The New River Company Tipple

I acquired a Walther's Cornerstone New River Mine kit and built it to instruction. Quite a beast of a kit in size. Noted was the fact that all the windows in the kit were not painted. So using my finger dabbed onto a thin pool of black paint, I dabbed the window frames to colour them.

I always knew it would need to trimmed at the rear to fit into the backscene. The rear 25 to 30mm of the whole building was cut off with a Dremel cutter. The rear track would need to run through the building, so an opening was cut at the front and back.

You will also see the tracks in the yard have been relaid...! This was necessary to accommodate the wider track centres of the loader. A little less track space but was necessary obviously.

 After cutting off the back, I added details such as the boardwalks, steps to the boardwalks with hand rails.

Once all the added details were painted, some weathering was started to bring it into the late 1950s era. Horizontal lines were drawn around the corrugated cladding with pencil to represent the joins in the sheets. Weathering was done using enamel paint dry brushed on for the rust. The first pass with the brush is shown in the above photo and another pass in the below photo with a slightly different colour. Black soot stains were made with black powders. Resting in its final position, it will be an imposing feature on the layout.

After some research on the area most likely to have a tipple on the Virginian Railway that at least looked like this model, I settled on the New River region in West Virginia. So I picked a fictitious extra tipple that was located at Oakwood.

The signage I designed on my computer and printed on plain paper on my ink jet printer. I then applied PVA glue to the back and pushed the paper into the corrugations on the surface. This gives the illusion of the sign writing being painted onto the corrugated iron.

The bridge that links our layouts

We could have joined the layouts via the lower level at the pier but decided it would be better to do so at the upper level. This required the trestle bridge on my part of the layout to slightly extend to the baseboard edge. Geoff's layout would then need a bridge in the same style to match up. So I built the whole bridge across the join.

I purchased some "Bents" that were ready made and available in different heights. Starting with the central part of the bridge, I worked out a spacing that allows a nice spacing and would also look right for the heavy locos that would be driven over the deck. Having them close together will visually look right and strong enough to support an articulated steamer.

The spur siding needed clearance for a boxcar so the "Bents" either side needed to be angled.

This shot give you an idea of its size with one of our 2-8-8-2 VGN steamers on the bridge.

The main deck support was piece of Meranti sanded up and suitably stained to match the Bents.I cut up a heap of extended width sleepers for the deck and individually glued them onto the main timber deck. The gap in the centre is where the join will be.

At the join, some copper sleepers were employed to gain strength. Some stock Code 70 rail was then spiked down and gauged accordingly.

Along each side of the sleepered deck a stringer was glued down to strengthen everything as per a drawing of these original style bridges. With added cross bracing and horizontal braces the bridge now looks the part. The whole bridge was then re-stained with wash of black Indian ink thinned out and brushed over all timber parts of the bridge to give that weathered look.

Geoff made a couple of small plate girders to add over the planned roadway which sits between the river and the rising land to the right of the photo. At a later date I added check/safety rails down the centre of the track on the bridge. Next we continue finalising track laying.... 

Track work in progress...

The baseboards took some time to be built due to some complex roadbed alignments and once we were happy with them we spray painted them all entirely to seal the timber work.

Geoff's end at the Port.

Once they were dry we started on track laying. Like the days of old when railroads were built from each end and met in the middle, so we did the same.

Most of the track in place - a
layout mounted on
the wall behind is not
part of this project.

We just had to place a train on to satisfy our need for progress.....

My end at the tipple loading tracks.

Yes, it's been awhile....

I must apologise for not posting any updates here since 2014/15. I was introduced to Facebook and I thought it was wonderful, but I'm sort of over it now, its so intrusive, so I'm ramping that down and will endeavour to post here a bit more regularly. This also means I haven't checked email comments here either which I forgot about. Just read through them and I didn't expect this much interest. I'll try to check the comment more often.

That means I need to catch up on what I've built in the last few years - which is a lot to ask really. I have built another Great Moor Street fold up layout and have started another English layout. Both of which I will endeavour to post some shots of here.

Anyway I'll start with an update on my Virginian Railway layout. Since the first post on this layout, its progress has been slow, but its at the stage of powering up and testing everything at present (January 2019). My friend Geoff and I have been building our two layouts together at his house. So I've had to venture to his place to work on it over the last two and a half years. Geoff's layout is of course on the Norfolk & Western theme and mine is on the Virginian Railway (not Railroad) theme. The Virginian was referred to as a Railway and not a Railroad as some might think, even though its American.

A lot of timber work was required for this layout due to its hilly nature. Seen here with supports and roadbeds before adding the profile boards along the front.

The profile boards now fitted. There are the three modules of my layout at the rear and the three of Geoff's from front. But later a new module will be added. Details later. The layout total length is 40 feet. (12.2 metres)

My section of the layout is based on Linn H. Wescott's design of the Port Ogden & Northern Railroad on Page 6 of the 101 Track Plans For Model Railroaders book. A quaint and very interesting concept that influenced my choice of design.

I made some changes to make it a little easier to shunt. Some tracks are re-arranged in the station area and access to the station from the mine tipple differs from Linn's plan. Turning a train around in the tipple yard that has come from the station is made easier and can be sent away to Geoff's layout engine first.

Next update will be of the track laid out and some small changes to the tipple yard. Till next time ..... Happy Railroading!