Model Railroad Benchwork: BV Central, Phase One

All aboard the Boyer Valley Central Railroad! As promised, here is a shot of the existing bench work. Also notice the re-painted woodwork and walls. I used anything and everything, including remnants of an old built-in closet that I tore out of this room to make more space. Underneath the pink foam, you can see the wooden support brackets which are made from some of this recycled lumber.

Note how close the ceiling is to the back of the tabletop. In HO scale, it is actually about the equivalent of a five story building from table top to the edge of the "sky". Thankfully, the pitch of my roof is fairly steep, so it rises quickly as we move out, away from the wall.

This section extends along the length of the west wall. It will likely house a cluster of industries loosely modeled after the Dunlap/Denison area of western Iowa. This basically means a bunch of agri business. Possible prototypes include Dunlap Fertilizer (a rural fertilizer plant), Quality Liquid Feeds (a livestock feed manufacturing plant), Amaizing Energy (an ethanol plant), a few smaller online industries and several casualties of modernization: industries located near the mainline but not actually served by the railroad.

Check back soon and see what grows here!

Plywood and styrofoam and homasote - Oh my!

It's pretty late at night, so this is just a quick post to jot down a thought before I forget. I got to thinking that when I get a little further along, my layout will have a really neat feature: it is essentially three layouts in one: a modular layout with two modules, each 2' x 4'; a shelf layout with shelves along two walls; and a basic oval although not quite 4' x 8' (closer to 4' x 6'). It also will comprise several base materials (pink foam board, homasote, good old plywood, and shelving a.k.a. particle board). It should be fun to document the progress! I've got the pink foam installed already and will get a picture posted soon, as well as that diagram I promised earlier.