Моделировщик воссоздал атмосферу лесозаготовки в Западном Вирджинии 1920-х годов

Thanks to Bob Hazard’s careful modeling and attention to detail, visitors to his HO scale 26 x 26-foot Crabbitt & Pitchahissee RR are treated to a slice of the logging industry in 1920s West Virginia. Just don’t look for the C&P in the history books. “I really enjoy capturing a place that might have been,” Bob said. “It’s gratifying to develop vignettes that pull the viewer into a scene.” Though the Crabbitt & Pitchahissee and its two subsidiary logging railroads aren’t based on any prototype, Bob said his layout creates its own reality by presenting a realistic depiction of the logging and railroad industries that were once active throughout the rugged and beautiful mountains of east-central West Virginia. “Details are vital to credibility, and I think my strengths are in the scenes and the structures,” Bob explained. “All of the scenes on the layout were built with the intention of expressing emotions ranging from the quiet and serene to the breathtaking and dramatic.” Ambient sound adds to the sense of realism. As visitors walk around the layout, they’re treated to the sounds of saws, crickets, bluegrass music, the loggers’ steam donkey engines, and mountain streams. A train and a circle of track Bob’s interest in modeling West Virginia’s logging industry was influenced by his many trips to the Cass Scenic RR, as well as his deep family roots in the area he models. But trains have been a part of his life since he was 5 years old and received a tinplate train set for Christmas. As the years went by, he added to his Lionel tinplate empire with money he earned from a paper route. At age 12, he was ready for the next step. “I did what I had to do,” Bob said. “I traded all of my Lionel trains for a handful of HO scale flextrack, an 0-4-0 Mantua locomotive, two turnouts, and a pair of cardboard-sided freight cars. I can still see the smile on the store owner’s face, but I was content!” In the years since, Bob has built many completed and almost-completed model railroads, several of them on behalf of friends and relatives—but not all of the layouts were given away. His wife Diane recalls discovering, early in their marriage, a very small layout hidden under their bed. Finally Bob was ready to tackle an ambitious project, the original Crabbitt & Pitchahissee, a 12′-6″ x 26′-0″ layout. Like many real railroads in 1920s West Virginia, forest products would be the C&P’s lifeblood. The C&P is a common-carrier railroad, and its subsidiaries, the Crabbitt Tie & Lumber Co. and the Deer Creek Timber Co., provide traffic for the C&P in the form of lumber, millwork, and timber for local and distant customers. All outbound shipments on the C&P are delivered daily to an interchange with the Baltimore & Ohio RR at Richwood, located some 30 miles to the west. Crayons, dreams, sledgehammers With an idea in mind of what an expanded C&P would look like and what it would do, Bob started planning. Some modelers like to have every layout detail planned on paper before they start. He takes the opposite approach and says that it works well for him. “I had no plan. I’m terrible at converting ideas and concepts to paper,” he said. “I guess ‘visualization’ most accurately describes how I plan. Layout development happens at the moment rather than by design. This would make many modelers uncomfortable, but for me there’s no other way.” In June 2002, he was ready to double the size of the C&P. First, he needed to demolish an inconveniently placed wall. Most modelers avoid knocking down walls, especially if the wall happens to be a load-bearing masonry one, but not Bob. A carpenter and long-time owner of a home-improvement company, Bob installed an I-beam ceiling support to hold up the house, then took a sledgehammer to the offending wall. The project increased the layout size from 12′-6″ x 26′-0″ to 26′-0″ x 26′-0″. Three quarters of this newfound area would be devoted to the layout while one quarter would house a workshop. With a recently enlarged room ready for a layout and quite a few ideas in mind, he took a carpenters’ marking crayon in hand and drew his proposed aisles and benchwork configuration on the concrete floor. The target was to have about a 30″ width in the aisles for operators to pass each other and a minimum of 24″ at a few choke points. Above all else, he vowed, there would be no duckunders. After studying the room at length, he decided that limiting the width of the benchwork against the walls and installing a central peninsula would be the most efficient use of the space. Both logging subsidiaries, one a standard gauge operation and the other built to 3-foot gauge, flank the peninsula and use switchbacks to arrive at the log pond and sawmill on the peninsula. “I decided on a loop-to-loop main line thanks to a lot of arm-twisting by my good friend Steve Sherrill,” he said. “That was just about it for my planning and analysis.” Building