PRODUCTS

I N F O R M AT I O N S TAT I O N

Getting started in
Proto:87 modeling
 A small layout you can build
Roque Bluffs,
a Maine
T
he various MODEL RAILROADER
Planning a “no room project layouts built over the years
have assumed many shapes and
for a layout” layout sizes, and several have introduced new
concepts and techniques. This project
By Iain Rice layout is one of the smallest yet, and
Photos by the author the first to be conceived and executed
outside the United States.
Those of us living outside the U. S.
have had to become adept at squeezing
a lot of visual and operational interest
into very small layouts. Many of our
layouts are also portable and make use
of lightweight construction materials.
These are all concepts relevant to a
growing number of U. S. modelers.
Our Roque Bluffs (pronounced
“rock bluffs”) project layout has a U. S.
setting but explores many European
layout ideas, including the use of
Proto:87 (P:87) HO track and wheel
standards that are closer to actual 1:87
scale prototype dimensions. P:87 is also
similar to the British Protofour system.
Commercial P:87 products, notably
NorthWest Short Line’s superb wheels,
are now widely available, and most
aspects of fine-scale modeling can be

Seaport
accomplished with familiar techniques.
Our Roque Bluffs project shows you
just what is entailed in building a layout
to P:87 standards, but it can also be eas-
ily adapted if you wish to build it to
normal HO practices.
Site? What site?
Roque Bluffs is a “no room for a lay-
out” layout. It sits in a gap between the
upper and lower bookshelf units in my
home office. This tight space allows a
total layout size of 11⁄2 x 12 feet, with
height restricted to 17".
PART 1
Roque Bluffs is one of five layouts
that I’ve built to fit this space, enabling
me to overcome one of the main draw-
backs of small layouts – lack of scope –
by changing the entire layout. The other
layouts are my P:87 1950s Dutch steam
tramway, two different British railway
terminals in P4, and a French-prototype
HO meter-gauge layout. And no, they’re
not all finished!
All the layouts are sectional and
portable. With the exception of the
Dutch tramway, they also all require an
add-on staging board. My staging is
1. Watched by a row of curious Sheepscot
gulls atop the rendering plant, Maine Central
U18B no. 403 makes a rare appearance at
Roque Bluffs, our 11⁄2 x 12-foot shelf railroad
built to Proto:87 fine-scale standards.
designed around a cassette system,
which allows me to use a common stag-
ing board for the various layouts with
trains that rest on movable cassettes
(see “Staging solutions” in the April
MR). However, conventional staging
would work just as well for Roque
Bluffs – it would just need more space
than I have available.
The display slot in my office has a
permanent backdrop and built-in light-
ing. It is situated 44" above the floor, a
good viewing height. All my layouts use
the same basic control system.
When my layouts are not in use, I
store them on racks in my basement
utility area. My layout-building bench
is also in this area. I have an additional
bench in my workshop (an 8 x 12-foot
garden shed). This arrangement ensures
that I keep messy work out of the living
areas of our small home. It also allows
me to have two layouts “on the bench,”
one set up in my office and two more
stored on the racks.
As a self-contained portable layout,
Roque Bluffs and its cassette staging
board can be set up in any 12-foot-long
space. I designed Roque Bluffs to be the
kernel of a larger model railroad as it
can be easily extended at either end.
The joys of stub terminals
A stub terminal with a fiddle yard is a
very popular subject for compact lay-
outs in Europe. First, it needs a single
set of staging tracks as there’s only one
way out of the dead end. Feeding the
end of a branch line direct from staging
means that trains always depart the
same way, avoiding any problems of ori-
entation. Second, terminals often have
more interesting track layouts and more
complete facilities than through sta-
tions, with runarounds, extra spurs,
engine terminals, and so on. Finally,
they are more interesting to operate –
no one gets to highball right on through!
Terminals take many forms. In
Europe, the country branchline termi-
nal has long been popular with model-
ers, but many of these are quite large
and difficult to compress. More recently,
cramped city, industrial, and harbor ter-
minals have become common small-lay-
out subjects.
Roque Bluffs is the terminal of a fic-
tional branch inspired by the real East-
port Branch of the Maine Central
(MEC), which ran south-eastward from
2. A lighthouse is a signature structure of
any Maine coastal town. The Roque Bluffs
Light is an altered Builders in Scale model of
Brandt Point Light on Nantucket Island.
 Roadway Grade up Cannery
Hidden switching Warehouse complex Boiler
Meiner’s Town Rock
lead in staging Top of grade water tank house Roadway Firehouse cut
Diner

1⁄2"
1⁄2"
1 ⁄2 "
0"

0"

Staging tracks Lighthouse

Fish meal Quay Oil depot Harbor Pier
Section joint plant Rip-rap Boatyard 2
1 4 Slipway office
3
Extended version 8'-0" x 14'-6" Compact version 1'-6" x 12'-0"
Extra section Extra section

Inner harbor Approach

Extra
section
ROQUE BLUFFS
Minimum turnout: No. 6
Maximum grade: 3 percent
Minimum curve radius: 33"

Careful detailing of track and

equipment and a well thought-out
operating plan bring a Maine sea-
port community to life on Iain
Staging
Rice’s HO project layout.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF PROTO:87 WHEEL AND TRACK STANDARDS

P roto:87 (P:87) wheel and track stan-

dards for HO scale are very close to
true prototype dimensions reduced to
1:87 scale. The standard was first set
out as long ago as 1966, when the
Anglo-Australian Model Railway Study
Group (MRSG) produced workable true-
scale standards for a number of popular
model railroad scales. Two MRSG stan-
dards have found widespread favor in
Britain: 4mm/ft, 1:76 (known as Proto-
four or P4) and 7mm/ft. 1:43 O scale
(Scaleseven or S7). In North America
and parts of mainland Europe, the
related 1⁄4" O scale standard, 1⁄4 AAR or,
more recently, Proto:48, has also been
taken up. These standards have been
well-proven in three decades of use.
Proto:87 has a much shorter history.
The most notable pioneer was British
modeler Brian Harrap, who built a com-
plex HO triple-gauge Austrian-prototype
layout in 1989 using the standard. Brian
was followed by other groups and indi-
viduals in Europe who decided to experi-
ment with the MRSG dimensions; in the
Netherlands, the Anglo-Dutch Scalefour
Society set out to build an ambitious
Dutch P:87 layout, Portiershaven.
In the process of evolving their lay-
outs, the Dutch modelers commissioned
British manufacturer Alan Gibson to pro-
duce commercial P:87 components such
Proto:87 standards use wheel and track
dimensions that are close to 1⁄87 of proto-
type dimensions.
as locomotive and rolling stock wheel-
sets, and wheel and track gauges. The
availability of these critical components
led others to take an interest.
In the U. S., P:87 modeling started
with the launch of the P:87 Special
Interest Group Web site, which attracted
interest from around the globe. Ideas
were exchanged, and various individuals
set out to see how P:87 would work in a
U. S. context. Canadian modeler Rene
Gourley produced some of the first P:87
North American models, which included
a Canadian National SW12 switcher and
modern freight cars converted from com-
mercial models, together with scratch-
built 1890s-era equipment.
Discussion within the SIG covered a
wide range of topics, but it was the
fusion of the European experience with
well-established National Model Railroad
Association procedures and proven mod-
eling techniques that led to practical
solutions and put the MRSG P:87 stan-
dard firmly on the path to becoming a
worldwide norm. P:87 became a viable
option for North American modelers with
the arrival of commercial components
and gauges. Roger Miener, a P:87 SIG
member, persuaded NorthWest Short
Line to produce P:87 wheelsets, while
member Ed McCamey designed and had
NMRA-pattern P:87 gauges laser-cut in
stainless steel.
Paul Dolkos covered P:87 in his Nov-
ember 1998 MODEL RAILROADER article,
“Proto:Scale – Standards based on the
prototype lead to greater realism.”
Recently, Kadee has started to pro-
duce its close-to-scale no. 58 coupler,
with other couplers arriving from Ser-
gent, McHenry, and Accurail. – Iain Rice
 More on our Web site
To read the November 1998 “Proto:Scale”
article by Paul Dolkos, visit our Web site
at www.modelrailroader.com
3. A truck belonging to Dolkos Oils leaves the
tank farm to deliver early fall heating oil.
4. A Maine Central S1 delivers a tank car of
heating oil. A carefully thought-out track
plan makes the most of limited space.
 A small layout you can build
Roque Bluffs
Lightweight bench
No space for a layout?
Start by looking in
your office
By Iain Rice
Photos by the author
L
ast month I introduced you to
Roque Bluffs on the Maine Central,
a shelf-type HO project layout built
to Proto:87 practices. (You could also
easily build this railroad in traditional
HO.) This month I’ll show how I found
room for a model railroad in my “no
space for a layout” house and how I
built the lightweight and sturdy bench-
work for Roque Bluffs.
A model railroad slot
Roque Bluffs is one of five inter-
changeable layouts I’ve built to fit an
18"-deep, 121⁄2-foot-wide display space –
I call it the “slot” – in my office book-
shelf system. Because I have a variety
of layouts to choose from, I can change
my model railroad whenever the mood
strikes me.
The shelf units in my office consist
of a 44"-high free-standing lower unit
and a wall-mounted upper unit. In
between is a 17"-high by 121⁄2-foot-wide
space that’s ideal for a shelf layout.
To make a base for my interchange-
able layouts, I installed a 15"-wide piece
of laminated 1⁄2" particle board. Home
improvement stores sell these boards as
shelving. I made sure the board was
level and square before I firmly screwed
it in place on top of the bookshelves.
The shelves house my collection of
model railroad magazines, which I
keep in large-size laundry detergent
cartons. The boxes are efficient and
cost-free but are not pleasant to look
at! Thus, I conceal the soap cartons
behind drapes that run on nylon cur-
tain track supported by a strip of 1 x 2
lumber mounted under the front edge
of my new shelf-top. As the layouts are
mostly a tad wider than the 15" top, the
curtains are effectively set back some
way beneath the layout front fascia.
A perspective drawing of my model
railroad slot is shown in fig. 1.
Lighting Roque Bluffs
Another particle-board shelf runs
above the layout display slot, which is
also 15" deep and spans the full 121⁄2 feet
of wall. This shelf is framed with 1 x 2
lumber and supported by heavy-duty
shelf brackets, one on every other wall
stud, as it carries quite a load – files,
more magazines, and boxes of pho-
tographs. It also keep dust off the layout
and supports the layout lighting system.
Concealed 35-watt fluorescent lights
illuminate the railroad. The 4-foot
“slimline” lights have small-diameter
tubes and are mounted sideways on the
1 x 2 framing that supports the top
shelf. I nailed a 4" fascia strip to the
front of the shelf to hide the fixtures.
Mounting the lights at the front of
the display ensures that the forward
edge of the layout is adequately lit. Ide-
ally, these lights should be another
three or four inches out from the wall –
but there isn’t space to permit this and
still open my office door!
I prefer fluorescent lights for model
displays. First, fluorescent tubes are not
“point” light sources, which dodges the
multiple-shadow effect that often
results from using a number of incan-
descent lamps. Second, fluorescent
lights produce little heat – an important
consideration when the lights are as
close to the models as these are. And
PART 2
Fig. 1 THE “SLOT”

work Fascia and

side pieces
are dark blue
to match
drapes

Lighting –
4-foot slimline
Upper
Books

bookshelf

Lighting
4"

14"

daylight- fascia
balanced
fluorescent Viewing 12'-6"
tubes aperture 44"

Side pieces
to viewing
aperture

Support
shelf for
layout
Drapes to floor
(dark blue)
Magazine
storage
in boxes

ILLUSTRATIONS BY KELLIE JAEGER

Iain Rice’s Roque Bluffs project layout is one Fig. 2 BASE ASSEMBLY
of five interchangeable model railroads that Secure with 3⁄4"
fit an 18"-deep, 121⁄2-foot wide space in his drywall screw
office bookshelf system, proving that there’s
always room for a layout. Medium-density
fiberboard base
third, the soft-focus, even illumination Mounting blocks
is much closer to the way daylight falls for top board
on a scene, provided you want a soft
northern autumn light and not a sear- Plywood cross-
profile board
ing noontime in Nevada!
1"-square
glue block
Lightweight benchwork and girders
Roque Bluffs is made of three 4-foot Water
sections. This design allows me to easily surface
disassemble and transport the layout.
For any truly portable model railroad,
the benchwork sections must be made Slot to
Rear fit over
small enough, strong enough, and light L girder Hole for T girder
2"
enough to be easily handled. I made the wiring run
benchwork sections of the Roque Bluffs if needed
Hot glue
layout from good-quality 1⁄4" plywood, bead
3
⁄8" medium-density fiberboard (MDF), 3⁄4"fillet also
cardstock, and even paper. I used adhe- 2" makes good
sives, staples, fine steel nails, drywall gluing block
screws, nuts and bolts, and Velcro to Mounting
Small finishing nail
hold it all together. blocks for
Roque Bluffs is built on a surface of Masonite
3
⁄8" MDF, which is smooth, stable, and Front fascia
rather hard. The MDF is supported by T girder
Plywood Add-on support between
mini L girders made from 2"-wide strips splice plate profiles as needed
 of 1⁄4" plywood. My local home improve-
ment store cut 12 of these strips for me,
each 4 feet in length. Slicing them from
a standard 4 x 8-foot sheet of plywood
was economical and quick.
In a traditional railroad layout, L-
girder benchwork is used because it can
support considerable weight across a
long span. For that reason, L girders are
usually made from substantial pieces of
lumber that are glued and screwed
together. However, the essential virtue
of the L girder is that each leg of the L
braces the weak (thin) dimension of the
other leg. That remains true regardless
of the girder’s size.
Since the three sections that make
up Roque Bluffs are only 4 feet long,
Fig. 3. Accurate benchwork. The benchwork of Roque Bluffs varies in height with the sur- the mini L- or T-section girders I made
face features it supports. To create an accurate template for the benchwork, Iain first drew from 1" x 2" and 2" x 2" strips of 1⁄4" ply-
a full-size plan of the Roque Bluffs on the same sheet of medium-density fiberboard that wood provide ample strength and stiff-
will eventually form the three levels that make up the top of the layout. ness for the structure.
I glued the girders together using a
high-strength resin-based woodworking
adhesive. To hold the wood while the
glue cured, I hammered in fine steel
nails and used staples from a staple gun.
Most of the girders are 2" x 2" sections,
but the front girder on the right-hand
board, where the water of the harbor
extends inward to the rear of the scene,
is an inverted 1" x 2" T girder.
I cut plywood cross-members and
glued them inside the L girders to serve
as frame cross-braces and as supports
for the MDF top, as shown in fig. 2.
The 2"-wide girders at the base of the
structure make a good reference surface
and sit evenly on the shelf that supports
the finished layout. For this reason, I
set the support girders a bit less than
Fig 4. Custom-fit framing. With a layout template drawn full-size on the medium-density 15" apart to fit on the width of the base
fiberboard base, Iain knows exactly where he needs to place his L-girder benchwork in order shelf. All track is arranged within this
to support the different levels that will be present on the finished layout. 15" width. The area of the model can-
tilevered outward from the front girder
is scenic foreground (mostly water
areas on the Roque Bluffs).
Correctly shaping the cross-profiles
of the framing is essential. Each part of
the framework supports a particular
area of the model, so the track or other
surface feature determines the outline
of each part of the framing.
Roque Bluffs has three main levels –
the water surface, the land surface, and
the raised roadbed of the cannery spur –
and these profiles have simple outlines.
I just had to be careful that my framing
did not interfere with any of the sub-
track-level features.

