Ohio Valley - somewhere between Weirton and Wheeling


JeffH

JeffH

Well-Known Member
Both sides of my family have deep roots in the panhandle of WV, and I have very fond memories of watching train and barge traffic along the Ohio River. If you're familiar with the area, this is my fictitious area similar to Mingo Junction. It turns out the the Ohio Central (now part of Genesee & Wyoming) runs through Mingo Junction as it travels to and from Columbus Oh. The locomotives are still painted in Ohio Central colors, and I live about a half mile north of their track as it makes its way through the small town of Pataskala, Ohio where my wife and I have built our retirement house. I was lucky enough to find an Atlas C420 decorated in Ohio Central.

This is N scale, and I started this a little over a year ago when my wife suggested I get my old train set out for something to do last winter when we all were sequestered to our homes.

The fuse was lit... Our new house has a huge, and very dry, basement, so my wife has about a third for her crafts, and I have about a third for my train area.

Long story short: It took me about 6 or 7 months to put together a plan that I liked. I ended up getting a lot of tables for free, so I used them to design a U-shaped layout that floats in the middle of my area in the basement. Total footprint is 10' x 11'

I bought AnyRail, which really helped me come up with a design that would 1) fit onto the table, and 2) provide for some "job" operations (like making deliveries to a depot) as well as just watching trains run through a rural area like Mingo Junction.

Here are a few pictures of how I started the build:

This first pic is when I first got the free tables, which are really desk shaped work surfaces. But rather than assemble them into L-shaped desks, I had rectangular tables that are 4.5' wide by 5.5' long. The track you see is my old (mid 90's) Bachmann EZ-Track.
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I continued to refine my layout ideas using Anyrail. This led to slightly modifying how I arranged the tables. By this time, I knew I wanted teh Ohio River to flow north to south, with WV to the East and Ohio to the West. In Ohio would be more rural, with a logging site, a coal mine and a dairy farm. On the WV side would be a county seat type small town. When I thought I was happy with the design, I printed the layout in 1:1 scale, and laid down the printout so I could visualize the layout in real-size.
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This was great, because it allowed me to do a couple of things. First, it gave me a sense for how all the structures I had built up to this point would fit. I wasn't sure if I had enough buildings. BUt more importantly, it gave me a perspective I couldn't get by looking at the layout on a computer screen. Being bale to see the layout in full size, gave me some ideas to further refine my layout design.

Keep in mind, that I'm not really into yard style layouts. I wanted a very rural look, with long sweeping runs where I can watch trains run.

By this time, I had come to the conclusion that I would have 2 separate tracks. One at ground level, and one up in the hills. Also by this time, I hade decided to use Atlas flex track along with Peco Turnouts and Peco turnout motors (PL-10).... All Code 80.

The next step was to layer foam in a manner that allowed for "voids" in the foam layers to become tunnels. In other words, a 1/2" layer of foam on top of a 2" layer. With the 1:! printout of the layout taped into place, I traced the centerline of the track, and made marks where turnouts and other key pieces of geometry were important.
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I wanted to be able to control turnouts from a central control panel, so I printed a poster size version of my layout, and laminated it to a piece of Masonite, inserting toggle switches.
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More layering of foam boards, taking care to come up with ways to keep the bridges at the right height.
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Tunnel access hatches on both sides of the river... dead tress to use as handles
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Now, I'm finally about ready to start on scenery, now that the underlying terrain is pretty much where I liked it.
 
First step for me was to layer plaster cloth on top of the foam.

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Then add tunnel portals. You can see the other tunnel access hatch in this picture
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I had a spare tunnel portal, which made a pretty good road bridge over the stream that will cut through town on the WV side.
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More progress. The plaster cloth was a slow, tedious process. But glad I did it, because I ended up using wadded p newspaper to add additional variations to the topography.
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By this time, I had already gone through all the trouble shooting to be sure the wiring worked, as I have a couple reverse loops, created by 2 wye junctions on either side of the ground level bridge in the center of the layout. I had a few shorts I needed to deal with, and I had to dial in teh sensitivity of the Digitrax AR-1 auto reversing module.


Next on the agenda was to cast a bunch of rocks for the cliff walls.
I used 4 different Woodland Scenic rock molds to cast a LOT of rocks. I think it came out well.
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Then I cemented the rocks to the cliff face and "painted" the rocks using WS liquid dyes. They have a great video on their site that shows you exacty how to make these rocks look real.

