Corral at Cave Junction

Started putting the town of Cave Junction back together. The first area was the Corral. All the fences were reinstalled after reworking them a bit. Now cattle can be driven across the tracks from the ranch or through town. Trees fill in gaps in the fences and add vertical  structure to the scenery.

Corral back in operation 

Long horns arriving at the Corral. 

Backdrop painting

After the revisions there were a few areas where rock castings were removed. Now that new castings have been added at a lower level the wall had to be repainted.

I had roughly covered in the area were the rock castings were removed. 

Highlighted were a stream would go with a little white paint.

A panoramic view of the area to be repainted. 

First area completed.

Second area finished. Now the streams through the scenery can be worked on.

Gravel truck arrived at Waldo

Gravel (ground clay) applied to the roads to Waldo.

The rock castings also got the first coat of paint. Nice thing is I don't have to touch up too much of the background, just paint in the road were it goes into it, and maybe some taller, foreground trees.

The stilts were added to the Boarding House. It still needs a set of stairs up to the beck. The General Store now sits on log cribbing under it's left side.

Waldo

I made the mistake of looking a some dioramas on the internet. Steve Pettit's town of Chamatiago and Laurie Greene's, Grizzly Flats, wow! I love the way the buildings run up a hill in a swooping curve.  So impressed was I that I went about replaning half of my layout to try and fit them in. After a week or so it dawned on me that I could get some of that effect by putting a little extra time and work into the layout the way it is right now.
Waldo became my focus as it was just some buildings sitting on a flat surface. As it happened the backdrop already had the contours I wanted.

The old road in front of the barn runs up a hill, then down and back up a larger hill, which slopes off to the right.

After some more contouring, plaster and rock castings were added. With some Touch up paint and other scenic material applied, this should look like a hilly country road.
There is a flat area next, where the station is. After that is the town consisting of 4 buildings. Again the old backdrop showed me what to do.
The first building, a boarding house will be on stilts where the hill drops off to the left. Then up again to the highest level of the hill where a Grocery sits and then down a bit to a shoe store. The hill drops off sharply as the road shirts an out crop of rock and runs down to a warehouse.

The area was plastered and had a rock face applied along the front of the entire hill. I'm hoping to be able to paint the backdrop to look like the road goes down behind the station, up over the new hill and drops back down into the backdrop between the rock outcrop and the wharehouse. 

All roads lead to Grants Pass

Having a large piece of thin styrene I cut it up to form the base for all the paved roads in Grants Pass.

Painted the roads a medium grey. Still need to stain the crossings and the shoulders need grass and dirt. May add white lines also but need to get a paint pen for that.

Good Smoked Hams

After building some hills around Grants Pass there was a nice spot to put a house with a laneway going up a small hill. Thanks to Gary I had a ham smoking scene that would really finish this scene off. Some fire wood, stumps, and trees will fill up the rest of the space.

Test fitting the structures. Don't know if the smoke shack should be in front or behind the house.

Behind the house makes more sense.

Some scenery has been added and the rock work has been painted. Mr. Good should have a good location to sell his hams as the gentle breezes carry the aroma down over the village.

Hill's at the entrance to Grants Pass.

There are too many unrealistic flat areas at the west end of Grants Pass, even putting a small house down didn't look right. Besides camouflaging the big curve on the N.P. mainline, a few hills with rocky outcrops suggest a logical reason for the layout of the tracks into Grants Pass.

 Oh, look what I came up with, the curve of the road leads the viewer's eyes throught the scene, back to the point of interest, the town. Almost like I planned it.

When the plaster dries I may dig out some valleys.

Background repainted

I had poked a hole in  my background and had to patch it. As I had no blue paint of the sky colour I painted a white cloud over patch. After touching up all the other clouds I decided to touch up the land forms. Painting green over the row of mountains I had painted Brown, made an improvement. Covering up the trees that had a blue green tone with a better colour of green also improved the scene. By painting a hill of trees on either side of the road going off into the background it made it look like the road goes over a hill and down into a valley. Not bad all in all.

