Building a foreground scene

As mentioned in a previous post, I had imagined in a scene in the left foreground of the layout.

I wanted:

1. Something that was elevated (to distract from the flat track)

2. Something overgrouwd and neglected.

3. No structure to block the trains, but still something of interest.

Step one was to create the blog using the usual foamboard.

And...

As you can see, the blob was in two parts. The first part is an incline leading to a plateau. The second, smaller piece, is flat. I cut the foam in two to make it easy to cut out some foam to install a little scene.

The scene I envisioned was a formerly abandoned lot that someone was constructing a small building on (this will make sense when you see the foundation). There would be an overgrown gravel road/path, long grass and some weeds. The road wasn't perpendicular to the edge, to prevent the right angle effect.

The scenery was applied in layers - starting with dirt, then the gravel and ground foam - eventually creating a solid underlayer prior to applying the grass.

The gravel road was the hard part - I wanted a narrow road, even on both sides, with a slight shoulder before the grass took over.

I then added the grass in a variety of colours. The grass (well stretched into a thin lair) was glued using watery white glue. 

It was slow and steady. Add a layer, let it dry, fill the gaps and add another layer...

Still not done...but close enough to place on the layout for a test fitting.

At this point, I cut out a square for the eventual addition on a concrete foundation for an unbuilt building.

And added texture to the trackside hill to blend it in.

Separately, I began to put together into a "hero tree". A hero tree is a highly detailed tree (particularly the trunk) intended to be placed in the foreground of a scene as a focal.

I took a stock Wood Scenics tree trunk, painted the trunk greyish-brown and, here comes the hard part, took Super Tree branches and laboriously glued them to the trunk, using tweezers and glue, accompanied with swearing.

Was it worth it? Stay tuned for part II...

 

 The ONR, Northern Ontario and Father's Day

Next weekend brings the true start of summer for me. I'll pick up my Uncle and head north to Temagami then by float plane to a remote lake for several days of fishing.

Northern (actually "near Northern") Ontario is a favourite place in the summer. I like the two-lane roads, the endless procession of trees/rocks/lakes you see along the way and the small towns that look modest but have an interesting history (Cobalt has a fascinating collection of buildings from its brief boom period in the 1930's).

There is also interest from the railroad side. At North Bay, the Ontario Northland Railway takes over from the CN line, taking the rail all the way up to Moosonee on James Bay with a few branch lines along the way to Rouyn, Hearst and the outskirts of Timmins. The ONR is a meat and potatoes railroad - paper, lumber, chemicals and metal products are its main commodities. No fancy intermodal trains or hyper-efficient unit trains for the ONR. They even run a mixed freight/passenger train to Moosonee with piggyback cars. 

When we were kids, my Dad took us up to Cochrane and Nakina. That's what I call the "North". Nakina is about 24 hours north of Toronto and is where the road ends. Cochrane is slightly closer, but the same in terms of the road ending.

I've been through Nakina on the Canadian a few times:

2016

From a labour law nerd perspective, Nakina is interesting because of a court case/Royal Commission that came into play when CN ended its status as a Division Point (i.e. where train crews sign in and out of work) in the late '50s. The above photo was taken on my way to a labour law conference in Winnipeg.

I had a labour law brush with the ONR in 2001-2 as a junior lawyer. They were a client of my firm and I did document review/research related to a potential sale of the railroad (which never happened due to onerous labour contracts).

Cochrane is home of the Polar Bear Express running to Moosonee.

We went there in 1985(?) and rode the train:

And my Dad got us a visit to the engine cab (an FP7):

Really, really glad to have these photos and they seem especially appropriate to post today on Father's Day.

Because of all the time we spent in Northern Ontario growing up, the ONR is my second/third favourite railroad (Keeping in mind I work for a European railroad, the ONR probably gets bumped down to #3).

I took a northern Ontario drive in 2017 to check out the ONR.

Stopping in Temagami to catch Train 214 from Englehart to NB (sadly my video of the train is too large to upload):

And admire the station:

Before heading up to Englehart to check out the yard and display steam engine:

SD70

Pacific with "Elephant Ears"

Looping back to the start of this post, I come to 2015 for a favourite photo (albeit not of the best quality).

2015 was our first fly-in fishing trip out of Temagami. Our means of transport was a De Havilland Dash-2 (?) built in 1956 and still flying today (I'll see it next Saturday).

The ONR still runs GP9s, one of which was also built in 1956. 

And guess what? As we loaded our gear into the plane, there was a sound of an approaching train - the ONR freight from Englehart to North Bay.

And the last engine in the consist was 1601, built 7/56 according to the Trackside Guide...

