Maine Central, Lamoille Valley

Maine Central, Lamoille Valley
Click image to link to my web site, nekrailroad.com

Tuesday, January 16, 2018

Working on Whitefield

I've spent a few sessions continuing to work on the scenery in Whitefield, starting from the area where I added trees up to the diamond crossing. I ballasted the B&M and MEC tracks and added dirt and grass between. The MEC track is straight Arizona Rock ballast, NS/CSX blend. The B&M is a mixture that includes Northern Pacific gray along with sone various other ballasts I have on hand to create a dirty blend to represent older ballast. The MEC in my time period was regularly ballasting the Mountain Division and I wanted the clean look that is evident in many pictures.

The other areas include various Scenic Express blends of dirt and turf. I added static grass with a Noch Grassmaster, and also some sections of Heki wild grass fibers. I still plan to add more, and then fill in more trees as well.

It is nice to see the structures in a sceniced area. It is a lot of fun to bring the scene to life with some added details I've had for quite a while. Included is a casting for the B&M call box. Plenty of more details will be added, especially around the MEC section house. But for now it is a good start.

An overall view of area. In the back is a dark brown patch where I will add a structure for Whitefield Plastics.

A lower level view of the ball signal with a B&M and MEC train staged. 


Looking back towards the ball signal, this grade crossing links to the section house parking lot. Additional weeds and treatment to the gravel will be done here.
The siding for Whitefield Plastics is in place, but I need to build a structure and some tanks for the covered hoppers to unload. I like the way the the gravel road came out, which has a number of different materials added and final dusting of granite dust.
A close-up of the section house. Pretty cool Dodge pickup model that will look good in this prominent location. Just need to add the NH license plate decals.

7 comments:

DandHColonieMain said...

Mike,
It looks great. However, I love that "Flexi-Flo" car. Is it a Spring Mills Depot car? If so, it is a pretty rare model- they only made about 48 of them in that large "can opener" scheme. I wish they made them in other road numbers but they said this was the only road number they had a picture for. So, it could be a rare prototype car too! I bought one and it is the only car I haven't had the courage to weather yet.

Keep up the good work.

Aaron Mitton said...

Very nice.

Is "Whitefield Plastics" representative of Presby Environmental (AKA "Presby Plastics") on Airport Road?

Mike McNamara said...

Re: Flexi-FLo - Yes, that is a Spring Mills car. I picked it up at Springfield right when they first came out. I really went with the one I thought would fit my time frame and also looked "cool"! Interesting that so few of this scheme were made. I have not done any weathering on mine either, but I will keep it light as it was still pretty new for my time period.

Re: Whitefield Plastics, Yes Aaron, Presby did give me the idea to add this siding/customer to the layout. They obviously came later than my time period, but this is a good addition operationally as not too much other local traffic is there.

Mike

DandHColonieMain said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Rob D said...

Excellent job as always, my wife and I saw the "ball" this past fall, I was impressed! Great job Mike, sorry I missed you at Springfield, you did look busy, LOL!

Geof Smith said...

Mike, if it looks too crowded to put tanks in this spot for the plastic pellets, give some thought to a compressor on a trailer that could suck the pellets from the hopper into a semi-trailer. The truck would look good on that gravel road!

Mike McNamara said...

Geof, that's an interesting idea. Will need to look into that. Thanks!