E&N Malahat mountain range free-mo-N modules.

[craigolio1]

It’s really fascinating how the desire for, and adherence to modelling authenticity is the culmination of a veritable cross-continental adventure.  Good on ya, mate!

It’s convenient that I have family on Vancouver Island, and in this case a reason to go to Victoria. Otherwise it’s highly unlikely I would have made the trip just to see the bridge. I’m really glad I did though!

[craigolio1]

Even though I could t access them to measure (I also did t bring anything to measure them with) the shots of the supports provided a ton of info.

The ones in the middle that were beside the river had wedge shaped ends, presumably to defend the structure against debris and logs that could hit them when the river is swollen.

The way the surface has the snow clinging to it also makes me think it’s a bit rougher in texture.



Because these supports were made in the early 1900’s I presumed they used dimensional lumber to make the forms.

I planned to pour mine form plaster so I made a two piece mold using styrene siding. This way I’d have forming lines on the castings.





Here’s one cast in plaster.






The supports that hold up the towers on the slopes are square with angled tops.



I made a similar two piece mold for them.





And here’s one in plaster.



I made a whole bunch and they came out with a variety of detail on the sides which I liked.



Then I tried casting them in anchor bolt cement.



Depending on how wet the mixture was, they came out with all kind of artifacts. It was a fun experiment.



Some of them didn’t turn out well at all.



Ultimately I ended up with enough of the anchor bolt cement castings that looked good, so I decided to use them. Something about the texture really appealed to me.





I also needed end abutments. So I made molds for those and cast them in cement too. They appeared to be smoother in pictures so I used smooth styrene






I built depressions into the molds to fit track and hold the ballast in place, as they had on the prototype.





With the castings all complete it was time to work them into the scenery.











Hmmmmm.  This is an issue.



Having never seen the bottom of the canyon, I just guessed when I made the scenery. But now that I know….. I had to fix it, so I ripped out the canyon bottom.









I wanted to plant the supports in the scenery,  but wanted to detail all sides of them. So I opted to detail them on the bench and then install them.

They got washes and brushing.



I really like how those forming lines stand out!!



And then they got some rust and moss. Using powder and fine ground foam.







I began rebuilding the river bed with cedar bark and castings. Because I knew the path the river takes, I was able to build those features in!







When it came time to fill in the gaps, I wrapped all of the castings with plastic wrap to protect them.





Next I painted it with latex paint and put dirt all over it. I guess I didn’t take a picture of that.

[craigolio1]

As usual for me, my brain went else where. I built a passenger train, modelled my Uncle’s hot rod, travelled to a show with the other modules, visited a friends layout. And after all that when I finally came back to my railroad, I had been inspired by  running at the show and my friends house. It was time to get The Race Track operational!

For those who don’t know, @CNR5529 has named my railroad “The Race Track” because it’s an incredibly boring single loop of track with one passing siding. Now in my defence, I do have plans to build this out to a two level railroad, and at that time the Malahat actually goes on the lower level. There will be a yard and some industries etc, but for now, yes, it is an oval. Because severe ADHD makes it hard for me to finish anything, I have committed to finishing the Malahat and Lake Cowichan, on the other side of the room, before I move on to additional empire building otherwise nothing will get done. So far it’s working, albeit slowly, and in the mean time I am running trains!!

I layed road bed and track on the turn ends and went about checking all of the turnouts and such. Turns out, the curved #10 in the Malahat was no bueno. I purchased it about 20 years ago on eBay. It’s a Fast-trax turnout but the builder didn’t do a great job. It was a while ago but thinking back I believe the frog was HUGE, and the gauge wide, so trucks fell into it. Guard rails were poorly placed and not gauged properly so things de-railed, and I think because I super elevated it, wheels were hitting points pretty hard.

I unsoldered the turn out from the points to the frog. I made a new frog and points and soldered them in place, and then added longer properly spaced guard rails.

I can’t remember if this is a picture of the turnout prior to repairs or after. I think I recall having to move the left two frog rails forward to fix the gap/gauge which left those giant gaps there on the left. And I believe I filled those in with styrene fillers. Honestly it wasn’t pretty and I’m not super proud of it. Track work is something I’m not experienced at.  But it all works now. And it’s almost at eye level so even if it’s a bit gross looking, it’s not super visible.