Where in Canada can you get a photo of two machines from 1956, largely unmodified, still fulfilling their original purpose in the same frame?

Words do not describe...Thank you Dad and looking forward to seeing you Uncle!

 Filing the Gap (III)

The last piece of the scene was a small gap between the tracks and the road.

If this was a well-travelled part of the world, there would be a nice, orderly "T" intersection instead of roads going off in four directions. But this was a back road to the station and a cold storage facility. Not exactly the "must see" part of town. 

Roads go as they go for a reason. And I didn't want an orderly road. So to excuse the disorder I created a small bluff. The bluff adds an additional visual layer between the tracks and the front part of the layout and the bluffs. More bluntly, the bluff acts as an "X" in the line of sight preventing a clear view of the back.

Pre-bluff

What's apparent in the above photo is the steep drop from the road to the base brown foam. The bluff would help to "mellow" and disguise the drop.

Again with the blobs...

I started with the tried and true method of building small blobs off layout using insulation foam. I also found a left over plaster rock to incorporate into the scene to add a little Canadian shield effect.

The blobs were painted brown and I covered them with understated ground foam as a base. This meant any scenery gaps wouldn't show through.

Basic model railroad scenery theory states, "Add scenery in layers".

Shrubs and the base ground scenery around the bluff came next:

I tried to leave enough space between the tracks and the bluff, and again between the road and the bluff to give each element room to breathe. I also made sure that the area around the switch point (where the switch is turned) so that the imaginary train crew would have level ground to work with.

I was happy to see at this point that the drop off from the road was gone. The shrubs were a mixture of colours and Woodland scenics shrub and leftover Super Trees.

Speaking of which:

Note the black ballast around the switch.

As I went along, I also re-weathered the road to add more dust/dirt using powder. I found it easier to blend the colours once I had added the surrounding scenery. A lesson for me. A lesson I had already learned from the bluff was that you only need a few trees to give the impression of density. In this case, two medium-sized trees create the effect. 

From the side:

I think all these photos illustrate the "X" concept. The bluff does a good job of breaking or distracting the line of sight, keeping the eyes from going directly to the backdrop or building.

One last note before I close the post. Summer time is not exactly layout time. But it is a good time for driving. 

When I built Aston Growers, I used other HO scale models as a reference point. At the time, I looked around for a real-life example and couldn't find anything online.

And then, a few weeks ago, about five miles from where I live, beside the CPR tracks, I found Dixie Growers Ltd.:

Love the brick elevator shaft and the office section too.

...and

Aside from the weathering, I'd say 👍.

 Intermission

I'll take a short break from the filling the gap story to talk about the overall progress of the layout vs this blog.

I have one more post to go on "Filling the Gap". With that post done, the story will be current, more or less. I will have covered every completed section of the Aston Spur.

I am working on a new section at the front left edge of the layout. It is going well, albeit at the usual slow pace. There have been many some details to create, paint and prepare for a placement (watch out for an upcoming picture of my first "hero tree"). 

Once that is out of the way, I'll have covered about 80% of the layout and have pretty much plotted out the remaining bits. I think I need a swamp and there is just enough space for one.

Of course, there are more details to add and finishing touches to touch, which will take a while. Road signs, station signs, roof details, the "vignettes" I talked about in an earlier post, etc. etc. But the completion of base scenery (which will take several more months) will be a milestone.

This all means the pace of posts has slowed. 

I attach though a preview of some of the latest work. A small hill leading to a building under construction. I also took some time to weather my ONR boxcar to make it less shiny. Burnt Sienna looks nice on a boxcar is my weekend discovery:

Under construction.

 Filling the Gap (Part II)

With the road to the backdrop installed, the next phase was to rough out the lower level roads. There were three to lay out:

1.    The road to the station.

2.    The road to the (non-visible) part of AG.

3.    A short stub to the "local delivery/pick-up" loading dock beside the tracks.

I used the MDF board as the base. As we will see shortly, this was a mistake. I should have used Smooth-it in between a wood frame (acting as a dyke to keep the Smooth-it from running amok), but what can I say...lessons learned.

Another photo:

The problem with plaster/Smooth-it is keeping it away from surfaces that you want pristine. Like the backdrop (see the left above). For a short stub coming from the backdrop, I used sandpaper, painted and chalked (with powder), for the surface. This method also allowed me to play with the angle I wanted the road to hit the backdrop at. 

One more photo:

Once I was happy with the basic layout, I began to plaster.

This is where I discovered the folly of not using wood to "frame" the road. With no frame to run my leveller (a crepe press) along, I got a very uneven and patchy road. I added black paint at this point which hilighted how rough the road was:

Look at the new blob!

