People & Scenes

People
And Scenes

Various Members working on Assorted Scenes on the Pacific & Eastern

		Wil Cleveland, E. Don Petit and Dave Spakousky contemplate the saw mill scene at Butte Falls. This scene will be completely free lanced, although it has been thought through as to the logical flow of incoming logs being sawn into lumber which is then dried, planed, strapped, stored and shipped. Wood chips are also processed and shipped. Part of the mill operation will exist "off layout" meaning where Wil, E. Don and Dave are standing. The rest will be modeled starting with heavily modified Walther's kits and additional details, structures and scratch built features.
		Jim Dougall hard at work on land forms for Eagle Point. Jim's preferred method for crafting terrain is foam. Here he's shaping and gluing it into place. Weights hold the foam down until the glue sets.
		Bruce McGarvey works on a scene where the P&E climbs the grade out of Butte Falls towards Summit. He's applying plaster cloth to the foam land forms. Behind him, at Summit, Art McKee plans his mountain logging scene.
		Art McKee spent a career with the U. S. Forest Service so it's only logical that he want to model a forest and logging scene. Here he's smearing plaster over pink foam which he had carved into terrain. Next will be ground cover, then trees. This scene is on the logging branch just above Summit
		John Gerritsma is literally on top of the world, painting the wall above Summit and Art's logging scene sky blue. Initially we'd left the wall behind the layout white, but realized this was a mistake. John rose to the task of crawling above the "tunnel" behind the backdrop with roller and brush to correct the oversight. Next, he'll return to his perch with white paint and create fluffy clouds.
		Back down to earth, John takes up artist's brushes and acrylics and gets busy painting mountains on the backdrop. He's done an outstanding job detailing the majority of the backdrops around the layout and giving the railroad a sense of realism and continuity.
		John Powell shows off the model of the Medco engine house he built. This structure was built from pictures of the original building and selectively compressed to fit the scene. Many of the detail parts, including the louvers in the clerestory, are not available commercially and John crafted them by hand. While this scene is compressed significantly, the location of the engine house relative to adjacent buildings has been preserved.
		Jay Mudge (left) and Ed Kleinman designed and built a board to test and demonstrate the use of both a control panel and radio throttle to throw turnouts. The four Tortoise switch motors wave little blue flags back and forth as they're activated by the either the green panel nearby or a Digitrax throttle. The experiment was deemed a success and the Pacific & Eastern now features main line and staging yard turnouts which are controlled remotely.
		Ed's suggestion to run wires for DCC buses, signal detection, signal operation, loconet and "other" was taken to heart. We spent three weeks planning, drilling and running wire before Ed pronounced the under table wiring complete. While this seemed to slow layout construction down considerable, that time will be more than saved when the time comes to connect the track, signals and interior lights. In this picture, Ed is inspecting our work and offering an suggesting an occasional correction to the wiring plan.