I also added a guard rail going into the points as I think I was having issues with cars coming out of the diverging route I think…. Or maybe going in. If I recall, cars were picking the point on the high side of the superheated turn out, so I carved a bit of the rail out to nestle the point into the rail and make a smoother transition, but then cars were picking the notch I carved out going one direction. I think I remember the extra guard rail fixing that.



I didn’t take a ton of pics of this process. It was long, and frustrating and I just wanted to get it done. But it worked and now trains roll through no problem. Basically it was a matter of tightening up the tolerances. I used the NMRA track gauge all through out and fixed all of the little oddities.

And on that note….. Feb last year I ran the very first train on my railroad!!!  Actually the first train on my own railroad EVER!  Can you believe I’ve been modelling N scale for 25 years and I’ve never run a train on my own railroad until now?!

/>

[craigolio1]

At this point it looks like I took a long break and started working on scratch building houses for Lake Cowichan on the other side of the room,  finished up some wiring, tried to buy a classic car… tried to build a working Jordan spreader…. you know…. The usual.

Years ago I had plans of building a basement empire as many of us do. But nothing was happening.  I had been hanging out with the NTrack Roadshow guys a bit. Many of them are on here, hey gents!!   They are an NTrack club in my area and  @CNR5529 was encouraging the club’s move to the Free-mo-N format. To get me out of my quarter century rut of building cars and locos, he suggested I build one small module start to finish. For an ADHD kid like me this was perfect. A small project that I could actually get done.

And I did!  That module was Rutherford Creek documented in a TRW thread here:

https://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?topic=48417.0






Here’s one of @CNR5529 train on Rutherford when we travelled to Strathroy to meet up with some most excellent guys from London and Windsor area….





Many of whom are also on here. Hey guys!!

This brings us just a few months ago where the travelling railroad actually travelled in its entirety for the first time!

(This is the part that @CNR5529 ruined a couple of posts back. )

The N-Track Roadshow assembled for the Double-Headers meet. We assembled about 50 feet of track with a yard at one end and my Lake Cowichan models at the other end with the passing track to serve as a runaround. So where there’s a diagram but I can’t find it. Maybe @cnr or one of the other guys can post it.

It was awesome to see so many trains crossing the Malahat!!

Here’s my Rocky Mountaineer crossing Arbutus:





And on Niagara






@CNR5529 Dominion





And one of his CN mixed trains



Another member’s coal train



From the floor of Arbutus Canyon




It’s a lot of fun to view the modules and trains from angles not possible in my basement. It was also very flattering how much club members and show goers enjoyed running trains and taking pictures. People were interested in how I built them and the inspiration behind them. Travelling to the shows with my modules adda an aspect to the hobby that I just don’t get hanging out in my basement. And while I only get out once or twice a year, it’s really fun. I think I had about 30ft of modules at this show.

[craigolio1]

With the kinks worked out (sometimes literally) and having operated reliably several times…. It was time for ballast.

I decided that the theme i wanted for this module set was in the fall after a rainfall. Fall gives me the ability to model the two trees that change colour and it rains 363 days a year here so I figured that was appropriate, and a fun challenge.

Here’s an example of the effect I’m after.



I started by airbrushing the ties and rails a mixture of Tamiya black, brown and red.



Ballast was added using traditional methods.

I used Arizona Rock a Mineral NP Grey Granite with a bit of extra black mixed in.



To fix it in place I sprayed it with 70% IPA and the. Soaked it in a 50/50 mixture of Matte Medium with a drop of dishsoap in it.



A while back I stained the rock castings some variant of light grey. It was ok but I wasn’t super pleased. Because the castings were plaster of Paris and the joints were drywall compound and I had glue dips on them from gluing down dirt… they stain looked odd and all of those imperfections were highlights. All the joints were lighter and the drips didn’t take stain at all.