Adding a bluff

Annoyed, I left the road as is for a while. In any event, I had scenery to put in behind the road, and generally you finish scenery from back to front.

I left some space against the backdrop to add a small, tree-covered bluff. This complemented the downward grade of the road and, to my mind, took the eye off the road.

I built the bluff with my favourite "blob" method. Pink insulation board, shaped with the hotwire and painted. Building blobs off layout is particularly helpful where the hill is steep. It is much easier to add ground cover with the blob laying on its back.

I add ground cover, Heki grass, some trees and yet another dead tree (again justifying the $9 purchase of twigs). The result, once installed, was great.

Note the "sandpaper" road to the right.

I was very happy with the blob. It looks like classic near north Ontario scrub. The bluff also smooths the transition from Station hill, the road and the flat land where AG is.

Back on the road

But that road...ugh.

I attacked the road with thinned paints to dull the black, followed by weathering powder.

Still pretty rough...

Still pretty...ugh!

Roads vary in colour and the difference is most pronounced between where the rubber hits the road and elsewhere. Hence the darker tracks that approximate where the tires do their work.

To make a long story short, I did a lot of sanding and re-colouring until I felt the road looked passable. All of which could have been avoided if I had kept to my original wood-framing road construction method.

Careful eyes will note the very out-of-period traffic lights that are visible on the backdrop. You can't plan for everything! 

I'm still not done with this part of the layout. In part three, I'll talk about completing the short stub to AG and adding the hillock.

 Filling the Gap (part I)

After finishing (mostly) the AG/GC complex, the last piece of unfinished terrain was the area between Aston station and Aston Growers.

The above picture shows the gap in the early stages.

Closing the gap was a five-part process. Five parts in what was less than a 2 foot square area!

1. Build a road disappearing into the backdrop (see the black strip) to link this area with the outside world and connect (out of sight) with the main road running along the backdrop.

2. Connect that road with the station road (to the left above), the road to the (unseen) truck loading area of AG - the upper right and a short stub to the modelled truck loading dock at AG (the lower right).

3. Build a small bluff (upper centre).

4. Finish "Station Hill" so that it descended down to the road.

5. Construct a small hillock beside the tracks to camouflage the intersection (middle of the photo).

The road to town

Easily the most challenging bit was to build a road those rose from ground level to disappear into the backdrop at an angle. I'm no geometry whiz. The road needed to blend into the big hill behind the station and the later constructed bluff while coming down at a reasonable angle. It also had to meet the backdrop at a angle. Finally, the right side of the road also needed a shoulder. This got complicated because the backdrop and later constructed bluff left little room. It was a puzzle. 

I used styrene as a base with 320 grit sandpaper on top. I left part of the styrene uncovered for rock ballast (shoulder) to be added later. To give the crest of the road some flex, I cut the supporting styrene and narrowed the end of the road going into the backdrop. Again, this creates the illusion of the road disappearing. I weathered the sandpaper and added my shoulder. I also added a wood "lip" at the bottom of the road to match the height of the road that would be added later. This gets tricky because I would be using plaster Smoothit and did not want to sully the sandpaper road with plaster.

But to blend the road in, I needed to finish the hill behind the station. 

Station Hill

I have really come to love pink insulation board as a scenery base. It is firm but easy to cut and counter. Once you add paint, it will absorb ground foam and it is soft but still a good base to plant trees in.

I did not entirely finish Station Hill the first time round. I knew I'd be finishing the hill later so I left room for more trees and roughage.

More SuperTrees, some Woodland Scenics bramble, Heki grass, and some puff balls added greenery:

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the greenery options have come a long way in 25 years and the major challenge these days is not over doing it!

I have particularly fond memories of building the retaining wall on a cold December morning while I listened to a 1978 broadcast of a Kings/Canadiens hockey game. I wasn't able to match the colour of the previous wall but I can't say it is noticeable amidst all the bramble.

The other note about this part of the construction is the dead tree trunk you see in the above photo. I was at a train show a few years ago and spent about $10 on "Woodland Scenics Dead Wood". At first I thought this was the most ridiculous purchase - I was buying stuff I could get for free by crossing the street and going to High Park. But I really like how the trunks are weathered (you'll see more of them shortly), and what I was really spending $10 on was confidence - i.e. that they'd play their role well on the layout (as dead tree trunks).

At some point, construction got to the stage where I could install the road knowing it would blend into the hill once greenery was added. That was a huge moment of relief.

And the same for where Station Hill would eventually meet the flat road behind the station. I roughed in the scenery at the "meeting point" but left enough unfinished that blending could be done at a later date.

In part II, I'll discuss the bluff, the road network and the hillock.