Roadbed and water surfaces

Before doing any cutting, I sketched
Fig 5. An even playing field. The L and T girders are made of high-quality 1⁄4" plywood a full-size plan in pencil on my 2 x 4-
glued with woodworking adhesive. By building the benchwork on a level shelf, Iain knew foot MDF sheets. I then temporarily laid
his lightweight but strong framing would also be level and square. all the track using flextrack, overlapped
at the turnout locations, to check clear-
ances and radii. I find this works well,
as it’s easy to adjust flextrack by eye to
get nice smooth curves and transitions
and to make sure there are no awkward
kinks or tight spots. I also find it much
easier to mark track positions on the
boards when I’m using actual track.
I held the flextrack in place with
thumbtacks and marked just outside
the tie ends to establish the foundation
area of the track. The twin lines make it
easy to position the foam roadbed strip.
At the locations where the tracks
extended over the water on the pier and
the trestle, I marked the track position
on the water surface. I’ll build all the
track-supporting structures when I lay
the track. Fig. 6. Site-specific considerations. Iain has set his long main support girders so they rest
When I was satisfied with the posi- solidly on the 15"-wide shelf the layout will occupy. He gained a few extra inches of width by
tion of all the elements on the layout, I cantilevering part of the layout outward from this shelf. While all of the tracks will be sup-
inked the lines with felt-tip markers (fig. ported by the main benchwork, the extra few inches will become a scenic foreground.
3). I used a color code: track edges in
green, structure positions in black, and
cut-lines in red. To make everything
absolutely clear, I also outlined and
cross-hatched the watery areas in blue.
I then used a saber saw to cut the gently
curving front of the layout and carefully
smoothed the edge with an orbital
sander. I used the marked MDF base
pieces as templates for assembling the
framing (fig. 4), knowing that the sup-
port structure would match the surfaces
it supported.

Assembling the benchwork

Benchwork accuracy depends on
careful assembly. Building on a flat sur-
face – in my case, a level shelf – ensured
that the finished base would be both
level and square, thanks to the wide
bottom elements of the L girders resting
flat on the shelf, as shown in fig. 5. I
assembled the benchwork framing with
woodworking-grade adhesive applied
with a hot-glue gun. Fine finishing nails
held the girder pieces in position until
the adhesive cured.
I set the end profiles first. These
were made as a matched pair cut from
two pieces of 1⁄4" plywood clamped
together with 1⁄4" bolts. I left the bolts in
place until all the framing had been
assembled. With the whole layout accu-
rately aligned from the start, I knew
that Roque Bluffs’ three sections would
always go back together as intended.
I built the framing around the end-
profiles and girders. First I lined up the
girders of the adjacent sections on the
end profiles and glued them in place
using dots of hot glue on the base
flanges of the girders. Then I reinforced
each corner with 1" square blocks glued
with the resin woodworking glue. I let
Fig. 7. Finishing the benchwork. With his frame of L- and T-section girders completed, Iain
no longer needs to use the plan drawn on the fiberboard as reference and can cut the board
to separate the three main levels of the layout and attach them to the top of the benchwork.
the adhesive cure before adding the rest When I finished gluing the frame, I
of the framing. no longer needed to use the MDF piece
I had a problem with excess adhesive as a template. I cut out the water, land
squeezing out and gluing the sections surface, and raised track areas with a
together. I should have trapped some saber saw (fig. 7). I glued these pieces on
sheet plastic between the adjoining end- the cross-members with resin adhesive
profiles before I bolted them together. secured with 3⁄4" drywall screws. I added
I fitted my remaining cross-profiles a Masonite fascia later, after installing
in place on the girders and glued and the turnout motors.
nailed them in place. I made the can-
tilever pieces in front of the T girders Speedy construction
individually to fit their location (fig. 6) The light, solid, and strong bench-
and similarly glued them in place. work for Roque Bluffs was not expen-
To reinforce each joint between a sive or time-consuming, and it enabled
cross-piece and a girder, I placed a glue me to move speedily to the actual con-
block and added additional blocks struction of the layout.
along the top edges of the cross-pieces Next month I’ll show how I selected
where they would join the baseboard and detailed the right mix of freight
surfaces. Once the adhesive cures, this cars to serve the layout’s industries, and
type of light benchwork is robust and I’ll share some tips for giving rolling
surprisingly rigid. stock a Proto:87 makeover. 1
 A small layout you can build
Roque Bluffs,
rolling
L
ast month I described how I pre-
Developing an equip- pared a location in my home office
for my Roque Bluffs shelf-type HO
ment list and finding project layout and how I built the rail-
road’s lightweight and sturdy bench-
the right level of detail work. This month I’ll show how I
developed a realistic mix of rolling
stock for my fictional Maine Central
By Iain Rice branch line.
Photos by the author
Roque-ready rolling stock
“Hold on!” you say. “How come
we’re talking about rolling stock before
an inch of track has been laid?” The
answer is logistics. Roque Bluffs will be
built with the more true-to-scale
Proto:87 (P:87) HO track and wheel
dimensions. Track needs to be tested as
it’s laid, and to test P:87 track you need
P:87 equipment.
Motive power for Roque Bluffs is a
straightforward proposition, even for a
slightly obscure railroad like the Maine
Central. For many years, the Maine
Central kept a General Electric 44-ton
diesel locomotive at Calais to work its
Eastport branch. Alco S-1 and Electro-
Motive SWs were also used. All of these

stock
locomotives have been produced in
Maine Central colors in HO.
Rolling stock is even less of a prob-
lem than motive power, but first I had
to think about the level of detail that
would be standard on the Roque Bluffs.
The tread width of the wheels is the
major difference between a P:87 car
and a standard HO scale car with
wheels made to RP25 (the National
Model Railroad Association’s recom-
mended practice for standard HO). But
there’s a bit more to P:87 modeling than
swapping wheelsets. I’ve found that
PART 3
When he encountered Life-Like’s
sweet-running and well-detailed Proto
2000 Alco S-1, Iain Rice knew he had
found the right motive power for his
Roque Bluffs HO project railroad.
ultra-fine details may be prone to dam-
age on an operating layout, but I still
wanted an amount of detail that com-
plemented the finer wheels.
My ideal specifications list included
P:87 wheels in scale-width trucks,
where possible; scale-sized couplers,
with no trip pins; scale wire grabs; del-
icate ladders, stirrups, and running
boards; and realistic paint jobs.
Recent equipment from Proto 2000,
InterMountain, Bachmann, Kadee, Red
Caboose, and Athearn met my specifi-
cations right out of the box. The real
work lay in bringing equipment from
other – mostly older – sources up to the
same level of detail and finish. While I
do try to make my models authentic,
I’m not a freight-car expert, and I’ve
relied greatly on those who are for
advice. I felt that if I avoided obvious
visual anomalies like molded-on grabs,
the cars would at least look okay to me
and to everyone else except the experts.
An Alco for Roque Bluffs
Choosing a locomotive was my first
step in equipping Roque Bluffs. Initially
I envisioned an SW7 in Maine Central’s
later “solid green” switcher scheme – a
choice helped by the fact that I already
had an undecorated Athearn SW that I
knew was a cinch to convert to P:87.
The work was coming on quite well
when, in search of a Detail Associates
etched SW front grill, I paid a visit to
Henry’s Hobby House in West Boylston,
Mass. Fate was smiling that day, for the
store had just received new models
from Life-Like. One look at Life-Like’s
Proto 2000 Alco S-1 in razor sharp
Maine Central black-with-red-stripe fac-
tory paint and I forgot all about SW7s!
NorthWest Short Line’s no. 27691-4
P:87 wheelsets for Life-Like engines are
easy to install. After I installed a set of
Kadee no. 58 scale-size couplers in
place of the original couplers, the 953
was ready for service.
I added the appropriate details sup-
plied with the model and installed a
pair of Cal-Scale no. 280 brass marker
lights on the nose in approved Maine
Central style. I reworked the paint
slightly to vary the shades of black – all-
black engines are rarely uniform in
color, and using different shades on
trucks, frame, cab roof, and walkways
really brought the model to life. The
step-well ends on the pilot were picked
out in Harvest Gold. I also chemically
blackened the bright sides of the NWSL
wheels and lightly brushed them a
rusty-greasy brown.
All the new paint was brush-applied
Polly S or Humbrol acrylic, and the
engine received a moderate weathering
with powder to blend the finish and dull
the lettering and stripes a tad. This model
is superb and runs like a Rolex. It also
tracks very well in its P:87 form and
negotiates all the nooks and crannies of
Roque Bluffs without problem.
Finding the right caboose
Life-Like also supplied the caboose
for Roque Bluffs. The Life-Like model
has excellent detail and quality of finish
and is a dead-on match for the proto-
type – except for its color. It seems that
no two manufacturers agree on the
shade of Maine Central’s Harvest Gold.
(Judging by the color variations in pho-
tos of the real thing, the railroad itself
wasn’t too sure!) The dull orange of the
Life-Like caboose is the most extreme
variation I’ve encountered. I may re-
paint this car, but for the moment I’ve
contented myself with a set of NWSL
wheels, no. 58 couplers, and a touch of
paint and weathering to complete what
was literally a half-hour project. It’s a
dinky little crummy and it looks
absolutely right for Roque Bluffs.
Choosing the right freight cars
Before buying freight cars, my first
task was listing the traffic generated by
the on-line industries and the car types
needed to handle this lading. With a tiny
layout like Roque Bluffs, there’s a finite
number of cars that can be handled, so
I restricted my choice to around 20
pieces. My traffic and car-type list is set
out in the table on page 115.
My predominant need was for box-
cars – no surprise, as these are usually
the most common general-service cars.
Looking at pictures of Maine Central
trains, though, I was struck by the rela-
tively high number of home-road box-
cars found in its trains, so I decided the
mix of road names would strongly favor
the home team. Covered hoppers, on
the other hand, seemed to come from
all over the place and fish meal (a fertil-
izer and a feed for fish-farms) is a gen-
eral lading not requiring dedicated
hoppers, so I reckoned I had a free
hand. I went for a mix of older two-bay
and newer cylindrical and multi-bay
hoppers. Tank cars come in two basic
variants – single-compartment (and sin-
gle-dome) cars handling one product
only, and two- and three-compartment
Stock HO
to Proto:87
in 5 easy
steps
cars that can carry a mix of products. I
purchased both a single-dome car and a
three-dome car to serve the customers
at Roque Bluffs.
P:87 car conversions
All the equipment at Roque Bluffs
rolls on NWSL P:87 code 64 wheelsets,
and about half the cars ride on scale-
width trucks from Eastern Car Works.
The company also sells P:87 bolsters
that fit its standard truck kits. As they
currently offer 19 truck types, you
should be able to find something suit-
able! Most of my stock rides on the
common Barber 100-ton S-2 roller-
bearing trucks.
Equipping newer cars with Eastern
Car Works’ scale-width trucks and the
NWSL no. 37677-4 P:87 wheelsets on
.917" axles is generally simple, except
on some Athearn cars where the ECW
bolster gives a ride height that is too
tall. The Athearn truck mount doesn’t
permit lowering, and the alternative –
thinning the ECW bolsters – made them
too flexible. I had to reinforce them
with strips of .060" square styrene strip.
The only other snare with the ECW
trucks is ensuring that you cement
them truly square and flat. I made a
couple where the axles ended up a tad
skewed, leading to instant derailments.
I now assemble the truck sides and P:87
bolsters on a piece of plate glass using
Plastic Weld liquid cement, checking
the truck alignment with a small square
while the joint is still soft. I make sure
to let the joints cure hard before I gently
force the sides slightly outward to ease
the wheelsets in place.
The resulting ECW trucks run freely
without any slop in the fit of the axle
pinpoints in the truck frames. That’s
vital, because any play in the wheelsets
1 2
Remove the truck sideframes by unsnapping
the lugs at the truck ends and withdrawing
the central locating pins from the contact
strip and truck side. Take care not to damage
the leads from the contact strips and the
brake chains on the rear truck.
is a strict no-no in P:87. Trying to get
narrow-tread wheels onto the rails
when they can move around in the
truck frames is almost impossible.
This proved to be a problem with
most original-equipment trucks and
some otherwise excellent replacements
such as the equalized InterMountain
trucks. Even using the version of the
NWSL P:87 wheelset with the longer
axle left way too much movement with
most types of “wide” trucks, although
some recent castings by Atlas and Life-
Like (the Proto 2000 “Bettendorf” is
very good) proved to be fine.
I found that it was possible to adapt
standard-width trucks to take the long-
axle NWSL P:87 wheelsets by drilling
the bearing seats in the truck frames a
little deeper with a 2mm drill and
inserting brass bearings to take out the
end-float on the axles. The ones I used
are either Peco type R30 or the turned
“top hat” type widely used by British
modelers. I purchase mine from Mainly
Trains, a mail-order specialist, at Unit
C, South Road Workshops, Watchet,
Somerset TA23 0HF, UK; the Web site
address is www.mainlytrains.co.uk.
A multitude of couplers
When I started out on this project,
the only closer-to-scale alternative to
the normal Kadee no. 5 (or equivalent)
knuckle coupler was the no. 711 “Old
Time” coupler – essentially, the HOn3
coupler with longer trip pins. This cou-
pler is, if anything, a tad too small for a
modern knuckle, but it looks good. I
used this coupler, without the trip pins,
for the first few cars I built for Roque
Bluffs. Getting a no. 711 to fit generally
requires some shimming to locate the
tiny coupler box at the right height for
modern cars.
Slide a fine, straight-blade jeweler’s screw-
driver in the middle of one side of the keeper
molding to gently spring the lugs free of the
truck gearbox and remove the keeper plate
from the gearbox and set aside.
 Above: Iain decided that Life-Like’s North-
eastern pattern caboose is just right for a
branchline railroad. This model has excellent
fine details right out of the box. All the
caboose needed was P:87 wheels, Kadee no.
58 scale couplers, and a touch of weathering
and it was ready for service.

