Construction Update #54 - Lizard Head Scenery

Basic Ground Cover 

September 28, 2024 

I like to divide the scenery process into steps or phases..  The steps can be separated by hours, days, months or even longer.  The first step, covered in update #52 is basic land forms (foam profiles, cardboard webbing, rosin paper, plaster cloth & Sculptamold).  The second step is basic ground cover.  On my layout, about 95% of the basic ground cover is made up using natural materials.  Of that, about 70-80% is paving sand from Home Depot.  The paving sand, which is crushed rock, is cheap and readily available.  The rest is a combination of dirt from my garden, different shades of decomposed granite sourced locally here in Washington State, and left overs from friends.  A set of sieves is used to separate finer from courser material.  Commercial products from Highball, Scenic Express and Arizona Rock & Mineral make up the balance. 

A little fine ground foam is also used when the basic ground cover is applied.  These include Woodland Scenics blended turf green, blended turf earth, earth, yellow grass and burnt grass.  The idea here is to add just a touch of color.

 Basic ground cover.

 

Getting Started 

The ground cover is glued to exposed Sculptamold with a blend of earth colored latex house paint and white glue.  The ratio is about 75% paint and 25% white glue.   The raw sculptamold is on the left, the paint/glue mixture is in the middle and the basic ground cover consisting of natural rock followed by ground foam is on the right.  After everything is in place I mist a water/alcohol mix over it the basic scenery and then apply diluted matte medium (3/1) to hold everything in place.

 A old rotating floor fan is used to speed up drying.

September 30, 2025

  

The next or third phase includes more ground cover, the addition of a few trees, snow fences and a couple of structures. 

A Few More Details

October 1, 2025 

The next phase - some detail.  A lamp post, figures, a stack of ties and ballast.  The ballast here is a blend of Arizona Rock & Mineral Cumbres and Toltec ballast and Scenic Express gray ballast.  The figures are from Fun & Games.  I like stationary figures.  While "action" figures frozen in photos look OK, I don't like them when viewing the actual scene.  The HO lamp post came from Woodland Scenics.  Not sure where the tie stack came from. 

The Backdrop

I found this picture of Lizard Head on the internet.  I blew it up about 60% with Photoshop and printed it out on 4 sheets of 8.5" x 11" printer paper.  I taped the four pieces together, cut out the sky and cut the bottom to match the existing terrain.  The original plan was to have Walgreens print at 24" x 60" banner and cut it to fit.  Now I'm not so sure.  It looks pretty good in it's current form, without any blending to the foreground and attached to the wall with a couple of strips of double sided tape.

 

Here's an overall picture of the area.  About 10-12 hours were spent over 4 days getting the section house/bunk house scene to this point.  It still needs more trees and some static grass to represent the meadows typical of the pass.

As always, your comments, suggestions and questions are welcome

sdepolo@outlook.com

Construction Update #53 - Lizard Head Operations, Staging & a Smelter

 

Lizard Head

September 10, 2025  

Here is a overall view of the Lizard Head Scene.  I still need to smooth out the hillsides, behind and to the left of the stock pens, with Sculptamold.   The snow fencing will eventually be placed between the bunk/section houses and the hillside.  

Most of the track here was covered by snow sheds.  I may eventually include a section of snow shed but I don't want to cover the entire wye.  I think the snow sheds will get in the way of operations and I really like to watching the helper locomotives turn on the wye for their return to Ridgway.

Operations at Lizard Head - Stock Extra

September 18, 2021 

There are series of photographs in the RGS Story illustrating how the RGS switched the stock pens at Lizard Head.  Using what could be learned from the photos and captions, I thought I would attempt the same moves on the layout.  The photos aren't great due to the extreme contrast between the white Sculptamold and the locomotive and rolling stock.

RGS #40 arrives in Lizard with a stock extra from Ridgway

The caboose is left on the mainline and the 5 stock cars a set out on the siding.

 

 

The #40 then back around the south leg of the wye. 

 

 

And on to the south leg. 

Now with the #40 faced back to the north towards Ridgway, it backs up the main for the caboose.

After backing up to clear the turnout leading into the siding, the #40 pulls forward into the siding and pulls the sting of stock cars out of the siding and onto the main line.

The cars are then pushed onto the wye were the first two cars can be loaded/unloaded depending upon the season.  The RGS moved livestock to the higher elevations for grazing in the spring and returned them to lower elevations or market in the fall.  I have room to load/unload 2 cars at a time.

The 2 loaded/unloaded cars are returned to the siding.

