Building a five siding N scale Yard, need scenicking advice


M

Matthewd5

Member
Hello

I'm willing to put a LOT of effort to make my yard look as real as possible


I'm laying all the track for it on a big piece of thin cork so I won't have to be worrying about roadbed etc


I already bough a big bottle of woodland scenics cinders as I'm thinking using that both to ballast the track and to use it in general around the yard for ground cover


I have nice walthers yellow bumpers to put at the end of the siding that are dead ended and I have a very nice kit for a car repair shop and was toying with the idea of having a couple of tracks running into that building


This yard is a simple dead end storage yard


When turnouts from atlas be one plentiful I've got room on the other side of the mainline right across from this yard to have an arrivals/departures yard, or I can make this yard so that there is room left to finish it up when I can get another half dozen Atlas turnouts...


Looking for any good suggestions and would love to see some pictures of what other folks have come up with


Matthew
 
I don't have too much advice yet......except.....if you don't know what you're doing......at least do it neatly. :)

I have collected a nice load of N scale turnouts to make a yard and expand my layout someday soon. Good luck with yours and here is an interesting page on yard design I found.

http://www.housatonicrr.com/yard_des.html
 
railfan said:
...Good luck with yours and here is an interesting page on yard design I found.

http://www.housatonicrr.com/yard_des.html
Click to expand...

That's the page that I feel is very poorly worded. He calls them "Commandments", and "rules", and I can show several prototype exceptions to each and every one of these. I consider nearly all of what he says to be nothing more than suggestions from one modeler to another and its up to the modeler getting the suggestions to consider whether or not the suggestions really fits what he wants to do.

Matthew,
Since you're trying to realistically scenic a yard, the best advice I can give you is to go and observe several prototypes yards near you. See if the yard is all one color of ballast, is there weeds or grass growing between the tracks, are there any small structures, sheds, fueling racks etc on the periphery of the yard. Then follow the examples shown by the prototype.
 
Cjcrescent said:
That's the page that I feel is very poorly worded. He calls them "Commandments", and "rules", and I can show several prototype exceptions to each and every one of these. I consider nearly all of what he says to be nothing more than suggestions from one modeler to another and its up to the modeler getting the suggestions to consider whether or not the suggestions really fits what he wants to do.

Matthew,
Since you're trying to realistically scenic a yard, the best advice I can give you is to go and observe several prototypes yards near you. See if the yard is all one color of ballast, is there weeds or grass growing between the tracks, are there any small structures, sheds, fueling racks etc on the periphery of the yard. Then follow the examples shown by the prototype.
Click to expand...

Yeah I've read that page before...

I've got the me Janice pretty well set

I'm looking for visuals and your advice is very good

I need to poke around and find a freight yard in person

Matthew
 
I completely agree the commandments wording in that webpage is in error. Thanks Carey for your perspective on that.


Mike
 
Does anyone have a freightyard on their layout that they would like to share some photos of?

I've searched the web and found a couple of good photos but I'd love to see some nice pictures of yards that some creativity went into...

I'm looking around in my area to find some real world examples

My general thought is to use a bunch of cinders mixed in with ballast, or instead of ballast, and to dirty up the ground a lot, probably a combination of airbrushing and woodland scenics cinders

I've noticed that the real thing has a lot of tall light poles, trying to dig up a quantity of n scale industrial lamps

Matthew
 
Here's one. The ground surface is Woodland Scenics "Cinders" with occasional bits of ground foam. I think the ballast for the main line is WS "Buff" with plenty of weeds against the wall. The theme of the photo was "Why are all these locos cluttering the place up?"

http://tmrc.mit.edu/progress/reports/2010/05/IMG_3543.JPG

Different views of the same yard:
http://files.myopera.com/John98wbr/albums/661338/11709b.jpg
http://files.myopera.com/John98wbr/albums/661338/IMG_4506.JPG
http://files.myopera.com/John98wbr/albums/661338/IMG_3189.jpg
http://files.myopera.com/John98wbr/albums/661338/IMG_3192.jpg
http://files.myopera.com/John98wbr/albums/661338/IMG_3274.JPG

And here's a different one:
http://files.myopera.com/John98wbr/albums/661338/nickless1.jpg
 
John P said:
Here's one. The ground surface is Woodland Scenics "Cinders" with occasional bits of ground foam. I think the ballast for the main line is WS "Buff" with plenty of weeds against the wall. The theme of the photo was "Why are all these locos cluttering the place up?"

http://tmrc.mit.edu/progress/reports/2010/05/IMG_3543.JPG

Different views of the same yard:
http://files.myopera.com/John98wbr/albums/661338/11709b.jpg
http://files.myopera.com/John98wbr/albums/661338/IMG_4506.JPG
http://files.myopera.com/John98wbr/albums/661338/IMG_3189.jpg
http://files.myopera.com/John98wbr/albums/661338/IMG_3192.jpg
http://files.myopera.com/John98wbr/albums/661338/IMG_3274.JPG

And here's a different one:
http://files.myopera.com/John98wbr/albums/661338/nickless1.jpg
Click to expand...