beefy benchwork Finally Bob was able to build benchwork—but not just any benchwork. He used an L-girder design but selected straight-grained 2 x 4 and 2 x 6 framing lumber rather than the “one by” finished lumber typically used. Bob’s extra-sturdy construction minimized the number of legs and wall bracing needed, and it provided easier access for maintenance, wiring, and carpet installation. The price of the framing lumber was about the same as higher quality finished lumber, and the larger girders and joists made a much stronger and more stable layout. With benchwork and roadbed in place, Bob began to lay track. He painted all of the rails with Floquil Rust prior to installing it. He used code 55 flextrack on the more-visible standard gauge logging line, painting the ties with Floquil Earth, then repainting individual ties in various shades of grays and browns to represent rot and replacements. The peninsula containing the engine terminal, sawmill, and related industries is entirely handlaid with code 70 rail on home-cut ties of varying lengths. Bob used sifted dirt for ballast and held the dirt in place with diluted white glue. Once the ballast had dried, he painted the rails and then brushed rust-colored Bragdon Industries’ dry-adhesive powdered pigment on the rails and the molded tie plates. Freelancing a fascia Bob then turned his attention to the fascia. He applied 1/8″-thick Masonite hardboard, keeping the bottom of the fascia 30″ above the floor. In a few key locations, such as the dramatic bridge at Elk River Gorge, he continued the fascia to within 4″ of the floor. He also extended the scenery to the ceiling at Elk River and at two other places. Bob ripped most of the fascia in strips ranging from 16″ to 24″ wide and fastened the strips to backer blocks. The shape of fascia dictates the shape of the landforms, so he used a free-form approach to mimic the variation found in nature. “The saber saw pretty much selected its own path for land rises and drops,” Bob said. “I convinced the saw to consistently stay well below track grade. I didn’t know or care how the scene would explain that sudden drop or rise. Would it be a fill, log cribbing, a bridge, or a trestle? Time would tell.” He explained that after passing those spots again and again, he would eventually come up with an idea for how the railroad would overcome the obstacles. “I found this phase of scenery construction to be the most challenging and most demanding of my imagination,” Bob said. “But those same areas also became focal points of enjoyment for me once they were done.” He created landforms with poultry wire, a technique he learned from Steve Sherrill. Bob liked the wire’s strength and its minimal need for support when stretched over large areas. Rather than cutting the wire to create long horizontal runs, Bob opted for shorter vertical runs from the fascia to the roadbed and then from roadbed to wall-mounted wooden blocks. He connected each section of mesh to the next with wire ties. After arranging the wire to his satisfaction, Bob dipped heavy commercial paper towels in a soupy mix of Structolite gypsum plaster. After the groundforms dried, he painted them with black or brown latex paints so the grayish plaster wouldn’t show through any bare spots in the ground cover. According to Bob, Structolite’s greatest assets are its no-drip consistency and its long working time. He also used Structolite mixed to peanut-butter consistency to fill voids and as a second coat to add strength where required—such as in the foreground or under rock castings or real rocks. That’s right. Bob uses real rocks to represent rocks! A few years ago, the highway department was doing some blasting close to where Bob lives. Never one to pass up an opportunity, he visited the site and scavenged some excellent rock samples, “weathered and fissured in just the right ways,” he added. Trees by the truckload You need plenty of trees to convincingly model a logging railroad. Bob used a wide variety of natural materials as well as commercial products made by AMSI, Scenic Express, Selkirk, and Woodland Scenics. He cut the trunks for his tall conifer trees to 20″ to 26″ lengths, carved the tree trunks to shape, and added deep furrows by aggressively raking the trunk with a handsaw blade, and painted the trunks with a base coat of flat black. He then drybrushed various brown and gray acrylics followed by white highlights. The most dominant trees in the forests were made from sedum with Super Trees from Scenic Express interspersed for variety. Bob harvested the sedum from a nearby golf course with the permission of the owners. After culling the flower heads, he sprayed them with green aerosol paint, followed by a coat of spray adhesive to affix static grass and various shades of ground foam. Bob used real dirt for ground cover, topped with ground-up leaves, twigs, small rocks, moss, dried flowers and anything else that looked right. Since many of the