The process is repeated, 2 cars at a time, until all the cars are loaded/unloaded.  I'm not sure how many cars the prototype could spot at Lizard Head. 

Once all the cars are loaded/unloaded and tucked into the siding, the #40 leaves the caboose on the main line south of the siding and clear of the turnout.

The #40 will run up to the north end of the siding.

And back down the siding to pick up the loaded/unloaded stock cars and caboose

 Northbound at Matterhorn, back to Ridgway, through some actual scenery.

The Rico Staging Yard

September 20, 2021 

What a struggle but it is finally operational.  Access, about 3 feet from the nearest aisle, made for a difficult install.  A turnout that was out of gauge through the diverging route (guard rail and frog), that I didn't discover until after it was installed, added to the difficulty.  And finally, there was a short that developed on the other side of the layout that took me two days to find!

Two of the tracks will hold a locomotive, 9 or 10 cars and a caboose.  I think trains will be limited to about 8 cars providing a bit of a cushion.  The near track holds a locomotive, 7 cars and a caboose with a cushion.  I had originally planned on 4 staging tracks but I decided 3 would be more than enough.  A good day on the RGS, during the time I model, was 1 or 2 trains a day in each direction.  The roadbed is in place so a 4th track can always be added.

Two north bounds in the Rico staging yard.

The Rico staging yard is controlled by this small panel.  The two toggles on the left control the Tortoise switch machines and the three on the left are on/off toggles for track power.

Here are the two switch machines.  The turnout that was out of gauge was the one on the right; the most difficult to get to of course.  I have decided to install frog juicers on all my turnouts.  One is already installed one on the south leg of the Lizard Head wye and these two are next.  Since all my locomotives have current keepers, I thought I could get away with insulated frogs... Not a great idea!  In the past, I have always used Tam Valley frog juicers.  As an alternative, I ordered a DCC Specialties version for about 1/3 the cost.  I'll let you all know how it works.

A Winter Project - The Rose-Walsh Smelter

I have always loved the Rose-Walsh Smelter kit from Ragg's...to Riches.  Recently a S-Scale version showed up on ebay and when the seller offered me a significant discount I abandoned all sensibilities and bought it.  Then I followed up with the purchase of the Ragg's complementary receiving bins and shed building kit from the same seller.   

The third Ragg's kit for the complex was the office/assay building.  I will probably scratch build this building since I built a near duplicate for my old Alaska Pacific. There is a possibility that I still have this structure packed away somewhere.  Here's a photo; built with Evergreen siding and metal roofing along with Grandt Line doors and windows.  It was painted with Rustoleum sprays from Ace Hardware.

 

 Here is the kit version.

 

If you are wondering where this structure will fit on the layout... It won't.  According the instructions, the finished complex requires around 9 square feet.  But, I have never attempted to build a "contest quality" model and an attempt is in order.  It should fit on a 2x5' module that will fit in the back of our SUV or in the back of my full sized crew-cab pickup with the seat folded up.

 

 

 As always, your suggestions, comments and questions are welcome

sdepolo@outlook.com 

Construction Update #52 - Lizard Head Scenery, Snow Fences & Stock Pens

The Lizard Head Scene

I tend to jump around when it comes to working on the layout.  This morning I went out to the layout and  started working on the scenery around Lizard Head.  After all, I had the tunnel portal, bunk house and section house ready to go so why not?  Here's an overall picture of the Lizard Head scene.

Normally I would rough in the scenery first and then build a tunnel portal to fit.  In this case, as shown below, I built the tunnel portal first.

 

 

 

 

Hillside, Cut & Tunnel Portal

September 2, 2025

 

 

With all of the foam in place, this is the viewing angle for a person who is around 6' tall.  Here at the summit, the railroad is about 60" off the floor.

September 3, 2025

 

Sculptamold was used over the plaster cloth to smooth things our and eliminate the "steps" in the layered foam.  The Sculptamold also provides some texture for the next step; a mixture of earth colored paint and white glue followed by some basic ground cover.  A little bit of Scultamold did end up on the wood retaining walls and portal but it was easily removed with a dampened tooth brush.  

 

Since the Sculptamold will take several days to dry, I decided to go on to a couple of other related projects.

 

Snow Fences

September 4, 2025 

There were snow fences on both sides of the tracks south of the Lizard Head snow sheds.  While I'm not sure about including the snow sheds, the snow fences should make an interesting addition and won't interfere with operations.  A simple assembly fixture was made from styrene and the wood was stained with SilverWood.  The posts are 6x6's and the fencing is 2x8's. 

