has not become noticeably more positive....

I have, however, started working on the crossing at Savanna from town to the elevator:  you will note that more ballast is required.  But, I seem to have a mental block about doing that:



Part of the reason is that, to have this street-crossing configuration make sense, I have to remove 2 of the 5 concrete silos from the elevator complex.  And I will have to think about how to model a boat ramp and bait shop.....

I need another beer!

(And I am really glad this is just a hobby, and not another engineering project!)

[PAL_Houston]

Oh.
And PS:  the road-crossing is Plastruct brick sheet -- on of the uses for it that I think is acceptable....

[Philip H]

I have just noted that it's been over a month, and despite consuming copious quantities of air-conditioning, baseball, and beer, my attitude towards ballasting has not become noticeably more positive....

I have, however, started working on the crossing at Savanna from town to the elevator:  you will note that more ballast is required.  But, I seem to have a mental block about doing that:



Part of the reason is that, to have this street-crossing configuration make sense, I have to remove 2 of the 5 concrete silos from the elevator complex.  And I will have to think about how to model a boat ramp and bait shop.....

I need another beer!

(And I am really glad this is just a hobby, and not another engineering project!)

I think one of the recent Micro Train laser wood kits should do nicely . . .

http://www.modeltrainstuff.com/Micro-trains-N-Building-Kit-p/mtl-49990939.htm

[PAL_Houston]

So what I decided, after pondering it over a day or 2, was to keep all 5 of the silos for the elevator, and to move the whole elevator complex southwards.  The trade off will be the smaller cut of cars that can be run thru the loading shed.



On the plus side, I now have 2 entirely plausible reasons for the road crossings:  access to the elevator, and a river marina  (which actually exists at Savanna, although not in this precise location).  So now I am in the market for a boat & trailer (1:160 -- I know better than to buy a real one again:  BOAT = Break Out Another THousand). 



I have also added a couple of other structures to Savanna town, including the brick church from Hallmark, as suggested by Roger Perkins

[PAL_Houston]

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been working to put some perspective into the scene at Galena Jct.  Here is the result:



I had a lot of help and suggestions about how to do this.

The bridge is cut from one end of an Atlas kit.  The depth of the scene was provided by "photo-shopping" a bridge pic that was put out on the web by BCRail_FSJ -- the image was flipped left to right, cropped and scaled. 

After numerous attempts at matching the printed sky color to the actual backdrop sky color,  I ended up pursuing the most obvious solution and using a sharp Exacto to cut the sky out of the image (thanks, Wazzou).

The scene was completed by painting some background trees and greenery with acrylics and adding some foreground foliage.

I still have the ballasting to do, but this will be a good placeholder until I finally decide if I am going to put a hole in the wall to access the closet behind it for staging.

Regards,
Paul

[PAL_Houston]

It's been 3 months since I posted any progress.  It hasn't been very glamorous, but I did do work:  I broke down and ballasted the mainlines.  Then I went back and cleaned track.  Then I discovered all the switches that were sticking and worked on those.  Lately I have added some more trees to the Palisades, and started adding trees to the Savanna area. 

Oh.  And I levelled some of the houses.

Here are some photos at Savanna.







Here is a shot of CGW120 setting out some southbound cars for CBQ to pick up at Galena Jct.

[MichaelWinicki]

That's a real eye-catcher of a scene Paul... Very well done.

If you weather your trains/buildings you'll take it up a notch.