A Small Bridge over the Arroyo Lobo (Wolf Creek)
The short single lane road bridge over the creek. All it needs now is some NBW along the top of the guard rail.
Maintenance of Way Yard
The last section of open space between the locomotive servicing facility and the small commercial district is shown below. I decided to extend the creek under the yard lead and add a area for track supplies.
Box Culverts
The RGS used Box culverts for managing seasonal runoff and small streams and creeks. Many of the original small bridges and trestles were filled in with earth and replaced by wood or stone box culverts to reduce maintenance costs. I checked out the internet, went to my strip wood "leftovers" and came up with the following box culverts. Since I didn't want to cut away the roadbed under the tracks, the culverts were built without the middle section.
The streambed was cut to the edge of the roadbed and side was painted black to obscure the fact the streambed didn't really extend under the roadbed.
Here's one installed on the layout with some basic ground cover.
An overview of of the engine facility and maintenance yard. The little commercial district is on the far right right and the depot and yard are around the corner to the left in the background. I'm thinking about extending the creek into the open area to the right of the turntable.
Track Supplies - Rail, Ties & Spikes
Rail - I went through my box of left over weathered Micro Engineering/P-B-L flex track and came up with 4 or 5 pieces that were about 5 or 6 inches long. The ties were stripped from the rail and the rail was cut to a length of about 30 scale feet. The weathered rail was given a thinned coat of Floquil Rust and glued to the timbers.
Ties - The ties are a stack of Sn3 narrow gauge ties from Mt Albert Scale lumber. The other "junk" came from the parts box.
The Overall Plan
I got a call the other day about the plan. I've published it in the past but here it is again. The overall size is 22' x 27'. Minimum radius is 30" and the maximum grade is 2.5%. Track is P-B-L Code 70 flex and turnouts were built with Fast Track fixtures. With the exception of one turnout at Lizard Head and the Rico staging yard all turnouts are hand thrown. In hindsight, I wish I had installed machines. The hand throws simplify wiring but I don't like the way they show up in photos.
Placerville is a close representation of the prototype, Vance Junction and Ophir are reasonable representations and the rest is.....
The Sawmill Spur
I do have plan to add one more spur shown below leading to a small sawmill between Vanadium and Vance Jct (upper right hand corner of the plan inside the main line).
This is kind of what I had in mind. A kit would be nice but I will probably have to scratch build something. I think the Gazette ran a series of articles covering the construction of a similar mill. I have a couple of pieces of machinery but I will need to find more...
No comments:
Post a Comment