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| The track plan |
I was going to present a detailed step-by-step tutorial on how I built the first of the E. L. Moore diorama bases, but I won't. I was so keen to make some quick progress that I rushed, lost patience, and bungled things. I recovered, but it wasn't pretty, and much cursing accompanied getting things together properly, so I'll just summarize a bit.
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| Back view |
I made a base by gluing together 2, 1" thick pieces of pink insulating foam board cut to 9" x 24". Originally I had planned to make the bases 27" long, but since the raw material came in 24" widths, I figured smaller was better, and 24" seemed to work just fine. The sides and back edges of the base block are finished with 0.040" thick styrene sheet, which will be painted black when done. The front edge will be sheeted with a piece of 1/16" thick balsa wood painted in some shade of Moore Green. The base's top surface was painted with acrylic raw sienna in preparation for scenic work.The track is some ancient brass rail that won't ever get used again on an operating layout, so I figured it would come in handy for these modules. My guess is E. L. Moore hand laid the track on his module, but that's beyond me at present. I think with some appropriate paint on the rail and ties, this track won't look too bad, so the next job will be to have a go at track painting to test out this idea.
Nice! Keep it coming. When I built my ELM layout, I cut out bases for the buildings I intended, then spaced them out to see how small I could make the whole thing. It seems like you're following a similar path. Good news: I was really pleased with my project when done!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the kind words! As I thought about this one some more I realized I didn't like the dogleg track being built from sectional track because the ties at the section boundaries don't look right. I'm using a continuous piece of flex track instead.
DeleteAlso, I haven't forgotten about the ELM book. I've worked out an outline and should soon start the hard work of writing it.