Dawson Creek Subdivision - British Columbia Railway - H0

[Twist]

Hi there.

Last week I made a final decision. I was not happy with the location of my helix for a long time but was afraid of rebuilding it. But why stay with something what is not working and looking the way I want it to. So I removed all foam,track and benchwork of the helix and a small part of the benchwork next to it. I left the base of the helix untouched but moved it from the middle of the room into the right corner. This gives some space in front of it for scenery and a little bit more isle space.I started relay the track and made some measurements for the hights of the first level of the helix. All worked fine and I made a good start. I hope to finish it next week. I´ll show more progress the next days and how it all will work.
First picture is when the helix was buildsome time ago.


Here are some first pictures how the room is looking now.I will take a picture from the same angle to see the difference

New benchwork in place.

Started with some plywood. I have to make the cuts for the subroadbed and screw it to the risers. Landscape will be made from foam cut to shape. There will be a farmscene in front of the tracks and some fields in the background behind the tracks. Maybe a dirtroad....trees,bushes...etc.
More pictures will follow tomorrow if I find some time to work onthe layout this evening.

Thanks for looking,
Regards,Chris

[Twist]

There is some little progress going on on the helix. Track is glued and nailed down up two turns. The start for the new mill spur is also glued down and I layed out some track and structures for the Canfor mill. I arranged the new trackwork for the engine service,too.

Trackwork started


two more rounds to go.


There will be a mid level with some scenery and a siding


Leaving Chetwynd yard. Right track is the subdivision up through the helix to Dawson Creek, the other track is the main down to Vancouver hidden staging (one round through the helix down)


Track in front is the spur to Canfor mill, the other is the sub to Dawson Creek




New location for the Canfor mill....between the main and the backdrop will be only some scenery with trees and some hills...The entrance to the helix will be hidden with a small roadbridge.

And finally the new arrangement for the engine service.



I´ll redo the wall of the shopbuilding with another Pikestuff wall and add two openings for the tracks to it...... Still a lot of work to do to finish the helix but I´m very happy with the new look. On to of the Helix will be a small village, not much more than a road with some structures. The farm will be located at the old location of the engine house .....

I hope that the mid level on the helix with the siding will be working as it´s supposed to be... to add some time to the way to or from Dawson Creek. There will be track,a dirt road and maybe a lost building like my Saw Pit store, some junk around it...That´s all...
So I hope the pictures are showing and more progress will follow soon.

Thanks for looking and any comments are very appreciated,
Regards,Chris

[Twist]

Hi,

made some progress on the mill area. I put in some foam. This will be the base for scenery later.I also build a Pikestuff bridge and put it in place. There will be a dirt road going over the bridge and downhill to the mill. I place some old structures around to see, if my trackplan will work. The tracks will be glued to 5mm kork and the structures will be placed on 10mm styropor.



But next step is to finish the backdrop for that area, put a piece of plywood to the end of the woodchiptrack and to put the backdrop up behind the mill. I bought some fine wiremesh to cover the odd shaped space between the backdrop and the mainline...so a lot of things to do before I could continue on the helix.
Regards,Chris

[Twist]

Hi there,
so it´s been some time but I made some progress on my Helix. I cancelled the idea of adding a midlevel with the siding to it. I decided to place the siding on top of the helix on the last turn. That one is visible around the small village and will be partially hidden by some scenery. So you could not see the complete loop. This way I could build the siding a bit longer and the shorter track could hold a 12 50ft car train with two 4-axle engines and an caboose.track is glued down half way of the siding. I hope to find some time next week to finish trackwork and make the connection to the old tracks in front of the bridge. I´m still thinking about what bridge I´ll use and for now I´ll go with the Walthers Single Track Truss bridge but maybe I´ll change this later and rebuild the older wooden trestle as a smaller and shorter version of the Kiskatinaw Railroad Bridge.I also started to add some fascia to the upper level.




At the Canfor mill on the level below, most of the tracks are glued down and the feederwires aer added.The picture was taken before that work was done. The woodchiptrack extends behind the backdrop. So I have the space for three empty woodchipcars to be loaded. The hole in the wall will be hidden by some tubes etc. This track will be on groundlevel with a lot of woodchips and dirt .In front of the loading shed and the freeloading area will be some type of concrete surface and also a lot of dirt etc.



Last part on my list was some more work on my engine service area. I added the Walthers diesel house and finished the tracklayout. I will add some kork to the top of the styropor to get the correct hide for the tracks. I will add some more tanks etc. concrete tabs and much more. I think I will get the railhead hight by adding kork and some styrene on top of it painted a concrete color. I also added an caboose track to store up to four vans.





