November 25th 2013 - Update on the layout progress ...

Hello to all, once again ... It is Monday the 25th of November, and I have a 'rare' day off from the railway. I have a few errands to take care of and then I plan on devoting some time in the layout room this afternoon.

In the last post, I included some photos of what the 'original' Kelsey Bay switching area looked like. I will include some photos of what it currently looks like ...

I experimented with using a window screen material, with drywall joint compound as the 'base' scenery layer. I was pretty happy, with how this turned out ...

 I have painted the car barge 'basin' ... This would be dredged out to accommodate the tugboat and the car barge, so the color of the water might appear to be a bit different than the 'beach' area ...

More progress ... The tug is a model of the "Columbia", that works in and around Portland Oregon on the Columbia River ...

Another view of the car barge, car barge apron and the barge itself ... As one can see, the barge is still in 'mock up' stage ... should be a good winter weekend project, to scratch build a pair of car barges in the near future ...

This photo shows some of the track installed. To the left will be the Riverside lumbermill and woodchip loader. I have incorporated a short 3-car runaround (One can never have too many runarounds, in my opinion!) I might replace the 'wye' switch with a conventional switch. The flex track is Atlas Code 100 and the turnouts are Peco long radius turnouts ...

 

 What a mess! The finished product will be worth it ... hoping!

Here is a pullback spur to be used to switch the car barge. It will serve double duty, to service the bulk oil dealer ...

Interesting perspective shot ... The tugboat kit came with all of the necessary detail parts. I could paint it in CN colors ... or just paint it in Kootenay Western colors ... decisions - decisions !!

Another 'long' view of the Kelsey Bay area. Note the roadbed material, which will be a street, so that street running can be included ...

Hope you enjoyed looking at these photos!

A 54 month sabbatical ... I have returned!

Good Heavens! It has been well over FOUR years, since I have posted to this blog. Needless to say - there has been a lot going on in my life since the Summer of 2009.

At any rate, I want to bring each and every one of you an update - as to what has been going on with my modelling endeavours. In both Autumn 2010 and 2012, I have participated with two NMRA OpSIG 'Northern Lights' home layout operating sessions. The 2010 session went reasonably well (especially for a first time honest to goodness operating session!) and the 2012 session showed some deficiencies with the layout, in general.

In the coming winter months, I will have to work on some layout renovation projects, which I shall chronicle on this blog ... Some photos for your viewing pleasure ...

This photo above shows the 'Tramp Job' at Winfield. The crew is grabbing a quick coffee in the transfer caboose - while waiting for the folks at 'Pasture Prime Meats' to finish loading the mechanical reefer. the vehicular traffic uses the ( incomplete) road crossing. The locomotive is an Intermountain SD40-2w ... Transfer caboose is made by Sylvan Models - kindly donated by Dave Hackett.

Here we have a 'visitor' to Kelowna Shops. Trevor Sokolan brought over his Intermountain ES44DC over to show to the 'FREDs' ... Behind the ES44DC, is an Atlas 'Gold Line' MP15DC ... perhaps my favorite loco on the layout.

Shown below is a series of photos, showing the original concept, for the "Kelsey Bay' industrial park. Two of the largest carload generators ('Industries', if you will) are located here. These are a lunbermill and a car barge operation. I had originally wanted to have a steel fabrication plant here, as well. I have since scrapped this - as I was not happy with the way it worked.

General look at the original Kelsey Bay, before the scenic detailing began.

Another view ... showing the yard office. This is before the barge apron was put back into place ...

The lake basin is painted, and some of the scenic detail is done ...

Looking at the end of the barge apron. One can see the concrete 'seawall' in place and painted ...

Another 'seawall' structure, for the yard office parking lot. This one is supposed to be wooden planks. If I had kept this - then I would have further detailed this, with wood pilings and cribbing ... Note the 'porta potty' outhouse for the yard clerk and yard crew! Idler gondola, is sitting adjacent to the yard office ...

So ... in future blog posts ... I will show what I have done with revisions to this 'Kelsey Bay' location. Plus, I will add more photos from my days (and nights!), working the 'high steel' as alocomotive engineer between Edmonton and Edson. Hope you all have enjoyed this installment!