Updated layout plan

The connection between the the N.P. and the Grants Pass Western was redesigned. Instead of joining direct into Grants Pass, which created a reversing loop, the N. P. Now loops around a new transfer yard to join into the Grants Pass Western, just before in enters Grants Pass. Now the exchange of rolling stock between the 2 railroads will be in the new transfer yard.

The GPW runs from staging to Pelican Bay, from Pelican Bay through O'Brien, Cave Junction, past Waldo, and on to Grants Pass.
The NP runs from Grants Pass to staging.

Dirt road experiment.

First off, I think most roads I have seen modeled, are too rocky. My go to is powered local clay. The trouble is to get it smooth and keep it that way while gluing it. In my previous project, ballasting the transfer yard in Grants Pass,  I needed a road to the maintenance shed. Sprinkling the powdered clay and wetting and gluing it caused it to puddle. Spreading the soupy clay with my finger left unnatural ridge lines, but what else could be done? I have had good success brushing soupy drywall compound for river bottoms, so why not soupy clay? As it happens there are lots of gravel roads to be done. So after wetting and adding my glue mixture to some clay I painted the road with it. I should have painted the plaster Brown first, as some of the white plaster showed through.

Well that seems to have worked so back to road to the maintenance shed. Although it had dried some, the brush did smooth it out, but left many little striations behind. We will see what they look like when they dry.

 Well that didn't work, should have known it would dry and crack.

The 'ruts' left by the brush look not bad.

Union Pacific Transfer Yard.

Today's project was to start ballasting the transfer yard in Grants Pass. I started with pouring out my ballast onto the tracks and spreading it out with a small paint brush. When I do an area that has a lot of turnouts I only do up to them, they will be done individually later. I then add my 50 50 white glue mixture, don't forget to add a couple of drops of dish soap to the glue mixture. Once all the ballast has been glued I apply a thin coat of blended turf along the edges of the ballast. The excess glue and water help pre-wet the turf holding it in place to spray it with water and applying glue. I always respray everywhere I have glued so no glue puddles on the ties or foliage. The yard looked good, but lacked a signature scene. A curved area between the yard and the mainline called out, "I'm flat and ugly." A little maintenance shed, a rack of old, rusty rails, a pickup and a couple of people and "voila". Hmm, a little triangle outside the curve is just sitting there, a great spot to add some elevation to the scene. A small rock casting set on top of the otherwise flat landscape filled the spot. There is very little flat land in nature so I jump at the chance to add hills or gullies where I can. More items are still to be added, it will be left to dry for now.

Note. I like to pose people like they are doing something like talking, as in this scene. Yellow grass patches. and small clumps of bushes also add interest.

The rock has been mudded into place, and is waiting to be painted when it dries. When adding molded rocks like this, I try to continue and extend the shapes out from the casting. This helps ground it into the scenery.

Engine house at Grants Pass

After having bought this structure at a train show many years ago I finally got around to weathering it.

 Without any weathering, but lots of dust.

 The bricks have been painted with a thin wash of very light grey. The closed in arched door was painted a different shade of red to highlight the difference and it's man door was painted to match all the other doors.

 Smoke marks were added over the engine doors. The lights on the maintenance shed were painted green and the roof was rusted down.

Finished Building back on the layout, after a application of Hunter Line black weathering mix. After that dried the roof was dusted with a rust coloured powder.

N.P.R. yard.

The Northern Pacific R.decided that their crews were taking too long to to switch their freight in the confines of the yard at Grants Pass, so they built a new interchange just out side the city. This yard will be used to drop off freight for the G.P.W. and to pick up freight going back to the N.P.R.

What the new track arrangement does is to make the layout one large folded dog bone. Which is great for continuous running. I will still operate it as a point to point layout. The N.P.R. will operate from Grants Pass to it's transfer yard which feeds Medford and Portland. The G.P.W will operate from Grants Pass to the Port.
The benchwork and track is completed, next wiring, oh the joy.