Status
This is the latest photo of the Williamsport area. The newest feature is the painted front fascia board attached to the area. The water is done. The double mainline in this area is done, as well as one lone building (flat) along the back wall. The design diagram below shows the latest plan. We will soon be removing the existing turnouts and rebuilding the inside mainline.


Design
This area models a small, but active harbor. The harbor is situated along the busy Allegheny River. There is enough dock space for one large ship or many smaller ones. Using a simple switchback layout, the traffic can be moved from the mainline to the dock side in a relatively small space.


Progress
The next collection of photos shows the progress of this part of layout over the duration of the layout.

Today we decided to completely tear down the temporary mainline. The next photo shows the double mainline taken down, as well as all the vertical joists removed. These photos are taken standing in the closet.


Since the new layout design calls for more scenery and track, the front of the layout will come out away from the wall by 24 inches as opposed to 8 inches in the previous design. Because of this, we decided to move the front l-girder forward for better structural support.


The next two photos show the new vertical joists in place. The final structure, although complex, is very solid.




The next photo shows the new plywood support for the double mainline.


We are getting ready to place the plywood sheet that supports the shipyard track. This board will be installed permanently because the track and the Tortoise switch machines need to be mounted. The harbor floor will not be installed yet, because we still need to do a lot of work on the backdrop. What you see here is the supports for the plywood and making up the height difference between the joists and the plywood.


Here is the left side of Williamsport.


You might have already noticed that we have laid the double mainline track. The inside mainline loop track now includes our first two scratch-built turnouts. This photo also shows all the support cleats for the plywood board.


The left shipyard entrance turnout.


Here we have placed the track support plywood board on top of the support cleats. We will be attaching this board to the cleats next.


The Circuitron Tortoise switch machines on the inside mainline are now operational. The exciting part of this is that they are attached to the first two scratch-built turnouts. This photo shows one of the Tortoises installed. The back white and black feeder wires are the DCC main feeders. The front black and white wires are the ones that supply 3V power to the Tortoises themselves. The two gray wires hanging down the front-center go to a DPDT switch that controls the direction of the Tortoise. Eventually this switch will either be replaced by a stationary decoder or it will be attached to the front fascia.


The first photo is of the area between the outside mainline and the masonite background. We have about an inch of play there, so we are going to build "flats" against the wall. The flats (wall sections of buildings only) will be glued against a backdrop of photos of buildings. The flats need to be supported by some sort of flat surface. We fitted sections of styrene to the area between the AMI Roadbed material and the backdrop (the gray pieces in the photos). These will eventually be glued into place and made to look like roads, paths, or whatever strikes our fancy. The track is still covered with tape because we are still gluing down the greenery.




About a week ago we finished ballasting the outside mainline track. We just now got around to taking a photo of it. The inside mainline track will be ballasted once the harbor base surface has been put into place.


This is a close-up photo of our first "flat". This is a set of three walls glued together to form the back of a manufacturing facility. We are modeling the back alley of an industrial complex. Before gluing this building against the backdrop with 5-minute epoxy, we painted the styrene the building sits on with an aged concrete paint. The building itself has been painted and weathered. This is the back of the building so it is meant to be somewhat dirty. The third window from the right on the second floor even shows signs of a small fire in the building a number of years ago.


We recently completed our first scratch-built fence. It is made out of strip wood. The posts are a scale 6" x 6" and the wooden boards are a scale 2" x 6". Yes, we glued each board onto the frame one by one. The total length of the fence is 234 feet. Various parts of the fence are in different states of disrepair to represent their respective owners' commitment to maintenance. The fence is temporarily resting up against the backdrop. It will eventually be placed in between the track and the buildings. This is so as to keep the people and animals away from the high-speed mainline trains passing right behind them.


On December 16th, 2001 we completed the placement of the Masonite board. Underneath the board is plywood. To provide a nice smooth surface we decided to put a single cohesive piece of 1/8" Masonite board on the plywood. It was attached with contact cement. On the photo you may also see the faint clouds that we painted on the backdrop about a month ago. With the bright overhead lights it is a bit difficult to photograph, but if you look closely you can see some of them.


