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The PWRR 6 - The PA Countryside
This time we'll leave Philadelphia and head west to Harrisburg. The trip will take us through Reading and the Anthracite coal region.
The brown stone wall seen throughout is made of foamcore. The thickness (3/16") serves well for walls. I use a dryed up ball point pen and a straight-edge ruler to scribe the foam core in order to make separate stones. Then I use different acrylic colors to achieve the effect of the stonework. This wall had black, white, brown and yellow ochre applied by a 1/4" brush.
This section of the layout is a 35' straight run that's 30" wide. Another poster was advised to not have long straight runs. I preferred to do it because I wanted it to run along a wall in order to have the hand-painted background scenery. It's all up to the designer of course.
I used a lot of commercially available pictures of structures that were glued to my painted background panels. I believe that painted background scenery including any structures looks better than photographic ones.
The panels were started in the 1980's on my NJ layout and continued when I built the current PWRR starting in 1996. They are painted on 18" by 24" canvas panels with acrylic paint. They make up what amounts to be a 80' muraI around the entire layout. like to do paintings in acrylics so it wasn't too hard a task.
The structure is a Lehigh Valley Models Continental Canning Co, kit that was stretched out to make a backdrop front.
The PWRR loco is an American Models SD-60.
We're passing through Reading. You can spot the famous Reading Pagoda on a hilltop in the background.
The gray wall is also made of foam core and black & white acrylic paint. Some Woodland Scenics ground foam was glued on for foliage.
This factory front is from an old station that was destroyed in the move from NJ to PA (my fault).
Here we are approaching Blue Mountain.
We're passing by a mine that was built from a 3-part Lehigh Valley Models kit. The hoppers are mostly American Models and some American Flyer conversions. There are several AF cars that were converted to scale on the PWRR.
We're approaching Harrisburg which will be the subject of the next installment of the PW story.
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Boy, I love the photos that are being posted on this site - and your blog in particular. Thanks for putting these latest ones up. I especially liked the lake scene - a very convincing look.
I really appeciate your comments. There are several reasons why I'm doing the series. First, I wanted to quietly promote S scale. In your face promotion usually doesn't work. If I'm just a model railroader who happens to model in S, it just points out the S is a small part of a large fraternity and alive and well. It also shows that S is far more than just American Flyer toys. I appreciate the broad spectrum represented by the MRH readership and am proud to be a part of it. Secondly, I wanted to hopefully inspire others to do "layout tour" articles. Art Armstrong and myself have mentioned the MRH blogging on the yahoo S scale list and so far have heard nothing back (all too typical for S scalers, I'm sorry to say.) More S scalers would mean more readers for MRH, of course. It would indeed be a feather in ones cap to have their layout featured in the regular on-line MRH, but the blog gives us a chance to hopefully have others enjoy our trains in that genre', too. Anyway, I look forward to seeing what everyone is up to on their blogs.
Roy Hoffman
www.royhoffman.com/pwrr The S/Sn3 Scale Penn Western Railroad
Try S for Size!
S is a great, scale Roy, and I appreciate the work you've done. I look foward to your posts, especially that you take the time to relate how things went in or together. Those details are very useful.
I operate regularliy on an American Flyer layout though, I've run the AF layout enough to recognize a fair number of high rail cars on your layout, so I still don't fully understand the two sides of the coin - "scalers" vs "high-rail".
Seems like their all just model trains to me, some which may be less detailed representations of the real thing, others that could be very detailed representations of things that may not have existed, in the case of some of Sn3 layout's I've seen.
Modeling the Central Vemont
www.garbo.org/MRR
This is a great blog, showcasing a great layout and the background that you are giving us is what makes it so great! Thanks very much for sharing this with us Roy!
Regards,
blue
Not staff but here everyday all the same.
Model Railroading in HO Scale
I agree with you about AF. I'm sorry for the "toy" comment. For years now S has been tearing itself apart with the highrail vs scale stuff and I've tried hard to combat it in various ways. I think that O scale has similar battles (2 vs 3 rail, etc.). There's room in the hobby for all approaches and its survival depends on how well we all pull together to support and promote it. Those cars you recognize were converted to scale wheelsets and use Kadee couplers. S scalers did a lot of AF conversions in the past before the likes of S-Helper and American Models came along. I keep them part because of nostalgia and part because they look "good enough" for me.
Roy Hoffman
www.royhoffman.com/pwrr The S/Sn3 Scale Penn Western Railroad
Try S for Size!
Great Blog Roy. Also a collector of S trains and plan on doing a modular type layout in S scale at some point in the future. Like American models and S-helper products thier trains are as detailed as some HO stuff. Glad to see someone promoting S without discounting the virtures of other scales. I am on the s-trains e-mailing list and have been a member of COSG off and on over the past few years. Keep up the good work, also like the painted backdrops real nice touch.