Clear Lake

Clear Lake is a small mining town.  All of the buildings are scratch-built based on prototypes from early colorado towns.  Panoramic photo back-drop.

Clear Lake Station, Town Hall, Hardware store,
General store/apothecary

Clear Lake Main Street 

Miner's Cabins in Aspen Canyon

Park City

Park City branch line primarily serves the Silver King Consolidated Mines Tipple 
(Bar Mills kit).

The backdrop is a panoramic photo of a city similar to Park City.  The photo was edited to remove buildings more recent than the 1930s.  Park City has a small engine terminal with an engine house (Fine Scales Miniature),  turntable (Walthers), scratch-built water tower, and coal shed.  

Panoramic Photo Backdrop

Park City Engine House

Silver King Consolidated Mines

Park City Water Tower

Park City Coal Shed

Park City Turn Table

Park City Station

 

Echo Canyon

Echo Canyon is the ridge of mountains behind Ascape.  The high line passes through a series of tunnels in Echo Canyon.  The tunnel at the left returns trains to staging via the helix;  the tunnel in the center leads through the mountain to Park City; the tunnel through the ridge is Echo Tunnel #1.

Whetstone East Tunnel; Professor Plung Bridge;  
Park City Tunnel, Echo Tunnel #1

Boiler House Bridge; Echo Tunnel #2; 
retaining wall at Middle Canyon; Echo Tunnel #3

Dixie National Forest, more than 300 trees

Craig's Camp at Harding Canyon

Whetstone Ridge and Sulphur Gulch

Size:  5'x6'x6' tall -- 30 square feet

1. Whetstone Ridge

Whetstone Ridge (1) is a six foot from-the-floor mountain that encloses the helix that moves trains from the staging yard under Ascape up to the West Whetstone Tunnel  portal onto the trestle at Sulphur Gulch (eastbound) or the East Whetstone Tunnel portal  at Professor Plunge (westbound).  Park City attaches to Whetstone Ridge at the left side; Echo Canyon and Ascape engine facilities attach to Whetstone Ridge at the right side.  The front of Whetstone Ridge (2) is adjacent to the aisle entering the railroad.

2 Front Whetstone Ridge

Terrain (See Post 22)

The mountain is constructed by attaching strips of corrugated cardboard together using hot glue to form an armature for the mountain.  Several 1x1 wood posts attached to the benchwork support the top-most part of the ridge.   Vertical cardboard strips are glued to this top ridge and then formed to the shape of the mountain and glued to the benchwork. Horizontal strips are attached to these vertical strips forming a lattice like armature.  The cardboard strips are then covered with cheese cloth painted with diluted white glue to form the terrain of the mountain.  This cardboard armature and cheese cloth are easily modified as the work progresses to form a pleasing terrain for the mountain. The terrain starts at 6 inches above the floor and rises to just over 6 feet above the floor.  The mountain is open at the top, which is not visible to the observer but does allow standing inside the mountain to make repairs on the helix or the scenery on the top of the mountain.

Once the cheese cloth is formed to represent the terrain of the mountain it is painted with a thin mixture of plaster of Paris which forms into a thin shell.  The plaster contains a bit of stucco dye to give it a tan color so that it isn’t stark white.  Once the shell is dry it is covered with a thicker mixture of plaster of Paris.  This material becomes like modeling clay as it dries making it easy to carve.  This stage only lasts for about 15 or 20 minutes before the plaster becomes hard as stone and is very difficult to carve.  The rocks and cliffs are hand carved a small section at a time during this molding period.  Carving tools consist of a small piece of wire brush, several different Xacto knives, some dental picks, and a small paint brush with stiff bristles.  Once the carved plaster is dry it is first spayed with alcohol containing a few drops of India ink. This emphasizes the cracks and ridges in the carved rock.  The whole surface is then colored using diluted (12 to 1) tan latex house paint applied with a spay bottle and allowed to run where it will over the scenery.  When the paint is dry the rocks are brushed with pastel chalks in various earth tones until the rock has a realistic appearance.  The cliffs and rocks are then sprayed with flat lacquer to prevent the chalk from smearing.  Scenery on this railroad is never painted with full strength paint because then the rocks and surface do not look natural. 