The harbor water surface has been painted with a matte black acrylic paint (same as the Allegheny River). We decided to paint the front edge of the Masonite and plywood boards as well since the front fascia may not perfectly line up with the water's edge. That way any space will be black inside and hopefully not draw too much attention.


And now for the fun part (Ha!). I decided that since this is a harbor scene that the entire harbor edge will be covered with poles. This meant buying 1/8" dowel rods cut to around one inch tall. Since the harbor edge measures a total of 67 inches, that means (67 * 8 = ) 536 poles. These need to be cut, sanded, and glued into place along the water/land border. To be able to cut that many of them without going nuts, I created a temporary cutting jig/set-up. The photo below is this set-up. Starting on the right, I grabbed an empty cardboard box and used an awl to make two holes in each end of the box. This feeds and holds the dowel rod in place. The box is clamped to the workbench. As you cut the dowels the rod tends to want to fall of the table - this prevents that. Next, you see two C-clamps on the right-hand side of the wooden cutting board. The left C-clamp represents the cutting depth of the dowel to be cut, and the right C-clamp provides a surface against which to press the dowel rod as I cut it. It also makes for a guide to keep the saw perpendicular to the dowel rod as I cut it. I used the razor saw to cut the dowels by hand. Most of the time the last little bit of wood breaks off from the dowel rod, so to prepare the next dowel, I rubbed the dowel rod's end against the file leaning up against the cutting board. The cutting board is clamped to the table to keep the whole thing from moving. This made it possible to cut lots of dowels. It is nonetheless tedious, time-consuming, and hard work.


After sanding the ends of the dowels, they are glued into place on the layout using yellow carpenter's glue. Here you can see the right-hand side of the harbor. This is a total of 96 dowels cut and glued in one evening.


We are now up to 378 dowels (at the end of the third day). This is tough work (sore wrist, shoulders, and back), but it will be all worth it. The dowels are glued into place with yellow carpenter's glue applied with a tooth pick. They are kept perpendicular to the water surface by using the triangle as seen on this photo. Hopefully one more day and we will be finished!


All 523 poles have been hammered into the ground. The coast line is now safe! The whole thing took four nights.


Next I covered all the poles with a water-based stain. It was a random collection of three shades of brown and a dark green. This was mixed with water to create a soupy stain.


Over the last few days of December 2001 I finished the three layers of gloss medium on the harbor water surface. The next three photos show close-ups of the left and right edges of the harbor as well as a more distant shot so that you can see how the harbor merges with the Allegheny River. To read more about how I did this river, please visit the Allegheny River pages. By the way, I also painted the ground surface plywood board with our ground base color.






We are finally ready to tackle the trackwork in and around Williamsport. The three turnouts in this area on the mainline were the first ones we built and installed on the layout. We have since then improved our method for making turnouts, so we will be taking the inside mainline track out soon. However, we have decided to start work on the harbor track first. We needed some extra running space, so we are going to build a set of small trestle bridges to allow the track from the harbor to extend into the Lyon Hills grassland. Most of this land is used for floodcontrol anyway, so no big deal. A significant chunk of land needs to be excavated to provide a solid footing for the trestles. The first photo shows the footing and where it is to be located.


Next we mark the territory with a permanent marker (no dogs). This area will be cut out.


With a drywall saw, we cut out the area. Plaster cloth and Sculptamold looks a lot like drywall when it is hard. It creates about the same amount of dust when cut!


From underneath the layout, we have installed the footing. It is a simple piece of 1/2" plywood. We will be attaching the trestles to this board, and then covering the board up with Sculptamold. This will hopefully make it look like the trestles were dug into the land. I threw out my back installing this, so we will not be making much progress here for a few days...

As a matter of fact, this was literally the last straw that broke the camel's back. After this we tore out this layout and started working on version #4, which was going to be a lot more ergonomic...