Left: Iain needs only about 20 cars to oper-

ate Roque Bluffs. Just as real railroads did
in the era he models, Iain updated some of
the older rolling stock by removing the run-
ning boards and lowering the ladders.

3 4 5
Remove the wheelsets from the truck. Pull Note the difference in tread width between Place 1.5mm-diameter by .020"-thick spacer
out the Life-Like wheels with their stub standard HO in front and Proto:87 at rear. washers over the axle ends outside of the
axles. Push replacement NorthWest Short When all the wheelsets have been replaced wheels to take up the difference in width
Line P:87 wheels with stub axles in place in the truck, snap the keeper plate back in between RP25 and P:87 wheels. Place the
and use a caliper to set the back-to-back place on the gearbox. contact strips over the axle ends outside the
wheel spacing at 15.55mm. washers, and replace the sideframes.
 When I was a year into the project,
Sergent, Kadee, and Accurail all
announced couplers, and I obtained
some samples from Sergent and Kadee.
The cast-pewter Sergent looks great –
and is nearly exactly to scale – but it has
to be assembled, which is a tad tricky.
The Kadee no. 58 arrives ready to drop
into a standard no. 5 coupler box, mak-
ing installation a cinch. Kadee also
makes a no. 78 – an assembled no. 58 in
a narrower box. I found that the Kadee
nos. 5, 58, and 711 couplers all couple
quite readily with Sergent couplers.
Era-specific car detailing
My chosen late-1970s/early 1980s
period is at the time of changeover from
traditional freight cars with running
boards and full-height ladders to the
modern standard of short ladders, low-
mounted brake wheels, and no roof
access except on cars – like covered
hoppers – where it is necessary for load-
ing. To accurately represent this period,
I needed one or two unconverted box-
cars with the traditional arrangement, a
few slightly older cars that had been
modernized by removing running
boards and lowering brake wheels and
ladders, and a handful of modern cars
that arrived from the builder with a
low-ladder arrangement.
The first and the last were easy
enough to come up with, but moderniz-
ing older cars proved quite tricky, espe-
cially starting with models with cast-on
ladders. By the time you’ve carved away
the ladders, running boards, and brake
wheel platform and filled any resulting
holes, you’ve made quite a mess of the
factory paint job! Fortunately, the real
railroads had the same problem, and it
was quite common to see modernized
boxcars with the end panels and ends
repainted in not-quite matching colors
or even patches of oxide red primer. So
I touched-in the paint on my conver-
sions without worrying too much about
getting an exact color match and
blended the colors with weathering.
Otherwise, my freight-car detailing –
such as it is – follows conventional
lines. I use Detail Associates pre-formed
wire grabs to replace the cast-on vari-
ety, and I generally make my own
replacement stirrups using ordinary
steel office staples re-bent. I find the
flat-section staple wire is just about
right to represent the steel strap section
With NorthWest Short Line P:87 replacement
wheelsets, Kadee no. 58 couplers, and a
touch of weathering, this Atlas PS-2 covered
hopper is ready for fish meal service.
from which the real thing is made, and
using four staples sliced off a standard
refill strip makes it easy to produce a
set of matching stirrups in one try.
I attach wire details by either drilling
holes and gluing them in place using CA
(cyanoacrylate adhesive) or by carefully
melting the stirrup into the plastic with
a small soldering iron.
The new ladders, brakewheels, and
other plastic details are mostly from
Detail Associates, Details West, and Des
Plaines Hobbies. Air hoses are of fine
wire, and uncoupling levers are bent to
shape from .012" brass wire and held
with loops of 40-gauge copper wire (a
single strand of layout hookup wire)
cemented into drilled holes with CA.
The essential art of weathering
I regard weathering as essential.
Weathering aids realism, helps to inte-
grate equipment into the overall layout
context, and tones down the over-bright
 TRAFFIC AND CAR TYPES
Industry Traffic and direction Car type

Fish meal plant: Bulk fish meal, out Covered hopper

Bagged fish meal, out Boxcar
Fish oil (in drums), out Boxcar
Fuel oil, in Tank car

Cannery: Canned goods, out Boxcar

Empty cans, in Boxcar
Bulk ingredients, in Boxcar
Fuel oil, in Tank car

Oil Depot Diesel fuel, in Tank car Iain used a variety of scale couplers for
Kerosene, in Tank car his Roque Bluffs rolling stock. This boxcar
Gasoline, in Tank car has Kadee no. 711 “Old Time” coupler
Bunker-grade fuel oil, in Tank car knuckles, which work well but are almost
too small for HO scale.
Boatyard Steel plate, in Gondola
Lumber, in Flatcar
Machinery, in Boxcar

Pier General merchandise, in Boxcar

Chandlery supplies, in Boxcar
Fresh fish/shellfish, out Reefer*

Town: General merchandise, in Boxcar*

*This traffic most likely carried by truck at this date.

Semitrailers may be added to scene in place of rolling stock.

factory finish. Looking at a model is
equivalent to looking at the prototype
from some way off, so colors need to
take account of the intervening distance
– what artists call atmospheric dilution.
The atmosphere is not totally transpar-
ent, so distant colors seem less vivid
than those seen up-close.
In art, colors are modified when
being mixed to account for atmospheric
dilution. This isn’t possible with pre-
painted models, so I start by giving the
model an overall thin coat of a dilute
blue-brown-gray mix of acrylic paints
dusted on with the airbrush or washed
on with an artist’s sable brush. I then
add weathering tones as needed by
painting or drybrushing with acrylics. I
am careful to avoid any strong or pure
colors, especially blacks. I never use
pure black or white in model work – a
dark brown or dark gray shade for
black and a pale gray or cream for
white always looks better.
Finally, I use weathering powders to
add traces of dirt and rust. The ones I
use are British, made by Carrs, and you
can order them from International
Hobbies in California. Alternatively,
ground-up pastel chalks work as well.
Once I’m happy with the look of the car,
I seal the finish with a dusting of Micro-
Matte acrylic varnish.
I’m especially careful to weather the
front and backs of wheelsets, the axles, Iain likes the Kadee no. 58 scale couplers
the truck frames, and the couplers. A equipping this gondola. All Roque Bluffs
light dusting of weathering color with rolling stock is manually uncoupled, and
the airbrush doesn’t affect the function Iain reports that the various sizes of
of the knuckles and makes these impor- Kadee couplers he sampled as well as
tant items look as though they are part cast pewter couplers from Sergent couple
of the car. To help paint stick to wire or just fine with each other.
metal details like grabs or cut levers, I
treat them with chemical blackening
solution such as Blacken-It. This gives a
good base for paint, and if the paint
does wear or flake off, you don’t see
bright metal.
Keeping busy with a small fleet
Equipment for a small layout like
this offers a lot of scope for modeler
input even if you start, as I have, with
stock ready-to-run or kit models. I tend
to gradually upgrade stock over time so
as to keep a reasonable selection avail-
able to work the layout, and there’s still
plenty of scope to improve the cars The difference between scale-width P:87
rolling on Roque Bluffs. wheels and trucks and standard HO wheels
Next month I’ll show how I built and trucks really jumps out at you when the
P:87 trackwork for Roque Bluffs. 1 two are set beside each other.
 A small layout you can build
Roque Bluffs,
realistic
L
ast month I showed how I selected
Great-looking handlaid and detailed the mix of freight cars
to serve the industries at Roque
track starts with simple Bluffs, our Maine Central project rail-
road. I also shared some tips for giving
tools and techniques rolling stock a Proto:87 (HO fine scale)
makeover using wheels that are closer
to scale prototype dimensions. Although
By Iain Rice I used P:87 for this layout, you could
Photos by the author build it using National Model Railroad
Association standards.
This month we’ll start laying track,
but first a word of advice. Rough spots
in the track that cause a barely de-
tectable bump in standard HO will put
those narrow P:87 wheels on the
ground. Careful work at this stage will
reward you with track that looks great
and trains that operate smoothly.
Precision track
Proto:87 track differs from conven-
tional HO scale track in one important
aspect – the turnout flangeway clear-
ances are narrower in P:87. Otherwise,
all the techniques used to build HO
scale track work just fine for P:87.
There are two ways to make realistic
track. You can either study full-size rail-
road engineering until you understand
 PART 4
track
how it all works or you can look at pro-
totype pictures of the railroad you’re
modeling and copy what you see –
which is what I did.
I went through all the 1970s-era
Maine Central photos I could find and
took notes. For instance, I noticed the
MEC didn’t worry too much about get-
ting their tie-ends neatly aligned!
Good track starts with good tools,
and the most essential tool of all is the
human eye. Your eye will detect kinks,
doglegs, things that aren’t parallel,
curves that lack nice transitions and –
most essential – whether the track looks
right. This is one case where the old
maxim, “If it looks right, it will work
right” applies. Model track that flows
smoothly through curves and turnouts,
transitions gradually between tangent
and curve, and rises gently onto grades
is likely to run well.
Track materials
Good-quality flextrack nicely repre-
sents well-maintained track, but that’s
not the kind of railroad I’d expect in a
backwater like Roque Bluffs. Handlay-
ing my track also guaranteed that its
appearance would match my handlaid
Handlaid track and a few simple tech-
niques allowed Iain Rice to accurately
model the down-in-the-weeds look of
a Maine Central branch line.
turnouts. The materials I used are stan-
dard fare – Micro Engineering’s wood
ties and Micro-spikes, with Peco and
Micro Engineering rail in codes 55, 65,
and 75. For unseen track or track des-
tined to be embedded in pavement, I
used printed-circuit board for ties and
soldered the rail in place.
In the November 2002 Model Rail-
roader, I described how I marked my
track locations using temporarily laid

