The detachable extension is not “standard” in any way, except that the vertical support plus baseboard is 6" tall to match the Free-moN endplate.
It’s all scrap wood, with the 4" x 23 1/2" baseboard being a piece of 1/2" ply left over from ripping the sides & supports of the module framework (it was the “other” side of cutting a side frame piece, and so the end even has the other side of a 15 deg. cut).
Here’s the whole shebang detached (before paint & track & scenery):
Right now I just clamp it on & it works fine, probably because it’s only 24" long, though I’ll probably go back and drill a hole higher up through vertical support and endplate to have a dowel just for ease of alignment.
If I were to do it again, I’d glue & screw a 1"x2" on edge along the bottom center of the baseboard to stiffen the structure: my 1/2" ply baseboard has a slight downward curve, as the triangle gusset is only 5" or so. I could still glue and clamp one on, but I’ll just put bumpers on the ends of the tracks to prevent the 666-scale-foot drop to the concrete.
I’ve seen Free-moN layouts with short connector pieces like this: they have vertical supports on both ends that just clamp to the Free-moN endplates of the modules it’s connecting. Not sure if there are standards: small pieces like this are just fillers specific to each club & layout iteration.
If the extension is part of a perminant layout and will have only a flat carfloat on it, then I’d think about using a hinge and sliding bolt (or hinged gusset) to lock it in place when up. If it’ll have taller structures on it (like the apron hoists), then removeable is probably better). Anything longer than 24"-30" I’d think about having a single detachable leg at the end to prevent sagging.
Looking forward to seeing yo
Gidday, don’t want to hog the post and don’t know if MisterBeasley has the room but have seen and read about carfloats mounted on a “tea trolley” that could be wheeled right out of the way when not"in port".
As for watching the progress on the Shoo–fly module I was thinking that if I tended towards "the dark side’ I could be come quite depressed when comparing it to my own lack of getting anywhere fast. However as I would rather tend to treat life as “a half full glass” as opposed to a half empty one, keep those posts rolling in.
Cheers, The Bear. [:D]
Your really nice photo essay and interactive follow-up has inspired me. I’ll take pictures and see if I can do something similar. Thanks.
Today the foam was a-flying!
Well, it’s a pinkfoam prairie no more.
Now it’s pinkfoam puffball puddle.
Started by carving out the stream, place for the abutments, and old barn/abandoned vineyard on the right:
You can see the garbage bag I kept open under the edge to try to catch as many foam flakes as I could (not that many, it turns out, as wrangling foam bits is about as easy as hearding cats). Guess I could have put a large dropcloth under it, but actually it wasn’t as messy as previous pinkfoam perferation parties I’ve thrown.
After the stream I worked left and got the gentle slope of the cow pasture:
Then the real fun began.
In the photo above, notice that it’s still light out.
After about an hour of rasping, I carved out the downstream side of the waterway as well as the large Lush Vineyard that will extend along almost the whole side and will definitely be a challenge to model:
Yup, it’s dark.
I used a steak knife that’s been “missing” from the kitchen for a couple years for some work, but mainly that was all forming tool.
No reason to go to the gym now: probably put on five pounds of muscle in my right arm and back with all the exercise.
I’ll get better pictures tomorrow after I carve & rasp some more.
Today I just started blocking out the shapes to get a feel of the composition and flow of it all.
Part of the fun is to see what landforms appear as you form away.
Don’t worry: that big hill will get eroded down quite a bit by the time I’m through.
Had to stop on the hill be
Someone made the fabulous suggestion of having some olive trees as part of the Sonoma scenery, and that got me thinking again (D’oh!)
Earlier I was seriously considering olive trees for the orchard area until I thought about twisting all of the wire for 40 trunks.
For some reason I think twisting all of the wire for 10 rows of grape vines will be easier.
But now I’ve got olives in my head (it’s the pits!), and I’d love to have them on the module, but right now I"m envisioning the trains rolling slow past a large expanse of lush grapevines.
I could swap the old vines near the old barn with some olives.
Or, since many vineyards have groves of olive trees, too (it’s the off-season crop):
I could stick a couple olive trees next to the vineyard between it and the river or on the other side towards the endplate:
That depressed area at the “front” is for the vineyard. The olives could go either left of it at the bend or on the right before or after the drop-off.