I decided to redo all of the rocks with a base coat of paint this time. I used dollar store light grey acrylic watered down a bit so it’s not like tooth paste, and painted the whole lot. Because I’m modelling a post rain scene, all of the rocks are darker as seen here:

Over top of my grey base coat I did a black wash, and then stippled on multiple layers of black, dark grey, brown, and green. The last step was white and grey dry brushing. A lot of it I mixed up randomly on a plastic lid. I didn’t follow a pattern. I just kept on going until I thought it looked right.

This first pic was with several layers done and looking more green.



Here’s with additional layers of grey and black.













I also detailed the river beds. When we go camping I’m always on the look out for good scenery materials and one year on Lake Huron  I found a vein of the tiniest perfect “river rock” in the beach. So I gathered a bunch up and sifted it through various sizes of screen.

That’s what I’ve used here.







You may also notice shiny globs. Those are clear acrylic caulk which I squirted on to plastic wrap and teased into wave shapes. They are then peeled off and can placed on spots to create 3d water affects. It’s a technique I learned from YouTube and I’m experimenting with placement in these shots.

Here’s one of the whole river in Arbutus Canyon.



Here’s Niagara



In the fall there isn’t a huge amount of water coming down these rivers. In fact on my last hike to Niagara this past October, the lower part of the river at the Island Hwy crossing was actually dry and we hiked the river beds to get to the falls.

My plan for the two rivers is for Niagara to have some pools with the river flowing over small waterfalls in between and some stretches of river with fast moving water.

Arbutus will be pretty much all fast moving water tumbling over rocks and river bed.

[craigolio1]

this brings me to October 2025. My wife and I travelled to Victoria to visit a family member who is in decline. We were there visiting for five days. We visited her every day for a few hours but she doesn’t have a lot of strength so we had a lot of free time.

What to do with this free time? Hike up the Malahat of course. If you ask my wife, she would say that the hike was not as advertised, which is evident by the look of disdain in her eyes in many of my photos. But I feel like she still had a good time. She sure likes to tell the story, haha.

Man, to be back here again was really special. I grew up in the west coast and I feel like my soul is at home when I’m in a forest like this. I just wish the Salmon were running. We were a few weeks early for that.

We hiked the river bed to the base of Niagara Falls. The water fall is over 150ft tall.





The pool at the bottom is very deep and an emerald green colour.



It has fish in it!



They are trapped right now as the water that exits the pool disappears into the ground. The river bed east of here is dry.

While I won’t be modelling the water fall it self, the pool with its dead fall and fish in it will serve as inspiration for a pool that I have on my river.

[craigolio1]

This time I came in the home prepared. I brought I 200ft tape. No where on line could I find anything about the sizes of the supports on Niagara.

So while my sister and her boyfriend took photos, and my wife put silent curses on me, I climbed everywhere I could.

The two end abutments were easily accessible and I was able to measure their length and height.







I also measured the size of the masonry blocks and counted how many blocks high and wide they were.

For the two main supports, I was able to access the one on the north side. I did the same measuring and counting blocks as this one I had no way of measuring the height.







The one on the south side was not accessible. I tried to climb down to it but it got to the point where the slope was dangerous and I was clinging to bushes and could not see what the next step had in store due to being in bushes. So I called it and decided it was the same as the one of the North side, just taller. How tall? Literally no one knows.. so tell me I’m wrong!  Haha.



At home I made some crude drawings and got to work on constructing these megaliths.





Oh I also dragged my wife to Store Street in downtown Victoria where I measured, in paces, looking like an idiot, the whole length of the street and its side streets. The E&N had some street running here until the early 90’s and I have good pics but needed to know exactly there all the streets were.

So now I have that for a future module set.

[Bob]

The bridge and the abutments you made are super-impressive!  Thanks for posting!

[craigolio1]

The bridge and the abutments you made are super-impressive!  Thanks for posting!

Thanks Bob!!

[craigolio1]

A while back @Lemosteam sent me some molds and left over castings he had made for a PRR cut stone project.

This was critical as cut stone was what I needed and even though 3d printing things would be “soooo easy”, I don’t have the CAD skills or the printer and my friends who do are way to busy and I bug them too much as it is. Yes yes yes I know I should sit down and learn,and that the skills will make future projects easier and faster and cheaper… but my brain tells me that I can have instant gratification if I just spend massive amounts of time doing it the older inefficient way, and I have a high tolerance for pain… so here goes.