Some photos from my recent trips...

Hi again...I thought I would take a small break from layout updates and show some of my photos from 'workin on the railroad'...The shot above is from Fort Edmonton Park, with a 1920s - era 'Prairie' type 2-6-2 steam locomotive pulling a short train around the park.


I was the engineer on a 'distributed power' train, hauling 18,000 tons of phosphate rock (originating at Kapuskasing Ontario) to the Agrium Redwater fertilizer plant. This is not far from Fort Saskatchewan, AB. We were waiting for local switcher assignment 512 to come off the spur and wye as it proceeded to Scotford Yard from the Agrium plant. Here we see a pair of SD40-2's on the point, with the leader actually designated as a SD40u rebuild.


Sitting at Scotford on a westbound to Edmonton's Walker Yard. We are awaiting the arrival of assignment 514 from the Beamer Spur. Interesting shot, given the Sun was setting and the being very dusty with harvesting and combining in full swing last Autumn. The Dow Canada (Fort Saskatchewan) plant cooling towers (just above the locomotives) sort of add to the shot...


Enroute to Biggar, Saskatchewan with an eastbound doublestack train. This CP intermodal train was enroute from Edmonton, thru Hardisty AB and Wilkie SK to Saskatoon or points east. Nice to see they don't skimp on power! Note the unusual bridge design...maybe the deck truss was too short and they had to fill the gap with a very short trestle! Just west of Unity SK...


Let's carry on with sunsets. SD40-2(w) 5296 on the point of the Wabamun Turn at Wabamun AB. This is close to the location of the derailment I was involved with in August of 2005.


I am currently on assignment 442, which runs three times a week from Edmonton to a crew change point and small yard at Mirror AB. The train performs some switching at Mirror, then continues to Calgary's CN Sarcee Yard with a fresh crew. Here we see a pair of GP40-2L's and a WC GP38-2 on the point of a late 442 arriving at Mirror last winter. It was probably -35 Celsius or colder that night...



After close to 12 hours since we were called in Edmonton, we have train 713 ready for loading at the Ram River sulphur loading facility, 224 rail miles southwest of Edmonton. The plant crew will load over 10,000 tons of bulk sulphur destined for North Vancouver to be shipped to Japan. Note the full moon over the nose of the locomotive...


Another shot at Ram River showing the loading tipple...power was a GMDD SD75I and a BCOL Dash 8-40CW...


Final shot shows yours truly climbing back on the headend of train 516 from Whitecourt to Edmonton. We had just finished setting out SD38-2 1651 in the elevator track at St. Albert (my home town)...

Thanks for looking!

Ken.

May layout progress on the Kootenay Western

Hi again...I have been cruising along with scenery on my layout. I plan on having the layout ready for display during the upcoming NMRA Pacific Northwest Region meet in mid-September. Lots to do before then!

Some photos for your viewing pleasure...


These two photos are an overview of the completed scenery to date.New scenery base to the right of the bridges, including an access road and small parking lot...perhaps for some rafters to enjoy the white water of the river...fairly mild current, given it is mid-September on the layout...


Trackside view approaching Winfield siding from the south. Should look real good with more trees and various plant life...


Looks like those pesky beavers have migrated from Chris Lyon's layout to the Kootenay Western. Engineering forces may have to consider destroying the dam, before the water washes out the mainline!


Another view of the beaver pond. After the Kootenay Western roadmaster spoke with the animal control officials, it was decided to open up a small area of the dam to enable partial drainage of the backed-up creek...now to trap those beavers and to send them back to the Lyon Valley Northern! (freshly poured acrylic gloss medium...makes for the milky look)


The creek has collected into a small pond a bit downstream from the beaver dam. Here we see a culvert with a small brook draining into the pond...The water level is significantly lower than where it should be...gonna need a few more pours of acrylic gloss medium...sure like how the pond bottom detail shows!

Another view of the pond. I used actual water to trace the contour for the streams and the pond, then poked a hole in the bottom of the plaster to drain the water...worked like a champ! I then marked the 'high water mark' around the pond ( a lighter ground shade marks where the water was in the springtime...)