Wow you really nailed it!

Thank you for the great pictures, I really appreciate all the views

The stone wall, was it a plaster casting? And what scale is that, looks like n scale

Do you have a picture that shows the transition point going up to the freight yards level from the mainline's level?

That added a lot to the visual depth, I never would have thought of that

Matthew
 
This is not mine but I like it.


Union_Street_Depots_zpsd1f39a7f.png
 
Matthewd5 said:
Wow you really nailed it!

Thank you for the great pictures, I really appreciate all the views

The stone wall, was it a plaster casting? And what scale is that, looks like n scale

Do you have a picture that shows the transition point going up to the freight yards level from the mainline's level?

That added a lot to the visual depth, I never would have thought of that

Matthew
Click to expand...

These two pictures show the east end of the yard:
http://files.myopera.com/John98wbr/albums/661338/IMG_3406.JPG
http://files.myopera.com/John98wbr/albums/661338/IMG_3400.JPG

And this is the west end:
http://files.myopera.com/John98wbr/albums/661338/IMG_3401.JPG
http://files.myopera.com/John98wbr/albums/661338/IMG_3402.JPG

It is HO scale, not N. I can recall when that part of the layout was being designed. Somebody, certainly not me, suggested that we ought to have the main line ramp down (which it does, not the yard entrance going up) in front of the yard to do exactly what you said--make a visual separation between the two. I was skeptical, and said I didn't think it would help much, but it actually does that exact thing very well.

I'm glad you're asking about the wall. That was a kind of grudge project of mine. For a long time we just had a plain white styrene wall there, but I finally said it needed something better, and I started to stick pieces of Holgate & Reynolds embossed stone material on the plastic. Then I looked around for more of the stuff, and it turned out H&R had gone out of business! But at that time we had a guy in the club who was experienced at working with silicone rubber and polyester castings using material from Smooth-On Inc. After another delay, I grabbed some of his supplies and made a mold about 15 inches long using some scraps of the remaining H&R stone, then cast sections of wall about 2mm thick. The match in texture was extremely good, and once it's painted you can't tell the original material from the copy. Joints between sections were a hassle, though: I cut around individual stones and fitted ends together as best I could, but some of them never looked right even with the help of green Squadron putty. So I allowed ivy to grow up the wall in some places. Here are some closeups of joints in the wall, including the first one I did where I never made any transition at all:

http://files.myopera.com/John98wbr/albums/661338/IMG_3407.JPG
http://files.myopera.com/John98wbr/albums/661338/IMG_3408.JPG
http://files.myopera.com/John98wbr/albums/661338/IMG_3409.JPG

Here's the website for the molding material (and hey look, Martha Stewart uses the stuff):
http://www.smooth-on.com/Silicone-Rubber-an/c2_1113_1136/index.html
 
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Thanks for the extra pictures and explaining the wall layout...

Having a love hate relationship with my mold making process

I have a couple of really nice lightweight molds that make a great small wall pattern but to make them useable for n scale there needs to be a bit of trimming and whenever I try it just cracks

Someone said to try a band saw and I came across someone who offered to let me use their small bench top sized band saw

Did you use hydrocal or plaster in your molds?

I saw pictures of a nice layout done by a local guru who builds killer layouts for people with too much money and for the hell of it he tried one of the chooch stick on plastic walls and it looked gorgeous once installed and weathered

I need to solve my mold issues as I'm in Maine and I'm modeling coastal Maine with a river and ocean harbor and we've got a lot of rocks and I don't think I want to make them freehand with plaster of Paris like in the Foscale DVD

Matthew
 
No plaster. I cast the wall sections entirely using Smooth-On products, their 2-part silicone for the mold, and their 2-part resin for the finished product. It had the advantage that the wall sections were flexible and because the yard has a curve in it, I could make the wall match it. I assume plaster would never have allowed that. Though maybe necessity being the mother of invention, if I'd been casting plaster in rubber molds, I might have figured out how to bend the mold and use it in that shape.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
John P said:
No plaster. I cast the wall sections entirely using Smooth-On products, their 2-part silicone for the mold, and their 2-part resin for the finished product. It had the advantage that the wall sections were flexible and because the yard has a curve in it, I could make the wall match it. I assume plaster would never have allowed that. Though maybe necessity being the mother of invention, if I'd been casting plaster in rubber molds, I might have figured out how to bend the mold and use it in that shape.
Click to expand...

Excellent, I assume the resulting piece is far easier to cut than hydrocal?

I have a silicone mold of a small brick wall and if I could cut that more easily I could trim it down to two right sized wall pieces for n scale

Matthew
 
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