Wednesday, February 25, 2015

A Milestone of Sorts

Earlier this week, I completed the poly fiber trees in the area around the west end of Nelsonville. The last section to be finished was the area between the prep plant at Summit Springs and BA Cabin which controls the west end of Nelsonville Yard. The entire side of the peninsula along Nelsonville and Summit Springs is now covered as can be seen in the shot below.





























A lot of scenery remains to be finished around BA Cabin. But at this point, there are only two areas that remain to be covered with trees. The first is the lift-out behind the engine service area at Hollister Yard.






























I need to be able to get in there to lay the tracks for the roundhouse and to finish the scenery in this area once the roundhouse is built. I'll then come back and, using a creeper, finish up the trees.

The other area to be completed is the east end of Nelsonville along the Wilson Bridge Branch. I've already started gluing toothpicks in place in this area as can be seen in the photo below.






























There will also be a small tipple along the hillside behind the wood chip cars. This will be the last tipple to be added to the layout- at least in its current configuration. 

The photo below show the layout after the very first section of poly fiber trees was completed. These trees were left over from my previous layout and were eventually replaced.































There were times I thought that I would never get the entire layout covered with trees. And while it's not done yet, the end is finally in sight.

2 comments:

  1. Tom,

    These last two posts are fantastic. You and your crew should be very proud of all the progress you have made over the years. It must be gratifying and also very exciting to pull out old photos (some possibly even involving actual film?) and seeing how much has been accomplished. The scenery is some of the best Appalachian landscaping I have seen. In addition... nothing beats handlaid track on homoasote.

    As you move towards "completion" I am intrigued to see how you are going to incorporate all those bridges in the yard t the other en of the layout.

    Keep up the good work!

    Best

    Gerard

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    Replies
    1. Gerard,

      Thanks for the kind comments. I'm very glad I kept record of the construction over the years, and yes, all of the "then" shots are scanned from old photos taken with film. This layout has been a dream of mine ever since I got back into the hobby in the early 1980's. It's a dream come true to finally have it at the stage it is today.

      The bridges at the engine terminal in Nelsonville will be based upon the bridges at Cane Fork yard on the C&O. Bill Ford gave me copies of a bunch of detail photos he took on several trips to the area. I also have a number of shots that I took on a visit in addition to the various photos in C&O publications. It's going to be a fun project!

      Tom

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