Here We Go

 

This is " C.A. Farms "; it is named in honor of Carl Arendt who passed away in 2011. We lost a brilliant man who pioneered the art of small/micro model railroading. The website has since been taken over by three other people who are keeping his dream alive - THANK-YOU.

The base is made out of foam-core and has been sealed with cheap spray-paint to keep out any moisture. This will keep it from warping the base during scenery placement and also gives the look of dirt. The building is also made of foam-core with the roof made from card stock. The whole thing is finished with textures from the internet scaled to 1/2 inch = 1 foot. Likewise the brick and stone walls are made from double thick foam-core and finished with the same treatment as the building. 

The track has every third tie (sleeper) removed and the remaining two pushed together to give it a short-line, rural look. They are held in place with double-stick tape and painted to tone down the black ties. The track was balested sparingly and is held in place with a 50/50 mixture of white glue and water applied with an eye-dropper. When dryed the track was permantly held in place.

The turnout (point) is only half visable in the scene with the rest making up a 17 inch off-scene " fiddle yard " which goes past the opening in the layout. This will be the place to change out loads or cars then re-enter the scene. This a trick used to represent the " rest of the world " and to give variety to the operation of C.A. Farms.  

The layout can also be seen at http://railroad-line.com . Click on the forums tab; the layout is under the mini/micro layout section. This is a great website with very friendly people.

We will continue discussing the build in the next installment and I will share some more photos of C.A. Farms.

The Beginning

Now that I had decided to do a shoebox layout, the matter of scale had to be decided and I wanted to do narrow guage of some sort. After poking around the internet for a while, Gn15 seemed to be a good choice. If you go to http://www.gn15.info , you will find a fantastic site that has Gn15 layouts, as well as other scales.

Gn15 is "G" scale buildings, people, and scenery combined with 16 mm track which figures out to be 15 inches wide. Actually Ho scale track is the same size; which allows me to use Ho scale car chassis and engine mechanisms. It just so happens that I have plenty of each. Also with this scale it gave me the chance to "scratch-build" almost everything and it is large enough not the strain the eyes.

Materials were the next thing on my list. I wanted them to be inexpensive and easy to work with, not requiring a lot of tools. After some more internet research, I found what would be my materials of choice: foam-core sheets, cardboard (pasteboard), paper, craft-sticks, styrene, double-stick tape, white glue, and a cheap can of spray paint (to seal the foam-core and paint the track).

Tools were kept very basic. Some I already owned and others were purchased as needed. They consisted of: ruler, small square, x-acto knife, pencil, steel scale, small piece of thin plywood (to cut on), a jig (to keep buildings square), single-stage air brush, a small metal miter box with a razor saw (for cutting materials), and a pair of rail-cutters.

All of the above was accomplished  over the course of several months. This is a hobby, so time spent was a few hours here and there. In the next installment we will start to get into the actual construction of the layout.

Welcome

Welcome to Shoebox Railroad

Since 1972 I've been dabbling in Model Railroading. The keyword here is dabbling. Never seemed to get past the laying of some track; nor had the room, time, or money to commit to a large project. Although, small layouts always did seem to catch my eye. About two years ago I happen to come across a website http://www.carendt.com called " Micro/Small Layouts for Model Railroads ". This was Carl Arendt's site which not only had valuable how-to articles, but also a scrapbook with about 10 years worth of monthly installments of modelers sharing their work from all over the world. Wow, what a find; I spent the next couple of months reading just about every article. If you want to try your hand at Model Railroading and don't have much space or money or time then Carl's website is for you. The one area that caught my interest was several Micro Layouts which were built in an actual  shoebox; thus came the inspiration for this blog. In the next installment I will start sharing my current project with you.