This is a picture after dyeing the rocks, and before I painted to ground.
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I then started putting down grass and trees.
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Tip with trees: If you think you might need 10-15... make 50, and then wish you had even more. Seriously... It takes a LOT of trees, lol.
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Of all the stuff I have done, so far, I get the most enjoyment out of planting the trees.

I really like the plastic tree armatures from Woodland Scenic. They have 3 sizes that work well for N scale. The largest come in a package with trees ranging in size from 5" to 7", which is like a 93' tall tree. Using their clump foliage, I can pump out a hundred trees in a couple of evenings.

I also find that the small details really make the scenery look real. For small stuff like briar patches and small brushy trees, I like WS Fine Leaf Foliage.
 
And that's where I stand today... I'm about 75-80% done with scenery. It's about time to clean the track really well, and start running trains!

Here are a few shots from unique perspectives.
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I'm really happy with the way this is turning out. For me, it's the perfect balance between watching trains run and running trains to do jobs. The track up in the hills has a sur on either side of teh river, and teh ground level track has a couple of spurs as well.
 
If you have a sharp eye, you might see some pieces of dried flowers that my wife sneaks in on me. There are small pieces of purple statice and pink coxcomb stuck in here and there. She also sneaked in some small pieces of Sweet Annie. I'm OK with that... she's having fun too!
 
Some random observations:

With N scale, static grass is overkill. The shortest static grass is 2mm in length. That's about a foot tall at scale. Even so, it's passable as a "lawn." But the next size up is 4mm static grass... way too long for a lawn, but passable as prairies grass at nearly 2 feet tall. To my eyes, regular old WS fine turf looks just as nice. I like the "Green blend", and sometimes mix it with Earth colored turf to use for grasses other than nicely groomed lawns. The earth color mixed in gives it more a ratty look like you would see in a field of grass.

I AM happy that I used 2mm static grass to make a bunch of grass tufts to be used to represent crabgrass and other weeds in gravel. But other than that, I see no reason to spend the extra $$ on static grass for N scale or smaller.

I'm not a fan of pine trees... I don't like them in the real world, so I chose not to model them on my layout. Occasionally, I will end up with a piece of "fine leaf foliage" that looks like a pine tree, so I plant it and move on.

For deciduous trees, I started out making my own armatures from stranded wire. These trees look great, but they are very time consuming. I find the WS plastic tree armatures to work very well, and they cut the time it takes to make a tree down to something acceptable. They sell several different sizes. I used mostly the mid-sized ones, which (if I remember correctly) were 3"-5" in height. they make larger and smaller ones too. The larger ones are pushing the limits on how tall a tree really is in N scale, and the smaller ones are good for ornamental tress that would see in landscaping around houses and in between roads and sidewalks.

If you are going to dye rocks in place, do so before you start the scenery directly below them, as the liquid dye runs off the rocks as you color them. This isn't an issue if you plan to put down a coat of paint before you start laying grass and shrubs since the paint covers up dye that pooled up and dried at the bottom of the rocks.

Lastly... I had no previous experience doing anything like this. Youtube is your friend! And don't be afraid to just roll up your sleeves and try. Anything made using these techniques can be covered up or ripped out and replaced if you don't like what you just did.
 
Thanks for the kind words! All the videos I have are a bit old, from when I was testing teh wiring.

This one is really fast... I needed for the train to pass through a certain area in order to see how the AR-1 module was reacting since they need adjusted in order to work the best they can.

Since then, I have had the track covered in painters tape as I work on scenery. It will be a few days before I get the track cleaned up and get some better videos now that scenery is almost done.

I need to put down some more grass before pulling up the rest of the painters tape.
 
Ok, so I saw the first picture and thought “ok, this guys having fun”.
Then I saw the second picture and thought “ok, what’s this guy up to?”.
Well by the time I got to the last pictures I was actually saying “wow, this guys really going somewhere!”
You've got an awesome layout going there, and I love how you terraformed with the foam board, well done!
 
I think I just put down the last of the grass. I need to let it dry, then give it another dose of watered down glue in the morning. Then hopefully this time tomorrow I can start cleaning track.
 
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