Refurbishing the unfinished train layout.

 About 30-35 years ago, Dick Miller started an N gauge model railroad.  Built on a 32" hollow core door, it was complete: buildings, track, switches, wiring for lights, power, etc.  It even ran, but, it had no scenery.  There were most of the components to do so but it was never finished.

First step of many, deconstruct the track layout.  In traditional anal-retentive style, if the track had a nail hole, there was a nail.

Finally, a track inventory- plus lots of other track that was not on the layout.

Building inventory

Rolling stock

The rebuild and refurbishment begins.  First up, a base layer of foam board.  This does a couple of things including being able to add negative relief scenery without digging into the wood and make the layout run nice and quiet.

Sketching layouts with terrain 

Waiting for glue to dry

Glue dried

 

Time to start sculpting

Work on the right side starts

the back board is just for forming against

all blocked in.   sculpting to commence

Left side sculpting continues.   lots of smoothing to do here.

More smoothing

Let mix dry after doing some bulk carving before it set up

Applying the plaster mix to the mountains

Throwing some paint onto the mountains

Tunnel portal

Work around the pond.  The colors should give the feeling of depth and undergrowth.  Landscaping will get done prior to the pouring of the "water".

More mountain work.

Church on its hill.

Various scenery ready for paint- all but the church and portal are 3D printed

For the tank farm.

Pond and creek view from the rear

More painting

Ready for tracks- the colors will change the way the landscaping looks once the ballast, dirt, grass and surface materials are in place.   It should provide depth of field.

Fitting the main line through the portal. [for future use, possible extension point]

Cementing the bigger bridges into place [note the spray bottle holding the little girder bridge down on it's moorings]

A week or so passes, fiddling with a whole bunch of items from the 3D printer that may or may not wind up here.  FYI, all the bridges are 3D printed.  Most of the buildings were existing stock from the original layout.  

Back to the pond trolley.  Dry fitting the track to get the curves,

Trolley roadbed; "let glue dry"-the great builder Laura Kampf

Laying some tracks

Test Run

Flying by

Existing street cars- they do not like 8" radius turns

Track rough in on mountains

Ballasting the loop

Railbed to the right

Ground cover around the pond

Filling the pond; adding ground more cover

Ground cover complete and pond spilling over the dam.  Let glue dry.

More roadbed.  That's white paintable latex caulk since I couldn't find gray at a reasonable price.  grrrr.

Just a little bit more road bed to lay.