I initially planned to build plastic forms and apply stones one by one which is what @lemo did. After casting one set of his stones I decided I didn’t QUITE have the pain tolerance for THAT.







I switched gears and decided I would make thick slabs and cut them so shape to make assemblies.







I spend a couple of days casting a dozen or so pieces and got to work making styene templates, cutting pieces, beveling edges on my belt sander, and assembling.










When an assembly was banded together, I flipped it over, tried up the tops, glued the seams with CA,



and then filled the hollow center with putty.



Lots of putty oozed out of the joints. I just broke it off when dry and then used a knife to blend it and hide the joints.

I used the same templates to make the taller South support, inky it got a bottom that had plumb sides and was twice the height.



Once the assemblies were made I mixed up some putty and used a tooth pick to fill in any remaining joints.

The end abutments were more complicated. I made them in two separate assemblies and then combined them. They were also messier.





When assembling the pieces together, I made a styrene block that the longer top piece could sit on.



I glued them tether with Gorilla glue which I had never used before. Turns out it reacted with the putty and had kind of an expanding foam reaction. I as able to squish things into place a recover but I won’t be using it again in this application. I don’t have a pic of that as I was panicking.

Once assembled they got the same paint treatment that I did on the rocks. A base coat it great and then stippling and dry brushing black, grey, grown, green and white until it looked right.





After this everything got some moss. I’ll add some more as I do scenery.



In pics I noticed that the seams on the tips of the towers had dried grass growing in them. So I made some seams and added static grass.



These were installed in much the same way as the supports for arbutus. But very little destruction was required. For the North abutment I estimated the height at 34’. On my module I had left a space of about 40’!!!  I filled it in with a bit of wood shim.



For the South tower I made it as tall as I needed, because again… no one knows how tall it is, so tell me I’m wrong! Haha.

The end supports went in with styrene shims to bring them up to track level.





The next step was to build it all in with Celuclay, This time I protected them with masking tape.









After this I was looking at photos for inspiration on how I would start the forest understory and I decided that the slopes on the front sides of the modules were wrong.

So I turned this:



Into this:



And this:



Into this:



Next they got celuclay,





And then all of the bare spots got brown latex paint followed by glue and chunky dirt.





In the last picture you can see I’ve started on the understory.

What I’m going for with this forest is to model not just the trees but the whole forest, and the trains will be viewed through the forest.

BC rain forests aren’t just trees. They are rocks, moss, ferns, deadfall’s, trees growing out of dead falls, bushes, small trees, then the big trees with 50-80 foot trunks that have no foliage, and then a canopy of foliage that’s another 50-60ft tall. From the top it’s just green tree tops. But from within it’s a whole other world.

That’s what I plan to model, and it starts with the understory.

Here is a plate of some of the  textures and colours I’ll be using. There’s some ground foam that’s fine and coarse. There’s some blended up floral moss, there’s some spongy brown stuff that I have a bag of but don’t know the origin. There’s some sifted dirt, and some small broken root bits.



Other materials I have are complete bits of tours I’ve pulled out of the garden, tiny sticks I’ve collected, various grades of sifted limestone, and dried leaves I’ve ground up in a blender and sifted.

Here is my first attempt at combining these materials. Ive also done part of the pathway to the bridge which starts as a bed of limestone screenings which was then covered I. Softer dirt and brushed to reveal some limestone.



This is still evolving. I’m not sure about the colours yet. I think it needs more green. I’ll see after I add some bushes and small trees, and moss covered roots… and banana slugs.

[craigolio1]

Hmmmm. Max 100 uploads a day. I just learned something. More tomorrow! But it is almost up to date.

[craigolio1]

Something I did after I painted the rocks, that I missed adding here, was addressing drainage.

With a railroad in rainforest you need drainage!  Actually you need it in the desert too. Every ROW needs drainage. The whole line through here has ditches on one or both sides of the tracks and there are lots of culverts allowing water to drain under the ROW and down the mountain side.

I found this picture inspiring. This was a a screen shot from a YouTube video of a fellow walking the line.



I like the corrugated metal culvert with the extra piece to extend it. I looked for commercially available bits but nothing looked the part.

