Here was my weekend project, now having some mastery of the casting process.  Build the interlocking tower at the CN/KVR diamond in Hope.

I had pictures that detailed three sides of the tower. It’s pretty basic. Rows of windows along all sides for visibility of the operator, windows on the front, and an area at the bottom where the cables came out.  This project would have faced an interminable delay if I’d had to rely on scratchbuilding every window.  I had looked around at hobby stores but could not find one close enough to a CPR No. 2.  Being able to cast meant having to get only one right, and then recast it a gazillion times (25 windows total!).

The one hitch to this was there was no indication of any doors on the sides or front of the structure.  That left the back, but no pictures exist of it.  I had to take a guess and put a door and window back there where I thought they might be.  Figured the door must be near the tracks, and on one side so that there was room once you entered for the stairs to reach the top floor.  Usually on these structures the stairs are outside, but on wider/bigger towers, apparently they could be inside.  Anyway, best guess for now until someone proves me wrong. 🙂

Roof again was a lot of guesswork – calculating the little edge at the top, the rise, and then positioning the edge in the center of a piece of styrene casting, and making diagonal cuts to its end.  That was for the front and back piece.  On the sides, I simply painted the edges of the front and back roof, and then placed a piece of casting on top of it carefully, leaving an impression of the diagonals I needed to cut.  Then I used some rubber cement and assembled.. voila!  A signal tower.  Pretty darn close, I think!

A water tower for Brookmere.

Okay – my layout is 4 levels (yes, 4), and I’ve started at the top, and Brookmere is a LONG way away from ever needing any structures, but I really, really, really wanted to do its water tower.  It’s an enclosed structure, I think about 20,000 gallons.  Now that I had learned how to cast parts, it would be easy to make some No. 2 windows, door, and roof segments.

The basic structure is easy – just clapboard styrene cut in strips.  I’ve physically been to the prototype but of course did not bring a tape measure and so was left with guesswork from photos.  But I got pretty close.  The hardest part was getting the octagon shape aligned right, and the roof.  For the octagon, I simply found one on the ‘interweb’ and printed it off, then used my photocopier to scale it properly for n-scale.  Then I just glued the walls carefully together.  The roof was trickier.  Not knowing the math well, what I ended up doing was measuring from a photograph taken directly in front of the tower.  I calculated the height of the roof, the width of each triangular roof panel at the widest end, and the radius to center of tower.  Using the height and width, I calculated the hypoteneuse using an online calculator, which gave me how long the each panel would be from the wide base to the pointy top. 

From there, I used my n-scale ruler to draw a line the width of the base of the triangle, found the center point, drew a line straight up from it, marked off the distance where the point should be (I think it was about 11 scale feet), and then used my ruler to make the sides of the triangle bisect it at the same angle.  Once I had that, I cut it out, tested it on the model, and once satisfied cut some styrene.  Just a couple pieces to make sure that they’d go together okay.  I’ll do some detailing on one piece, cast it 8 times, and voila!

I put the basic tower together for now with the few scrap pieces I had cut.  I think it looks pretty good, considering my limited skills!!

This Chistmas vacation I decided to finally get out that Alumilite casting kit my wife got me two Christmases ago.  The contents had (quite) settled in that time, but were still usable.  I’d never made molds or cast anything in my life, so naturally not knowing what I was doing, I winged it.

The rubber mold process threw me a bit.  Opening the lid and pouring a bit, I was greeted by a clear, thick fluid resembling snot.  Being ignorant of these things, I assumed that was my molding rubber, and mixed some up per the instructions.  The intent was to replicate windows and tiny detail parts that make my hands want to fall off.  Long ago I had started building Hope station, but had given up because the process of making the windows and mullions (that is what those window sticks are called) was just too laborious and finicky.  Now I could make one good window, or one good door, and cast hundreds of them.

What I did not realize of course was that the clear fluid pouring out of the RTV silicone can was one part of what was supposed to be a mixture.  At the base of the can was a white compound that was supposed to be mixed with the clear stuff but, after years of sitting, had separated.  Before I realized what was going on and found myself with a tub of hard white goo in the bottom of the can, I had run out of the clear stuff and could not remix.  Lucky for me, the clear stuff provided ideal molds anyway for my tiny detail parts.  I then mixed up the Alumilite Part A and Part B plastic mix, stirred it up nice, and did a pour.  Way too much for my tiny mold, and I ended up with a half cup of solid plastic after.  Eventually I ended up mixing it in a pen cap.  Just a few drops at a time of each part.  After a few test casts, I had enough confidence to fire off a few windows and doors and soon Hope station, the project, was recovered and on its way.

A note about casting though – it takes patience, and care.  After making a bunch of windows I decided to create a mold of a few of them so I could cast a bunch at once, which worked fine *except* I found the more alumilite I mixed up, the more difficult it was to pour and avoid bubbles, and the quicker it set.  I eventually just went back to mixing tiny amounts – 8 drops each of Part A and Part B.  Got it down to a science!

Pictured is the still unassembled Hope station, with fancy (and in need of sanding and finishing) new windows!

Rivers are a tough business.  Especially rivers that are cascading as they go.  When I first tackled this scene years ago, I learned a few useful things though.  One is that realistic water, poured deep enough, takes a while to cure, and somewhere in the middle of fresh and cured, is a point where you can manipulate it into nice little waves or whitecaps.  Woodland Scenics sells a product specifically for making waterfalls or waves, but I found just taking a tiny brush dabbed in white acrylic was enough.   Repeatedly tapping into the drying ‘water’ caused each thing to give a little – the water allowed itself into a more teardrop, or wave shape readily, and the paint on the brush was injected into it giving it a nice froth.  And because the ‘water’ was on the way to being dry, it didn’t immediately sink back to level.  It froze that way.

