Modelling Maine Railroads

While waiting for a metro train at the King Street metro station in Alexandria, VA, the other day, I saw a Virginia Railway Express commuter train, an Amtrak train to Union Station in Washington, DC, as well as some trains on the metro. I took a few quick pictures of the action and thought that I would share them here. The VRE train aproaches the station. The VRE train arrives at the station. The Amtrak train arrives at the station. Amtrak and VRE at the station. The Amtrak train departs as a metro comes into the King Street metro station. 

This evening, I built and weathered some oil barrels. The oil barrels were plastic parts that came in two halves. I found them in my scrapbox, so I am not sure what manufacturer made them. They originally came in what, to my eye, was an unrealistic, plasticy, blue. I painted them brown, red , and black, and then drybrushed them with brown, black, and light grey paint.  I think they turned out fairly well. I will probably add one or two of them to my section house scene and save the rest for later projects. The barrels in their original, molded plastic color. After painting, but before weathering. After weathering. Another view of the finished barrels.

This old steetcar track is located in P Street in Georgetown in Washington D.C. I saw it this evening while in DC and thought it would be interesting to share. Sadly, it is long abandoned. Note the center conduit for providing power, a fairly unique method of powering streetcars that was mandated by law in DC.

This morning I scratchbuilt a small tool shed based on a Washington and Old Dominion standard design. These tool sheds were found at most towns on the W&OD. It took me about two hours in all to build. I used clapboard wood sheet, and scale lumber for the trim. The roof is made from styrene covered in masking tape to represent tar paper.

This is an Accurail kit that I had on my workbench for a few months. I finally built it today since I was looking for a small project. The car still has to be weathered at some point.

Just thought I'd post this picture of the W&OD's logo. The logo is on a (non W&OD) caboose in a park in Herndon, Virginia, by the old right of way of the W&OD.

Here are a few pictures of a small scene that I started Yesterday. The building in the scene models a standard design section House on the Washington and Old Dominion. It is meant to go with my Dunn Loring station. The section house was scratch built in three nights with clapboard siding wood sheet. Scenery is a a layer of ground foam with static grass flock sprinkled over the ground foam, and the soaked with diluted white glue. The scenery is not yet finished. Looking towards the section house. I played around with the image color filters on my phone and converted the image to black and white. This is the so called vintage setting on my phone. I like how it looks personally, as it seems like a print from an old photo from the 1950s.

Like many (most?) model railroaders, I am interested in many different prototype railroads. Recently, I have been working on several structure models depicting buildings on the  Washington and Old Dominion Railroad (W&OD). The W&OD was a shortline that ran from Alexandria and Arlington Virginia, across fromWashington DC, to Purcellville Virginia. Last month I built a model of the W&OD's Dunn Loring station. The model was built from clapboard wood sheet siding with modified windows. I modified the windows to match a prototype photo of the station. The station was built in about five nights of work.

Today I reassembled the layout. It is now (almost) back to the way it was. The module connections that I designed really made it easy to put the layout back together. I can now start working on scenery. The corner module is cantilevered out from the town module. The bolt connections are quite strong as they are m providing most of the support for the corner module. Everything is back to normal on the layout. I ran a train to test that everything worked and, fortunately, everything worked fine. Next project is to shape the wall side of the cut on the countryside module.

I haven't posted for a long time, as is rather apparent. I'm still around, though the layout was partially disassembled recently and now has to be rebuilt. My cat is fascinated by the moving trains in a photo from early July.