Using a marking pen, Iain outlined the location of the track on the layout’s sur-
face, then he glued Woodland Scenics foam roadbed in place. The long ties at left
are headblocks – the pair of ties that support the switch stands.
Rails are held in place by paired spikes in every fourth tie. At rail joints where a
little extra support is needed, Iain solders the base of the rail to a steel pin that he
pressed into the layout’s medium-density fiberboard surface.
flextrack and drawing parallel lines
along the tie ends on the fiberboard base
of the layout. I also indicated the loca-
tions of the turnout switch rods with the
letters “HB” for headblocks – the two
extra-long ties that will support the
switch stand.
I used this initial marking to place
the Woodland Scenics foam roadbed
strip, which is 17⁄8" wide. Since my tie-
end position lines are 11⁄8" apart, I simply
drew an additional line 3⁄8" outside the
tie-end marking. One line is enough –
the side nearest the front of the layout
being the most useful.
I glued the foam roadbed to the lay-
out’s surface with Walthers’ Goo, laying
three beads along each strip – up the
center and along each edge. The Goo
gave me a minute or two to line up
things to my satisfaction before it set.
Weights kept the roadbed in place while
the adhesive cured.
At turnout locations, I either laid one
length of roadbed strip right through
the turnout and spliced the second
piece to it for the diverging track, or I
built up the track foundation using sev-
eral smaller pieces of foam. It doesn’t
matter if the joints aren’t snug – they
will all be buried in the ballast.
Laying wood ties
I position wood ties according to the
sort of track I’m modeling. In the case
of Roque Bluffs the track needed to look
bad! The Maine Central kept its main
lines in good repair, but out in the
boondocks the railroad’s spurs, sidings,
and industry tracks were not nearly as
shipshape. The tie ends didn’t line up,
the rail was lighter and spiked directly
to ties that were often twisted, split, or
chipped. Some ties were considerably
off-center because the section crew had
shifted them to one side to find enough
sound timber to hold a spike.
The ballast appeared to be about 30
percent stone, 50 percent cinder, and
the rest dirt. In most places, weeds crept
right up to the tie-ends.
Accurately modeling less-than-perfect
track is an interesting challenge. I
started by positioning the individual ties
by eye, using a rail that I pinned tem-
porarily in place as a guide.
At this stage in the process, the rail
location doesn’t have to be exact and
neither does the tie positioning. I spaced
and aligned the ties to suit their loca-
tions, closer together on the main run-
ning tracks and a bit farther apart on
the spurs and run-around loop.
I also sorted the Micro Engineering
ties as I laid them, copying full-size
practice by using the better-looking ties
for running lines and using the not-so-
good examples for spurs. I welcomed
the occasional chipped or twisted ties
and used them to make my weed-grown
sidings look even more decrepit!
I glued the ties to the foam roadbed
with Goo, one tie at a time. A slow
process to be sure, but it was the best
way of achieving the slightly wayward
tie placement I was after.
I cut turnout ties roughly to length. I
didn’t attempt to produce neatly gradu-
ated ties – prototype pictures showed
the tie-ends staggered all over the place.
I have a typical modeler’s urge to tidy
everything up, and all of this went a bit
against the grain. But the real world
isn’t that tidy, and the real world is what
we’re supposed to be modeling!
I left most of the turnout ties loose at
this stage to allow me to adjust their
positions. The exceptions were the
headblocks and the ties at the extreme
ends of the turnout.
Paved Track
Quite a lot of the track at Roque
Bluffs is embedded in concrete and other
paving materials, as is common at dock-
side. You do need to ensure that the rail-
heads are a few thousandths of an inch
above the pavement to ensure good elec-
trical contact and easy track cleaning.
To model paved track, I soldered the
rail to printed-circuit-board (PCB) ties.
Ties spaced about an inch apart are
enough for a strong result. Don’t forget
that PCB ties require you to cut an elec-
trical insulation gap in the copper foil
 On straight track use two gauges
facing in opposite directions.
Spike rails between gauges
Outer rail
Inner rail
For curved track use two gauges set with
two points on the outer rail (lay this rail
first on curves)
Gauge widened by this amount
il
er ra
Out
r rail
Inne
Principle of gauge-widening
with 3-point gauges – exaggerated view
Using three-point track gauges
Illustration by Robert Wegner
surface between the rails. I find it best
to cut this gap with a triangular needle
file before laying the ties, checking the
isolation with a meter. It’s a lot easier to
do this than chase short circuits once
the track is laid. I will describe my
paving techniques in detail in an upcom-
ing installment of this series.
Resilient roadbed and tiny spikes
I’ve found that foam roadbed makes
for smoother running, which improves
wheel-to-rail contact and reduces de-
railments with fine-scale wheels.
The tiny ME Micro-spikes hold only
in the actual ties, and so handlaying
track on a soft roadbed requires a slightly
different technique than spiking on a
firm roadbed like Homasote or cork.
I first set one rail on the ties and held
the alignment with straight pins pushed
into the layout base on either side of the
rail. I used a plastic ruler to align the
rail for straight track. For curved track,
I take advantage of a useful natural
characteristic of the rail – it forms a
smooth curved alignment of its own
accord if you hold the ends in place and
let the rail in between do its own thing.
I drilled no. 78 pilot holes on either
side of the rail base where I needed
paired spikes – about every fourth tie
was sufficient – then I pushed the spikes
in with fine-tip pliers. Some of the ties
were of harder wood than others. To
overcome this, I placed the tip of a small
screwdriver under the tie end as a sup-
port while driving the spike.
To give the finished track more
strength, I reinforced the rail location
As is common with dockside railroads, the track will be set in pavement in several
places on the Roque Bluffs layout. Since the ties will not be visible in these loca-
tions, Iain soldered the rails to printed-circuit-board ties.
with cyanoacrylate adhesive, used spar-
ingly, to lock the spikes in place.
At points where rail location is criti-
cal or where lateral loads are high – as
at an unsupported rail end or adjacent
to the turnout switch rods – I soldered
the rail to a pin driven into the layout’s
medium-density fiberboard base and
snipped the pin at rail-base level.
There’s no point in having a nice
springy foam roadbed if you lock every-
thing solid by ballasting with stone chips
and hard-setting glue. I use Woodland
Scenics ballast – made, they tell me,
from ground-up nutshells – held with a
flexible white glue.
The adhesive I use is low-strength
stuff intended for use by children, but
acrylic matte medium would work just
as well. You need only enough adhesion
to stop the ballast from coming loose.
You don’t want to mix a sort of glue-
and-ballast concrete!
I found it easy to end up with track
that looked too good for the sort of
rough-and-ready branch line I was
after, so I used short rail lengths to get
the slightly kinked look of the proto-
type. In an odd reversal of my usual pri-
orities, I even deliberately arranged
joints to meet on a curve rather than
going all-out to avoid them!
Automatic gauge widening
Once the first rail was spiked down, I
gauged the parallel rail from it using a
Micro Engineering three-point track
gauge. On straight track I use a pair of
gauges, one facing each way, to ensure
accuracy. But on curved track the two-
point side, the base of the triangle,
should always be on the outside of the
curve, as the illustration shows. This
gives automatic gauge widening – the
tighter the curve, the greater the offset
of the track gauge.
To ease the friction between wheel
flanges and the railhead, the gauge of
full-size track is eased outward a frac-
tion on curves. The tighter the curve,
the more the gauge is eased, to a maxi-
mum of around 1⁄2". This may not sound
like a lot, but it has a dramatic effect.
With the P:87 wheelsets having the
same relationship to the track gauge as
the real thing, gauge widening of a few
thousandth of an inch has a similarly
beneficial effect.
Turnouts made easy
Starting with ties, spikes, and a pile
of parts and ending up with realistic
track is a very satisfying process, and
it’s not too different from the way real
railroads do it – only without the back-
breaking toil! Next month I’ll finish lay-
ing track and show how I custom-made
turnouts and crossings (“diamonds”) for
Roque Bluffs. MR
 Building Roque Bluffs
October 2003: Planning a “no room
for a layout” layout
November 2003: Lightweight and
sturdy benchwork
December 2003: Selecting and
detailing the right mix of rolling stock
 A small layout you can build
Roque Bluffs,
handlaid
turnouts
Build ‘em in place for
J
anuary’s installment on building
Roque Bluffs, a shelf-type Maine
free-flowing trackwork Central switching layout in Proto:87
(HO fine scale), covered how to lay
plain track by hand. This time I’ll show
By Iain Rice you how to build your own turnouts.
Photos by the author This layout is “Proto:87” because of its
track and wheel standards, but if you
prefer you could use exactly the same
methods to build track to National
Model Railroad Association standards.
Most model railroaders become
accustomed to planning layouts around
standard turnouts, or at least turnouts
PART 5
that are available in the larger product
lines such as Shinohara or Peco. But if
you make your own turnouts, the range
is pretty well infinite, as once you know
the basic rules you can build a turnout
for any situation following any proto-
type. We’ve become a tad fixated with
the common frog numbers – nos. 4, 6,
or 8 – but real turnouts come in all sorts
of odd angles. You don’t really have to
care what the frog angle is, so long as it
fits the situation on a layout.
The rules of turnout construction are
actually quite few and basic. The actual

Fig. 1 Turnout
terminology
Headblocks
Switch stand
Switch rod
“Set”
“Set” is slight angle
of stock rail to guide
flanges onto point
Closely spaced
ties supporting
heels of points
Stock rails
Closely spaced ties supporting
closure-wing rail joint
Wing rails
Ties supporting frog
Frog
In the fifth installment of his Proto:87
layout construction series, Iain Rice
explains how to scratchbuild turnouts
Guard
in place, to fit any layout situation. rail
Here’s the turnout leading to the
Dolkos Oil track, with the train in the
background on the “main line.”
frog itself, where the rails cross, is nor-
mally straight. The switch points are Heel end
“housed” into the stock rail, usually by of turnout
machining the base of that rail to allow
the point to fit snugly against it. There
is also usually a “set,” a slight tweak or Illustrations by Rick Johnson
Toe end
of turnout Fig. 2 Check gauge Flanges miss point of
frog by .003" to .005"
–a miss is as good as
Back of wheel just a mile!
clear of frog wing
Points
Frog
Back of wheel
in contact with Check
guard rail gauge
Guard rail
Stock rail
Flangeway
Adjust the guard rail position to set the
check gauge, using a wheelset as a gauge
(this works for any standard, not just P:87)
offset in the curved stock rail just where
the nose of the point touches. This helps
guide the wheels smoothly onto the
switch. [The “turnout” is the whole
Closure assembly including the frog and the clo-
rails sure rails. The “switch” is the moving
part of the turnout, the points that guide
wheels onto one route or the other. –
Ed.] All of these features are shown in
fig. 1, which also names the parts of a
turnout following full-size practice.
Critical tie positions
Positioning the ties is a big part of
turnout building. In standard turnouts
railroads follow standard tie patterns,
but certain tie locations are critical even
in turnouts built to fit.
Starting at the toe of the switch,
there is always a pair of long ties on
either side of the switch rod (the real
name for what model railroaders usu-
ally call the “throwbar”). These are the
“headblocks” that support the switch-
stand or turnout motor.
The next critical ties are the switch
heel ties – two ties close together to sup-
port the joint between the points and
the closure rails. A similar pair of close-
Wing rail spaced ties supports the joint of the clo-
“knuckles” sure rails and the knuckle rails. Then
there is always a tie beneath the actual
knuckles, another beneath the point of
Guard the frog, and a third beneath the frog
rail wing rails. And, lastly, there are usually
close-spaced ties to support the ends of
Wings of frog
the rails at the extreme ends of the
turnout. I usually glue only the critical
ties in place to start, and fit and glue
the rest of the ties in place as I go.
Proto:87 considerations
In Proto:87 construction, the flange-
ways through the frogs are to scale, a
maximum .024" wide. To get the rails
this close, you need to file the inside
Fig. 3 First stock rail. Iain positions the first stock rail on Fig. 4 Second stock rail. Using track gauges and a
the ties and temporarily pins it in place. The “housing” metal weight, Iain positions the second stock rail opposite
where the point will fit will extend back from the headblocks. the first and pins it in place as well.

base off the wing rails at the frog. The
actual flangeway width is easily set with
an ordinary feeler gauge as used to gap
the spark-plugs on an automobile
engine. Flangeways that are too narrow
will cause problems, but if they’re a bit
wide I find they’re usually okay.
The positioning of the guard rails,
however, is critical in P:87, as they have
to function exactly as in the prototype.
Again, you don’t need to bother with
measurements, although a gauge would
come in handy. The important thing is
that when the back of one wheel in a
Fig. 5 Point of frog Base of rail
(shaded)
Railhead
Gap
Frog-point rails can be filed to more than half
the desired frog angle; resulting gap will be
filled with solder (color shading)
wheelset touches the guard rail, as shown
in fig. 2, the flange of the other wheel is
still on the same side of the point of the
frog. The clearance needed is small, only
a few thousands of an inch, but it’s a very
important few thousandths. Allow that
flange to ride over a little too far and it’ll
pick the frog, ride up over, and pow! –
you’re in the dirt.
Building turnouts in place
Except for a Rail Works no. 6 used
for the cannery spur, all the turnouts in
Roque Bluffs were built on site follow-
ing these principles and work fine. I
determined the locations of the head-
blocks when first laying out the track,
but I located all the other parts of each
turnout as I built it by rule of thumb.
With the headblock position fixed,
the stock rails can be set in place and
held by pins pushed into the sub-base
on either side of the base of the rail, as
shown in figs. 3 and 4. Then you can
mark the stock rails where the tips of
the points will fit, over the headblock
farthest from the frog. Form the hous-
ing to allow the point to fit tightly
against the stock rail by filing away the
base of the rail on a long taper back
from this location.
Start the actual rail laying by spik-
ing down the stock rails from the head-
blocks back to where they join the last
rails of the plain track, using four spikes
in every tie to hold everything firm.
Then select one of the stock rails as the
“datum” – usually the straight one if it’s
a standard turnout, or the “main line”
or “normal” route through a wye or
curved turnout.
Spike the datum rail at the far end of
the turnout and then carefully align it
back to the headblocks. If it will curve, I
allow the rail to take up a natural curve
between the two fixed points.
Pin the rail to the sub-base again to
hold its alignment. Then spike it to the

Fig. 6 Positioning frog rails. Iain positions the first frog Fig. 7 Adding wing rails. With a strip of wood helping to
rail from his “datum” stock rail, the far one in this case, hold them in place, Iain solders short strips of brass under
which is already spiked down. The second frog rail is added the frog to serve as attachments for the wing rails.
to form the required angle from the first.
 More on our Web site
See how Model Railroader’s Gordon
Odegard scratchbuilt turnouts on printed-
circuit-board ties. The story is online at:
www.modelrailroader.com

ties, but avoid placing spikes where they

will obstruct the guard rails or points. I
spike the outside of the rail on every tie
in these locations and glue the rail to
the spikes with cyanoacrylate adhesive.

Frog
With the datum stock rail located,
the next job is to build the frog. Start by
filing two rails to form the vee of the
frog as shown in fig. 5. The aim is to
get a nice, snug fit between them to give
a crisp, sharp-pointed angle appropri-
ate for the turnout.
When shaping the taper of the frog
rails, it doesn’t hurt to file away a bit
too much inside the angle, as you can
easily open up the gap by a tad and fill
it with solder. But if you don’t file a fine
enough taper, the frog rails won’t meet
at a sharp-enough angle, and then you’ll
have problems.
I like to cut the two frog rails long
enough to allow for adjustment of their
exact position. You can trim them to
the final length after everything is
finally spiked down.
Once the frog rail nearest the datum
stock rail is filed sharp enough, lay it in
place with track gauges from the stock
rail to hold its position, as in fig. 6.
Then lay in the other frog rail and
adjust its angle by eye, or maybe with
the help of a straightedge to pick up
alignments from track already laid.
Once the angle is set, spike the frog
rails to the ties, and solder them
together using a small iron and paste
flux – rosin flux only, never acid, since
Track in the street
Where track will be paved over in a street, Iain builds with only printed-circuit-board
(PCB) ties supporting the rail. He built this turnout essentially the same way as he
does on wooden ties, but the rails are soldered rather than spiked in place and no
extra brass strips are necessary. The top foil surface of every tie must be carefully cut
for two-rail insulation. – Andy Sperandeo
trackwork must carry electrical current. standard turnouts offered by Rail
Allow the solder to flow into and fill any Works use this system.
gaps between the two rails of the frog.
At this stage, I also solder a short Wing and guard rails
length of brass strip under the two frog With the frog spiked in, you have the
rails, about 1⁄8" back from the nose of the skeleton of the turnout. Gauge the other
frog. As shown in fig. 7, these are used stock rail from the frog and spike it to
to attach the wing rails and to bond the the ties at the heel of the turnout as you
whole frog into one electrical unit. did the datum rail. Add a couple more
Another good approach is to use ties to support the wing rails, and then
printed-circuit-board (PCB) ties rather make these. Again, cut the rails long and
than wooden at this location, so all the trim them after everything’s aligned.
rails can be soldered into a strong and To get nice crisp bends for the knuck-
reliable unit. The Proto:87 and NMRA les of the wing rails, file a v-shaped nick

Fig. 8 Wing rail alignment. Sighting along the wing and get his eye down to the track. Rolling a truck through the
frog rails is the best way to make sure they’re aligned. Iain frog is another good test. It should roll quietly and smoothly,
uses a small mirror for sighting where it isn’t convenient to and any clicks or bumps mean something is wrong.

