Missouri, Kansas, & Texas Railroad along the Missouri River by Cathead - 1/87 (HO) scale - model railroad with steamboat

[JacquesCousteau]

1 hour ago, Cathead said:

My initial impression was that grain was still handled and delivered locally in bulk, but I can't prove it. Obviously grain could be shipped in sacks, as seen in the photos of Peerless loaded down with grain sacks, but it wasn't done this way on railroads in 1900. So I can't say whether the steamboat-borne grain was sacked and farm and brought to the vessel, or brought to a central receiving point and sacked there before being loaded on the vessel. So the same would apply to this elevator; maybe local farms were sacking grain for local transport and the sacks were just getting emptied into a chute at the base of the elevator.

I'm not sure how helpful this suggestion will be, or how necessary it is for the model, but the chapter on grain in William Cronon's Nature's Metropolis might have relevant information--either the text itself, or a footnote may point toward a source on it in some trade journal or something.

 

Edit to add: it's been a while since I read it, but grain transportation technologies are important to his broader argument about commodification, so the book should have something on it.

Edited March 13 by JacquesCousteau

[Cathead]

OK, enough talk, how about some more model progress!

 

I've been putting a fair amount of time into hidden work, adding braces and stiffeners and the like to keep the whole thing nice and rigid once the paint starts spraying. By today I finally reached a point where I was comfortable firing up the airbrush, so all of the sudden it looks a lot better! I applied a thin coat of primer, then several coats of a dull red, then a light overspray of dark grey. I followed that up with some light pastel weathering.

You'll notice the two loading docks. The one on the elevator's front (south side) is visible in the photos, but nothing shows the other (west) side, so I just decided there would be a loading door and dock there for visual interest. Maybe this is where farmers unload their sacked grain now. It could also be a supply/store shed. The loading docks are built from scratch, including hand-laying the individual planks. I don't mind using scribed siding for building walls but I think platforms look better when hand-laying lets things be a little more uneven. These were brush-painted with washes of various colors to create an effect of raw but weathered wood. 

 

And here are two more closeups, including a wagon for scale and setting:

You can also see the grain loading chute in its withdrawn position (it would be extended for loading boxcars). Here's the original photo for reference:

 

Next I started on the roofs. I'd already been working on these, making flat sheets with bracing underneath to keep them flat. Now I started adding laser-cut shingle strips from Bar Mills. I apply these with a thin brush of wood glue to ensure they stick. One strip at a time, with a hockey game in the background to cut the monotony:

And here's how the roof parts completed so far look. These are just set loosely on the model, not attached, so they don't sit perfectly in place yet:

And here it is with a boxcar in place for context:

And here with the previously built depot in the background, just for a fuller sense of the consistent style of coloration and weathering I'm going for:

I have to say I'm pretty pleased with how this is coming together. It doesn't look too old for a structure that can only be 5-10 years old at most, but weathered enough to not look toy-like. Nice visual interest in the lines and coloration. Fits well with the depot. But enough of my opinions, what are your thoughts? There's still time to make changes or improvements. The loading docks and doors aren't glue on yet, and neither are the roof pieces.

 

Thanks for following along and for all your feedback, ideas, and speculation that make this a richer project! 

 

[Knocklouder]

Very nice work,   I got to try that some day. They actually look like grain elevators. When I was young I work for the railroad and live in that very same yellow and green building, amazing what paint can do. We'll done.

Bob  M.

[wefalck]

... equally interesting is the vertically boilered shunter on the photograph. Will you be building one too?

 

[Cathead]

3 hours ago, wefalck said:

... equally interesting is the vertically boilered shunter on the photograph. Will you be building one too?

That's actually a track inspection car. It's quite significant since the Katy sent this out on a tour of this part of the system in 1898, including a photographer, who took photos of railroad infrastructure at many stops. Those photos are a core resource for me because they're almost exactly at the time period I'm modeling and cover a lot of obscure places that otherwise weren't photographed (or preserved). 

