Section 2 Progress

The somewhat glacial progression of Beatton River continues with the completion of Section 2. This is one of the two smaller bridge sections that is supported by free-standing sections on either side of it.

The same standard steps were used as for Section 1. An insulation board (green foam) base was glued down to the underlying benchwork using latex caulk adhesive. Below grade features were cut into this foam using a combination of knives, saws, rasps, hot wire cutters and sandpaper. Major gaps and holes were filled with lightweight joint compound. Above grade features were added using sheets of white Styrofoam from a local craft store

The roadbed itself uses my time-honoured method of N scale roadbed stacked on top of HO scale roadbed for that prominent raised right of way typical of the BCR north end. The staging yard roadbed has been laid to the width of a single track for now and will be expanded out later (likely to 3 tracks) once the exact track layout of staging has been fine tuned.

Once rough terrain shaping was complete the whole surface was given several coats of off-white paint to seal the foam. I will be fine tuning all the terrain profiles with Sculptamold once all benchwork sections have been completed to this rough format.

Note my treatment of benchwork connection which uses precision alignment dowels, carriage bolts and a hardwood endplate for the roadbed at the join interface (to facilitate firm mounting of track to either PCB ties or brass screws. These will be described in detail in a future post.

In the photo below, staging runs along the right-hand side of the benchwork and will be hidden from view by a thick line of trees.

The large free standing central section (Section 3) is next!.