Fig. 9 Guard rails. Iain uses a wheelset to locate the guard rails, as shown in
fig. 2. The plain wood supports the brass strips he uses to secure the guard rails.
in the base before tweaking the rail to
the desired angle with square-jaw pli-
ers. Check the angle by holding it tight
to the frog and sighting along it – the
gauge or running sides of both rails
should line up perfectly.
Once the wing rails are bent, file
away the rail base facing the frog to
allow for the correct flangeway spacing.
The ends of the wing rails need a “flare”
to gather flanges smoothly into the frog.
Some railroads bend the tips of the
wing rails outward, but others simply
grind away the railhead on an angle.
Positioning the wing rails is probably
the trickiest part of making a turnout,
and getting this right is the key to
smooth running. Again, the eye is the
best tool, aided by a suitable spacer, to
set the width of the flangeways. In P:87,
these are only .022" to .024" wide, and a
piece of styrene or brass this thick will
Fig. 10 Filing Cut this
switch points way
File
Hold rail here – a
thumbtack
works
well
Saw cut for
base of rail
Hardwood
block
work in lieu of a feeler gauge. I find a
small mirror useful for checking align-
ments where I can’t get into position to
sight directly along the track – see fig. 8.
At this stage, I also fit the guard rails,
which like the wing rails need their base
filed away on the side nearest the stock
rails (HO rail has an over-wide base).
Gauge them from the frog (not from the
adjacent stock rail), using a wheelset to
position them as in fig. 9 so that they
hold the wheel flanges on the same side
of the frog. This “check gauge” is critical
for any track standard.
I aim for a clearance of between
.005" and .010" between the flange and
the frog. Too much won’t hurt, but not
enough spells trouble.
Attach the guard rails by soldering
them to short pieces of brass strip sol-
dered beneath the stock rails. This will
allow you to adjust the check gauge.
Point
Cross section
Stock rail with base
filed flush with head
on gauge side
Vise
Fig. 11 Heel anchors. Small brass strips soldered to the
undersides of the stock rails provide secure anchors for the
heels of the switch points, where the rails will be allowed to
flex as the points move.
 Building Roque Bluffs
October 2003: Planning a Ò no room
for a layout” layout
November 2003: Lightweight and
sturdy benchwork
December 2003: Selecting and
detailing the right mix of rolling stock
January 2004: Handlaying track
Use a scrap of tie stock to hold the brass
strips in place for soldering.
Switch points
I lay the points and closure rails as
one piece. That means that the points
have to flex rather than pivot like those
found in commercial turnouts. With the
lighter rail sections – smaller codes –
this isn’t a problem.
When filing points I take care to get
a nicely formed profile. Bringing the
tips of the points to a truly fine taper
that will close seamlessly against the
stock rails is essential in P:87 – those
little flanges will pick the tiniest of gaps.
I file points over a hardwood block
clamped in a vise. As shown in fig. 10, I
file at a shallow angle along the line of
the rail. To help hold the rail while fil-
ing, I cut a saw slit in the face of the
block to hold the base of the rail.
First I use a mill file to remove most
of the metal, and then I switch to a fine
second-cut file for the final shaping. I
finish with abrasive papers to smooth
away any file marks.
To provide a firm location to the heel
of the point – the location from which
the point flexes – solder small pieces of
brass strip beneath the stock rails as in
fig. 11. This is another location where a
PCB tie or two might be a good idea.
 Trim the closure rails and wing rails
to allow for an insulating gap between Crossing
them, then spike the closure rails using
three-point gauges to gauge them from
the opposing stock rails as in fig. 12.
Once the closure rails are spiked in
place, the heel of the switch points is
soldered to the brass strip or PCB tie.
This not only anchors it in place, it
makes a positive electrical connection
so dirt or other foreign matter between
the tip of the point and the stock rail
can’t interrupt electrical power.

Switch rod
The last job is to add the switch rod.
Make this from PCB tie strip filed to fit
easily between the headblocks and with
a gap cut through the upper foil surface
for insulation. Solder the points to the
switch rod as shown in fig. 13. This is
easier if you remember to tin the under-
side of the point before spiking the
point-closure rail. Adjust this joint,
reheating if necessary, so the points
close tightly against the stock rails.
For P:87, the clearance between the
stock rail and the open switch point is
around 1⁄16". I use a spare tie as a gauge
for this. It’s okay if the backs of wheels
brush the open point, since it will
always have the same electrical polarity
as the stock rail.
At this stage I like to test the com-
pleted turnout, first with just a single
freight-car truck, and then with a vari-
ety of rolling stock. Make any adjust-
ments required for smooth passage
through both legs of the turnout in
either direction.
Once all is well, the turnout is ready
for ballasting and a point-operating A crossing or “diamond” includes four frogs with matching guard rails. This sequence
mechanism. I’ll go on with turnout con- of photos shows the construction of the diamond where the pier track crosses the
trol next month, along with wiring so boatyard track. We’ll show the wiring for this all-rail crossing next month. – A. S.
you can start running trains. MR

Fig. 12 Point-closure rails. Gauges from the opposite Fig. 13 Switch rod. Iain solders the switch points to a
stock rail help Iain locate the first point-closure rail. The toe length of PCB tie stock filed to slide easily between the
of the point fits into the housing on the stock rail, and Iain headblocks. The cuts through the upper foil surface provide
leaves an insulating gap between the closure and wing rails. the required two-rail insulation.
 A small layout you can build
Roque Bluffs,
wiring and
W
ith the benchwork, track, and
Simple wiring and turnouts completed on my HO
scale Roque Bluffs project rail-
detailed scenery bring road, it’s time to bring this layout to life.
This month I’ll describe a simple man-
our seaport to life ual turnout control, install the layout
wiring, and get started on the scenery.
By Iain Rice Building manual turnout controls
Photos by the author I designed this shelf layout for stand-
ing operation with a handheld cab con-
trol, and my experience with similar
layouts has convinced me that manual
turnout control works just fine on a nar-
row railroad like this.
Roque Bluffs is built with Proto:87
(P:87) HO wheel and track dimensions,
although it could just as easily be built
using the National Model Railroad
Association’s standards for HO scale.
Proto:87 turnouts differ from normal
HO turnouts in that the point clearance
(the distance between an open point
and the adjacent stock rail) is much
narrower – around 1⁄16" – so the turnout
throw mechanism must operate in a
very small range of motion. However,
the simple manual turnout controls on
Roque Bluffs can be used for both P:87
and standard turnouts.
 PART 6
scenery
For my wire-in-tube system, shown
in fig. 1, I used K&S no. 1143 1⁄16" brass
tube. I also used K&S no. 501 1⁄32" (.032")
music wire to slide in the tube. Music
wire is springy and it can be soldered,
but it doesn’t like sharp turns.
To prevent the tube from pinching
closed when making a gradual bend, I
always form the tube to shape with the
operating wire in place. To trim the tube
to length, I make a deep nick in one side
with a needle file, snap off the surplus,
and file the end square.
You’ll flatten the tube if you use
snips or cutters, but a cut-off disk in a
motor tool works fine – just be sure to
wear eye protection.
I secured the tube by soldering it to
brass pins driven into the baseboard. At
the operating knob end, I passed the
free end of the tube through a 1⁄16" hole
drilled in a small block of wood.
Because I installed all the manual
actuators before I glued the Masonite
fascia in place, I was careful to locate
the wood block and tube a little way
inward from the fascia position to allow
room for the knobs. I also created a
simple “friction lock” at this end of the
tube by bending the tube slightly, which
Framed by seaweed and the yellowed
grass of late fall, a Maine Central U18B
idles on a wooden trestle in the Maine
seaport town of Roque Bluffs. This
month, Iain Rice explains how he wired
the track and created scenery for his
HO scale project layout.
held the wire stiffly enough to keep the
switch points firmly in place.
I purchased the knobs at a hardware
store. The hard-plastic knobs are tapped
to accept a mounting screw, so I drilled
a 1⁄32" hole through the screw to accept
the end of the operating wire, which I
soldered in place. This allowed me to

Iain uses a simple push rod soldered to the turnout switch rod to operate the
lever-action microswitch that changes the polarity of the frog.
unscrew the knobs from the operating
wire to facilitate the fascia’s installation
– removable knobs are also much less
vulnerable to damage when the layout
is transported.
I then fed the wire through the tube
and trimmed it to length using flush-
cutters with hardened jaws – music
wire will easily chew bites in the jaws of
ordinary wire cutters. I aligned the
other end of the wire to match the
height of the switch rod and made sure
that it was exactly in line with the rod.
The push-pull action of the music wire
needs to be absolutely straight to avoid
twisting the switch rod. I then soldered
the wire to the switch rod.
I regard powered turnout frogs as
essential. I supplied power to the frog
FIG. 1 Manual turnout control
Masonite
fascia
Hot-glue
bead
Friction-lock kink
1⁄2" locating block
Plastic
knob Washer soldered
on each side to
locate tube
through lever-action SPDT (single-pole
double-throw) microswitches to change
the polarity. These switches are available
from electronics suppliers like Radio
Shack. The best switches must be small
enough to be easily concealed above the
baseboard, where they can be operated
by a simple push-rod off the end of the
switch rod – usually the end opposite
the connection to the actuating wire.
The microswitches on Roque Bluffs
are all located inside structures or hid-
den by small removable scenic details.
The same microswitches can be used
with powered turnouts.
Basic block wiring
I used a very simple wiring arrange-
ment, shown in fig. 2. I ran all my wires
K&S no. 501 1⁄32"
(.032") music wire
K&S no. 1143
1⁄16" brass tube
Hole drilled
on angle in
track base
on the top surface of the baseboard.
Removable scenic pieces hide the wires,
and critical parts like microswitches
and electrical junctions are all accessi-
ble. All the wiring leads to two compact
printed-circuit board terminal strips –
one for each of Roque Bluff’s baseboard
sections. The terminals are inside the
lean-to and office of the boatyard, a
structure that spans both layout boards.
The track is divided into four main
electrical blocks because it’s a lot easier
to locate a short circuit if you can
switch off blocks until it goes away.
Then you know that the last block you
turned off is the one with the problem.
In wiring the diamond, I took advan-
tage of the fact that the frogs of the dia-
mond must have the same polarity as
the frogs of the two adjoining turnouts.
I simply wired together these turnout
and crossing frogs as shown in fig. 3.
When the turnouts are set to cross the
diamond, the polarity of the diamond
will also be correct. I have to ensure
that both turnouts are correctly aligned
– even the one the train won’t be using.
But this is no worse than having to flip
a switch, and it saves a lot of wiring.
Scenery with character
I wanted to capture the atmosphere
of a working port, a place where the pic-
turesque has to contend with the prac-
tical. True, there are some character-
filled old buildings like the boatyard
and a lighthouse. But Roque Bluffs also
features brick and sheet-metal struc-
tures, sheet-steel piling, rip-rap fill, and
lots of poured concrete.
Apart from the built-up dockside,
what’s left is bare rock – pale, flat-lying
granite with pronounced horizontal
strata and some frost-shattered out-
crops – and a few patches of scrubby
brush. Vegetation is confined to coarse
sea-withered grass and a few hardy
shrubs, wind-sheared to the odd, flat-
topped shape of coastal growth.
Gaps
Push rod for
microswitch
Switch rod in foil
Microswitch for frog
Illustrations by Rick Johnson
Landscaping with glueshell
I’m firmly in the “glueshell” camp
when it comes to landscape modeling.
Traditional hardshell uses paper towels
dipped in soupy plaster to form a thin
shell layer. Glueshell is very similar,
except that diluted common white glue
is used instead of plaster.
Glueshell has several advantages over
plaster-based scenery. Glueshell is light,
but also strong. It won’t chip or crack
like plaster, and it’s controllable if, like
me, you build up your shell with layers
of tiny pieces of paper applied with a
brush. You can work glueshell right up
to tracks and into corners, controlling
the accuracy of application by the size
you tear the pieces of paper towel.
Best of all, there’s no need to wait for
glueshell to harden before adding tex-
ture materials, as these are held in place
by the same diluted white glue used for
the shell itself.
I generally work in small areas – typ-
ically about 4 x 4 inches. By the time
I’ve completed a small section, the sec-
tion I did previously has set enough to
allow scenic texturing. It’s surprising
how fast you can go from bare base-
boards to finished scenery with this
method – and there’s nothing like the
rapid appearance of finished terrain to
keep your enthusiasm high.
I used a heavy-duty paper towel of
the type often encountered in public
rest room dispensers. The towels are
thick, tough, and not particularly good
for drying hands, but as a landscape
medium they’re perfect!
Roque Bluffs doesn’t have a whole
lot of topography. What little there is
rests on a foundation of breakfast-cereal
carton, cut into thin strips and woven
into a lattice using a hot glue gun.
Where necessary, I attached these strips
to thicker cardstock landscape forms
that I cut to the desired outline. I apply
the paper towel using liberal quantities
of thinned white glue and a stiff paint-
brush. I start with a layer of strips cut to
about 1 x 2 inches, then cover it with
small pieces of towel, picking the pieces
up with the tip of the brush, setting
them in place, then working the glue
mix into them. I think glueshell con-
struction is a satisfying and enjoyable
process. It’s also an activity you can
share with younger members of your
household, who will tear towels and
“sploosh” glue with vigor!
Rough grass and scrub
The vegetation on Roque Bluffs is
pretty limited, being confined to scrub
grass, weeds, and brush. The basis of
my “scrubland brew” is felt matting,
which is widely used in upholstery and
Dead-end, fed by
toggle switch
High level
3
4 1
Staging
Fish-meal plant
Gaps
FIG. 2 Wiring diagram Feeders
FIG. 3 Wiring a crossing
Loop
(section 2)
as sound insulation in older autos. You
can buy sheets of it from auto trim
shops and upholsterer’s suppliers.
The felt consists of two layers of
pressed fiber on either side of a plastic
net. I tease up wads of the fiber and
chop the mat into narrow strips – 1⁄4" or
less wide – with utility scissors. I then
“crumble” these strips of fiber between
my fingers to produce a coarse fluff. To
round out the basic mix, I add a modest
amount of Woodland Scenics fine turf –
in this case, a mix of medium green and
grass yellow. I also add a good sprin-
kling of Noch electrostatic grass flock-
ing – dark green with a dash of light
green and a good helping of Heki “win-
terboden” (literally, “winter ground”) –
a good dun brown dead-grass flock. I
adjust this mix by eye to give the sub-
dued shade I’m after.
Even here in rainy old England, most
grass (especially my lawn!) is burnt
pretty much to a dull yellow-brown by
mid-summer, unless artificially or natu-
rally watered. And that’s even truer of
grass near the sea, where the salt-laden
breezes stunt growth and cause wither-
ing. For the early fall setting of Roque
Bluffs, I needed grass ranging from pale
straw yellow through buff to brown,
with only an undertone of green.
The other main ingredient of my
coarse grass mix is manila hemp – the
stuff plumbers used to use for packing
glands and joints. It’s a series of thin
strands in a pale straw yellow that is just
the thing for making tufts of withered
grass. A good commercial alternative is
Dead-end, fed
Cannery by push button
1
1
Main
Oil depot
2 Pier track,
not powered
Siding 1. Main line
2. Siding
3. High level
4. Staging
Both One
rails rail
Main (section 1)
Track on pier
not wired
Insulated
gap in both rails
Woodland Scenics field grass in the
straw yellow and pale green shades.
I selected a reasonable number of
strands to make a bunch about 1⁄4" thick.
I then chopped off clumps with a single-
edged razor blade and “planted” them
into blobs of thick white glue. When the
glue started to set, I lightly fanned the
clumps out. I then built the rest of the
grass areas clump by clump using my
fiber-flock-ground foam mix, applied
with my fingers or a pair of ordinary
eyebrow tweezers. It may sound tedious
and slow, but it’s a process I enjoy,
secure in the knowledge that this is one
patch of grass I’ll never have to mow!
I then add small bushes, weeds, and
low-growing shrubs. My small, low
plants are based on brown fiber teased
into small balls and set into dabs of
white glue with the tweezers. A quick
blast of cheap hair spray and a sprin-
kling of suitably colored ground foam
provides foliage. I create stouter growth
by using either rubberized horsehair –
another traditional upholstery material
– or torn-up pieces of kitchen scouring
or floor-polisher pad, mixed with tiny
bits of natural growth (roots, mostly)
harvested from my garden. I use Wood-
land Scenics or Heki foliage matting to
create the leaves.
To ensure that all the various mate-
rials stay put, I finish the job with a
quick overall coating of hair spray.
Pretty much any firm-hold hair spray
will do. Cheap spray is more durable
and effective for this purpose than the
classier stuff, but be warned, it can
Glueshell scenery in four steps

