The Summit Ridge Railroad

Details

I finally decided to paint the Chivers boxcar that I had built many years earlier. I brushed on some old Badger paint and immediately wondered why I waited so long.

Chivers boxcar
Chivers boxcar

Even before I built the post office platform back in December 2011, I envisioned a fence along the wall separating it from the storage yard. I looked and looked but found nothing I liked. One day in early May 2014, I chanced across an O-scale layout with a fence I liked. It was a hairpin fence from Atlas. It proved to be very hard to find as no one had stock but I finally found one at Western Depot. It is a composition fence and a little fragile to work with but I think it was worth it.

Post office fence
Post office fence
Atlas hairpin fence
Atlas hairpin fence

I also added a homemade fence behind the parking area for the depot. It is just strip wood and bamboo skewers painted white.

Depot fence
Depot fence

I finally got around to starting to add ground cover to the church area. I also added a Raspberry Pi B+ screwed to another crossmember to replace the laptop connection for JMRI. So here is the layout at the end of May 2014.

SRRR - late May 2014
SRRR – late May 2014

I got busy with other things again but I continued to putter on the layout throughout June.

I was pretty unhappy with the trees. They are too small and too alike. I bought a Super Sage kit from Scenic Express to try one of their sage brush armatures with the SuperTrees branch structure. I built one for on top of the hill at the back of the cut. I used the worst armature in the kit since I was pretty sure I would muck it up. I did. It looks okay but I really should have painted the armature after adding the SuperTrees and before the foliage as suggested. I made a root system from modeling paste and colored it with craft paints.

Tree on the hill.
Tree on the hill.

I also added a fence and tulips (don’t ask, I don’t know what I was thinking–tulips in November/December?) to the church yard.

Church yard
Church yard


I also picked out a sage armature for in front of the post office.

Sage brush at the post office
Sage brush at the post office

Here is the main line freight in late June. Not much real progress but at least I was still modeling.

Mainline freight - June 2014
Mainline freight – June 2014