Description

by Noll Horan

Stardate: Christmas morning, 1949.

I blame my love for trains entirely on my late father.  It was Christmas morning when, at a mere nine months of age, I encountered by first "layout":   a 4' x 8' sheet of plywood containing an extended oval with a couple of switched to form a crossover.

But the real thrill was seeing the Lionel 6-8-6 (sic) # 2020 pulling maybe five or six cars around that oval with smoke billowing from the stack.   I just sat there mesmerized.  Each Christmas thereafter, Dad would add something new to the setup -- from the bubbling water tower to the cattle loading platform and corresponding cattle car.  The train was only set up at Christmas, so I had to cram as much "railroading" into two weeks as I could.  I have that engine today, and it still smokes!

But being from Strasburg, VA, I could view trains -- real trains, Southern steam -- from our apartment bedroom window daily, as we lived only a block from the depot in Strasburg; across from the creamery.

Southern still ran passenger service through town during the early 1950's, I can still picture trains crossing Main Street, blocking traffic, from that bedroom window.

Which brings me to Naughton Timberworks.  This wasn't my first attempt at model railroading.  I've been into N-Scale since 1970.  After home layouts, several dioramas, etc., joining NVNTRAK gave me the opportunity to finally concentrate on a mini-layout at club setups and shows.

Naughton Timberworks (named for a gentleman who succumbed to cancer in 1993) is a standard 2' x 4' module depicting a logging theme with switchbacks.   Although four feet didn't allow me to get the backwoods atmosphere I wanted, I feel I did achieve the logging theme.  Actually, I built the module around the two-truck Shay engine I had scratchbuilt, but that's for another time.

All the buildings were scratchbuilt with the exception of the water tank, which is made by Bachmann.  However, I did cut off the legs, built new shorter ones, and wrapped the tank with individual boards which were stained and weathered.  This is the only plastic kit on the module.  The sawmill, turntable (a Giant Foods ice cream quart container lid), and maintenance shed were all freelanced projects.

Scenery is based on Dave Frary's water soluble method with some of my own techniques.  I start with an earth color shade of paint, then sprinkle dyed sawdust, ground foam, real dirt, whatever seems to look right.  All this is held in place with acrylic matte medium cut 3:1.  The trees are just weeds (goldenrod, astible, saspia and others that I have no idea what they are). It's the shape that is important.   After trimming them to the desired shape, the weeds are dipped in matte medium, then rolled in ground foam and/or dyed sawdust.  I haven't seen a commercially available tree yet that I liked.  The tall evergreens are bamboo skewers painted a gray-brown to resemble tree bark color with Woodland Scenics foam sheets cut into triangles, then slid down the "trunks".

As far as the logs on the log buggies and tree stumps, they are just azalea and Japanese holly branches from various lawns I do work in.  I try to use different varieties because their texture and color is different to represent different species of trees.

As stated earlier, all scenery is held in place with matte medium.  The buildings are all glued in place as setting them up each time would be a chore.

And yes, J.D., there are other scales incorporated on the module -- but only three (N, Nn3 and HO figures, vehicles and detailing parts).  Although I have received quite a bit of verbal abuse over this minute detail, I do feel the logging theme was captured on the module, just not the backwoods flavor I wanted.

However, I don't plan to stop here.  I would like to have a companion module called Ragg Mountain ready for the GATS show in October, 1998.   Ragg Mountain will be a transition module which will fit between Naughton Timberworks and Port Sara, which is also planned to debut in October.

I've enjoyed building these modules, especially the scenery aspect.  I would rather scenic a module than run trains on them.  I look forward to the members arriving in Port Sara, going over Ragg Mountain and passing Naughton Timberworks in October.

But for now, I think I'll go over to the bedroom window and wait for the Southern 4:15 to arrive at Strasburg Depot.