Category: Pakesley Mill & Timber Co.

With a design in mind, I started by painting the backdrop. I did this before putting in the basic foreground scenery structure because the foreground would make it difficult to paint the distant hills.

I followed the approach outlined in Dave Frary’s “Realistic Model Railroad Scenery” book. First I painted the sky; then I added a line of distant trees. I used cheap flat acrylic paints picked up at the local Michael’s arts and craft store and used a simple foam brush for both:

Here’s a picture of the module with these two areas painted in:

The cardboard mockups are standing in for the station/warehouse building at the dock and the water tank. I then added a second line of distant trees on top of the first line. This second line of trees was a slightly more intense green that the first. I also used a little spray of flat white enamel at this point to increase the illusion of distance.

Finally, I switched to a bristle brush and followed the Hales’ method of painting trees as described in recent issues of Railroad Model Craftsman: you just get a little bit of paint on the end of the bristle brush and just daub it onto the backdrop. This works very well for recreating Ontario forests. I squeezed out several shades of green onto my palette (a margarine tub lid) and then mixed different shades for blotting. I finally went back with a fine brush and some grey / white / black paint and painted on some tree trucks. There are a fair number of white birch trees in this area and I wanted to capture them on the backdrop.

I’m pretty pleased about how the backdrop turned out. It looks great without a lot of work. Here’s the east end of the module:

Unfortunately, I did not match the colours of the backdrop to the ground foam I was using and later on had to go back and repaint the trees. I strongly recommend purchasing your ground foam early and matching the backdrop colours to it.

Before I started slinging paint and plaster around, I wanted to cover the basic open grid benchwork with a layer of foam. After looking around, I decided to break open the piggybank and buy some of Woodland Scenics 1/4″ and 1/2″ foam sheets. These things are expensive but I felt it was necessary to use such thin sheets to help keep the roadbed looking like it was put on top of the ground. I used 1/2″ foam on the north side of the track and 1/4″ on the south side to create the feeling that the ground slopes from the north to south.

At this point, it became very clear that I really didn’t have a clue on what to do next. Like many other things, designing scenery from a photograph is much easier to get right than trying to make things up in your head. So I started searching around for photographs that I could use as a basis for the scenery design for the dock module. I don’t have any pictures of the Key Valley Railway around its dock, so I turned to another railway in the area that has a lot more photographic documentation: the Huntsville and Lake of Bays Railway. I found a picture of the H&LoBRwy. docks at North Portage in the 1920’s which showed a panoramic view of the area that matched the vantage point of my dock module. Working from the photograph made it much easier to design the basic scenery structure, in particular, setting the horizon and determining how much of distant hills should be visible.

Editor’s Note: In 2005, I exchanged some emails with Dave Robinson who provided the following photograph which if I had in 2001 would have substantially changed the design of the Dock Module:

After reading a lot of differing opinions on backdrop materials, I decided to try 0.060″ sheet styrene. The best reference on sheet styrene backdrops is Marty McGuirk’s Back to Basics column in the April 2000 Model Railroader.

I had some difficulty locating a company that would cut a 4’x8′ sheet of styrene into 3 16″x8′ sheets. I finally found Commercial Plastics here in Calgary who did the cuts for no additional charge.

I decided on 12″ radius corners at each of the three corners of the module. In order to line things up easily, I marked the wooden module structure at key places. I then calculated the linear distance of backdrop need to match up with this point (using the rule that the circumference of a circle = 2*pi*radius; therefore the length of a 90 degree curve is pi*radius/2). Then I just put the styrene in place, matching up the marks as I went.

I used latex contact cement to glue the styrene to the wooden module structure which worked very well. Because a single 8′ section was not long enough to fit the module, I spliced two sheets together with an 8″ splice plate between them. I used styrene putty to fill the small gaps at the splice. Here’s a photo of the backdrop while the cement was drying:

At the left side exit of the module, I built a little flap of styrene to cover a very unattractive view of the benchwork which can be seen here:

One thing I would do different on the next module is to give the styrene a light sanding with a fine grit sandpaper before installing in the module. It is relatively easy to chip the paint on the unroughed sheet styrene. Touch wood; I have not scratched anything yet but the potential is there. Roughing up the surface would give the paint something to adhere to.

I’ll be using DCC on the PM&TCo. so the wiring is pretty straightforward. I ran two feeder bus wire roughly parallel to the mainline track from one end of the module to the other. On the recommendation of the Digitrax group, these bus wires are solid 12 gauge copper. Such a large wire is necessary to keep voltage losses down.