1 2
Glueshell is lighter and more flexible than plaster-based Make a cardboard-strip lattice. Cut-up cereal cartons work
hardshell scenery. Start by making contour guides from well for this purpose. Secure the strip lattice with adhesive
heavy cardstock. Attach guides with a hot-melt glue gun. from a hot-melt glue or use staples.

smell a bit flowery. The smell wears off
after a while, but it may be wise to
make sure your wife knows what you’re
doing before the lingering perfume
aroma arouses unfortunate suspicions!
Water, water everywhere
There has probably been more writ-
ten about modeling water than about
any other aspect of scenic modeling. It’s
something I should be expert at, given
that pretty much every layout I’ve built –
a dozen of ’em – has had some water on
it, and several have had a lot. I’ve tried
most techniques over the years and I’ve
concluded that there’s no sure-fire way
of hitting the bull’s-eye every time.
The problem with water is that it’s
almost invariably moving, while on a
model it’s not (as are many things on
our models, where the trains move real-
istically and everything else stands still).
Iain found that realistic stone seawalls can be created from blocks of balsa soaked
in varying shades of gray paint and set in a fine bead of white glue.
I’ve never encountered a modeled wave
that looks good, so the harbor at Roque
Bluffs forever basks in the calm of a still
day in early fall.
I started off by making a very silly
mistake. I drew out the harbor features
on the baseboard with a permanent felt
marker, and neatly hatched the areas
that were to become water. This proved
to be a Very Bad Idea. I discovered that
permanent marker shows through any
number of layers of paint and varnish.
I finally had to scrape the paint and
varnish from the harbor area, then used
spray carpet adhesive and heavy paper
to cover the stripes. I then brushed on
hobby acrylics in a dark green-blue-gray
shade with an undertone of brown.
When the paint was dry, I covered the
paper with lots of thin coats of clear
gloss varnish. The more coats of varnish
I put on, the better it looked.
Block-by-block seawalls
Seawalls of rectangular blocks of
granite are a signature feature of a New
England seaport. After a few experi-
ments, I hit on a simple way of model-
ing these distinctive walls.
The granite blocks normally used are
roughly squared off without being fin-
ished. After trying blocks made from
plaster (realistic but slow) or modeling
clay (even slower), I found that blocks
cut randomly from 1⁄4"-square balsa and
stained with acrylic paint looked almost
as good and were very quick to produce.
By cutting my blocks with a utility knife
with an older (not too sharp) blade I
obtained a somewhat ragged cut, and by
taking care not to get the ends too
square and crisp, I could rapidly make
irregular-looking “stones.”
I colored the blocks with diluted
acrylic paint, using a mix of white, gray,
matte earth, and oxide red to give the
warm brown-gray tones of the New
England granite. I mixed small batches
of paint in a deep glass jar, added the
blocks, and stirred. I kept adding blocks
until the paint mixture was absorbed,
then tipped the blocks out onto paper
towels to dry.
I built the walls against a backing of
thick cardstock secured in place with
hot glue. Each course of stones was laid
onto a fine bead of white glue. I split
some stones lengthways to give half-
height blocks and set a few shorter
blocks on end. I also found that the soft
balsa could be squeezed or crushed to
alter the shapes of the blocks, making it
easy to get things to fit.
Not all the seawalls at Roque Bluffs
are this picturesque, however, and the
stone has been replaced at various
places by more modern forms of sea
defense – poured concrete, steel sheet
3 4
Cover with small, torn pieces of paper towel, coarse heavy-
duty towels are best. Liberally brush on diluted common
white household glue. The same technique is used for roads.
piling, and rip-rap fill. I made the sheet
steel piling from sections of styrene
Pikestuff box-profile sheet material. I
then trimmed the top edge of the panels
to an irregular outline (to suggest indi-
vidual sheets) and glued them in place.
I built the poured concrete areas
using layers of thick cardstock and hot
glue, and brushed on a coat of thinned
tile grout to convey the look of concrete.
The rip-rap is made from acrylic paint-
stained cat litter laid onto a glueshell
sub-base using liberal quantities of
thinned white glue.
Rubber molds for a rocky coast
Maine is a rocky state. I used plaster
of paris and Woodland Scenics C1234
Random Rock and C1242 Washed Rock
flexible molds to make my Maine rocks.
Rather than casting my rock in place, I
persuaded my daughter Bryony that she
wanted to spend a Sunday afternoon
mass-producing plaster rock castings –
castings which Daddy then smashed up,
carved, and rejoined to slowly create the
rocky shore.
I used white glue to bind the rock-
work together and blended a soupy
plaster mix into the gaps. A little sand
and some cat litter served for added tex-
ture and rock fragments.
I painted the rocks with matte
acrylics, starting with a base coat of a
mid-gray-brown followed by a wash of
dilute dark gray, which I allowed to set-
tle in crevices and beneath overhangs. I
finished with drybrushed highlights in a
sequence of pale granite grays, the last
one being almost white.
All the seawalls, piles, trestle bents,
and rocks around the harbor have a
broad stripe of green-brown wash just
above water level to suggest the high-
tide mark. I applied this, using thinned
There’s no need to wait for the glueshell to dry before
adding foliage. A final dusting of cheap hair spray helps
keep the vegetation in place.
acrylic paint, with a wide brush to get a
consistent high-tide line.
Cardstock roadways and docksides
There are extensive areas where
tracks are set in concrete and blacktop
paving at Roque Bluffs. I established the
foundation for my roads from card-
stock, using thick corrugated material to
build up the level between tracks. Thin-
ner cardstock fills in between this and
the railheads outside the rails, and over
the ties between the rails.
For reliable operation and easy track
cleaning, I made sure the railheads were
slightly higher than the road by finishing
my card sub-base about 1⁄32" below the
railheads and building up the surface
with layers of paper towels.
I used a hot-glue gun to set the card-
stock firmly in place, paying special
attention to the edges to make sure it
wouldn’t curl when I painted on the
thinned white glue used to fix the torn-
paper road surface.
Suitably slimy seaweed
All seaside structures are affected by
the harsh maritime environment, which
causes rust on steel, pitting on concrete,
and water staining, seaweed, and algae
growth on just about everything that
comes into direct contact with seawa-
ter. The rust, pitting, and flaking paint
can be represented by normal scenic
distressing and weathering techniques,
but creating realistic seaweed is a whole
other can of worms.
I found an inexhaustible source of
seaweed in my garden pond, which pro-
duces alarming quantities of stringy
green slime. I dried some slime with a
paper towel and chopped it into 1⁄4" to 1⁄2"
lengths with a sharp hobby knife. I then
picked up a few strands on the tip of a
brush and draped the stuff over rocks,
stonework, pier timbers, piles, rip-rap,
and elsewhere on the shoreline to great
effect. I added a few drops of thinned
white glue to hold it all in place, but the
stuff is pretty much self-adhesive.
Other sea-fringe details include sev-
eral clusters of clams and mussels made
from Woodland Scenics fine ballast –
dark gray with a touch of brown and
light gray added to vary the colors. The
clams cling to rocks and piers at the
high-water mark. I secured them with
white glue and gave them a coat of var-
nish using clear acrylic.
To finish off the shoreline, I brushed
an algae mixture – made from ground-
up green, yellow, and orange artist’s
pastels – onto the rocks, rip-rap, and
timbers, and held the pastel powder in
place with more hair spray. There’s a
lot of hair spray on Roque Bluffs!
Next month
With the basic landscape and road
paving in place, I can move on to creat-
ing the buildings and a small but varied
fleet of boats – the real heart of a sea-
port model like this. MR
 Building Roque Bluffs
October 2003: Planning a “no room
for a layout” layout
November 2003: Lightweight and
sturdy benchwork
December 2003: Selecting and
detailing the right mix of rolling stock
January 2004: Simple techniques
for creating smooth-running and
great-looking handlaid track
February 2004: Building handlaid
turnouts and crossing “diamonds”
 A small layout you can build
Roque Bluffs,
seaside scenery
Improve your structures
T
his month I’ll show how I modeled
the boats and buildings that give
and modify boats using our 11⁄2 x 12-foot Roque Bluffs HO
project layout the flavor of a Maine sea-
a few simple techniques port. Most of the buildings on the rail-
road are made from plastic kits or bits
of kits, but I used scale lumber to
By Iain Rice scratchbuild two structures, and I built
Photos by the author one craftsman-style kit as well.
Tricks to improve plastic kits
Most of the structures on Roque
Bluffs, including the fish-meal plant and
the cannery, are heavily modified plastic
kits. I made the fish-meal plant from
styrene panels – Pikestuff’s Milton A.
Corp. factory kit is an economical way
of obtaining a good supply of compo-
nents. I still have a lot of parts left even
after building the plant and warehouse!
The “Tylick’s Soup” cannery started as
Walthers’ Golden State fruit cannery.
The plastic kits I used on Roque
Bluffs are pretty good, but they have
quirks that I find hard to live with,
including visible corner joints, chunky
details, and door moldings that are
much too thick. The window frames
and sash are also too thick, and the
glazing is set too far back in relation to
the framing. Happily, improving the
windows is a simple task.
I first thin the castings by about half
their thickness by rubbing them – back
PART 7
This month Iain Rice shares a variety
of techniques he used in building the
town of Roque Bluffs on his HO scale
shelf layout, including the scratchbuilt
pier and harbor office and the kit-
bashed soup cannery.
side down – on a sheet of medium-grit
sandpaper glued to a flat piece of board.
Most plastic window castings have
mold draft – the edges of the piece taper
from back-to-front to aid release from
the mold. Removing material from the
back of the molding not only reduces
the depth of the framing, it reduces the
width of the mullions as well.
Filing the taper of the mold square is
often enough to correct the mullions.
Occasionally, even after I’ve thinned
them, I find that the mullions still look
too heavy, so I use a small, square nee-
dle file to narrow the mullions further.
This is laborious but worth the effort.
On sliding-sash windows, like those
on the cannery building, the instructions
call for the window glazing to be glued
to the rear of the window frame. How-
ever, a major characteristic of sash win-
dows is that the glass in the upper sash
is further forward than that in the lower
sash. It’s a feature worth representing. I
cut glazing panels from Evergreen clear
styrene, insert the top ones in front of
the window molding, and put the lower
ones in behind the molding.
Doorways, handrails, steps, sills, and
cornices are some of the other details
that benefit from extra work. Kit manu-
facturers simplify these parts to ease
toolmaking. I find that adding extra
trim in the form of thin styrene strip
makes a big difference.
Molded handrails can be a little
clunky, and I often replace these with
soldered brass wire or strip, which
looks better and is much more robust.
I’ve also found that doorways are too
tall on many kits. By re-framing them
or adding steps or sills, I restore the
doorways to more-realistic proportions.
Where there is an obviously tapered
mold draft on the end of a wall panel, I
file and sand the end square, and fill the
cracks and joints with fine putty.
Tips for realistic bricks
Since all of the brick structures in
Roque Bluffs are from plastic kits, I was
able to make the brickwork look consis-
tent from building to building. My
favorite finishing technique for brick is
particularly effective on plastic.
First, I gently rub the surface of the
brick with medium-grit sandpaper to
take away the shine of the plastic parts.
Then I assemble the building so I can
color the entire structure in one opera-
tion. If possible, I also set aside the win-
dows, doors, and other details for the
time being.
Once the building is assembled I fill
any gaps and cracks with putty, then
paint the building a pale mortar color –
flat white acrylic with a little added gray
and flat earth. This colors the mortar in
the brickwork and, in the case of build-
ings with molded-in windows, serves as
a nice neutral priming shade.
Then I color the bricks with Berol’s
Karisma art pencils. The colors of these
soft pencils take well on the painted sur-
face, and by using a variety of shades I
can create a nicely varied and subtle
brick coloring. The Karisma product
line includes several useful shades. For
Iain kitbashed the fish-meal plant
using a combination of Pikestuff
styrene panels from the Milton A. Corp.
kit. He built the structure on-site using
clips, adhesive tape, and Handi-Tak to
hold the pieces together for trial fitting.
To finish the complex, Iain later added
Rix ventilators and several components
from a Con-Cor grain silo kit.
bricks, I use 135 Black, 144 Terra-Cotta,
918 Orange, 941 Raw Umber, and 1033
Mineral Orange. I blend the Karisma
colors by layering one over the other
and, if needed, rubbing them together
with my fingertip.
I build up the final effect slowly with
a lot of lightly applied layers, working
across the brick surface with the pencil
held at a 45-degree angle to the brick. I
use black before applying the other col-
ors just to pick out the odd brick here
and there; when overlaid with the brick
shades, the darker bricks look as if
they’ve been over-fired a tad. I find this
helps break up the monotony of large
expanses of brick.
Working with scale lumber
Although I’m a fan of plastics for
most structure modeling – particularly
Evergreen’s superb milled siding and
sections – I made the timber pier and
trestle from scale lumber.
My first step was to pre-color the
wood by staining the pieces with dilute
acrylic paint.
For working with scale lumber, I
highly recommend a North West Short
Line Chopper. Once set, the Chopper
cuts wood to a consistent length and
angle every time. I determined the cor-
rect length of the piling by mocking up
the deck of the pier to match the height
of the rail above the water. I then used a
length of scrap wood to cut a few test
pieces. Once I had my settings locked
in, I used the Chopper to turn out many
identical parts in no time flat.
The pier consists of rows of piles
joined by heavy lumber cross-braces,
 The tug M. J. McGuirk is the largest
boat in Iain’s fleet. Iain made a new
hull from styrene for a Sheepscot 55-
foot yard tug kit, and updated the boat
with a modern steel mast, radar
antenna, and diesel exhaust stack.