I thought of doing it with tin foil and a bolt.

I discussed it in this thread here.

https://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?topic=59855.0

This was the finished result.



I did another in a place that made sense as well.  I figured it would be good to stop the turnout from getting washed out.



The other thing I haven't mentioned yet is trees. Holy cow I need so many trees.

I need mostly conifers, but I also need some nice maple trees and a very unique tree that only grows in the Pacific Northwest called an Arbutus tree. You can probably guess there are a lot of them here since one of the canyons is named after it.

They are a neat tree. In fall/winter they don’t shed their leaves, they shed their bark, leaving behind a beautiful smooth crimson coloured trunk.



The Maples and Arbutus trees I can do with Supertrees. I have a couple of boxes of those laying in wait.

But conifers I need in the hundreds and in many sizes. Some as tall as 150 or so feet.

I’ve looked at what @grove den is doing, and in key spots I definitely plan to have some super detailed trees.

Here’s a few dozen that I’ve started his process on:



 For anyone who hasn’t seen his thread you must abandon the trash I’m writing here and read this immediately! But be warned. It’s likely that you’ll be ashamed of every tree you’ve ever made.

https://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?topic=34967.0



But for mass producing conifers I settled on a version of the trees that @. makes. Here’s his YouTube tutorial:

/>
Grant’s SAR is way higher in elevation than the E&N. The trees are spaced farther apart and shorter. I had to modify the technique a bit to be better suited for the Malahat. This included making them much taller, and with limbs at the top but a more bare trunk for the rest of the tree.

As usual I love to over complicate simple things, so instead of just twisting, trim, spray paint and flocking like Grant does… and making 50 in a night….  My process is twist, trim, then cover the trunk in glue, then saw dust…. On taller trees do this one or two more times to create variety in trunk size and detail… then dip in brown paint and spin, then spray paint and flock. Those last steps are from @grov, so I suppose my trees are a hybrid.

Here’s a few that are just twisted up.



Some sawdust covered trunks.



Some painted trunks



And some flocked trees.



On the subject of flocking, for the above trees I used a mixture of Woodland Scenics products consisting of:

2 x Coarse Conifer mix
1 x fine turf weeds
1 x fine turf earth
1 x static grass flock light green
1 x static grass flock dark green

I came up with the mix randomly, experimenting with small amounts, until I arrived at a colour and texture that I liked. Then I took big shaker containers of each and poured them all into a big plastic bin with a lid, mixed it thoroughly and now I have a huge amount of material to make many many trees.

The one on the right in the photo below uses this mix.



I plan to do some trees with a darker mix as well to create variety. The tree on the left in the above pic is just coarse conifer green.



What you see here is 578 trees in various stages of completion.  And these are the “filler trees” hahaha,  Ugh.



A bunch are getting more detailed trunks with moss and ferns on them.



There will be a ton of variety in my forest.

[Dwight in Toronto]

This documentary just keeps getting better and better!

In addition to the magnitude of time you’ve invested in your modeling prowess, I’m equally impressed at how much effort you’ve put into constructing this RailWire post … just managing all the photo work alone is staggering 

Thanks for sharing, man.

[craigolio1]

This documentary just keeps getting better and better!

In addition to the magnitude of time you’ve invested in your modeling prowess, I’m equally impressed at how much effort you’ve put into constructing this RailWire post … just managing all the photo work alone is staggering 

Thanks for sharing, man.

Haha. Thanks Dwight. It’s 7 hours I could have put into making trees. But honestly… I need a break from that. All the twisting started to give me tennis elbow.

While I’ve been putting this thread together, and revisiting all of the work I’ve done, I’ve realized just how much effort I’ve put into it. It takes me so long to finish anything. Granted I’ve stepped away and built other things and then come back to this…. But I’m in awe of people who can build large railroads. Or build several from start to finish. Makes me look at a lot of the work we see people here on TRW doing through a whole new lens. We’re in some pretty impressive company here.

[grove den]

Very , very impressive sir!
Time consuming? hmmmm....it' called: "a hobby " AND aaaalways faster as in real! Aspecialy the trees! 
Lokking forward to the progress of your work!( uhhh:  hobby!!)

Jos