That way I’d need only a couple of olive trees to suggest something larger, and it would be cool to stage a picking scene:
Or a more realistic, prototypical picking scene:
Or a planting scene:
Not much done today.
Did get the bumpers put in on the detachable extension to prevent the 666-scale-foot drop to the concrete:
The crew is waiting for Hank to get off the ties so they can start working.
Problem is that Hank’s as slow as molassas or gopher fannies stuck in gorillaglue, so looks like no one’s going anywhere anytime soon.
But I did get a rather large package from Scenic Express today with my “weed” and “grass” shipment, so hopefully this is the last time you see the extension as bare as this:
Hope everyone has a groovy weekend!
Well, today I was ec-static: fired up The Banananator and used an old piece of scenery as a “grass palate” trying different combinations of long & short grasses of various colors.
Gotta say: It’s going to take a while to get the static grass technique down, somewhere between too little and too much or too even.
Also tried some small “super trees”, though not too ecstatic about the results. But will get better with practice, I guess.
That didn’t stop me from starting to scenic the detachable extension with grasses, bushes, some trees and a wire fence:
'Twas not a great day for photos.
The lighting gods were not on my side today (I really need to get some good spots: the CFLs from the hardware store just don’t cut it).
Got the grass a bit too uniform, even though I did “squish” some of it with the tweezers to break it up.
Actually looks better in person, though a little “chia-pet” in places.
Going to try some different mixes tomorrow.
But it’s nice to be back in scenery after the benchwork.
Thanks for looking and have a great weekend!
Well, the pinkfoam prairie is no more.
Now it’s a brownish blob.
This morning, after eroding the hill down into more of a rolling Sonoma shape and sanding the whole thing with a foam sanding block, I used some lightweight spackle to cover over the seam lines, smooth the riverbed, cow pond and some future dirt roads, and fill in some chunks:
[I’ll ream out the holes for the temp tubes later, when I get them]
Then I took the latex interior paint I found in the mistint bin at the local hardware store ($3), and covered the whole shebang:
I occasionally dipped the brush in water to allow the paint to flow into all the pink places.
It’s the same paint I used on the detachable extension, so I think it’ll work out okie dokie.
Then I went to go wash the brush before it dried and got all stuck together…
STUCK TOGETHER???
D’oh!
So I ran back and undid the bolts and separated the two sections before I had just one:
Phew!
Now I just hope everything stays in alignment when I put it back together!
Thought about blending in the darker creek-bed bottom paint, but I’m going to have to touch up the bed anyway after I put the temp tubes in, so I’ll do it then.
I also painted the two rock castings I’ll be using: Sonoma really doesn’t have that many large bare rock faces.
A weird change from the Mt. Coffin & Columbia River layout, which seems
Busy day yesterday.
Realized I needed to get the fascia cut & installed, so did a bit of tracing & jigsawing:
If I had more time I might just glue & clamp, and for some reason yesterday I wasn’t thinking about glue until after I’d screwed it all in (D’oh!).
That’s ok: I think the screw heads give it a solid, industrial appearance (yes, I countersunk them, but not all the way as it’s waaaaay too easy to punch through the 1/8" masonite. Next time I’ll try the 1/4").
I filled the spaces between foam & fascia with lightweight spackle:
I made it around the module with the spackle I had left: literally used up the last drop (chunk?) so that saved a trip to the hardware store.
Later I cut some 1/2" split cable tubing from Radio Shack to use as the temp tubes:
I’ve looked at tubing in a lot of places, and that gets as close as it can.
The tubing is spiraled, but by sliding the sections along the split you can make it concentricly corrigated.
You can also see my custom tunneling tool: sandpaper wrapped around a marker.
Worked great.
[cont.]
After the spackle had dried, another coat of the brownish tan (or tannish brown) mistint-bin latex, and then I mixed in some muddy & black paints to color the creek bottom and cow pond:
My daughter said sadly, “It looks so lonely!”
So we fixed that:
[though a single cow might make the place even lonelier]
Installed the “true” mainline (the one being worked on):
It’ll all look better when painted!
Almost forgot to make sure the track lined up towards each other on both sides of the future bridge!
But here’s how I left everything last night to dry:
Today I’ll prime the fascia sides and then start laying down dirt.
Going to need a lot of dirt!
Thanks for looking.
Well, lots done, just nothing very photogenic.
Masked off the fascia, primed it & then painted it flat black:
Then, after almost forgetting to slip in some replacement ties under the turnout (D’oh!), I masked off the track and spray painted it Grimy Black:
[The weights are holding the temp tubes in place as the caulk dries]
You can see I laid down some dirt (mostly tan, with some slightly browner stuff scattered here&there).
I didn’t do the left side because I ran out of dirt (D’oh!), so had to run back across the street from the LHS to get some, then bake it, then lay down the rest.
The siding has a messier paint job because I had to hand paint that section with Poly Scale Grimy Black, as that section is down directly on the foam and Floquil on Foam is a good way to watch you foam melt into a moonscape (yes, I should have painted the latex under the track before laying it down: I’ll try to remember for the next layout).
Kinda looks like Mars right now.
[cont.]
So today I brushed the rest of the module with diluted white glue, got the tan dirt down, used the brown dirt on the shoofly mound for a slight bit of differentiation (newer dirt, or trucked in), and then started putting down the groundfoam and static grass around the cow pasture and endplate:
Not sure how I feel about the application of the static grass: I need to be able to concentrate it in smaller areas.
But not bad for a basic first covering.
Once everything dries I can go back and add some here&there with spots of glue and a vacuum.
Everything was going great and I was on track to glue down the dirt and get a lot of groundfoam & grass down when…
My fine-mist spritzer crapped out.
I tried just pipetting the alcohol onto the dirt in the vineyard and then pipetting the 50-50 glue, but it was just too flooded with alcohol so I stopped.
So pretty much all the dirt you see in this picture is still pretty loose:
I brushed glue on the surface before sprinkling, but all the top stuff is loose.
So tomorrow I need to raid my wife’s side of the bathroom cabinets for another atomizer / fine mist thingy or take a trip to the drug store.
I don’t like the trigger spray bottles as they seem to always throw droplets along with the spray.
I just hope it’s not windy tomorrow when I open the garage door, or we’ll have a re-enactment of the Dust Bowl, and my vineyard will turn into the Grapes of Wrath.
But I should have basic ground cover and ballast done by tomorrow night, which will be nice.
Then I j
I’m enjoying this thoroughly. I think I need to consider trying static grass. The results are great, as is the rest of this project and its chronicle.
I really like the “bumper” at the end of the extension.
Thanks, Mr.B for the kind words.
Static grass is a lot of fun and can look great (though it can also look like mold or facial stubble).
I built my static grass applicator for under $30 & it works great.
I very much recommend giving it a try.
Yesterday my wife surprized me with a willing donation of her super solid fine-mist sprayer, so we’re back in the scenicking service.
This atomizer is awesome & built rock solid (yeay Japanese beauty industry!) and should last for the next 10 layouts.
Finished laying down & securing the base ground cover (dirts, ground foam, some gravel here & there), as well as flocked most of the areas for grass:
Left the vineyard area bare dirt until I figure out what the ??? I’m going to do there & how to make the Lush Vineyard.
Much thanks to Jamie (lashedup) for taking the time to give a mini-tutorial on static grass application techniques, as well as share all his research into all things static grass.
Still got a long way to go to get to his level of layering, but with his great guide any failure is totally my own.
Also balasted the “main” and layered some more darker dirt on the shoofly.
The mainline ballast needs a bit o’ weathering still.
Then, I thought I’d do a VERY SMALL pour of water, JUST for the cow pond:
Then, seeing how much Magic Water (tinted with grimy black, bnsf heritage green & some roof brown) I had left, I totally ignored my own advice / bett
I guess I should clarify the “ugly” comment: everything on the layout is “new” looking.
Pristine grass, dainty bushes, well-groomed ballast.
So it looks very Toy Train-ish, rather than lived in & worn & real.
But I hope, in the end, it’ll all come together.
Just needs lots more layers & textures.
Yesterday morning I planted the fence posts:
Used a peice of wood 8 scale feet long as a spacer for the T-pins.
After planting all the T-pins, I was tempted to leave all those shiny silver pins in, as it looked like a Christo scuplture.
But I used CA to plant the posts.
Good thing I had so much scrap stripwood.
