ChrisNH's blog

Designing Winslow Mills, Another Look

ChrisNH — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 17:12:29 +0000

I have decided to take another look at how I am handling Winslow Mills. I switched the position of Waldoboro and Winslow Mills. This provided me with a number of benefits. Winslow Mills is correctly oriented as far as East and West relative to Waldoboro. The majority of the structures are now on the inside of the plan creating space to include the cannery and a few others.

Designing Winslow Mills - My First HO Adventure

ChrisNH — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 02:29:26 +0000

It is finally time to get something built in HO scale. In this entry I am going to describe the layout I am planning with a focus on the 20"x120" section I am going to start with. The larger layout will include Waldoboro on the Maine Central's Rockland branch but my first effort will be focused on the village of Winslow Mills a few miles to the northwest of Waldoboro.

It has been a long time!

ChrisNH — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 17:25:39 +0000

It has been a long time since I have made a blog entry. I have been busy with work, family, and other hobbies. After a long hiatus I started home brewing again. I have also discovered that editing home videos takes an absurd amount of time. Oh yeah, I have two toddlers. 'Nuff said!

Hosted My First Round-Robin Session

ChrisNH — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 13:46:33 +0000

Hi,

I don't have pics, so I will keep this short..

I am a member of a round robin group called "The Seacoast N-Scalers" here in Southeast NH. It has proved to be a tremendously enjoyable group. Everyone is relatively local which has made travel easy. While we mostly visit the same large "operating" layout, we from time to time we visit one of the other member's layouts. In my case, we were visiting another member's mostly empty basement.

A Step Forward With Ballast, A Step Back With Trees

ChrisNH — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 15:48:34 +0000

2009 National Train Show Layout Pics

ChrisNH — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 17:15:06 +0000

Model Railroad Potpourri

ChrisNH — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 02:27:10 +0000

This month I have a little progress on a few different things:

I have finally completed my AC Static Grass Flocker Mark I

I have practiced painting my bridge abutments

I have begun to ballast my track.

This is kinda silly, with the magazine coming out tomorrow my timing is poor, but here we go..

Gilman, VT LDE

ChrisNH — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 20:09:08 +0000

The July 2009 issue of Model Railroader features a track plan for the west end of the Maine Central's mountain division. Included prominently in this plan is the paper mill at Gilman Vermont. Since I am including this industry in my design as well, I thought it might be interesting to see what I came up with, too.

Adventures in Dirt Texturing and Tree Building

ChrisNH — Tue, 05 May 2009 18:01:52 +0000

With the coming of spring my basement has once again become a hospitable habitat suitable for the migration of Model Railroaders. Once the wife goes back to work, I expect to have more time to myself to spend working on my layout. I figured it was time to fire up the Journal again..

Ground Texture: Trial & Error

ChrisNH — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 20:59:12 +0000

I have finally completed putting the plaster/vermiculite mixture down for my scenic base and have painted it my basic earth color. I also got around to painting the valence. I will paint the facia after I complete my scenery. The next step is to put down the ground texturing which, per Joe Fugate's scenery DVD, is a mixture of plaster and dried tempera paint. This sifted onto the scenery base.

St Johnsbury, VT 1979 LDE, RFC

ChrisNH — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 20:21:37 +0000

Click to enlarge..

Scenery Continues..

ChrisNH — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 22:37:28 +0000

I have continued work on my scenery. The masking tape has been applied over the cardboard webbing and plaster has been applied over a small portion.

Scenery continues on the Johns River

ChrisNH — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 03:34:41 +0000

Now that I have knocked off the spray booth project I can continue with my scenery project. I am focusing on a tree-lined river being skirted by a causeway. I am drawing elements from the B&M running along the Connecticut River in Vermont as well as the actual operational location of the B&M crossing of the Johns River near Whitefield, NH.

Spray Booth Complete!

ChrisNH — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 02:36:29 +0000

I have finally completed my spray booth! I am excited to have this done, both so I can use it and so I can move on to scenery on my layout. To keep it from being prepetually almost done I stayed on the project as I found time rather then move forward with other things.

The inside has been painted white to seal it. I have little expecation that it will stay white. I will either repaint it or cover it in poster board as required.

A Trip to Vermont

ChrisNH — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 13:27:08 +0000

This weekend my wife's sister took our one year old for the day (!!!) freeing me and Deb to head up to Vermont. I wanted to take some research photos and my wife wanted to hit the King Arthur Flour shop.

My trip to Vermont included some stops of interest to model railroaders. At an antique mall called

Queechee Gorge Village

A little progress on my layout..

ChrisNH — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 02:19:57 +0000

I have finally raised the level of my water base in an attempt to mitigate what I felt was excessive height of my causeway and excessive distance between my bridge and the river. I think it helped. Below are some pics of the scene as well as a casting I made of a Chooch bridge abutment that has been cut down a bit in height.

Working on my spray booth this week.

ChrisNH — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 00:53:36 +0000

Edit: The second part of this with the completed spray booth is here.

I have started work on a home made spray booth. I am using a 273 CFM squirrel cage blower:

http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/items/1TDR3

Causeway Engineering Needs Redo

ChrisNH — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 15:23:35 +0000

After completing the framework for the shorter of the two causeway sections I have realized I have a bit of a problem that needs be resolved. The attached photos show the causeway next to a bridge abutment I plan to cast in plaster and trim down to size. Clearly the slope of the causeway exceeds the size of the abutment which is not how these things are engineered. I need to either change the slope of the abutment, raise the height of the water, or some combination of both. I need to be careful not to make the slope too steep.

Base for a water feature in place.

ChrisNH — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 22:20:26 +0000

I have just completed installing a base for my water feature. Its 1/4" plywood supported on the edge of the facia and by risers attached to joists at six points. I sealed it with gloss medium which needs sanding again. Learning point- install bases for water feature BEFORE installing facia! This was a real pain the butt.

Paint Rack For My Workshop

ChrisNH — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 13:44:24 +0000

I have found as I progress on my practice layout that I spend at least as much time and money developing a work shop that facilitates the hobby as I do on the actual hobby itself. Recently I have started to find my work bench completely overwhelmed with Jars. While I do have some shelving, I wanted something that would be easy to access while I work without taking up a lot of space. I hit on the idea of suspending a vertical paint rack from the exposed joists in my work area.

Google Book Search for Railroad Data

ChrisNH — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 19:50:26 +0000

I recently discovered that Google is making books that are in the public domain available online. This may not be "new" but its new to me. I recently got hits on two when I was searching for info on prototype bridge tie size and spacing:

Notes On Track

Introducing my 3x5 "practice" layout

ChrisNH — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 20:01:50 +0000

I am currently in the process of building a 3x5 test layout. The givens reflect things that I wanted to cover to prepare myself for the next layout. In some cases, I did things in a way less suitable for a small layout in order to prepare myself for the next layout.

Givens: