Quebec South Shore Railway

[sailormatlac]

Thanks guys! Good to see this kind of "insignificant small endeavour" can gather such interest.

Couldn't agree more! This is shaping up to be a really great looking layout with a simple, yet interesting theme and clearly shows what can be accomplished in a small space. I abandoned any notion of again trying to fill the basement with a large layout that would probably never get finished, in favor of doing a simple, yet prototypical industrial switching operation - that I might actually get to a finished state before I'm called to the roundhouse in the sky. Will be watching this thread with great interest.

Until recently, I was always blaming a lot of exterior circumstances to stay a semi-armchair modeller: the house weird geometry, lack of time, lack of "a great prototype to fully replicate", etc. Honestly, it was getting tiring and I really wanted to try many things for once. I never fully completed a layout except my first layout as a child. So keeping simple is a good reason to move forward, have fun and evolve in the hobby. Better small than a big dream that goes nowhere. I'm always amazed how great basement filling layouts habitually shine throught a very few select, small and simple scenes.

@Gene: The great thing about going small is that the scene is less crowded and have better proportions, making it visually larger and more prototypical. Each day I find new photographic spots on the layout.



My layout is heavily inspired by the old grain elevator near Route Lagueux in St-Nicolas (east to Charny) on CN mainline on Quebec South Shore. At this very place is a typical exemple of a highway access road concrete overpass built in the early 60s when Quebec was developing its highway network.

I've always found it a nice locale when I was a kid and my father would drive us to a aunt living in the area. When I was 4 years old (circa 1987), I was absolutely convinced I saw two steam locomotives there and draw them back home... They had orange cabs and CN wet noodle on the tender! I think I probably saw some old MLW units in wet noodle which was unusual for me since I only knew about the zebra them back then!!!

Anyway, I decided to make a replica of it to hide the staging area.

The prototype was measured with Google Earth help. Deck and piles are made out of 1/4" MDF. Lots of fun on the table saw! Well, in fact, it was more straight forward than I anticipated.

MDF parts were glued together with carpenter glue and illustration board was used to define the underside of transversal girders. They would be used as lost form when pouring plaster.

I finally used plaster of Paris to fill the gaps and get an even surface. The back of a saw was used to shape correctly the plaster. Some rough spots are there, but I'll keep them to represent crumbling concrete (eh! Quebec is famous for it's sh*tty concrete infrastructures and poorly built roads... looks like 400 years isn't enough to learn the lesson up there!!!). Joke aside, it will help to get a more realistic look. I often feel plastic kits and styrene lacks the texture to make believeable massive concrete structures. Anyway, I hope the structure will hold well together. I was thinking about sealing it completely prior to any painting work to make sure it won't warp during summer.













****EDIT**** I should have sealed the MDF before doing the plaster job. The overpass suffered significant sagging in both directions. Consider it a lesson learned. I painted the top side with latex paint to add some moisture on the other side of the board to help straighten it before the plaster fully dries and used clamps to give some tension in the structure to get a convex shape. I'll see tomorrow if it works.

Matt