Yesterday I posted scenes, from the WTRR (West Tennessee Railroad), which crews were preparing a portion of the layout for a new maintenance area for the military airfield. I have been working on this project again, I’d like to share it with all of you.
It’s early morning and the crews are up. The basic support is blue foam, covered with sifted dirt from parking lots.
After the crew moves the dirts, a rain of alcohol and diluted white glue will fall.
Trains are able to deliver supplies as the ballast work has been completed. My ballast is sandbox sand mixed with tempra powered paints to make a grey color.
some last minute preparation as the planes move in.
Airfield without flash above and the same with flash below
Road crews are almost done, signs are being posted
As a final shot, I thought I’d stand on the runway as planes get ready to depart. I can tell you the engine noise is loud.
The foam board was left bare and painted concrete. I am re-doing the marker stripes at the end of the runway.
Thanks for letting me share.
Robert Sylvester, WTRR
This looks really great!!! I like the variety of aircraft at your Army Air Forces field. Say who is the manufacturer of those aircraft and are they HO or close to it? Again good job!!!
The two military aircraft are actually 1:76 models from Wal-Mart. The samller aircraft on the field are 1:86 Williams kits and the passenger plane without the props is a Walthers 1:86 kit.
The military vehicles are from Rocco, good models and highly detailed.
Robert Sylvester, WTRR
Hey Robert,
Great job on the airfield. I was a little confused about the “mix” of aircraft vintages…but it sure seems to work (Is that a DeHaviland Tiger Moth on the tiedown line?). You took some great pictures AND posted them correctly (something I have no idea how to accomplish). As an old aviator, I appreciate your efforts. I will also show your pictures to my flight students further illustrating the need to become proficient at short field takeoffs and landings. Keep 'em flying!
Really neat, robert. I imagine the engines are loud, just be glad they aren’t flying jets out of it.
I can’t recall if it was Elko or Winnemucca, NV but I sure remember a night in a little RV campground on the triangle. The highway, the railroad, and the airport. Didn’t sleep a wink!
jc5729 John Colley, Port Townsend, WA
Greeley Model Railroad Club layout couple of years ago at a Denver Train Show. Nicely done piece of work.
Robert, Great stuff! Don’t see aviation combined very much with model railroads, probably because airfields gobble up so much space. When I was younger, I built a lot of 1:144 scale airliners and envisioned adding them to an n-scale layout, somehow getting them to actually fly over from time to time. Of course, now I realize that would have taken a miracle to pull it off. Then again, I am starting an n-scale layout and still have a lot of those airliners on display…
Jamie
It was Elko, NV and I stayed at the same campground (KOA?). Like you I didn’t get much sleep. At a stay in the early 1970s, I was awaken by what sounded like the end of the world. Upon stumbling out of our tent; I looked across the road and observed a B-17 powering up for takeoff! What a sight…and the sound of those Wright engines was unbelievable…is there any sweeter sound than a radial engine?
Last weekend we stayed at a campground in Pelham, AL (south of Birmingham). We were “treated” to the sound of diesel horns and freight trains all night long…I guess these are some of the sacrifices one has to make. I was amazed at the amount of rail traffic coming and going throughout the day and night. My little 1:87 people are very appreciative of the fact that the Newburgh, Dutchess & Connecticut RR doesn’t run trains at night.
Robert:
Nice work, and a nice variety of aircraft, too (even one civilian airliner, it looks like!) It’s handy having so many 1/72 planes to choose from that are, give or take, close enough to HO scale. Making the runway out of blue foam, it would be really easy for you to add runway lights for night operations.
Jamie:
Don’t give up on animating airliners on your N guage layout. A corner of an airport can be implied without having to model it all. I agree that engineering a fly-over would be a trick (but possible, using fishing line to support and guide a plane, maybe). I experimented years ago in HO with a background airfield, represented by a fence, a VOR building (one of those odd cone-shaped buildings usually painted in red and white checkers) and background flats shaped like hangars. I was trying to make a threaded shaft concealed behind the hangars that would turn and pull a jetliner tailfin (made from painted balsa wood) slowly across the scene, like a jet taxiing behind the hangars. I never pulled it off, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. Combined with jet engine sound effects (or prop plane sounds, if you prefer), I think it could be an effective and interesting effect.
Good luck with air commerce on your rail empire!
One side of my new n scale modules is going to be Navy. It going to be made up of an airfield and a dock.
Justin:
Modern Navy or historical? There are lots of models to choose from in either case!
At the Moment Modern. The airfield will be made up of Hornet / Super Hornet fighters and the dock will have Sea Wolf Class Sub.
Very cool! Are you going to use 1/144 Hornets? An N scale Seawolf will be very impressive! Please post photos as you make progress!
Yea the Hornets are 1/144. When i was looking for planes for the airport the only ones i found for the navy was hornets/tomcats. After building one of each i found that the tomcat just looked to big against n scale rolling stock so i went with the hornets. The Seawolf class sub is also 1/144. It was the only modern us naval ship close to n scale at the moment. After looking at the parts for the model i found it to be perfect. Most of the sub is split down the middle, this will make it easy to plance on the water.
I am trying to figure a way to included some part of a shipyard on my layout, possibly with a helicopter pad. I am not going to show an actual shipway but just some of the support structures such as assembly and store houses.
As for your airfield and dock, you might consider creating a seaplane ramp as many naval air bases had both docks and seaplane ramps as well as a hangar complex in the area of the seaplane ramp. THe Navy hasn’t used seaplanes since the 1960s but the ramps haven’t been removed.
The model railroad club I belong to meets at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn NY. When it was an active Naval Air Station it oiperated both seaplanes and landplanes. The seaplane ramp and hangar are at the shoreline and are still used. The seaplane ramp is used for people to launch and recover their pleasure boats. The hangar is a display of a number of old military aircraft. It’s also occasionally used to host model railroad shows.
Irv
The larger warehouses at a shipyard could be modeled as low-relief background flats. Having spent time at both the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in the Seattle Area and at Pearl Harbor, two things I would recommend would be cranes and lots of signs that indicate the scene is a naval shipyard. These places have huge cranes (and a number of smaller ones), and it seems like most buildings have numbers and often names posted on the outside, as do piers and other features. This being wartime, security-oriented messages on buildings are also appropriate (examples can be printed off the internet and glued to your buildings.)
This Navy photo shows several cranes of different sizes, and also some pier-side structures.
Naval Shipyard
Looks great! Good to see someone else doing what I’m planning. I want to include an old duster strip on my layout. Just the hangar area and part of the gras strip. I’ve got some 1/72 scale biplanes that are close enough. Should be fun. One thing about your field, be careful firing up the Stearman and he B-26 on the gravel area. You are going to have stones flying everywhere and that’s hard on props. Being a Stearman pilot, I would never park or operate on gravel. Just a thought. Jim
Right now i am modifying a Walthers ho scale PEIR TERMINAL building for my n scale scene. It will give me the look of an huge dock building that the scene needs. For the Pier i am using the Walthers Peir, its from the same series as the PEIR Terminal. Both kits are hard to find these days because they are both retired. The Peir set comes with a large crane. It will look great after i modify the doors on it. The runway should end up to be a 9 foot n scale runway. Its still not the lenghts of a full n scale size runway but it will give a good impression. Right now i do not have a hanger yet for the air port. I can not find a model i like so i think i will have to build one this fall after i get it completed enough for the green county model railroad show (in Monroe, Wi) in September. My plan is to have it almost completed for the Lena Train show (in Lena, IL) in Febuary.