natural materials would turn brown if left untreated, he sprayed them with Design Master floral spray, a product that’s carried at Michaels and A.C. Moore stores. He had good results using Design Master’s no. 760 Hunter Green and no. 676 Basil. Bob used Enviro-Tex two-part resin to represent streams and ponds. He applied a coat of acrylic gloss medium to the surface where he wished to create the illusion of movement in the water. Locomotives of all shapes and sizes Locomotives can be just as varied as the scenery on a logging railroad, and Bob says that being able to realistically run unusual locomotives and rolling stock is one of his favorite aspects of the Crabbitt & Pitchahissee. “Out of necessity loggers had to develop and build—or modify existing equipment—right in their own shops,” he said. “And the logging operation was totally dependent on the railroad to supply all of its needs, from transporting workers to hauling machinery.” With that in mind, Bob’s locomotive roster includes many geared steam locomotives of the Shay, Climax, and Heisler types. His rolling stock includes kitbashed, scratchbuilt, and ready-to-run models. All of Bob’s cars and locomotives are weathered with washes of acrylics and dry colors. He even coated the locomotive cab roofs and boilers with real coal dust to represent soot and cinders. The dust is held in place with diluted white glue. Unrestrained buildings About half the structures on the Crabbitt & Pitchahissee are kitbuilt or modified from craftsman kits, while the rest are scratchbuilt. Bob favors scratchbuilding or extensive kitbashing because it places few restraints on his imagination. Though Bob has worked with other materials, when it comes to structures, his preference is to use real wood. He made his foundations from individually set real stones, and he used single-ply tissues affixed with thinned white glue and then colored with paint and pastels to model tarpaper roofing. With the exception of one temporary steel girder bridge, all the bridges and trestles on the layout are scratchbuilt. Bob cut pine or basswood stock on his bench saw then re-sawed the material on his modeler’s saw to accurate scale dimensions. He made each of the bent assemblies individually, then combined them to complete the model. The 275-foot-tall by 350-foot-long curved trestle at Elk River Gorge took him more than 200 hours to complete and includes more than 3,500 Grandt Line nut-bolt-washer castings. More than the sum of its parts The Crabbitt & Pitchahissee RR and its two subsidiary logging railroads are more than geared locomotives, timber bridges, and mountain scenery. While not representing any particular prototype, the Crabbitt & Pitchahissee is a credible interpretation of West Virginia’s logging boom of the 1920s because, as Bob puts it, he focused on the “emotional essence” of a bygone era. It’s a process that started when Bob made a careful appraisal of where his interests lie—West Virginia logging in the early 20th century. With that in mind, he was able to arrange scenes and operations to support a single, coherent theme. “It was the best modeling decision I ever made,” he said. “Construction not only became simpler; it also became much more gratifying.” A coved backdrop Making the coved corners for the Crabbitt & Pitchahissee’s backdrop was easy. I needed to install furring strips and drywall only on the wall’s upper half, above the benchwork level. When that was done, I could start the corner-rounding process. I held the drywall back about 16″ from the corner on each sidewall. Leaving the panel ends unscrewed, I installed an 1/8″ strip of Masonite hardboard under the drywall, producing a 5/8″ thickness at the end. I padded the balance of the furring strip with 1/2″ drywall, which left a perfect 1/8″ shoulder on both sidewalls. I then bent a 24″ x 48″ piece of untempered Masonite into a quarter-round shape by pushing it into the prepared corner and snapping it into place. When I was done, I taped the joints and applied a topcoat of plaster to finish my quick and easily rounded corners. As a finishing touch, I painted the backdrop sky blue and the ceiling flat black. The ceiling is low, 84″, and has many drops, angles, and shadows. The flat black tends to minimize the ceiling clutter and keeps the viewer’s attention focused on the railroad. – B.H. Layout at a glance Name: Crabbitt & Pitchahissee RR Scale: HO and HOn3 (1:87.1) Size: 26′-0″ x 26′-0″ Period: 1920 Locale: West Virginia Layout style: walk-in Length of mainline run: 124 feet Layout height: 58″ to 68″ Benchwork: L girder Track: code 55 flextrack, handlaid code 70 (narrow gauge lines), and code 83 flextrack (yards) Minimum turnout: no. 4 Minimum radius: 24″ Maximum grade: 7 percent Scenery: plaster over poultry wire with real rock Backdrop: painted drywall and Masonite hardboard Control: Digitrax Digital Command Control (DCC) This story originally appeared in the April 2006 issue of Model Railroader. – Ed.