the screw heads to spread the strain.

The screws can’t be seen amid all the
pilings of the finished pier.
The deck of the pier is 1⁄16" hard balsa.
Initially, I cut lengths of stripwood and
laid them board-by-board. After a while,
I decided life was too short and simply
attached large pieces and then scribed
grooves to represent planking. Now that
the pier is painted and detailed I have to
look closely to tell the difference.
I handlaid the spur on the pier and
spiked the rail down as described in
part 4 of this series. In the places where
The soup cannery started as Walthers’ Golden Valley Canning Co., which Iain heavily the rails are set in the board deck, I put
rearranged. To turn it into a half-relief structure, Iain cut the pitched-roof main in a tie only every now and then. The
building lengthwise and used the remaining side and end panels to form a flat- spur is laid with Micro Engineering
roofed addition. Iain wanted the cannery to be part of the background, so he delib- code 55 weathered rail with the top left
erately kept the detailing to a minimum to avoid calling attention to the building. dull. It isn’t wired – locomotives are not
allowed on the pier, so it must be
mostly scale 12" x 12" beams. The deck 5 feet apart. I made sure to set piles switched using an idler car or two. The
is supported by two of these beams set directly beneath the beams that carry pier track will hold two 50-foot cars.
on top of each other. There are five of the load of the track.
these doubled beams – one down each I assembled the pier with hot glue The boats of Roque Bluffs
edge, one under each rail of the spur, used very sparingly. A few Peco track I was looking forward to this part of
and one down the center of the remain- nails at critical points reinforced the the project. I have a soft spot for boats,
ing pier decking. The pier is patterned structure. To make sure that the bottom especially the older and smaller vari-
after one I sketched near Salem, Mass., of the piles would remain firmly in con- eties. I decided that I wanted a tug of
but I made my version a little sturdier- tact with the water surface, I drove a some sort, a seagoing fishing boat, an
looking with closer-spaced piles to sup- pair of drywall screws through the cen- inshore lobsterman’s boat, at least one
port the rail spur. The piles are in rows ter line of the pier and into the frame of sailboat, plus a smattering of rowboats,
on 10-foot centers, spaced roughly 4 to the layout, using large washers under dories, and small motor craft. But when
I browsed the Walthers’ catalog, I was
surprised by just how scarce HO scale
boats are in comparison with most
other types of accessories.
Largest and most costly of my mod-
est selection was Sheepscot’s Snapper, a
55-foot yard tug, very much a crafts-
man’s kit in brass, wood, cardstock, cast
plaster, and plastic. I also chose Blue-
jacket’s no. 300 lobster boat and no. 303
Friendship sloop, but I couldn’t find a
suitable larger fishing vessel. This is
why, on my model of Roque Bluffs, the
fishing fleet is always at sea!
I started by building the yard tug.
This is more a selection of parts and
some helpful suggestions as to what one
might do with them than an actual kit.
The plaster hull former is common to a
number of Sheepscot kits, and I think
the hull shape is rather too racy for a
humble tug. The directions suggest the
former can be altered, but I figured if I
was going to that much trouble, I might
as well make a new hull in styrene to a
more appropriate outline – not too dif-
ficult for a waterline model like this.
Building a waterline hull
I started my sheet-plastic waterline
hull by making its footprint from a
piece of .020"-thick styrene cut to the
outline of the hull at the waterline.
Once the footprint was accurately cut
(I made it a tad oversize and finished it
with a sanding block), I cut a series of
openings in it so that solvent fumes
from the liquid cement used to build the
rest of the hull could escape. If you trap
solvent fumes in a closed structure, they
can distort the styrene.
I built the hull with ribs of .030"
styrene, and a central spine former that
determines the fore-and-aft sheer (the
curving slope), the height of the deck,
and the angle of the bow and stern. I
used the Sheepscot cast hull as a guide
for the deck sheer so that the etched
deckhouse would fit. Once the frames
were installed, I added .125"-square
styrene strengtheners at the outer ends
of the frames to support the deck.
The last job in building the skeleton
hull was to cement the .020" styrene
sheet deck in place. I drew around the
top of my waterline hull and cut two
pieces of .020" styrene sheet slightly
oversize, finishing to match the hull by
sanding. The second deck layer is an
overlay into which I later scribed the
deck planking.
Cutting and fitting the crosspiece
that makes up the stern of the boat was
my next job. I made this from .040"
sheet styrene, sloped to match the
inward slant of the sides of the hull with
the top cut to form a gentle curve.
The lighthouse is a Builders in
Scale Brandt Point Light kit. Iain
scratchbuilt the handrails from
wire and added a weather vane.
working with craftsman-style kits
Nearly all the structures on my Roque Bluffs layout are made of plastic – often from kits
that I’ve heavily modified – but since the layout is set in Maine, I wanted to include at
least one classic New England-style craftsman structure kit.
Craftsman kits typically feature a variety of materials. The Builders in Scale Brandt
Point Light that anchors the right edge of my shelf layout is a good example. The kit
includes a plaster base, laser-cut wood shingles, a cardstock-tube main structure, and
several cast-metal details.
I’m pleased with The Builders in Scale kit, but I’ve found that it pays to be selective.
There is a wide disparity among craftsman-style structures. I’ve found some kits to be
pretty crude. In fact, one or two I’ve seen appear to require more work than would be
needed to build a similar model from scratch!
On the other hand, I’ve found that a good craftsman kit, carefully built, produces a
subtler and more individual model than a plastic kit. In the context of a small, diorama-
type layout such as Roque Bluffs, those are important qualities, ones that justify the
extra work. I’m glad I invested the time. – I. R.
I used the etched deckhouse assem- The other Bluejacket kit – the Friend-
bly pretty much as supplied in the kit. ship sloop – was also built according to
For the funnel, I used a brass tube. The directions, with a few extra detail parts.
wheelhouse is located on the second I greatly enjoyed building these kits, and
deck by blocks of .250"-square styrene. I’ve ordered more of them.
I felt that the Sheepscot tug was a bit
old-fashioned, so I updated it by chang- Operations and finishing touches
ing the detailing. I simulated a diesel Next month I’ll put the final touches
conversion with a new exhaust pipe on our project railroad, including signs,
exiting inside the original funnel. I also figures, and vehicles. I’ll also talk about
installed welded-steel masts, a tubular how I tuned Roque Bluffs for smooth
foremast with a radar antenna, and for- running, and I’ll share my thoughts on
ward running light. I also substituted operating shelf-type layouts. MR
molded-rubber tires as fenders for the
cast metal tires in the kit and made a
rope fender for the bow.
 Building Roque Bluffs
Resin boats round out the fleet October 2003: Planning a “no room
The smaller craft in the harbor are for a layout” layout
white-metal castings, together with the November 2003: Lightweight and
resin kits from Bluejacket Models. sturdy benchwork
Largest of these is a classic New Eng- December 2003: Selecting and
land lobster boat, complete with cut- detailing the right mix of rolling stock
away wheelhouse side and the winch January 2004: Handlaying track
and davit for lifting the lobster creels. I February 2004: Handlaying turnouts
built it following the instructions and March 2004: Wiring and scenery
added a few details.
 A small layout you can build
Roque Bluffs,
detailing
A triple layer of details
T
his month we’ll finish our Roque
Bluffs project layout by building
adds the finishing touch layers of details to create lively,
realistic scenes. We’ll also give the rail-
road a final tune-up, an essential step for
By Iain Rice a layout built with Proto:87 (P:87) track
Photos by the author and wheel dimensions that are closer to
scale dimensions and less forgiving than
the familiar HO scale standards.
Details done right
I have definite views on the best way
to detail a model railroad. I find that a
little thought makes a big difference in
a layout’s finished appearance. It’s too
easy to just detail everything and create
scenes that are too busy. It’s just as
important to have “quiet areas” in a
scene as it is to have centers of interest.
I use detailing to call attention to a few
carefully selected centers of interest,
while leaving other areas of the scene a
little bare to act as visual respite.
In the case of Roque Bluffs, the key
centers of interest are the areas around
the fish-meal plant loading silos, the
boat shed, and the pier. Further back in
the scene are three less-detailed centers
 PART 8
and operation
of interest: the diner, the oil depot, and
the firehouse. I deliberately kept the cen-
ter of the scene reasonably plain – there
could easily have been a lot more gen-
eral clutter – while the long facade of the
cannery at the rear of the layout is
almost bland. The fall-off in detail as the
viewer’s eye moves deeper into the scene
creates an illusion of distance.
The layered-detail approach
I find that it’s much easier to build
detailing in a series of layers. It gives
me time to carefully consider how my
overall scene is progressing, and many
of my best detailing ideas occur as I
move the model toward a finished state.
My first layer of detail consists of
those things that have to be there to con-
form to the prototype: switch stands, sig-
nals, signs, utility poles, relay cabinets,
grade crossing crossbucks, and fences.
My second detail layer includes the
things I add to suit my ideas of what
the scene can be. This layer commonly
includes vehicles, animals, figures, and
“mini scenes” – such as a chicken pen
on a farm or a building site in a city.
Iain found that modeling a realistic
amount of dockside clutter was one of
the most enjoyable parts of the detail-
ing process. The different floats, for
example, are made from bits of wood,
plastic sprue, and glass beads.
The last layer I’ve christened “filigree
detail.” This layer include things that can
be seen only on close inspection – a man
working under a truck that is propped
up on cinder blocks or Grandpa in his
rocking chair on the porch.
Knowing how best to use this sort of
detail to tell a story or even to add a
A Maine Central switch engine works
the dockside at Roque Bluffs, Maine.
Iain uses varying levels of detail to
direct the attention of viewers to the
important parts of the scene and to
maintain a feeling of depth on a layout
that is just 18" wide.
touch of visual humor to a particular
scene is an art in itself.
Avoiding the frozen-movement trap
As with waves, waterfalls, and all
other things that should be moving but
aren’t, I avoid figures or animals that
are in a “frozen movement.” The gal-
loping horse perpetually stuck in mid-
stride, the workman with his shovel
half-raised, and the man running to
catch the train, are all banned from my
layout. Rather, I look for figures in
repose – standing, leaning, sitting, lying,
or otherwise in positions they could
conceivably maintain for some time. In
this way, their lack of movement is not
immediately apparent.
However, finding figures and animals
at rest is easier said than done. Many
HO product lines seem to be populated
entirely by people leaping about and ani-
mals at full gallop. I had quite a job find-
ing enough “in repose” figures for
Roque Bluffs – not the most populous
spot on the planet! In the end, I used a
few figures from Noch and Life-Like,
along with some of the less-frenetic
Preiser and Merten figures.
Modeling road vehicles is almost a
hobby within a hobby, and I had a lot of
fun producing a suitable selection of
vehicles for Roque Bluffs. Some of these
are the usual HO scale favorites from
Trident, Busch, Roco, Eko, and so on,
but there are also a few kitbuilt vehicles
to add interest and variety.
As with the figures and animals, I
find that a vehicle placed in a spot
where it should be moving – but obvi-
ously isn’t – strikes a jarring note. I’ve
also made a point of giving my road
vehicles a touch of workaday grime.
The vehicle I spent the most time on
is the pride of the Roque Bluffs Volun-
teer Fire Department – a shiny Ford
pumper parked on the firehouse drive-
way while the members carry out a little
remodeling project indoors. The fire
truck is an Alloy Forms kit, which I
modified slightly to follow a fire engine
I photographed in upstate New York.
Extra detail includes grab rails, lighting,
and a full complement of fire hose on
the bed. Alloy Forms kits call for a bit of
work, but I love them.
Layout tune up
Any model railroad benefits from a
thorough mechanical and electrical
going-over before regular operation
starts. On Roque Bluffs, I spent a good
many hours carefully test-running all
my equipment and ruthlessly investi-
gating any derailments, hesitant run-
ning, or other operating problems. Time
spent at this stage determining and cor-
recting problems is repaid when the lay-
out is in regular operation.
Many of the problems I found had to
do with the scenic work, such as ballast
or ground foam blocking crossing and
turnout flangeways or paint or glue
residue on the railheads.
I also looked for equipment flaws. As
a rule of thumb, the car is suspect if it
derails at more than one location, the
track is suspect if different cars derail at
the same location. For rolling stock, I’ve
found that the chief culprit in derail-
ments is dirty wheel treads. Those P:87
flanges are really tiny and even a small
speck of crud is enough to cause a prob-
lem. I also learned that it is essential
that the trucks swivel freely and that at
least one truck on each car is able to
rock from side-to-side and fore-and-aft
to allow equalization.
The close-to-scale couplers I used
required careful installation – there’s no
room for error with these tiny coupler
knuckles. Even when the couplers are
set correctly, I discovered that manual
alignment of the knuckles was often
necessary when coupling cars, but that’s
also true on a real railroad.
To my surprise, Roque Bluffs proved
more finicky to operate than an earlier
P:87 layout I’d built that used European-
prototype rolling stock. I believe that the
U.S. combination of long cars with
short-wheelbase trucks has a bearing on
this – my big covered hoppers are cer-
tainly more susceptible to track faults
than are my 40-foot boxcars. I’m sure
that a really free-acting equalized truck
with minimal slop in the wheel bearings
  Meet Iain Rice
Iain Rice has written articles and books
on model railroading for more than three
decades, but Roque Bluffs is his first
multi-part layout project. Iain wishes to
thank his wife Rosalind and daughters
Elsa and Bryony, and friends John
Chambers, Andrew Boyd, and Marty
McGuirk. He also acknowledges the
assistance of Martha Sharp at Train and
Trooper in North Yarmouth, Maine, who
came up with most of the bits and pieces
(often at short notice), and the helpful
staffs of Terminal Hobby Shop in Milwau-
kee, Des Plaines Hobbies in Chicago,
and Henry’s Hobby House in West
Boylston, Mass. Iain, a professional fire-
fighter, lives in Chagford, England.

