The ICG's Aberdeen District

This spring has been a real bear. I'm working 40 hours a week, taking two Ph.D.-level classes in Mechanical Engineering, preparing for my Ph.D. qualifying exams and teaching a college Sunday School class. Add in the fact that I'm a sports fan and I've not found much time for model railroading or even blogging about model railroading.

What I have found is a friend who is building a large layout in an upstairs room of his new house. The room (20' x 50') was designed for the model railroad: a model railroader's dream!! I've offered my help in building the layout and he's taken me up on the deal. It's been a fantastic experience to spend an evening sawing and nailing and figuring out how to support the layout. Beats the heck out of convective heat transfer!

Here's a link to the layout's website: http://bellsouthpwp.net/d/r/drail14me/

Until next time...(probably May)...

Bird's Eye View

I realize it's been a while since my last blog entry. I've got something in the works on my lightweight layout leg construction, so stay tuned! In the meantime, a fellow on one of my email lists sent a link to this website: www.maps.live.com. Now I know you're thinking "So what? Another aerial photography site." True, but this site has a feature called "Bird's Eye View" that allows you to see a three-dimensional picture of selected places. I was surprised to find that this feature covered some rather rural areas of Mississippi and Tennessee! The possibilities for modern prototype research are endless. Enjoy!!

Feedmill on the Columbus & Greenville at West Point, MS.

Backdrops for the Testbed

Happy 2008!! I spent my time off over the New Years holiday installing and painting the backdrop on my 1'x4' testbed layout. The backdrop is made from a roll of 18" wide aluminum flashing that I picked up at my local home improvement store. The stuff comes in 50' rolls, but I only needed about 6' to do this small layout.

The aluminum flashing is ridiculously easy to work with as it curves very easily. As long as you don't hit it with a sharp object, it will remain flat and smooth. Mounting it was a matter of gluing 1"x2" stanchions to the backside of the aluminum with Gorilla Glue. Then the whole assembly was glued and screwed to the benchwork.

Painting the backdrop is just a matter of observing nature and trying to mimic it. When you look at the sky, the blue color tends to fade to white near the horizon. Check it out next time you're outside. The effect is even more pronounced on a clear day. To replicate this, I started by painting the upper sky blue and left a band of unpainted backdrop at the bottom. Once the blue dried, I painted the remaining band white. Once this dried, I applied a second coat of white (it needed it) and began to feather the white into the blue using a sponge. The keys are to use a small amount of unthinned paint and make strokes parallel with the horizon. I think the effect is extremely convincing.

To make the tree line, I used a hunter green paint that looked like it would match the green of my soybean fields. On drying, it's a much darker green color. I'll go back over the tree line with some of this green mixed with the earthy color that was used to paint the layout base. This ought to homogenize the backdrop with the foreground scenery. The January 2008 issue of MR has a great article on how to blend the backdrop into the foreground.

In the coming days, I hope to:

1. Finish ballasting the track.
2. Finish the ground cover.
3. Build the industry for the long siding (probably a furniture plant).

I'll keep you posted....

Handlaying Turnouts

What has become one of my favorite parts of model railroading is making handlaid turnouts. Now all of my experience has been with a FastTracks jig (www.handlaidtrack.com), so some folks wouldn't really call that "handlaying". Whatever it is, it produces a good looking, smooth running turnout with relatively little effort and less cost than purchasing an RTR turnout (provided you don't count the cost of the jig). To the right are a couple of photos of N scale code 40 turnouts constructed with these jigs.

Carl Lester MMR has put together a clinic on handlaying turnouts that you might find helpful. Take a look at it here. Just click the "next" button to see the next page in the clinic. I plan to use Carl's ideas to build a curved turnout in the future. I've found that properly formed check rails and frog wing rails are what keep a turnout from "looking" handlaid. I figure I can use the FastTracks jig to build my check rails and frog wing rails. I reckon the rest of a curved turnout can be accomplished following Carl's method. I'll let y'all know how this comes out once I try it.