Modern-Era shelf layout: Big scenery update, trailer storage yard, ballast

 I'll have to finally come up with a better name than "tunnel hill" now that it's pretty much finished. Can't be confusing people since this is a blog titled Civil War Trains in N Scale. But it's done, with the interior of the tunnel painted and closed up from behind, and ballast along the track into the tunnel a bit. I realized after the fact that I should have added walls into the tunnel for at least the first few inches to simulate a tube. I can live with this. And again, this is all a learning experience for me. Small mistakes are fine. 

The open flat area below the tunnel will be residential lots. I'll need to build that later as I don't have enough or accurate houses right now. 

Tractor-trailer storage yard

The biggest addition this round is the landscaping and terrain, and the tractor-trailer storage yard. You can see a bunch of photos below. The first is the Susquehanna "SU-100" coming into the yard area from the "west," through the cut that separates the hill section from this new section. 

The "eastern" half of the new section features two rises in elevation to help add another break in the scenery before the approach to the downtown area and commuter station that'll come in the next few months. Here there are three tracks. The mainline to the station is in the middle. The passing/freight siding is on the bottom. And the reverse mainline is on the top and ducks behind the hill. 

Here's a look at the whole trailer yard. Once I get some actual trailers, it'll look good. There was an issue on my first attempt, however, as I used Woodland Scenics gravel for the lot surface. Those rocks were far too large. You can see some of them popping up from underneath the current surface. For this I used the WS fine ballast. It look almost perfect as a gravel lot surface. I plan to hit it with a little light paint to  give the effect of the truck paths. The chain-link fence adds to the little details that make a huge difference. 

I'll need to find houses that look better than the 40-year old Plasticville stuff. But you get the idea. 

A top-down look at the railroad cut on the western approach to the yard section. At first I wasn't sure how good this looked, but now I'm starting to come around. I really need to pain the wall blue or something. 

The next post will swing back to the original mission of this blog: The American Civil War. See you then. 

Modern-Era shelf layout: Tunnel hill construction near complete

This is the biggest scenery build I've ever done. It's not very impressive to serious model railroaders, but for us it's a big step in learning. The foam was relatively easy to work with, and reduces the weight by a significant margin compared to the old layout that used much more plaster and heavier wood. 

Tunnel hill skeleton prepared for plaster cloth.

Two things I forgot to do: paint the foam before the plaster cloth and add more than one layer of the plaster cloth. This would have reduced the need for more paint and ground foam later. But the section came out really well. It still needs some detailing, like inside the tunnel and additional coverage touch-ups. The tunnel portals look good, though I should have raised the ground level around the tracks before installing them. Trains clear just fine, but for realism purposes, it would've looked a little better. 

Tunnel hill 95% complete.

Those are real New Jersey rocks above and around the tunnel portals, along with some real dirt along the track bed. I still need to ballast the track, which will help a ton visually.