Once the terrain is carved, colored foliage is added consisting of small shrubs from Woodland Scenic colored foam, trees from various manufactures, and other scenic details.  Trees are sized to force perspective. The top of the mountain Is covered with small conifer trees with a few aspens.  Lower on the cliffs and closer to the viewer the trees are more to scale.  Around the stream are some deciduous trees and shrubs. Water in the stream and waterfall is Woodland Scenic Easy Water, a plastic substance that melts at a low temperature allowing it to be melted on the stove and then poured in the scenery.  We did encounter one problem, when the hot plastic hits the cold plaster it tends to set up very quickly rather than flowing into place.  The problem was solved by using a hot gun to melt the plaster in place on the scenery causing it to flow.  Rapids are emphasized by painting the plastic with acrylic white paint.

The left side of the mountain contains a tunnel entrance to Park City near where the mountain attaches to the backdrop.  A stream appears to flow from somewhere on top rear of the mountain and makes its way down and toward to top of Katy Falls, a large waterfall falling into Sulphur Gulch, a recess in the cliff in the front of the mountain to the bottom of the benchwork 6 inches above the floor.  The stream itself continue several smaller falls and rapids.  A large scratch built wooden trestle carries the main line in front of this waterfall across Sulphur Gulch to the front side of Whetstone Ridge (Figure 1).

3 West Whetstone Tunnel 

The eastbound main line exits the West Whetstone Tunnel portal (3) immediately onto the trestle .  The trestle is on a curve and a 3 % grade, matching the grade in the helix inside the mountain.  Katy falls is behind the trestle in Sulphur Gulch.

4 Doug's Lake

The mainline crosses at the base of Whetstone Ridge around the front of the mountain (2).  A barbwire fence protects the railroad from cattle grazing on the hill side below the track.  The scenery on this side of Whetstone Ridge contains yellow, red, and orange fall colors to represent autumn weather.  A Doug’s lake (4) is nestled at the base of the ridge behind the Ascape round house.  Some fishermen can be seen trying their luck in the lake. 

5 Professor Plunge

The right side of Whetstone Ridge contains two tunnel entrances.  One is the East Whetstone Tunnel portal that returns the main line to the helix inside the mountain and down to the staging yard under the Ascape Engine Terminal, station, and classification yard.  The East Whetstone Tunnel portal is in a large cirque in the mountain known as Professor Plunge (Figure 3).  Beyond the cirque the Park City branch line enters the Park City tunnel.  This right side of the Whetstone Ridge forms the backdrop for the Ascape Engine Terminal. 

Structures. 

The large wood trestle at Sulphur Gulch is scratch built.  A clear piece of 1 x4 pine was cut into ¼ inch strips on my radial arm saw and then cut into scale size lumber of the sizes require by the trestle using a small 4 in table saw with a carbide blade.  The tunnel portals are Woodland Scenic products. An under-track girder bridge crosses Professor Plunge behind the Ascape roundhouse. 

Lighting. 

Whetstone Ridge is lit by LED track lights mounted in the ceiling. 

Realism. 

The cliffs toward the top of Whetstone Ridge are red in color created by mixing a bit of red acrylic in the tan house paint mixture before spaying the upper cliffs.  The pastel chalks used to color the rocks also tended toward the reds.  Behind the waterfall the cliffs are grayer in color representing more hard stone found in lower strata in the mountain, also accomplished by adding a bit of blue acrylic paint to our base spray and emphasizing the grayer chalks in coloring the cliffs.  The result is a very realistic looking mountain and water feature.

Description of Completed Railroad

The AT&SG Railroad mainline is a big loop on two levels.  Eastbound trains leave the staging yard to the helix and exit the helix via the West Whetstone Tunnel portal at Sulphur Gulch, the lowest elevation on the railroad loop. They return to the helix and staging yard via Echo Canyon, the highest elevation on the railroad loop, to the East Whetstone Tunnel at Professor Plunge.  Westbound trains leave the staging yard to the helix and exit the helix via the East Whetstone Tunnel portal at Professor Plunge to Echo Canyon and return to the helix and staging via the West Whetstone Tunnel portal across the trestle at Sulphur Gulch.  There are three branch lines:  The Spring Canyon Coal branch begins at the Spring Canyon junction on the main line just in front-of and below Tennsion; the Tennsion branch loop begins at the west end of the Sage Junction siding and returns to the main just west of the Sage siding; the Park City branch begins at the east end of the Echo siding.

East bound trains enter the loop as they leave the West Whetstone tunnel on to the trestle at Sulphur Gulch in Whetstone Ridge (1). The helix and trestle are a 3 % grade.  The track levels out past the Ascape Engine Terminal (2), Ascape yard (3), Burgess Beef (4) and Farmer’s Grain (5).  It remains level across the truss bridge at Left-Hand Fork (6) and the Hidden Meadow (6) passing siding past the mining town of Clear Lake (7) but then begins a climb in Shaw’s canyon (8) below Roger’s Meadow and the Clear Lake Mine (9) around the end of the peninsula in front of and just below the industrial area on the Tennsion branch (9).  The track passes through the backdrop at the Spring Canyon (10) coal tipple and then levels out again at the Sage (11) passing siding, which is above the mining town of Clear Lake.  As it leaves the Sage siding it climbs again across the trestle above Hidden Meadow and the steel bridge over Left Hand Fork and climbs up past Craig’s logging camp (12) to the Echo Canyon (13) siding above Ascape.  As it leaves the Echo Canyon siding it descends through the East Whetstone Tunnel back to the 3 % down grade of the helix back to the staging yard.  The Park City branch line leaves Echo Canyon via the Park City Tunnel and proceeds past Whetstone Ridge to Park City (14).

The scenery of the Ascape Tennsion & Sulphur Gulch Railroad consists of a series of integrated scenes which will be described and illustrated below.  The Staging Yard is under Ascape and Echo Canyon and does not include scenery.  The numbers in the previous paragraphs identify each of the scenes that will be described in subsequent posts:  Whetstone Ridge (1), Ascape Engine Terminal (2), Ascape Yard (3),  Burgess Beef (4), Farmer’s Grain (5), Left Hand Fork (6), Clear Lake (7), Shaw’s Canyon (8), Clear lake Mine (9), Spring Canyon (10), Sage (11), Craig’s Logging Camp (12), Echo Canyon (13), Park City (14).

35 Round House Ascape

Ascape Roundhouse 

More than 40 years ago the ATSG acquired a Scale Structure Limited Sterling Colorado Round House kit.   The Roundhouse served on an early version of the ATSG railroad for a number of years.  The railroad was moved in 2006 and began reconstruction in 2009.  The roundhouse was removed from its crate where it had been packed for more than 5 years.  The construction crew in those early days were far less skilled than our current crew. When the roundhouse was put in place next to the turntable it was apparent that the construction standards did not meet the new building code for the railroad.

Ascape Roundhouse RIP track

Doug Whetstone, a member of the Color Country Model Railroad Club and operator on the ATSG volunteered to reconstruct the roundhouse to bring it up to code.  He completely disassembled the previous round house, discarded everything but the metal parts including the windows, doors, roof vents and details.  He repainted all of these metal parts using paint that he had on hand. He reconstructed the right wall of the building using foam core covered with embossed stone paper.  The new wall looked great.  But then the press of other responsibilities prevented him from further construction for a couple of years.  The management of the ATSG finally revoked the contract and retrieved the building parts for later reconstruction.

Reconstruction of the Ascape roundhouse was resumed in 2015. Using the pattern of the right wall constructed by Mr. Whetstone, the construction crew of the ATSG went to work reconstructing the remainder of the building.  Using plans from the original kit a floor complete with simulated pits was designed to correspond with the turntable already in place.  The roof supports in the middle of the roundhouse were reconstructed using some of the parts from the original kit.  The inner walls were lined with embossed red brick paper.  Overhead lights were installed under the roof support beams.

Ascape Round House

The roof was made removable.  Rather than attaching the rafters to the roof beams, these rafters were attached to the underside of the roof so that they rested on the support beams when the roof was in place on the building.  The roof was constructed from poster board with the roof vents and windows secured in place.  Scored aluminum was cut into appropriate panels and secured to the roof.  The roof was weathered by brushing on ground rust colored chalk.  The whole structure was then dusted with powered graphite to give it a dirty well used appearance.

When the windows were originally repainted, one window escaped and was not painted with the new paint scheme.  When the reconstruction was resumed Floquil paint had been discontinued and it was not possible to match the color scheme used on the windows.  The problem was solved when the roundhouse was placed on the railroad by including painters repainting  this window.

The original Scale Structures kit included a number of details of some of the equipment that might be found in a roundhouse.  These were also metal parts that were retained.  When they were placed inside the roundhouse it became apparent that even with the lights that were installed these details would not be easy for visitors to view.  Thus a construction shed was added to the right side of the building where some of these detail parts could be placed for construction on the RIP track at the side of the roundhouse.  A crane was also constructed for this RIP track to give the whole scene a more used appearance.  Appropriate railroad junk was placed near the RIP track including a set of locomotive drivers.

The motive power of the ATSG now runs much better with a roundhouse for regular maintenance.

