Those weeds....

Mike,

Do you have any photos (or could step outside and take some) of the of weeds that you use for your trees?

Since they'll be in bloom (or green, or whatever) right now, someone else might be able to identify them.

You never know - someone might have a backyard full of potential trees and not know it!

Top Notch Series and great DVD

I bought one of the DVD videos offered by Joe Fugate and the Model-Trains-Video.com and with the article and video I consider it a fantastic asset in my Scenery Video Library. Your technics for Scenery application is some of my favorites. I fully enjoyed the 3 Part series in MRH E-Zine and have referenced your video a number of times already in just this past 2 months. Thank you for sharing your cleaver applications at helping in making a model come a little closer to life and modeled realism.

The DVD was well worth the money and I'll be looking forward to any other Videos using more of your Scenery applications.

Dan

Bare trees

Jeff,

Yep, I'll grab a shot and post, if it ever stops raining around here. If wet, it all blends together and you can't even find the stuff in the field. I'll head up as soon as the sun comes out and dries things out. I scoped out my supply last week and I've got a ton of the stuff that has wintered-over and died back nicely.

Mike

Thanks

Dan,

Thanks for the feedback. I'll keep the stuff coming your way!

Mike

Different Approaches

One thing I've especially liked about these articles is how they illustrate that Mike's approach to scenery is so finely tuned to what he's modeling.  There is no universal technique that works for every type of scenery, but I still found plenty of ideas to try on my own layout.

Universal techniques

Thanks Rob. I'm glad everyone seems to have really enjoyed this series. I'm knee-deep in a quarry project now, which looks like it will line up for the August and September issues of MRH, and hopefully be the subject of a Volume 2 Outside the Box video to follow-up the paper mill DVD.

You bring up a good point about fine tuning, and about universal techniques. The fact that I model a very specific time and place (early spring in northern Maine) yet you still found plenty of ideas to try on your own layout tells me I did my job. My job is to teach other modelers techniques that they can use on their own model railroad, regardless of what they model. That's what going outside the box is all about - developing cool ways of doing things that are different and interesting, but at the same time useful to the masses.

You are correct, I do really drill down on what I need to make a convincing case for early spring in Maine, but with the exception of just a couple of techniques demonstrated in the article and the DVD, everything else is in fact universal, for all seasons, in all locales. Probably the only two things I do that are super-specific to northern New England in that season is the matted down grass and the bare trees. But even these are seen all over the place. The bare trees are applicable to just about any area of the country in winter where hardwoods are common. The matted grass is common anywhere in the east. Melting snow is common......well, anywhere it snows!

The rest of the techniques - making a parking lot/road system, using real dirt and gravel for road bed material, using real ground-up dead leaves in the forest, using florist foam for terrain, weathering track  etc.. are all universal techniques that any modeler can use, whether they model Ohio, Florida or North Dakota.

Mike Confalone

Portable techniques

The tip that caught my eye was for piles of dirty snow.  That would be useful well into spring time for a layout set in the Oregon Cascades or in parts of the Intermountain West.

Rust on rail sides and tie plates

Overall Effect is Great

Mike,

I really enjoyed your article on building the paper mill.  I don't model New England, and I don't plan to build a paper mill, but the ideas and results you have shared inspired me in many ways.  Thanks for publishing this.  

It was a welcome change from the usual stuff I find in the national magazines.  It is nice to have a how-to article not aimed at the newbie.

Bill Neale

P.S. Watch out for those AGE guys.  They have a reputation to maintain.

AGE / AGR

Hi Bill.

Glad you enjoyed it!

Ya know the Allagash interchanges with the AGE. I'm actually going to model an active interchange with Jack's railroad, and there will be a couple of joint trains circa. 1980. He's doing the same thing in '59. I think you'll see some of it published in MRH at some point. Good stuff!

Mike Confalone

Woodchip Pile

Mike,

You mentioned that wood chips are piled in various available spaces.

I guess this has to be near the tracks for chips transported by rail.

How are the railcars normally unloaded?

Regards

Mike Kenefeck, UK 

Depends Mike

That depends Mike on era, location etc.  Sometimes, especially the farther you go back in time, they had doors that opened like this http://ogrforum.ogaugerr.com/displayForumTopic/content/7906207208023246(Scroll down a little)

More modern is using a rotary dump system.  Kevin has a fine example on his Washington Northern (MRH NovDec 2010   http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/magazine/mrh-2010-NovDec)

You can see it herehttp://wnrr.net/ravennew.html  Again scroll down to the BN woodchip car inside it

Steve

Woodchip Unloading

Steve,

I am sorry that I have been so long in thanking you for this information.

I guess when unloaded by front end loader the chips would be piled nearby, or wherever there was space?

Maybe more concentrated where there is a rotary dumper, or would they be distributed to other piles by loader?

I suppose it all depends on the layout of the site and the amount of chips to be handled.

Mike

Unloading

The unloading method probably varies according to the space available and the volume of chips handled.

Off the top of my head, I can think of three systems used in W. Oregon.

1. Rotary dumper.  Substantial investment justified by high volume. Uses a standard size chip gondola.

2. Tilting platform for end dumps. Requires a gondola with a top-hinged end door and cars must delivered with all of the end doors in the orientations.

3. Vacuum system. Movable vacuum nozzle lifts chips from gon and distributes the load through a system of piping.

There are probably others.  Union Pacific had a series of chip gons with sliding side doors but I haven't run across a photo of them being unloaded.

Some info ...

Out of curiosity, I thought I would search for info "Google is your friend(?)" and found that the TrainLife site has eight pages of the Railmodel Journal for March 1995 available for viewing that discusses, with illustrations, a large variety of wood chip gons (pages 52 thru 59):

http://www.trainlife.com/magazines/pages/439/32086/march-1995-page-52

I was hoping to see something about unloading of the UP sliding door chip gons, but not there, although there are pictures of some UP chip gons of two or more types.