 

I don't have any plans to build one...it's too obscure and any time spent on it would take away from other progress on the broader project. Maybe in ten years or something, but not any time soon. It is cute, though!

[Keith Black]

Eric, I like the grain elevator a lot. It will be a perfect piece with in the overall layout. 

[Canute]

That inspection car is a "critter" for some railroads. Doesn't fit into any engine class on the railroad and usually smaller than any company locos. That one just exudes "charm". You might want to find some cats and terrier dogs for the mill. The grain is a lure for the rodents. Our horse barn had several cats and a Blue Healer that "serviced" them. Beat using chemicals.

[Cathead]

34 minutes ago, Canute said:

You might want to find some cats and terrier dogs for the mill.

I love the idea of having a few cats scattered around, I'll definitely follow up on that long-term!

 

3 hours ago, Keith Black said:

It will be a perfect piece with in the overall layout. 

Thanks! I'm excited to blend it into the scene with proper scenery.

 

I finished the roofing today. Here are a couple more in-progress shots of the hay barn roof, showing the complicated angle where it meets the elevator roof, and a peek at the interior bracing.

And here are some shots of the finished building in place against the backdrop:

And a couple paired photos with the originals:

 

 

I'll do a little more weathering and add a few more details. I also need to build the ramp up to the hay barn, or as much of it shows in front of the backdrop. But the main structure is done and I think I'll switch gears to something else for a bit.

 

For a change of pace, I'll start catching you all up on the scenery work that's been done so far, and maybe delve into some of the background planning. Thanks for reading!

[Cathead]

OK, let's try to catch up on the other work that's been done so far. I started trying to write up some deeper background about layout design, development, historical/geographic settings, etc. and it just got away from me, so for now we're going to focus on the more mundane physical details.

 

The Rocheport scene is built on two modules, each 5.5' long for a total length of 11'. The depth of scene (to the backdrop) is about 2' on both, though the left-hand one curves outward to accommodate a possible future curve back around the other way, and also to add more scenic interest. One rule of thumb in model railroad planning is not to lay everything too straight; subtle changes in direction add visual interest. Here's an early view of the benchwork showing how each module is its own unit, set on top of separate support structures. They're bolted together in the middle and I can take either one off its supports independently if I want to work on it in a different setting or at a different angle (such as tilted onto its side for track wiring beneath the surface or taken outside for messy painting).

If you're wondering about the wood color, most of it is Eastern Red Cedar that I cut and milled on my rural Missouri homestead farm. That'll be a theme in this project, using as much local/natural material as I can, especially for scenery. The backdrop supports are cheap pine 1x3s that I had sitting around from a long-ago project; I'm using them to use them up because they're perfect for this. The darker wood like the legs is also cedar, just older and weathered; those are reused pieces from an old chicken coop I built years ago and no longer need.

 

The benchwork is solid framed boxes, with the actual surface being plywood supported on risers. This allows for two things: (1) scenery below track level like rivers and (2) easier access for wiring later. Here are a couple early views of transferring my computer-drawn track plan onto cheap plywood sheets (which I reused from a shipping crate rather than buying new). The joint between the two modules is just to the left of the depot.

As the photos suggest, I did 95% of the woodworking down in my garage woodshop (and some outdoors when winter weather allowed). This is one of many benefits of the modular system; I can build these where all my tools are and then transport them upstairs to a more finished room, rather than turning a finished room into a construction zone for months.

 

Once I had the exact track routes laid out, I made patterns and cut new pieces from  high-end plywood to support the actual trackbed and core town areas. This ensures that the important surfaces are smooth and flat, but saves money from making everything out of good plywood. The cheap plywood remains as the base for things like rivers and other scenic areas that don't need to be perfect. Below are a few more views showing how these surfaces interact and how the risers aid in setting up scenery.