Then I found a cool graphic of a harp switch stand, inverted the b&w, and then attached it to the fascia to indicate where the turnout control is hidden behind the fascia:
[I like how Mt. Coffin just juts up like a green Mont Saint Michel in the background]
Painted the paper with Modge Podge Matte to seal it.
Now I just have to finish mounting the actuator rods.
Right about then I realized I had totally caught the stomach virus my son’s been partying with for the last 3 days, so I spent the rest of the day in bed or in the bathroom.
Haven’t been sick in 4-5 years, and then I get a pretty harsh bug the day before going to the Pacific Coast Division Meet to take the Train in a Box layout and my Free-moN module to see if it hooks up right to Steve’s.
D’oh!
Luckily I was able to sip some gatorade and get some sleep and made it to the meet.
Before I left I planted some deciduous trees I had made the day before:
Thanks for the kind words.
After some miso soup (which made “miso warm & sleepy”), and 12 straight hours of sleep, I’m feeling much better.
The meet yesterday went pretty well: Steve Williams brought his Lockhart, TX module (two 5-foot sections in an S-curve) and the Shoofly clamped on and ran fine.
There was a slight gap between the tracks at the module-meet because both of us had worried about the rails jutting out and filed them a hair short, but it worked out fine (no real “bump” but a fun & prototypical “click-clack” sound 
)
Mark Watson came along and brought, in addition to his retooled 4-4-0, fab ventilated boxcars and telescoping boom lifts, a nifty little HD video camera in a 1"-square box, which he proceeded to place all over the “Alameda-Belt-in-a-Box” layout as well as the two Free-moN modules:
As I can’t figure out how to embed a video on this forum, here’s the link to the YouTube video.
The first operator, youngster Alvin, blatantly ignored the slow-order signs on the shoo-fly because, as he correctly pointed out: “There are no slow-order signs.”
Not yet, Alvin, not yet.
(I’ll get the yellow & green markers out today)
You can see Mark’s unpainted ventilated boxcars (available at Shapeways) on the Alameda-Belt-in-a-Box portions of the video.
Those things are awesome: 34’ long with great detail. Can’t wait to get some for the Mt. Coffin layout!
They also fit perfectly on a Kato 11-105 critter chassis, so you could have some smaller dummy steam pulling the 1800s cars.
(Mark used the motorized boxcar as a helper for his Atlas mogul to get through the unpowered fr
Embed video exactly the same way you embed photos. The software automatically figures it out for ya! 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ4YRTE3NYk&feature=youtu.be
M.C. Thanks for the time you have taken to document and share your project. Your modules look great! jeff in college station
Thanks, Jeff, for the thanks.
Hope you and others are enjoying it 1/2 as much as I am!
Not much layout-wise the last couple days as I catch up on everything else I missed while sick over the weekend.
Painted some Modge Podge on the cow pond, but then decided it looked too clear and alpine-y, so will peel off the MP layer and do another (SMALL) pour of tinted Magic Water, this time with the proper ratio.
My daughter and I did hook up the home-built actuator wires for the Bullfrog turnout control.
I had glued some small squares of scrapwood to the cross-brace nearest the Bullfrog onto which we would mount the support shaft & brace.
First gorillaglued / sandwiched some styrene around one end of a small metal “L” bracket, then gorillaglued a short section of 3/32" K&S alum pipe through it:
[Yes, that’s an outhouse behind them. That’ll pop up on the module later]
A major coup d’etat: I thought ahead enough so I did not block the screw hole with the pipe!
Taught my daughter how to drill a hole at a right angle using the “Orbiter” (I supported the drill’s weight, she pulled the trigger).
Then I found out I had forgotten that there wasn’t enough room to fit a screwdriver in (D’oh!) and the Orbiter was too big too (Double D’oh!) so I had to put an extension on the screwdriver and drive the screw in at a slight angle (tough).
Luckily, before the second one, I remembered the “soap on a screw” trick and that one drove in much easier.
Here’s a shot of the support tube / bracket with the actuator wire running through it:
We also remembered to push the Bullfrog into it’s farthest position before measuring the bend in the wire: earlier I had dream
MC -
You are not only a good modeler, but also a very good writer and teacher of modeling techniques.
Thank you for posting these excellent posts.
Stein