34 Ascape

When Echo Canyon was mostly complete the folks in Ascape turned their attention to finishing the yard and some industries in Ascape.  Other posts will feature individual structures and their construction.  The purpose of this post is to provide an overall view of Ascape, particularly the Engine Terminal, Yard and associated industries.  

Figure 1 View of Ascape Engine Terminal.

Figure 1 shows the Ascape Engine Terminal (center), Ascape Station (left), and Ascape Power Plant (right).  The main line and Ascape siding are along the back of the terminal.  The caboose track is seen at the end of the Ascape siding.  There is another passing siding in front of the station next to the main platform. The other tracks from left to right include the engine ready track serviced by the coal tipple, the sand house, and the oil terminal.  This track connects to the turntable in the background.  The roundhouse is under construction and is not present in this photograph.  The track to the right of the engine ready track also leads to the turntable and is track for locomotives entering the terminal.  The track to the right is the lead track for the Ascape yard.  The yard ladder is switched from this track.  The gondolas sit on the Power House stub.  

The station is a Fine Scale Miniatures kit, the coal tipple is a Campbell kit, the turn table is a Diamond turntable kit. The water tower is Walthers.  The power house is scratch built from card stock with hand carved brick detail.  The sand house (hidden by the oil depot) and the oil depot are Campbell kits.  There is a old box car shed under the water tower.  Saulina's Tavern and Harley's Cycle Shop are hidden behind the trees behind the station.

Figure 2 View of Ascape Yard

 Figure 2 is a view of the Ascape yard. The yard lead shown in Figure 1 feeds the ladder to these tracks.  The track to the right is the main line with the turnout to the Ascape siding shown.  Burgess Beef packing plant and Mauzy Ice are at the end of the yard tracks.  Farmer's Cooperative elevator and feedstore are to the right of the main line in the upper right of the photograph.  Craig's Camp is in the far background.

Burgess Beef is a Fine Scale Miniatures kit, Mauzy Ice is scratch built, the grain elevator and feed store are Walthers structures.  The turnouts in the yard are powered by Tortoise machines from switches and indicator lights on the fascia.

Figure 3 View of Ascape Station, Water Tower, and Power Plant

Figure 3 is a view of the station, water tower, and power plant. Echo Canyon tunnels 2 and 3 are in the background.  This photograph was an earlier photograph that did not use Helicon Focus or the settings indicated below.

Figure 4 Ascape Coal Tipple from between Harley's Cycle Shop and Saulena's Tavern

Figure 4 was the photographer's first attempt to use Helicon focus with multiple exposures using manual focus (see photographic details below).  Note that the cliffs are about 30 inches from the camera. The coal tipple is about 20 inches from the camera.  The figures and gas pumps are about 8 inches from the camera. Enlarge the photograph by clicking on it to see the clear detail at every distance. 

Figure 5 Burgess Beef and Cattle Yard

Figure 5 is Burgess Beef packing plant.  Bruce Burgess is a cattle man and close friend of the president.  This structure and corral are a Fine Scale Miniatures Kit. The Cattle yard is small and can handle only one or two cattle cars in any one shipment.  Reefers call at the platform to ship processed beef and pork to the market. 

Figure 6 Mauzy Ice and Burgess Beef

Figure 6 is Mauzy Ice.  This small structure is perfect for the very small operation of Burgess Beef packing plant.  Reefers are iced one at a time and it is rare for more than two reefers to visit the plant on any given day. The ice house was named for Chris Mauzy, who is a frequent operator on the ATSG.  This structure is scratch built from polystyrene siding and strip wood.  The builder drew plans from photographs of an On3 model of this ice house designed and constructed by Troels Kirk of Sweden.

Figure 7  Farmer's Cooperative 

Farmer's Cooperative and Feedstore are Walthers kits weathered by the author.   Craig's Camp is on the hill behind this scene. The main line is behind these structures and again behind Craig's Camp on the upper level.

All of the photographs except Figure 3 were processed via Helicon Software and involve multiple exposures focused at different distances. The focus was set manually.  The photographer measures the distance from the furthest object and closest object in the picture using a metric measuring tape.  This distance is then divided into 5 or 6 equal lengths and an exposure taken at each distance. The camera indicates the distance when using manual focus:   Sony 35 mm 8 mp digital camera, F8.0, color real, no zoom.  Lighting is from overhead compact florescent spot lights enhanced by two photo lamps also with compact florescent bulbs.  Exposure time is automatically determined by the camera.  All photographs were taken on a tripod via the camera timer to avoid any camera shake.  You should be able to enlarge the photographs by clicking on them.