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: