Ever since I rode the 3ft. gauge line from Durango to Silverton in 1974 (when it was still operated by the D&RGW), I have a love affair with North American narrow gauge railroading. For many years, building a HOn3 layout was out of question, as those brass imports were out of reach in my neck of the woods - just too expensive. When Blackstone announced their new range of HOn3 locos and cars, the interest was rekindled. What a shock it was when I saw the street price in my home country. gain, those grapes were beyond reach, and I was about to shed my ideas of building a US prototype narrow gauge layout. Rescue came from Bachmann with their line of On30 equipment, which does not really resemble Colorado narrow gauge railroads, but is closer to tose two ft. lines in Maine. A change of locale seemed to be the only way for me to build this much wanted layout, so I buried my dream of a line in Colorado´s high country and moved eastward.
OK, folks On30 is not On2, but for me, this is not so important.
The Dream
Reseraching the web, I came across three truly superb layouts.
Troels Kirk´s Coast Line RR in Sweden
Martin Welberg´s Cardigan Bay Coastal RR in The Netherlands and
Geoff Knott & Michael Flack´s Smuggler´s Cove in Australia.
These highly detailed, atmospheric layouts were inspiration and driving force at the same time for me, to finally come up with an own layout idea. But what a challenge! All of these layouts are fairly large, and in no way I cut have my Quartermaster General allocate this much room to me for a layout and my Chancellor of the Exchequer generously provide the necessary funds for it.
Looking at my assets in terms of space and available funds, I was just about to give in. How to squeeze an On30 layout, which captures the atmosphere of the Maine coastal region and is interesting to operate into a space of a mere 10"6´by 6"6´ while leaving sufficient ro
Did You look at any of the Campbell Wood kits? A couple look very close to what you want to scratch build. Like pickens place #395 and the boat builders, two story building on the dock. You could probably arrange any of them to suit Your needs and idea’s, you would surely already have the scale lumber that come’s with the kit.
Just a Thought! Have Fun!
Frank
EDIT: In my height of enthusiasm in your project, I just remembered, ON30. Oh Well!
Frank - the cost of those are prohibitive! Building this layout is an exercise in model railroading on a shoestring budget. The total cost for it must not exceed $ 500, excluding locos and rolling stock. Track, ballast, switch stands (I will use Caboose Industries´ HO high level switch stands, which seem to be just right for On30) and the benchwork material already ate this sum up. For the buildings I will use cardboard, paper and styrene glazing, just like Troels Kirk and Martin Welberg did on their layouts - with astonishingly amazing results.
Frank - the lumber alone was about $ 80, add to that the stell brackets I need to hang the segments up on the wall, bolts, washers and the like and - poof - gone are $ 150! The track and switches (Peco On30) add up to about $ 300 and the switch stands another $120 - that´s for 7 high level ones, 2 ground level ones and a Blue Point “motor”, including accessories. I already overspent my budget [sigh] .
Things are slightly more expensive over here, not only due to our 19% VAT.
I finished the drawing for the Harbor View Hotel, which now includes the side elevation. It´s a backgrouns semi-flat, positioned at an angle against the backdrop, so the sides are different in width.
I also prepared the drawing for the second pier - the one on the left of the layout. It was more of a copy & paste job from the drawing of the first pier, than an actual design job, so it went pretty quick.
There are two mor buildings I´d like to prepare drawings for - the depot and, certainly the most difficult one, the lighthouse.
By the time these drawings are finished, I hope to get into some real model railroading by starting to lay the track!
Campbell has one (1!) O scale kit of a storage shed. At about $ 70 + shipping, customs duty and VAT, it´d cost about $130 when arriving at my door step - out of reach.
My plans to put the benchwork up on the wall today did not materialize. A friend of mine, who wanted to help me on this, has unexpected business to do, so it has to be postponed by a few more days.
So it is another paper modeling day.
This time, I tried my luck on the lighthouse. When I was nearly finished, my old CAD software decided to crash - gone was the file! 4 hours of work down the drain. Fortunately, it took me only a little less than half the time to re-create the drawing. Believe me, I now do back-ups frequently!
There are still a few more buildings I need plans for:
the engine house
Annie Hubbrd´s Lodging House
Emily Watson´s Boarding House
the freight house and
Ye Ole´ Lighthouse Tavern.
As I need a helping hand (which is currently not available) to put up the benchwork, I may continue my “paper modeling” exercise, just to make the best use of the time. Btw, there is a set of detail drawings behind those “pictures”, which will be used as templates for cutting each piece that goes into constructing the buildings.
Love it. I’ve had a thing for the Maine 2 footers ever since Hayben Carrabasset & Dead River and here you go tempting me again. Also love the scratch built structures. All my layouts over the years have been primarily balsa, paper, and stripwood strructures per EL Moore.
The segments are now securely attached to the wall and the detachable segment rests on a support with casters, so it can be easily detached and moved out of the way, if necessary. Getting this done, was a major exercise, involving a lot of noise and dirt, much to my wife´s dismay! After 4 hours of work, including several trips to our local home improvement store to buy missing items, everything was in place and the mess we made removed.
I used heavy duty steel brackets, bolted to the wall, to support the main segments.
These supports can carry a weight of up to 650 lbs per pair - that should do the job!
The joints require some smoothing, but that will have to wait until the Easter days are over - just to maintain the household peace. I will also install a board for the backdrop, using 3 mm hardboard, attached directly to the wall.
After sanding the benchwork joints, track laying has begun this morning.
Some weeks back, I had prepared a 1:1 print of the track plan to be used as a template when laying track. I gave that a try this morning, but soon skipped the idea and went the old fashioned way by positioningb the switches first and than work my way forward.
The tricky bit is yet to come - the diamond crossing on the right part of the wye. It´ll habe to be hand-laid “in situ”.
There is only little progress to report for the last few days. I did some track laying, but a pain in my shoulder keeps me from doing serious work on my layout.
A test run with the caboose resulted in one spot, where it derailed occasionall - of course, one of the benchwork joints was the culprit. A few turns with a screw driver lowering the screws to which the rails will besoldered took care of that.
“Nothing ever gets build the way it was planned (on paper)!”
I sketched out the piers on the layout, only to find out that both would not fit the way I had planned them
I had to downsize them a little, but I don´t think it´s much of a loss. See for yourself:
I “plan” to start the construction of them coming weekend, providing my friend lets me use his workshop. It´ll be going to be a dusty affair, cutting all the pilings out of 8 mm wooden rods.
