Here’s more of how it went together. I was particularly proud of the tiny little support column that was used originally when the tunnel was blasted out (before it was sleeved). Afterwards, they poured the sleeve around half of it. Since my model had the sleeving, I only made the column to half width.
The blasting ‘daylighted’ part of the third tunnel so that you can see over to the other side of the river. Because of this, I ended up doing scenery behind it so that when you looked into the viewing portal, you’d see the sleeve and then through the open parts of it to the scenery behind it. Really liked the effect.
Everything here was fashioned from foam, painted with flat white acrylic, and then ‘painted’/stained with WS pigments.
Unfortunately after assembly it became clear the portal I had made for viewing purposes did not show off any of the concrete work I’d hoped to have visible. I ended up having to cut out a chunk of the concrete sleeving on one side (where you see the columns supported by horizontal beams near the floor). Oh well. 🙂
One of the key parts of my model, as mentioned, is the Quintette Tunnels near Othello. Usually with tunnels model railroaders settle for nice detail at either end but otherwise leave it open (and accessible) and un-sceniced on the inside. There’s good reason for that – a) you never see it anyway usually and b) you can rescue trains. Another thing modellers usually do is ‘compress’ tunnels to a lesser length than they would be in full scale. The objective is to give you the impression of the tunnel without taking up too much room.
Well, I’m not that kind of guy. The third tunnel in this scene is a really cool 405 footer with a concrete portal at one end, and I was determined to scale it exactly, but also to provide a viewing portal through the side to see the train. That meant needing to scenic the inside of it, including some details of the concrete ‘sleeve’ inside. And that’s what I set about doing here. I ended up breaking the tunnel’s foam segments apart, building the concrete sleeve and detailing it, and then sandwiching it all back together. I created the rounded roof by getting a piece of wood dowling (about 1.1" diameter to scale correctly, taping sandpaper around it and then rubbing it (get those filthy thoughts out of your mind people!) along a piece of foam until I had a concrete roof.
And here is why historical aerials are so valuable. Above, we have Hope as it was in 1961. Below is Hope ca. 2010. In 2010, the railbed is completely gone. Hope Street and 3rd Ave, as it turns out, did not cross the tracks (couldn’t have – 3rd would have run smack into the middle of the wye, and Hope would have found itself bisecting the yard), but rather 3rd ended at Hope St. and Hope St. bent southeast and paralleled the tracks back to 4th Ave. In fact, that little alleyway running off of 4th towards the northwest appears to be a remnant of that road. The triangular area the wye occupied became housing, and just to the east Hope Secondary School’s field has appeared in what was railway tracks. It’s really quite amazing to see how much changed in a space of 50 years. You would never know there was a railway there today. But it’s neat seeing where old roads were – now when I’m in Hope, I know why some intersections near the former yard look kind of weird or like they were hacked apart. Some spots still retain vestiges of the old intersections before the roads were realigned. Brain candy for a history buff!
One day I discovered Canada’s National Air Photo Library (NAPL). Apparently, almost since the advent of the airplane, governments have been conducting aerial surveys of places for various purposes. These were carried out from various elevations at high resolution. And as it turned out, I got lucky – they had one featuring Hope. The earliest I could get (or could find) was 1961, which was 2 years after the line was closed due to slides, but it worked for my purposes because they had not yet set about to dismantling it. In fact, a segment of the track in Hope would remain until around 1970. But seeing this was like taking blinders off. Now I knew where everything was.
The photo cost about $40, scanned at very high resolution from the original negatives. It’s black and white and when you zoom in close it does start getting fuzzy due to the elevation and limitations of the camera tech at the time, but it’s good enough to pick out individual buildings, bridges and other features. Further, with Google Earth, I was able to use still-extant buildings in 2010 and the measurement tool to establish a scale and better position things on the model. When I get to that phase, of course. 🙂
I annotated this one as I figured out streets. Unfortunately, the angle prevented me from seeing where and how Hope Street (purple) ended, and whether it crossed into the yard. These questions would only be answered via an actual aerial photograph dating from 1960.