And one last view looking north out of the engine house.


I hope to get finished with tracklaying next week and could start with the buildings for the mill and the engineservice.

Any comments are very appreciatet. Thanks for looking.

Regards,Chris

[Catt]

Looks like quite the ambitious project Chris. I like your Pikestuff kitbashes.They are very believable looking.

[Twist]

Hi there,
again it´s been some time since I last updated my work so this time here is a bigger update.
I had a small test ops with two friends and we found out some small issues with other spots on the layout. The first one was the Northwestern Woodpreservers Planer Mill on the upper level. It was nice but the tracks are hard to reach over the buildings. So I reworked that area again. The structures moved to the back and the tracks to the front...I changed the purposes of the tracks. I have now one track for outbound plywood under a shed, one track for inbound tank and Boxcars next to another building and one for inbound pulpwood.


The mainline is hidden by the mill structures. I´m very happy with the new design and it´s working out nice. Here´s an overall view of the area with the new trackwork and structures.

The next area I started to work was the place for the engine service. After the tests with the Walthers dieselhouse I decided it was to big and did not match the look I wanted for it. So I searched the net and my books for pictures and finaly found some place I like. It´s the old PGE enginehouse at Lillooet. This could work for me in a similar way and I decided to try to build something like that. Here´s the picture I found on Flickr. It´s not my own picture and I use it for reference. I have some similar photos in one of my BCR books but this one shows the tracks better.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/37908073@N...907755857/

And here´s my version of that place. The enginehouse was scratchbuild/kitbashed from pikestuff parts, the Shop building is also made from pikestuff walls. The other structures may be used as the are or will be changed with other structures.



As you can see in the last picture I shortened the main to the far left. The caboose track will be extended to the left track next to the engine service shop and it will be connected with a turnout and the small structure in front of the tanks will be removed and there will be a track for delivering dieselfuel for the engines.


Some engines stored in the engine house and on the tracks around. I have to do some work on the base for the structure and start with some basic landscape.

And after all that work I decided to made a last change on the layout. This time on the upper level in the other room around the mainstreet and the industries around. I reworked the tracks and turnouts and now I have a more straight look. I also removed one of the two elevators, moved the mainstreet into the far right corner. On the liftout in front of the window the structures moved to the back and so giving more room for operations.

New place of the mainstreet. There will be a small scrapyard behind the gas station.

Maybe this will move a bit to the right to allow two longer tracks for the elevator.

A&C Cylinder Head rebuilders to the right, Mikes Custom Woodworking to the left.

The new place for Diamond Fertilizer.

The left over elevator. You can see the rebuild still in progress but it´s finshed now. Have to take some pics.

Loomis Express building moved into the corner to give more room for the trucks in front.

I´m still thinking about the structure. I don´t know if I´ll stay with that structure or will add a new structure made from pikestuff walls and doors, which will match the look of the prototype much better. Here´s a google street view picture of it. I could simulate a much bigger structure with the pikestuff kit.

So this was a big update on my layout but I´m quite happy with he changes I made. Now I can go back to finish the work on the helix with the two new bridges and the final trackwork.

Removed the old trestle but have not made a final decision for that.

This one will be placed right to the other bridge over the tracks heading out of the helix and will hide the hole to the helix.

Thank you for reading and following.Any comments are very welcome.

Regards,Chris

[Canadian Atlantic Railway]

It all looks good except for the last two pictures which don't seem to be showing up. I think going with a Pikestuff kit for the Loomis building would also give you a better look for the area.

[Twist]

Peir,thank you for the feedback....after looking on those pictures of Loomis I think I have to make a decision,soon....and I think I´ll shift to the Pikestuff kind of building....
I think I know my mistake for the last two pictures. I´ll fix it .Thanks for the advice.

Regards,Chris

[sailormatlac]

The new mill by the helix looks very promising. The scene is well composed and the higher mainline make for an interesting railfan spot.

I'm always impress by the sheer scale of that layout! ;-)

Matt

[Twist]

Hi there,
Matt,thank you for the kind words. The layout isn´t as big as it looks. The room with the helix has about 16 square meter and is the biggest of the rooms. All those corners were a challenge to work with... I wished I have more and longer straight walls....The layout was planned only in the helix room at the beginning and grew up with the time.
Here are some recent updates of my layout.....and again some changes.....only small changes.
First change was done to thenorthwestern wood preservers plywood mill again. I was thinking how the prototype would do it. I think they will feed raw wood into the mill on one side, add some ingredients during the manufacturing and will get finished and packed plywood on the other side....so it will make no sense to deliver the glue and paint on one end,the wood on the other and load the plywood in the middle....so this is what I came up with:

First part is a part of the area where the Logs and pulpwood is stored. The logs will be deivered by trucks as is on the prototype

Next step is the inbound track for tank and boxcars.


And the second track is for loading the outbound finished plywood into boxcars,flatcars and trucks.This will be the other end of the mill.


It´s only a rough mockup with leftover structures etc. but it will give me a better feeling for the whole thing.

The second part I´m working on was the interchangetrack and the look of this end of the layout.
I moved Wright´s food service around the corner and removed the cold storage. I placed the interchange to the rebuild area next to the teamtrack with the siding.


This gives me some new space where Wright´s was located. The single track is the NAR/CN row heading into Alberta. I will scratchbuild a road overpass maybe a third structure...I´m still searching for something maching to the two other buildings and will add some backyard scenery to it...some trees bushes etc.


More progress wil follow soon. Thanks for looking.

Regards,Chris

[MountainMan]

Coming along beautifully!

[sailormatlac]

16 m2!!! OK... now that's a real challenge to cram all this in such a small room!

It's interesting to see you work and rework every scene and industry. That's a necessary evil and much better than planning over and over on paper. The way you rationalized a few industry recently is fun to follow.

Have you the chance to operate the layout as you build it?

Matt

[Twist]

Matt,
thanks. I´ll do a lot of planning with Anyrail when I´m at my workoffice and have some spare time. All of the changes happened because I found some issues here and there while operating the layout. I can operate the layout while I´m building it. The only thing currently not working is the rund from the lower level to the upper level because I have to add two tortoises to the switches at the siding on top of the helix. But I can operate both parts of the layout independend from the other. And switching the upper level alone is a lot of work to do
It´s not all in those 16m2. That is the room with the helix on the right side of the attached plan.. The longest wall with the Dawson Creek yard is about 8m in lenght, the next part around the corner is about 3m and the last room to the left is 2,50 x 3,98m .

You can see how I have planned the landscape and placement of structures. More progress will follow,soon.

Regards,Chris

[Twist]

Hi there,
It´s been a month since my last post. I was very busy with my work and had not so much time for the hobby. I was not so happy with the last conversion on the layout for some time. The Modules and benchwork I made for this part of the layout were not all level and I was not happy with them. So finaly I decided to remove that part for now. It was not a big deal to remove the trackwork and cork. The wood will be fired up the next winter .The industries will be placed on other locations on the layout and the G.E.R.N. Industries Ltd. Facilitiy got some more tracks and has grown bigger...Here is the new trackplan. As you can see I changed the liftout at the entrance door,too. I removed the curves and have now a straight piece of track...I also started with the trackwork redo at Dawson Creek Yard. I used a shematic track diagram of the prototype for that and only removed one of the yardtracks and the spur to National Food. I added one track in front of the No.3 elevator and it will be used as teamtrack and also for loading TOFC cars.

I started with the G.E.R.N. complex. The trackwork is glued down and wired. From left to right starting with the truck loading structure.There will be a background structure behind the warehose connecting it with the mill building. I´ll add a door for boxcars to that new building where the track will disapear into it.

Mill structure with the elevator in the background. I will add an addition to the mill with an overpass to the other side of tracks next to the elevator. There will be also some pipes etc. going over the tracks to the mill.


Diamond Fertilizer on the right side to the front (blue and beige structures with the silo) is one of the railserved customers from the old part of the layout.




I also have some first pictures of the new arranged Dawson Creek yard.First pictures entering the yard from the east coming back from the G.E.R.N. area around the next corner


From right to left or front to backdrop are mainline, two yardtracks, runaround and elevator track


Looking from the other direction with the station and freighthouse in the far distance


More pictures will follow as soon as I could do some more work on the yard. I hope to get the Industry area with G.E.R.N. finishe d by the end of the week with painting the backdrop and adding some cork as a baselayer for the paved areas. I´ll use styrene sheet for most of the paving again. Some tracks will be paved in and some not.

Thanks for looking. Any coments are very appreciated.

Regards,Chris

[Rscott417]

What program do you use to make your track plan? It's an exact diagram of your actual layout, I'd like to start messing around with some ideas but I'm terrible when it comes to track programs.