 

Another reason to do it this way is that I can alter the level of the crappy plywood to create subtle changes in land surface even for areas I want mostly flat. If you look closely at the preceding and following photos you'll see that the crappy plywood doesn't quite line up with the flat high-end roadbed. There's a long, subtle climb in the surrounding "land" surface from below track level at the right end (near the depot) to above track level at the left end (near the bridge). This fits the actual landscape through Rocheport, where the track is a bit elevated over the surrounding floodplain at the town's east end, but goes through a shallow (but noticeable) cut as it approaches the bridge/tunnel combination at the west end. The "level" point where they're both even falls where a road crosses all the tracks, just visible at the left-hand side of one of the photos. These kind of details help keep a model railroad from looking like it's laid on a plywood tabletop. Even the flattest of landscapes, like the river floodplain this setting is, have local variations.

 

The last photo also shows my scratchbuilt bridge abutments (good plywood airbrushed and weathered) and initial framing for the tunnel. The scene is set up so the tunnel provides a natural transition through the backdrop. Lots of railroads don't have tunnels so conveniently placed, but this one does!

 

This has gotten long so I'll stop there. In a future post I'll show how I started developing the more complex landscape surfaces such as the riverbanks and the hills/bluffs rising above the tracks. Thanks for your patience as I catch up to real-time on this!

 

Edited Saturday at 02:02 PM by Cathead

[Ian_Grant]

Interesting to see it come together. Not to diverge too much from this log, but in my handyman days I was once hired to "restore" a large L-shaped basement area where the lady's deceased husband had run his model RR along with his friends. This area encompassed half of the basement of the house. RR track completely encircled the room (except for one doorway) with as much as three feet depth from the walls, which were adorned by very skilfully painted hills and trees (I know this because I saw the area before the husband's friends came to remove the whole thing to another location). Anyway, when I went back for the job the walls were riddled with large jagged holes where they had apparently just ripped stuff off them as opposed to unscrewing. The lady was surprised when I proposed to just patch everything up rather than install new drywall but that would have been a big job and I was getting too old to be lugging drywall sheets down stairs any more. It was one thing to patch and tape the holes (and build a little closet around the incoming water valve) but effectively hiding all the painted forests took about four coats of primer. The finished job delighted the lady with the fresh new room. I've found that one advantage of doing a job for senior ladies is that they keep you fed while you're there!  😏

 

Now back to our regular programming; sorry.

[Cathead]

Ian, great story, that's exactly why I'm taking this modular approach. I don't want to "ruin" this room and I don't want to have to throw everything out one day. This way a variety of outcomes are possible, from some or all of the scenes ending up in various local historical museums (of which we have several along this corridor), to possibly finding a new home with someone else. And if it does have to go to the landfill, it'll be a lot easier than ripping stuff off the walls and dismantling a messy web of permanent benchwork.

 

 

[Egilman]

Modular layouts have been around for about 70 years, and yes it is the way to go when building larger layouts...

 

And OSB, (oriented strand board) makes a great foundation for a layout... Doesn't have to be perfect and is almost as strong as plywood... (besides being about a third the cost of good plywood)

 

Nice progress, watching with interest...

 

EG

[Cathead]

Yep, I never claimed to invent the concept! And in fairness, modularity imposes design constraints that a permanent arrangement doesn't. We'll probably delve into that whenever I take the time to write up the background design story.

[Jack12477]

When I built my N scale layout, I used the L-girder design for the framework (you could screw everything, into the inverted leg of the L from below, such as the 1x3 cross members). For the  top we used 3/8 inch plywood or sometimes 1/4 inch, glued to 3/4 (5/8 ??) Inch thick Homasote then the cork roadbed was tacked to the Homasote.

 

Build a simple L-Girder

Edited Saturday at 07:53 PM by Jack12477
Added link

[Cathead]

Jack, it's not clear from the photos and I didn't take any while assembling the benchwork, but it is a modified L-girder approach. The support frames are L-girders, on which the modules sit. I can always screw the modules down onto their support frames (though the L-girders) if desired, but it hasn't been necessary as they sit comfortably of their own accord and not screwing them in makes it easier to move them around as I continue work. But someday when I declare things "done" I'll probably drive a few holding screws in and then it becomes a really solid construction. 

 

Also, I've used homasote in the past but chose not to this time. Thanks for your perspectives!

[Jack12477]

53 minutes ago, Cathead said:

Jack, it's not clear from the photos and I didn't take any while assembling the benchwork, but it is a modified L-girder approach

I sort of deduced that from their appearance in your photos. They did look like L-girders.  When I built mine I was surprised at how strong they were in terms of how much weight they can carry, yet be light enough to move the table around when needed. 

 

Your discussion of the history is most interesting.  

[Cathead]

Continuing the scenery, I began working on the more robust parts of the landscape by installing webs of cardboard strips shaped to roughly outline the terrain I wanted. This is a tried and true method that gives a lot of flexibility and uses easily scavenged material. It'll be hard to recognize in photos but, as a geologist, I put a lot of thought and planning into shaping this terrain to match the real landscape here. As stated before, Rocheport is bookended to the west by a high ridge that the railroad tunneled right through, and to the east by a long series of high bluffs parallel to the Missouri River, with the rail line sandwiched between rock and river.

With the webbing done to my liking (including some adjustments), I began using plaster cloth to make a solid base layer. The old-school way to do this was to mix up your own plaster and dip paper towels in it, but this was always super-messy and hard to get amounts right. The more modern approach involves various products that embed a light paper roll with dry plaster, and all you have to do is dip it in water. Virtually no mess and a lot easier to do.

 

You may have noticed the odd rectangular indentation in the bluff on the far right side of the scene. That's a specific local feature; the limestone in this region is pockmarked with karst features like caves, springs, etc. I'll be including some minor examples on the bluffs, but there was/is a larger cave-entrance overhang at the base of the bluffs right along the tracks. When this line was being built, the railroad walled in this opening to use as an explosives storage area. It remains today as a notable landmark along the modern rail trail, and I just had to include it. Here's what it looks like today:

So that'll be a fun mini-scratchbuild!

 

Next stage in the scenery is to start using plaster to really form the bedrock bluffs, river banks, and essentially seal in the landscape the way I want. This will take a while.

 

Other notes:

- I didn't really photograph the process, but you'll notice that the backdrops were installed. They're currently primed but I won't finish them until more foreground scenery is done.

- You'll also notice that I installed the fascia boards that seal in the front of the layout. Like the backdrop, I won't paint these until more scenery is done.

- The bluff on the left side, through which the tunnel runs, is pretty close to the actual scale height of the ridge there. It looks a bit "model railroad" if you don't realize it's exactly how the real thing is.

- The bluffs on the right side, along the Missouri River, are less than half the scale height of the real thing (on the layout they're a scale 90-100' high, in real life they're 200-300'). They still look a bit abrupt because of the horizontal shortening I had to do, and one of the scenic challenges here was finding the balance between making this scenery dramatic enough to capture the feel of the real thing, but not so dramatic that it looks "fake". I wish I had four more feel of horizontal space to make a really nice run of bluffs, the real railroad parallels these towering features for miles, but this is the best I can do.

 

Thanks for all the likes, comments, input, stories, etc.! I'm really looking forward to two things: getting some color on this scenery, and getting tracks laid so I can see some motion here! And I hope you'll enjoy getting there too. Soon I hope to write up some more background stuff to provide more context for the project. But I appreciate you all!

 

 

 

[Keith Black]

 That looks like a lot of fun work, Eric. I look forward to seeing how you make the geographical features. 

[Canute]

Coming along nicely, Eric. Excellent work. Looks like you've handled the vertical curves around your bridge with your pre-planned abutments.

[Jack12477]

Looking really good Eric! And I do remember the paper towels in runny plaster, very very messy.  The plaster cloth is a great n improvement.   