The prototype fencing appears from pictures to be about 9 or 10 feet tall.  I made a quick mock-up using a piece of scrap styrene and decided 9 feet looked out of scale in my scene; 6 or 7 feet looked better.  I settled on 6 1/2'.  With the exception of the bottom fence board, the remaining fence boards were cut to random lengths.

The fence boards were placed in the fixture and the post were glued in place six feet apart  using Aleene's tacky glue. 

 Here is about 110 scale feet of finished fence.  

 

The Stock Pens

September 5, 2025 

About 3 years ago I bought a Banta Modelworks stock pens kits (BMW-138S) from a dealer.  I used the kit, plus additional parts purchased directly from Banta to build my Old Placerville stock pens.  While Banta no longer stocks some of the older S-Scale kits, like the stock pens, they will make up the older kits upon request.  I ordered my 2 additional kits/parts in one box without instructions.

My Old Placerville stock pens were mounted on a separate piece of 1" pink foam.  A lot of time went into building these pens so I wanted them to be easily removed.

The kit doesn't really include traditional step-by-step instructions  There are 16 pages of drawings, with minimal instructions along with a CD containing a series of helpful photographs.  While the double deck chute assembly is a bit complicated the rest of the kit is pretty straight forward.  I did have a couple of issues when building the kits.  I have underlined those issues in the description below.

The Gates 

The laser cut fencing was left on the sprue and sanded on both sides.  One side requires a little more work due to burn marks from the laser cutter.  Most of the discoloration should be sanded away.  The fencing and strip wood (posts) were then stained with Builders In Scale Silverwood... Surprise surprise.  The fencing was left on the sprue while the posts and diagonals were glue on with Aleen's tacky glue; no surprise here either.  The nice thing about tacky glue is that if any squeezes out between the parts it can easily be removed with a tooth pick without leaving any visible residue.

Here are the all the gate assemblies.  Note that the 2 in the lower left hand corner are still on their sprues.  The next 2 gates, to the right, are the extension gates.  They are designed to be operational so a bit of extra care needs to be taken with the glue.  It should also be noted that the long laser cut diagonals on the larger gates had to be shortened about a 1/4" on the upper end.

 

The Chute Assembly

 September 6, 2025

This chutes are the most difficult  part of the kit to assemble.  Here is a picture of the Old Placerville double deck chute assembly.  Sheep were typically loaded in double deck stock cars so both a lower and upper chute were required.

The instructions call for assembling the chutes over the plan.  This is somewhat problematic in that the plans don't line up with the laser cut pieces.  The plan included with my kit is larger, around 4-6 scale inches over the length of the chutes.  When I built the Placerville pens, I lined the parts up with one end of the plan and went on from there.  This caused a few alignment problems in subsequent steps.  This time, I aligned a center post with the plan and worked out from there.  We'll see how that works out.  The laser cut fencing was taped to the plan and the post were glued in place using a straight edge along the bottom.

When it came to assembling the chutes, everything lined up this time around.  My kit included a neat little pine block that along with a set of squaring fixture made what would have been a challenging assembly easy.

The Chute Floors

September 7, 2025 

The instructions suggest using ACC to attach the cleats to the chute floors.  I'm hesitant to use ACC on wood.  It is difficult to control and can leave a shiny spot, when exposed, on the wood that is almost impossible to get rid of.  Instead I diluted some tacky cement with water, spread it out on a sheet of styrene, dropped the laser cut cleats into the glue mix and then transferred the cleats onto the floor.  All the part were sealed with a coat of Tamiya.

Here are the finished chutes.  Assembly  took about 3 hours.  

The view from the opposite side.

That's enough for one night!

 

 

Final Assembly

September 8, 2025

The fencing requires a lot of posts.  The strip wood was pre-stained and a NWSL Chopper was used to cut all the post cut all the posts at tne time.  The posts were glued to the fencing with tacky glue using a straight edge along the bottom to keep the fence posts level.  There are small board tabs separating the boards on the laser cut fencing.  They also show the location of the fence posts.  They need to be cut away once the posts are glued to the fencing.

The stock pens are mounted on a piece of hard board.  The hard board was cut to fit the available space on the layout and the pens were assembled on my work desk.  Work on the back side of the pens first.  Assembly was a measure, cut, test fit and glue in place process.  Squares were used to keep the fencing straight. 

Once the back side was done, the base was turned around to work on the front side.

September 9, 2025

It was another late night, around 2:15 AM, so the pens got finished up this morning.

As always, your comments, suggestions and questions are welcome

sdepolo@outlook.com