The vehicles on Iain’s layout are

parked rather than positioned on the
road, and the figures are limited to
poses that they could conceivably
maintain for some time. This makes
their lack of motion less distracting.

would go a long way to ensuring reliable

contact between wheels and rails.

Operating a shelf-type layout

Roque Bluffs is a pure switching
puzzle, and that’s the only practical
form of operation. Short trains, usually
four or five cars, are brought into the
yard from staging. All the cars have dif-
ferent final destinations on the layout.
Delivering them is not a simple propo-
sition. The oil depot and the pier spurs
face one way, the fish-meal plant spur
faces the other, and the cannery spur is
reached with a reverse move.
The other difference from normal
operating practice stems from the use
of narrow P:87 wheel and flangeway The narrow width of the Proto:87
dimensions and fine-scale couplers. work well, but I also know that this is wheels used on Iain’s Roque Bluffs
Working with these more-exacting com- true only because I put in the time and layout look realistic but make it diffi-
ponents gave me a new appreciation for effort necessary to achieve the required cult to rerail cars. Iain made this sim-
the forgiving nature of standard HO! accuracy in the trackwork and equip- ple ramp from thin brass sheet and
I find that switching Roque Bluffs is ment. A lot goes into keeping those tiny soldered wire to solve the problem.
a much slower and more demanding flanges on the rails!
process than switching a normal HO
layout and, in terms of authenticity,
For that reason I don’t see P:87 as a
realistic option for everyone. I certainly
 Building Roque Bluffs
that’s also closer to real-life. Switching wouldn’t care to attempt a large P:87
is often labor-intensive and time-con- project. But in the context of a small October 2003: Planning a “no room
suming, which is why real railroads layout, I believe the better appearance for a layout” layout
regard it as a necessary evil and model of the narrower wheel and flangeway November 2003: Lightweight and
railroaders think it’s fun. dimensions are well worth the effort. sturdy benchwork
My conclusion is that there’s defi- December 2003: Selecting and
Would I do it again? nitely a place in the hobby for track, detailing the right mix of rolling stock
Roque Bluffs is now in the shake- wheel, and coupler dimensions that are January 2004: Handlaying track
down phase. I’m still making all sorts of closer to scale than ordinary HO, while February 2004: Handlaying turnouts
little improvements, and every week the being less demanding than true-scale March 2004: Wiring and scenery
layout looks and runs just a tad better. I P:87 dimensions. I may have a few ideas April 2004: Seaside scenery
have no doubt that P:87 dimensions to try on my next layout! MR

Locomotive splicing
Converting an HO scale Athearn GE U30B into a U18B
By Iain Rice Photos by the author
W
hen I started work on my Proto:87 Maine Central pro-
ject railroad (beginning in the October 2003 issue of
MODEL RAILROADER), I wanted a locomotive for the lay-
out that was unique to the prototype. I found the perfect can-
didate in the MEC’s “Independence class” U18B lightweight
road switchers. Built by General Electric in 1975, each of the
ten locomotives was named for people or events associated
with the United States’ Bicentennial celebration. However, as
no one manufactures this distinctive engine, the only way I
was going to get one would be through cutting and splicing.
Reworking the shell and frame
My model Independence class U18B no. 403, the General
Peleg Wadsworth (couldn’t resist him!), started life as an
Athearn U30B. To shorten the shell and frame follow the cut-
ting diagram on page 93. [For a step-by-step description of
how to shorten and power the Athearn model, see Dean Fos-
ter’s article “Kitbashing a GE U18B” from the March 1984
issue of MR. You can find a reprinted copy of it on the
modelrailroader.com Web site. – Ed.]
You can make all the other indicated shell revisions at
this time as well, including removing the latches on the side
JIM FORBES
sill that hold the shell to the frame. Again, consult the cutting
diagram for this detail. On the finished model, the body sim-
ply press-fits to the frame, so keep in mind that it’ll be safer
to pick up the locomotive by its fuel tank.
One other major shell modification reversed the short
door and air filter under the inboard end of the radiator com-
partment, both of which are molded the “wrong way up” for
a U18B. To make the correction, follow the cutting and
reassembly directions in fig. 1.
I also changed a number of molded-on cab and nose
details on the locomotive as shown in fig. 2.
Coupler mounts
Another unique GE U-boat feature is the coupler box,
which extends part way through the face of the pilot. Figure
3 shows the pilot with the new coupler boxes installed.
I started by shortening Kadee no. 5 coupler boxes to hold
no. 58 scale-sized couplers. After sawing the cast-on coupler
mounts from the frame, I built new coupler mounting pads
behind each pilot on the shell using .250"-square styrene with
.040" styrene height-adjusting spacers. Next, I attached the
couplers and boxes to the pads with self-tapping screws.
 Remove flare Air filter section to be
Remove four roof vents from both sides reversed (see fig. 1)
Cut out
Fill bell-mounting holes 5'-3"
Remove
headlight
and fill
holes
Remove
drop steps,
both ends

Remove window Remove frame

center posts latches
Cut out File off
1⁄16" 5'-3" Motor-mount holes
SHELL AND FRAME CUTTING DIAGRAM Not to scale

Step 1. Remove Step 3. Swap sides so panel is inverted Step 4. Fill gaps
radiator section and cement shell back together and sand smooth

Step 2. Cut out

panels with air
filters

Fig. 1 LOWERING THE AIR FILTER. As seen in these before-and-after out the panel containing the high-mounted air filter and invert it. He
photos, Iain removed the radiator section of the shell so he could cut then filled any gaps with Squadron Green Putty.

I then filled the coupler cutouts in the pilot with pieces of

.030" styrene. Remove molded-on
grab irons New bell
hanger
Detailing the shell and cab location
Figure 2 shows where I would later install the new bell.
Photographs of Maine Central U18Bs show that the bell was Remove molded-on
mounted on the long hood behind the cab on the fireman’s rain gutter and
Drill holes replace with .010"
side (he must have felt like Quasimodo after a trip over Craw- for MV x .020" styrene
ford Notch!). I made a styrene strip bracket for a Details class
Associates frame-mount bell (a portion of the finished bell lights
can be seen in fig. 5).
I added other detail parts to the shell as shown in fig. 3.
The cab needed some basic interior details; with those big Remove
side windows, you can easily see into the cab. I cemented widow sill
pieces of .250"-square styrene inside the battery boxes below
the cab and built a floor from pieces of .020" styrene sheet on
top of them. This arrangement clears the gear tower on the Fig. 2 CAB AND NOSE MODIFICATIONS. After carefully removing a
truck at maximum swing and covers the drive coupling. I number of molded details from the cab and nose, Iain sanded the
made a simple control stand and seats (as seen in fig. 3) from parts smooth with fine-grit sandpaper.
styrene scraps.
lowing the National Model Railroad Association’s (NMRA)
Tuning up the mechanism Recommended Practice RP-4, I gauged the wheelsets to .613"
Mechanically, my U18B is pretty much identical to other measured from the back of one wheel to the rail side of its
Athearn four-axle road switchers. The only real modification partner’s flange. After installing the wheelsets, I carefully
I made was to replace the original trucks with Athearn’s GP- checked that the trucks would roll freely before clipping them
type (“Blomberg”) trucks to match those on the prototype. to the frame and hooking up the drive shaft. I added only a
Because the model was for my Proto:87 layout, I used few details to the truck frames as seen in fig. 3.
NorthWest Short Line’s no. 376424 Proto:87 conversion Before assembling the trucks I chemically blackened the
wheelsets as shown in fig. 4. The turned nickel-silver replace- steel side plates with a product called Gun Blue, though you
ment wheels simply push into the Athearn gear sockets. Fol- could paint them black instead.
 Air horn Firecracker antenna
Athearn brass bearing

Wire grab
Simple cab irons
interior Axle socket
Proto:87 wheel

Brake chain

Drop New
step coupler
box

Plow
Wire air lines

JIM FORBES

Fig. 3 ADDING DETAILS. In addition to building a simple cab interior Fig. 4 INSTALLING WHEELS. To bring the locomotive up to Proto:87
from styrene scraps, Iain also added the assortment of details seen track standards, Iain added NorthWest Short Line fine-scale replace-
here. This view also shows the new coupler box mounted to the pilot ment wheelsets. The new wheels simply press-fit into the Athearn
(the snowplow is temporarily held in place with poster adhesive). gear sockets.

To improve electrical contact, I soldered power wires

from the trucks to the motor. I also cut down the L-shaped Bill of materials
truck contact strip at the cab end just above the engine
frame to clear the detailed cab interior. Finally, I replaced Accu-Cals decals 9020 .020" sheet
the Athearn headlight with a Train Tronics constant lighting 5807 Maine Central 9030 .030" sheet
system. [If you use Digital Command Control on your lay- road switchers 9040 .040" sheet
out, you will want to install a DCC decoder at this time
instead of the Train Tronics circuit. – Ed.] American Model Builders Humbrol paint
237 Athearn GE U series 11 Silver
Painting and decaling window set 29 Matte Dark Earth
After bathing the shell in mild soapy water to wash off all 33 Matte Black
of the oil and dust from handling and sanding, I primed it Athearn
with Floquil Gray Primer from a spray can. After the primer 3440 powered U30B Microscale
dried, I airbrushed the shell with Polly Scale MEC Harvest undecorated 104 Micro Set
Gold (I add a dash of Polly Scale Clear Gloss to the paint). 42010 front GP power truck 106 Micro Coat, satin
I then masked the model and airbrushed the cab roof and 42020 rear GP power truck 4181 Maine Central EMD
long- and short-hood tops Polly Scale Pine Green. switcher decals
I brush-painted the side sills and frame with Humbrol Detail Associates
Matte Black paint, masking the straight edges. Next I used a 1202 frame-mount bell MV Products
spray can to paint the frame and fuel tank Floquil Engine 1403 GE drop step 19 lenses for marker lights
Black. I then brush-painted the truck frames and details in a 1508 MU hoses
weathered black I mixed myself from Humbrol paints, 2202 grab irons NorthWest Short Line
including Matte Black with a dash of Matte Dark Earth and 2210 safety chain 376424 Proto:87 half-axle
a spot of Silver. 2505 .015" wire wheelsets
After the paint had completely dried, I decaled the loco-
motive with Accu-Cals set 5807. (For the pilot, however, I Details West Polly Scale paint
used the white stripes from Microscale set 4181.) Once all 155 snowplow 404049 Maine Central
the decals were in place and safely snugged down with a 186 three-chime air horn Harvest Gold
touch of Micro-Set, I sealed the decals in place with an air- 404052 Maine Central
brushed coat of Micro Satin finish. Floquil paint Pine Green
130009 Primer 404100 Clear Gloss Finish
Final detailing and weathering 130010 Engine Black
With the painting and decaling out of the way, it was time Squadron Products
to add the final details. To glaze the cab windows, I used Evergreen styrene 9055 Green Plastic Putty
clear plastic cut from a Ferrero Rocher chocolate box, care- 100 .010" x 020"
fully filing the pieces to size. Laser-cut glazing from Ameri- 143 .040" x 060" Train Tronics
can Model Builders would be a lot easier to use (except you 199 .250" square 101 1-bulb constant-
don’t get to eat the chocolates). Figure 5 shows many of the 9010 .010" sheet lighting circuit
other details I added, as well as the chalk weathering I
applied to the finished model. I weathered the engine lightly
as I wanted the locomotive to look newer.
The work to build this rare four-axle road switcher was Iain Rice, a frequent contributor from the United Kingdom,
time well spent; it’s nice to have an engine you won’t see on has written numerous articles for MODEL RAILROADER. Watch
every layout, and these little snub-nose GEs certainly have a for Iain’s multi-part series on building a Proto:87 project layout
lot of character. 1 starting in the October 2003 issue of MR.
 Strobe light New railings Exhaust stack Frame and grills
made from modified from weathered with weathered with
translucent rod Athearn parts artist’s chalk artist’s chalk
Bell
Window glazing

MV class
light lenses

MU
hoses

Fig. 5 FINAL DETAILS AND WEATHERING. After painting and decaling  More on our Web site
the engine, Iain added MU hoses, windshield wipers, and MV lenses For a step-by-step description of how to shorten and power the
in the classification lights. He weathered the locomotive using a light Athearn model, see Dean Foster’s article “Kitbash a GE U18B” from
dusting of various colors of artist chalks. the March 1984 issue of MR at www.modelrailroader.com/