Each piece of rail has a 18 gauge solid copper feeder wire. It may be overkill but at 5 minutes per feeder, it didn’t take me long to install them all for the module. I tried Tony Koester’s approach of attaching the feeder like a spike to the side of the rail as described in the August 1998 issue of Model Railroader. It works quite well and after I painted the shiny parts black to match the rails, they all pretty much disappeared. The advantage of ‘feeder-as-a-spike’ approach is that you can add the feeders after the track was been laid.

Connecting the feeder and the bus was done with 3M Scotchlok IDC wire connectors, model 567. The only soldering required was to wire the feeders and the frog wire to the microswitch for the turnout control. These connectors are not the easiest to find; in the US, try Mouser Electronics; in Canada, try Electrosonic.

I’m using Boone Morrison’s turnout throw system as described in the November / December 1997 issue of the Narrow Gauge and Short Line Gazette. It is a simple mechanical system to swing the turnout points as well as route the power to the frog. I looked at electric switches but decided that a simple mechanical approach would fit the 1920’s layout better. I built my first one in an afternoon after gathering all the parts together. It works very nicely and keeps good pressure on the points in both directions.

I followed Bill Darnaby’s approach of marking the turnout control in a white/red colour code to denote the main and branch routing through turnouts. Rather than using a round knob, I chose a 3/8″ diameter dowel cut about 1″ long. A hole drilled in the one end was force-fit over the wire coming from the turnout control. Works very well.

I moved next to laying track. The PM&TCo. is my first model railroad to use handlaid track so I took some time to practice building switches before working on the module. I found it very enjoyable and not that difficult; just take your time and make sure everything is the right gauge.

If you are interested in handlaying track, I strongly suggest Kalmbach’s new book on track “Trackwork and Lineside Detail for Your Model Railroad”. Tony Koester’s chapter on building switches is the best one I’ve come across. Another good resource is Rick Fortin’s articles in the May and June 1998 issues of Railroad Model Craftman.

I pretty much followed Tony’s methods. One area I was not too happy with was using diluted white glue to glue the ballast down. I have a few spots where I got some white residue on the ballast. Next time I will probably try something different, like Woodland Scenics dry ballast glue which you mix with the ballast and then wet.

I cut my own throw bars from a 1mm thickness printed circuit board. I followed suggestions from the On3 e-mail group and used Radio Shack’s silver solder to solder the point rails to the throw bar.

I built the module out of 3/8″ plywood; Iain Rice suggests that 1/4″ plywood is sufficient; however I had a few sheets of 3/8″ lying around.

I constructed four L-girders using 3″ and 1 1/2″ strips of plywood. Cross pieces were 3″ strips of plywood and use an overlapping joint system with the L-girders. The subroadbed is 3/8″ plywood with 1/2″ Homasote on top. All joints are glued together with white glue; no nails or other fasteners were used.

The benchwork is supported by a robust two-track shelving system that I purchased at Lee Valley Tools. The shelving standards are lag-bolted to the wall studs using 1/4″ by 2 1/2″ lag bolts. The brackets come in different lengths; I’m using the 11″ and 14″ brackets. I’ve installed the brackets on 16″ intervals using an electronic water level to get them all at the same height.

The track is 54″ inches from the floor. It’s a nice height for viewing; I have a footstool available to work on the layout. I’ve also added some shelving under the module for magazines, etc.

I used an utility knife to bevel the sides the Homasote to a 1:1.5 angle. I then painted all the cut edges of Homasote with a ground coloured flat paint to seal it.

Finally, I added the side and back pieces of plywood to the module. This creates the display box look for each module and will support the backdrop.

I’ve always been a big fan of narrow gauge equipment, so I’ve always been looking for a prototype that fits the narrow gauge mold. While the prototype KVR was standard gauge, there is no reason to think that the Lauder Company couldn’t have built the railway as a narrow gauge carrier from the beginning to save money.

I like this prototype-freelance approach as it permits me flexibility in modeling locomotives, rolling stock, etc. I will try, where possible, to model the KVR buildings and trackage patterns from photographs, and will keep rolling stock and locomotives from the right eras.

Why O scale? I like the size for building rolling stock and buildings. The drawback is, of course, that O scale takes up much more room than, say, HO scale. But the PM&TCo. will be a simple railway with a very low trackage to scenery ratio.

The PM&TCo. has been designed for operation from the beginning. I hope to run all the trains the prototype KVR ran, including the passenger operation via railcar. I will be using a car waybill system to direct car movements, and may someday even recreate the phone system for dispatching the railway.