After lots of planning the Bethlehem Steel Co. has started construction of a new mill on the lower Susquehanna River. The Conowingo, Aberdeen, & Susquehanna railroad will be built to service the new mill.
This post marks the start of construction on my freelanced steel mill railroad. It is an 8’ by 15" shelf switcher featuring the open hearth and its support structures. Now that I have the benchwork up, I’m refining my track plan. I’ll post it here for comments once I draw it out in smaller scale. (for now it is chalk lines on the benchwork.)
Here’s a pic of the mill switcher, a Walthers SW-1 painted by me.
It still needs decals and weathering. I have to thank those who answered in the Acrylic Paint Problem and Masking a Curve threads. Without them I wouldn’t have been able to paint it.
Spacemouse, look at the scissors arrangement in the middle of the layout. On top of where the the 0" elevation marker is I can drop a car or cut of ingot buggies. To run around the switcher would pull forward then back through the crossing, pull forward above the crossing, and back through it again putting it behind the cars. I may change that area anyway as it is pretty complex.
Ken, I used to do O-scale, but the cost and my lack of space made me switch to HO. HO also has much better availability. The difference in what’s available is unbelievable. Lack of planning on the O-scale layout also helped my decision to switch to HO. On the O layout I stuck the rotary dumper in the ground before I finished track planning, when I started laying track, I couldn’t find a working plan. That’s why I’m asking for constructive criticism on here before construction. I don’t want that to happen again.
I have been doing more work this week, and have got a bunch of stuff done for the layout. First is a scratch/bashed bridge that will take the open-hearth hi-line over some tracks below.
The span is made from craneway girders from the Walthers overhead crane kit. The y were painted Pollyscale Oily Black and drybrushed and washed with the Sophisticated Finishes rust antiquing paint. The abutments (sp) are scratchbuilt from styrene and finished with one of my favorite ways to model concrete, charcoal ashes. To make concrete this way you first brushpaint on a thick coat of acrylic concrete colored paint, and then bury the model in ash. When the paint has had a while to dry, knock off the excess and spray the model with dulcote until all of the ash has turned dark brown. Bury it until the dulcote is dry then knock off the excess. Repeat until you have an even layer of ash on you model. This is an extremely cheap way to model concrete, but the results are fragile so you cant let them get banged up. Here is a close up of the abutments.
And here’s a pic of the bridge that will go over the access road, modeled the same way as the bridge above.
Finally, a pic of a short stretch of chainlink fence made from .040 styrene rod and som silver mesh picked up in the fabric section at Wal-mart.
During the past few hours, I have been roughing out the land forms of the layout in pink foam, and shaping the scenery around the bridges. Here’s an overall shot.
Here’s a close-up of the access road underpass.
And finally the area around the rail underpass.
Although it isn’t much, this is the farthest I’ve ever gotten in building a layout. Feel free to comment, thanks for looking, and check back often for updates!
I just finished kitbashing Life-Like’s Mt. Vernon Manufacturing kit into a low relief background building. It will hide the back half of the switchback to the hi-line.
Here’s a veiw down the track it covers.
The building isn’t quite finished. It needs dulcote and some weathering and details. I’m still not entirely sure what this building is for. I was thinking some sort of pumphouse but any suggestions otherwise would be appreciated. I also need ideas for hiding the holes in the ends that the hidden track passes through. Anyway I hope you like it and keep checking back!