Sometimes you get lucky and stumble across shots like this, available via bcarchives. I’m only showing this as an example – unfortunately for my purposes it was not at a resolution where I could make much out, and at an angle, and too far away from the KV to really see it. But, looking very closely, there were some details it helped with.
Of course my ever wandering mind, in between waiting for other scenic details to set or dry, had to get into it with Hope. I was really excited about modelling Hope as it offered one of the few opportunities along the Coquihalla for a town setting. Tiny Brookmere had lots of railyard stuff but was not anywhere near the town Hope was. The rest of the Coquihalla line, being strung up a remote and forbidding canyon, featured litte in the way of humanity, apart from section houses.
You can see here how I’ve printed out a mosaic from Google Earth in scale and then laid it out. However at the time, being unaware of historical air photos, I was flying a bit blind. Again, some 50+ years had passed since the Coquihalla was ripped up, and it had been completely obliterated in Hope. Houses and roads were now where railbed once was. I did my best using Joe Smuin’s excellent Mileboards book.. but it wouldn’t be until I stumbled onto Canada’s National Air Photo Library that I finally got a period aerial shot showing the tracks and where everything was.
Even before I had really gotten into the tunnels, I finally figured I’d learned enough about paper mache to take a run at it. I also wanted to test to see if the 12" of space I’d left between levels was enough to get the visual effects I wanted without compromising too much. So I decided to work on ‘Iago’ station.
Here, I got a bit more ‘clever’. Rather than merely finding it on Google Earth and sketching it out, I devised a way to print, with my inkjet, a mosaic of photos, which when printed were in n-scale size. This allowed me to accurately align the roadbed and mountains. I was so pleased with figuring out how to do that – it would make life a lot easier, esp. when it came to modelling Hope BC.
In the event, I was pleased with the way the second level came out. 12 inches left just enough detail. Of course, by now I had accepted that for some items, like bridges and rivers, they would have to cut into the scene below. There was no way around that. Some of the bridges in scale were into canyons upwards of 7-8 inches deep. Oh well. At least now I knew.
I have a restless mind. As Othello got into a condition that was acceptable, I began planning how to do the misnamed Quintette tunnels downstream.
This was the scene I was most enthusiastic about and eager to get to. I visited the site (now a park), taking photos, video. But when I got home, I realized just how little a photograph could tell you. Owing to the extreme heights and closed in nature of the river canyon, looking at the photos was almost useless – they distorted features and it was hard to get a sense of context. Google Earth was no help either – the extreme terrain messes up the satellite pictures, taking what should be a straight line of bridges, open spaces and tunnels and twisting them all over the place. I had to go back again (and again) and each time got better at taking notes. Unfortunately, having gotten started, I would have to revise this scene over and over again as new information came in.
Most sane people would use a foam base, and build the mountains out of wire (usually chicken wire) and papier mache. But I didn’t feel confident enough in my skills at that point. I thought it’d be easier for me to ‘simply’ stack 7 or 8 pieces of 2 inch foam together, and then carve my way out of that. And it worked, kind of. But man, was it heavy – and that was *before* applying spackling and scenic details. It was also awkward – all four tunnels were present in an 8 foot section. Carving them out made a HELL of a mess. Foam bits everywhere! But I was determined…
As I figured things out, I decided to work on a backdrop for the ultimate location of ‘Othello’ on my layout. Now, I had been really interested in art back in highschool and had done lots of painting. But after 20 years, I had forgotten almost all of it. My first mountains were a disaster, but one evening I got lucky and started to remember some tricks. What I ended up with (and did not complete for years) was what you see above.
You’ll note above this top level is the crown moulding and shelf the original model was supposed to run on. I even painted it somewhat sky blue up there. It ended up instead becoming a storage place for keepsakes. And yeah, I accidentally painted blue on parts of the crown moulding. Whoops. Will fix that.
I was also fortunate to come across plans for a CPR No. 3 Section house on the CPSIG website, as well as a kit form produced by a fellow named Geoff, which was available for a time at Central Hobbies in Vancouver. I made a few more houses out of styrene, mocked them up using plasticine, and placed them to help get a sense of direction. Over time I would take photos to try and match scenes from Steel Rails or other historical photographs, to check for accuracy.
