Feb 28 2010
Historical Marker
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The real story |
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While I might be off by a couple hundred years on the established date of Talviste Canyon  and a Geofoamologist really isn’t an occupation. But the heart of the tail is close to how I started and developed the module; I call “Talviste Canyon”. I did name it after my friend Mike whom without his help it may never have been made. There was also a lot of planning that went in to designing the module and supplies did have to be collected and bought. I must have a few hundred dollars invested in track and scenery materials alone.
As a modeler I like to give a scene of realism to my models so a little tail of a great discovery what’s the harm in that. The first idea for the module came from a discussion at a club gathering at the modular train club that I belong to. There was a need to develop an inside corner module and I volunteered. Most module modelers are what I call flat earthier that is they only build modules that are flat. If there are any elevation changes Mountains, Hills, etc. They are most often just pushed up in the back. This is because the mainline trackage has to be at zero grade, level around the whole display. With the inside corner the mainline trackage runs to the middle of the module as it curves around the inside corner. This allowed me to develop the foreground of the module as well as the background. I decided to lower the foreground and raise the background. This would create a canyon in the foreground and a mountain in the background. I would cross the canyon with a trestle but because our club has a three track mainline a three track curved trestle was out of the question so I decided to send the third track through the mountain. By doing this I am able to have hidden switches in the mountain that I can use to lead to a hidden staging yard. In addition to the trestle I also wanted an auto bridge in the foreground. Slightly lower so as not to hide the trestle in the middle of the display. I knew from the beginning that the module had to be strong but light enough to carry so conventional scenery construction was out of the question. I had attended a number of demonstrations from Bragdon Enterprises at local train shows and decided that his product was the best to use for my module. I work at a high-tech cabinet shop so the bench-work was made at my work out of scrap boards. High quality scrap boards. The frame was made as light and as strong as I could make it. I used Styrofoam where I could and glued and screwed and or stapled every joint and corner-cleats in every corner. I used AutoCAD to design the module and made a lot of changes before deciding on a final design. Even then some small changes had to be made whence the module came together. Virtual reality dose not always match reality. Both the trestle and the auto bridges where scratch built. With the trestle I made a jig to build the bents then I assembled them upside down using a board cut to match the curve and length of the canyon. I used rubber bands and small clips to hold then on the board and set the spacing. Once I was happy with the spacing I tied them together with horizontal braces. Once the curve was set I removed the bridge from the board and added planks from top of bent to top of bent. More bracing and hundreds of scale board feet later and it was done. I sprayed it with a black stain and whoa-la. The material I used for the trestle was alder that I striped to scale on a band saw. The auto bridge; at first I was going to use a preexisting kit but I could not find one that would work. I then decided to scratch build one out of sheet plastic but could not come up with a design that I liked. I had been using scrap material at work called MDF for building warehouses and other buildings. This is a great medium for building because it can be sanded to vary thin dimensions. It cuts easy and has no grain so when painted it resembles scale concrete. The two main arches where made by first cutting a number of arcs out of thin MDF then layering these thin strips inserting the upright supports at a given spacing. More thin strips where used for the top beam. The two tower where made from thicker pieces of MDF. I used a router to rout out the recesses in the towers. And the cherub and vases where buttons I found at the craft store. The decking and railing are Rix Products. Now on to the scenery; as I had stated earlier my friend Mike Talviste helped me with the mountain and rock work. We used Bragdon’s hard-shell method for the mountain base and then Bragdon rock molds and two part casting resin to form the rock textures. I had three Bragdon rock molds and mike had the rest. I really liked his pinnacle mold on top of the left peek. The rock castings where cut and formed to fit where we wanted them to be and secured with hot-melt-glue. After all of the rock work was done I coated it all with gesso and then worked into the cracks dry black tempera paint. The excess paint was removed with a damp sponge. After the paint had dried I then began adding different earth tone colors of water based acrylic paints using the dry-bush method until I was happy with the look. Woodlands Scenic materials and Heki trees finished off the rest. There is still a lot of stuff to be done to the module for it to be finished. I need to add the waterfall and add water to the stream. I also need to add some people here and there fisherman at the stream, hikers, mountain climbers, backpackers and sightseers. I hope some day to expand the scene to the left and right with two new modules and maybe to the front of the module I could add a lake scene who knows. |