Freshly applied acrylic gel medium to simulate frothy, turbulent water at the base of the outflow creek. This will dry and cure (overnight) into being semi-transparent.

That's all for now! Hope you enjoyed this post!

First post of 2009...Dirty deeds, done dirt cheap!

Hi to all...I must get on here and post more often! As the title alludes to, I have started to work on the scenery component for the layout. Some photos to show what I've been up to (with the help of our round-robin 'FRED' mini-group members...)

This is a 'before' photo of the Winfield (British Columbia) area. As you can see, I have done some more backdrop painting.

Some close-up photos of the backdrop...I might tone down some of the autumn colors, especially to the left of the log cabin in the 3rd photo...just a little too 'bright'!



A 'before' photo of the river mini-scene. I wasn't happy with the arch bridge, so I decided to remove it and place a through truss bridge in its place...


This helps to fill in the corner of the room. A modest tunnel with a swift outflow creek (with rapids, cascading water and a waterfall or two), draining into a small pond, which in turn will drain into the mountain river. This is plaster cloth on top of chicken wire, with another coat of plaster painted with a sandy 'dirt' color. I determined the creek flow and pond contour by pouring real water (with blue tint) down the creek and into the pond. Worked like a champ...


A closer shot of the outfall creek. Note the rock 'castings', made out of scrap drywall mud chunks!


I tried to do some moderate rock outcrops with SculptaMold, carved to look like rock strata (foded and mangled), with a diluted wash of India Ink. I would say the result is satisfactory!

The river scene looks good...at least the one bank does! I went and did some more plaster carving with a dental pick, along with another shot of india ink wash, to bring out more rock relief around the tunnel portal. The wing abutment was scratchbuilt, with 1/8" FoamCore board, with a thin coat of drywall mud and stained with the india ink wash.
An overall 'chopper' view of the project to date. Hope you enjoyed the photos!

Ken.

More layout photos...

I'm awake on a Sunday afternoon after a long night building DP (distributed power) trains. Both 301 and 303 must have been close to 200 cars and at least 18,000 tons. Head end power for both trains was 2200 series ES44DC's leading, with a 2400 series Dash8-40 CM trailing. We placed the remote about two-thirds back, using single EMDI 8800 series SD70M-2 single locos.

Anyways, enough of that...Let's continue with my update of the layout.

We left off with viewing the shops at Kelowna. Here is another look. The CN is currently represented with an ex-NAR SD38-2 and a venerable GP9. One gets a good look at the elevated thru staging yard at Kalamalka. Soon there will be a SD40-2w patrolling the KW line, from Kamloops as well...

Kootenay Western has acquired 2 ex-ATSF F45's for service between Kelowna and Fort Steele on Jack Slimmon's Kootenay Southern. As you can see, these units are due for a trip to the paint shop. The new scheme will be very similar to the mechanical reefer behind the trailing unit and the caboose at Kalamalka.

Eventually, Kalamalka will be partially hidden by a view block, depicting Kelowna's skyline.


The two photos above show recent work at the Winfield turnback loop. The two industries on the switchback spur ("Pasture Prime Meats" and "Ashland Chemicals") will be interesting to work, given that cars spotted to the Hiram Walker distillery would have to be moved out of the way beforehand. One can see the backdrop has been started. I was using the scrap piece of foamcore board for my pallette, and I've kept it in order to match colors for the trees.

The white styro board is temporary, and will be replaced with the distillery and some of downtown Winfield.

Two more shots of Winfield loop, showing the progress on the scenery to date. This is aluminum 1" chicken wire. I thought I would try it and it seems to work great guns so far. Very good at holding its shape. Figured this would be a good place for a campground - right next to the tracks! There will be a small ranch or farm on the hill, named after Old Man Murphy - and individual I have had the misfortune of meeting from time to time!




A closer look at my backdrop painting. In the second photo, I'm not certain about the uniform slope to the left. I might alter that. Hoping the grove of evergreens on the scenery blends OK with those on the backdrop. I'm quite pleased with how the distant mountains came out on the upper right.

Well, that's it for this time. Keep posted for future updates!

Ken.