[Landlubber Mike]

You must not be married?  My wife would kill me if she saw me working on a project like this.

 

All kidding aside, this looks like a really epic project.  Looking forward to following along (and living vicariously through you)!

[Cathead]

As it turns out, Mrs. Cathead is fully on board with all my modeling endeavors, she shares my interests in history and transportation and enjoys going train-watching and towboat-watching with me. She'll probably get involved in the more detailed scenery work, if nothing else because she's also a geologist and has Opinions about getting the landscape right. She's also a botanist and will definitely be involved in selecting and harvesting the various natural scenic materials we'll be using later on. She loves the Katy Trail too (we rode the whole thing together) and very much approves the idea of having an operating piece of its living history in the back bedroom. She also used to be an active researcher on the Missouri River so everything about this whole corridor is a shared love for both of us.

[wefalck]

I am curious to see, how another geologist will treat those rocks! As a geologist I usually find rocks on train-layouts and dioramas quite unnatural ...

[Cathead]

I agree, and now the bar is even higher with you following along! Here's a few hints, from scenery work I've been doing at a local model railroad club depicting this region as well (though not exactly the same locations). The photo quality isn't great but it's still some context.

A core thing for me in making realistic rockwork is NOT to make a solid wall. Almost all real rock exposures, even those that have been blasted, have a lot of texture and variability. Rock faces are almost always broken up by scree slopes, soil-covered areas, etc. The above shot shows what I mean; to my eye this is far more realistic than a single slab of rock all the way along this scene. 

 

Here's a closer look at part of this face:

 

This area is limestone as well, and though the color balance here is terrible, the rocks are washed with both grey and tan shades to capture the actual mix of weathered and fresh faces in this formation.

 

Below is yet another bad photo of a local creek bed. I was really constrained on this one because the benchwork pattern was set for this before I joined the club, and I wouldn't have laid the creek out as a straight-sided slab, but I did what I could with it. Creeks are here are routinely lined by nearly horizontal beds of limestone, giving long linear runs of rock along the water, with coarse gravel bars separating pools.

 

And here's a broader shot showing how even partial scenery work can come together:

 

 

All of these scenes need vegetation, which will also help tie the scenes together AND further break up the rock work. But it's been good warmup work for my own project. The way my plaster shell has been laid out is far from random and I'll talk more in a different post about some of the specific choices I made in shaping those areas with reference to the real scenic setting.

[wefalck]

I think understanding patterns, such as bedding or fractures that determine weathering forms are important to make this realistic.

[Cathead]

Yep, if you look back at the "context" shots from Rocheport, you'll see how complex the rock faces are there. Horizontal bedding, but shot through with layers of chert nodules and highly variable surfaces due to the karstic nature of the area. Also different geomorphology as you go up in the sequence from track level. It'll be a fun challenge. I also feel that the best scenery balances accuracy and realism. For example, some features can be accurate but "look" wrong to a viewer's eye, and my goal is for things to "look" right more than "be" right. A great example is lowing the height of the bluffs, even though that means I can't incorporate the entire stratigraphy there at scale. A 200' bluff in this scene would look toylike without the horizontal scale to match, no matter how accurate it is.

[Jack12477]

I'm curious Eric. How do you "sculpt" your rock faces/outcroppings? Carve by hand ? Use rubber molds like those available from Woodland Scenics? Will you be covering this in more detail in subsequent posts? 

[Cathead]

Good question. For the club layout above, it was a combination of commercial rock molds and hand-molded, all using Scultamold brand plaster, which is my favorite medium for texture and workability. On the Rocheport scene it'll all be hand-sculpted. Mostly forming as I go with wet plaster, with some later touchup.

 

I don't think I said this clearly, but the last scenery post caught us up to real-time on this project. Nothing's been done that you can't see in the images shown. So I'll definitely be covering my process once I get started on it! It'll be a few weeks because I have a few really busy weeks coming up with family visits and extra work commitments.