Time for another round of updates!
Today I focused on building the terrain that would be above grade, i.e. the hillside next to the tracks. To do this, I decided the quickest way was with expanding foam. The stuff is flexible, carvable, and can be stiffened with layers of paint and fill material. This hill does not support much weight, and so it doesn't have to be structural in any way. Being flexible means this hill can be bumped around (such as when traveling) and still maintain it's shape. By contrast, insulation board has a tendency to dent when struck by something. The insulation boards redeeming quality, however, is it's stiff and can hold weight.
The modules are 18 inches wide, and the main line will be recessed 6" from the downhill (North) side of the module, leaving 12 inches for the yard tracks and for the hillside. The hill, once carved down, will take up about 5 inches of space on the module. This leaves about 7 inches of space for three tracks. The prototype yard had tracks spaced 12-16 feet apart, so this scales down to 1.6-2" between track centers. The 7 inches, therefore, is enough space to represent the yard accurately.
The result is that I have a hillside which should represent the canyon wall perfectly while not taking up more space. Later on I can build a removable "backdrop" that has a mostly vertical hillside.
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| James Willmus 2018 |
This view shows what visitors will see, approximately. Hillside in the background, a ditch in the foreground, and three turnouts to form the yard ladder and turntable spur.
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| James Willmus 2018 |
Looking East down the yard clearly shows the track spacing I need to go with. There's enough area to effectively model the yard as it would have been in the 1920's.
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| James Willmus 2018 |
Overall view of the module from above. The left 6" wide strip is dedicated to foreground scenery, the center 6-7" is dedicated to the yard tracks, and the right 6" is dedicated to the hillside.
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| James Willmus 2018 |
Just a little more sanding of foam will get the foam to the same height as the plywood endcap. It's important that the track at the end plates be exactly the same height so trains can smoothly role from one module to the other while minimizing the gap between modules.
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| James Willmus 2018 |
From the operator's side of the module (South side). This shows the view if the layout were eye level. Obviously, the layout will have to be lower so that people can reach over the trees and hillside to couple and uncouple cars. The layout will have the ability to be operated from either side, but the South side of the module allows the light angles to be proto typically accurate.
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| James Willmus 2018 |
Here is the other end of the module from the operator's side. Module 2 will not have a hillside to allow better viewing angles. There are several photos from the South side of the tracks, so I need to have some places to take those photographs.
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| James Willmus 2018 |
Here's the view a photographer would have in the 1920's climbing the hill about 25 feet above the tracks. This is also the view I hope an operator will have when switching trains. I can then do a backdrop of the creek and structures of Mystic.
And that concludes part 3. The next step is now going to be marking out where the track will go and carving down the foam to match the terrain as accurately as possible.
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--James Willmus
Hello James, My name is Verne from Big Bend up in the Rimrock of South Dakota along the route of the old Crouch Line Railroad. I stumbled across your blog and see you are trying to research this area I recently bought this property in 2014 and found a couple of pine railroad ties with 3 railroad spikes still fastened in one of them .They were supporting an old retaining wall and I think they were salvage from the old rail bed when it abandoned after 1947. I saved it up in the rafters of my garage. I love reading about the history of this beautiful canyon we now call home. I have learned some things about this Big Bend area in the last 3 years I have lived here and would be willing to share this information with you
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting Verne! I'd love to hear about what you've found, maybe we could put it together into a post (giving credit to your sources, of course). The Big Bend area is one place along the Crouch Line route where information is scarce, so anything you have dug up would be appreciated.
Delete--James Willmus
Hello James, I just now found your reply from back in February. Some of the things I have learned about the Crouch Line history around big bend, In the early 1900's the train would chug up the Dark Canyon from Rapid City on it's way to Mystic to fetch coal, in the summer time passengers would ride up to Big Bend and stay for the day to have a picnic along Rapid Creek, while the children would play in the creek as the women fixed lunch the men got to looking at the south canyon wall and dreamed up a way to build a water flume to divert water over the steep rimrock canyon wall to power a turbine generator to produce electricity for Rapid City. The train was the main transportation up the canyon as the road was not fully developed until 1937 now called West Highway 44. When the train returned from Mystic in the afternoon they would stop and pickup the passengers to head back down the canyon to Rapid City
ReplyDeleteThat's good info Verne! You've basically described a fantastic scene to model sometime in the future where families are out by the creek on a Sunday afternoon to picnic, pluck wildflowers, fish and play. Though a regular stop, I imagine the railroad had a short platform and a shanty, not unlike the health and CCC camp whistle stops uphill from Silver City. If I ever get that far, Big Bend will certainly be it's own section. It's too bad not more photos exist of that area because of all the development that's taken place since the tracks were tore up, but I have seen a couple photos of the power station and the pipe going over the hill. Thanks for replying!
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