Because my previous river was (accidentally) level, pouring the ‘water’ on thick worked.  However with the river cascading downhill in this revised version, you just can’t pour it deep.  It runs wherever it can.  And the thinner layer that results also dries very quickly.

I did try a few new tricks though, including diluting the emerald green acrylic paint I intended to use to match the water of the Coquihalla in, well, real water, and then dipping a paintbrush back and forth into that and the realistic ‘water’, essentially dyeing it.  It came out okay, I think.  And in a few places where the ‘water’ was deep enough, I was able to whip up some froth.  Probably I will have to resort to using the WS ‘waterfall’ product to really finish this (not a huge fan of it after a few test runs), but, still pretty happy as is.  Even my ‘aerial’ shots appear to be matching real life aerial shots to an impressive degree, although I can’t quite get the same angles others have owing to my wall.

Anyway, I’m now working on aligning the tunnel segments one last time, doing some trim work, and then looking forward to piecing them together over Xmas, once and for all.

Finally!  Painting in the Coquihalla after a 2 year absence.  Yup, I tried it before, but had my tunnel spacing wrong and had to split up the scene and move one tunnel back.  Destroyed a beautifully done river that I was so happy with. But, that’s the price of getting it right.

Here’s the prototype from the air:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/angelad7000/6750660139/

Thanks to this awesome photo, I was able to figure more things out and work to get it as exact as possible in terms of the river’s path and surrounding rocks.  Taking an ‘aerial’ of it with my camera, I’m stunned at how close it is.  A few more rock adjustments, and we’re good.

I did the usual mix of emerald green paint, although it seems a bit off compared to last time.  I think the last painting I did the blue was.. darker.  Or something.  Anyway this was just a test.  Once I get it nailed down, I’ll do the realistic water treatment, and my ‘paint swirl in somewhat dried realistic water’ trick to make real waves.

This scene is really coming together!!

Busy day on the KV. When I started out, I never expected that my model would look any good. Had no right to: after all, I had never done modelling in my life. So it’s an understatement to say I’m pleased with progress thus far. The tunnels are really beginning to resemble their real life counterparts. I did some fixing on the first tunnel entrance.. making it more circular as per the prototype.

But now it gets tough. When I ‘designed’ this mess, the tunnels were all going to be one piece, aligned by marker and careful attention. That went out the window when I realized I had certain distances between tunnels wrong, water too high, etc. So of course, I ditched the plan and broke them up. And it’s worked well. Detail work on tunnel ends is much easier when you don’t have your hands squeezed between two mountain ranges. But then the day must come when you have to assemble them again. And this being the famous Quintette tunnels, created in perfect alignment by part-man, part-wizard KVR engineer Andrew McCulloch, I knew I had to get them in perfect alignment or I’d never hear the end of it from the little voices in my head.

Having no clue at all how to do this, n the first thing I did was make sure the tunnels were level with each other. Turns out they weren’t. . I needed to sand down one end of the third tunnel (errant spackling), and then (cringing all the way) break loose my beloved bridge footing and sand it down so that it was level with the footing at the other side. I have no idea how all this is going to come together with tracks, but I figure at least if I start out straight and level, I’m in the right zone.

I took multiple aerial shots via my phone as I worked to align. Then I went and did the same finagling between tunnels 3 and 4. It’s not perfect, but from the viewer’s perspective it won’t matter.

Now the decision point. I need to recreate the Coquihalla river between tunnels 2 and 3. But doing that usually means fixing in place tunnel 3. And that’s a problem, because there is river back behind tunnel 3 that I can’t reach once it’s in place. I’ve settled on a tricky strategy for now of tracing the footprint of the mountain for tunnel 3,and then building a river bed with spackling within those lines. I’ll then create the river with the fake water, and then slide tunnel 3 back in. Because of the awkward space behind the tunnels I won’t be able to fill in the cracks between river bed and mountain, but that’s OK. The viewer will never see it.

Some more shots. I’m still proud of that tiny little pillar at the back.  And I like the inside shots I’m geting.  They do kind of remind me of the real thing a bit, which I’ve been in a few times.  The real thing is almost like a Roman ruin.  There’s a temple feel to it, even though it’s just reinforcement.

Flash forward to today – I decided to really get it in gear and get my river back between the first and second tunnels in my Quintette Tunnels scene.  As it happens, I had posted pictures of my model in a Hope BC Facebook group.  They were very generous in their compliments, and one lady was kind enough to post a link to some aerial shots she had taken during a flyover of the site.  I was at once thrilled and distressed – being able to see the side of the second tunnel from an angle that is impossible from the ground meant I now knew how I had had portrayed it was slightly off.

Here’s the pic: https://www.flickr.com/photos/angelad7000/6750660139/

You might ask why this matters.  After all, this side of the tunnel would not be visible, since it faces the wall.  But I am a perfectionist.  I did not want a facade of the tunnel.. I wanted it to be as detailed as possible.  Even if I couldn’t see it.  So I went in again, chipped away some rock, used styrene strips to fix the concrete sleeve work on the outside, spackled it, colored it.. and voila.  Much closer and much happier result.

I also took the opportunity to remove and sand down the tunnel portal on the outside.  It had been cast too thick, as the photo linked above revealed.  I took half an hour to grind it down to more or less the right thickness.  Happy now.