IN THE NORTH

We've been back in Idaho since early October and have been living in a short-term rental apartment until we can get into a house...which will happen in about a week or so.  It's good to be back here after 8-1/2 years.  We've quickly gotten reacquainted with the Boise area and people we know, particularly at our old church.  We're also currently getting reacquainted with snow!

The house we're buying has three bedrooms and two baths, but no room for a layout, which is fine since I hadn't planned on having one, anyway.  I will have room to display static models and small dioramas and am looking forward to that.  Since I have always enjoyed scenery and structure construction the most, this will suit my needs just fine.  It will be a while before I have photos, but they will eventually appear.

After unpacking and building storage shelves and a workbench in the garage (which has a shop-sized area in addition to room for two cars), my first display project will be my 1930s Orient Express coach, which I've been sporadically working on for several years.

HEADING NORTH

We've sold our house and will be leaving for Idaho in less than a week.  We will miss our many good Texas friends, but we know this is the right thing for us.  God has opened every door for our sale and move and so we really know this is what we're supposed to be doing.  We're very grateful.

END OF THE LINE

The Gulf Harbor Terminal Railway no longer exists.  The layout has been completely dismantled; rolling stock, most structures, figures, vehicles, signs and other scenery items have been packed away.  The layout itself, including track and scenic base, is now scrap in a local recycling center.

This is not a sad event, but one that signals a change in our lives, a change we are looking forward to implementing.  It's a decision inspired by a recent visit to our daughter and her family in Utah.  Having been in Texas eight years, we are returning to the Northwest, back to Boise, Idaho.  Though my wife and I are both Washington State natives, we have lived in Idaho on three different occasions (if I count my Air Force time), two of which were in Boise, and consider it a second home.  While we've enjoyed Texas and have made many close friends here, we no longer have family here and so it's time to go.  Our daughter in Utah will be only a five-hour drive from Boise, and that's a darn sight closer than a 1200- mile plane ride.  Way less expensive, too!

We also plan to downsize, shedding about 1,000 square feet of living space, so there won't be room for a layout.  And I'm fine with that.  The GHT was my sixth layout and, believe it or not, the same rail and spikes were used in all six!  I sure got my money's worth from that rail I bought in 1978 and 1985!  I had countless hours of enjoyment and learned a lot from building and operating those layouts, but it's time for a change.  I want to pursue other interests, such as my other hobby of amateur astronomy and get back into trout fishing and become reacquainted with the mountains.

While I won't be building another layout, I intend to continue to build models of rolling stock strictly for display purposes and someday may even create a couple of bookshelf dioramas.  We'll see; for now, I suspect my equipment and rolling stock projects in progress will be packed away for at least a year or two, if not longer.  Our immediate concern is to sell our house here in Texas and find another up north.

The decision to relocate wasn't easy, but it feels absolutely right, and we trust in God to lead us into this next phase of our lives.  As I said, we have made some wonderful friends here and that's the hard part of leaving.  However, I am looking forward to living again where there are four distinct seasons and, being a native of the Northwest, I have never stopped missing the sight of mountains.  Boise is a very pleasant, very livable city of 200,000 that backs up to a mountain range and has a nice climate.  We will have to get used to snow again, true, but since Boise has a high desert climate, we won't have to deal with the sticky humidity any longer...nor with bug treatments for our house!

I don't know how many people have read this blog and it doesn't really matter, because I've enjoyed writing it.  It focused my thoughts and was fun to do.  I hope some of the experiences I've set down here have been helpful and I hope you have enjoyed my photos, too.

Thanks for reading!

ROLLING STOCK UNDER CONSTRUCTION...MORE

Also under construction:

--Baltimore & Ohio boxcar using American Flyer car body, doors that were extra from a kit, scale trucks and couplers.

--Refurbishing a "billboard" refrigerator car I built a number of years ago from a kit.  "Billboard" reefers became illegal by the late 1930's so this one will be repainted and relettered for "Texas Coast" railroad. 

ROLLING STOCK UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Several cars in the works:

--Texas & Pacific gondola using an American Flyer carbody.  The scale trucks have been mounted and couplers are next, along with steps and weathering.  The car will have to be weighted and, to hide the weights, it will have a load of utility poles.

--Texas Coast (my fictional connecting line) boxcar, also using an American Flyer carbody.  Lettering, using dry transfers, is done.

-- Texas Coast boxcar from a partially assembled (but incomplete) kit I acquired somewhere (can't remember where).  I need to mount trucks, add lettering and a roofwalk, which I'll make out of styrene.

--Southern Pacific flatcar using an American Flyer carbody.  Scale trucks are mounted, couplers and steps and a brakewheel are next.

Upcoming projects:

--Scratchbuilt baggage car and a coach using plans from Model Railroader.

--Steam loco water column and an oil column (Texas steam power was often oil-fired).

--Diesel fuel tank.

MISCELLANEOUS UPDATE

In no particular order of importance, some of the things I've been working on:

--I just received an order of freight trucks from American Models which will help in the completion of a dozen cars.  Ten of these will use American Flyer car bodies, two will be scratchbuilt boxcars.  I also have a kit-built billboard reefer that I will repaint as a Texas Coast reefer, since billboard reefers were no longer legal in the year, 1947, I'm modeling.

--I have six pairs of passenger trucks available.  Five will be used for cars to be used on the layout.  One pair will be set aside for a special project:  I'm working on a model, strictly for display on a bookshelf, of a 1930s Orient Express coach.  I found plans in a book about famous trains and have been building the coach on and off for several years.

--I still have on hand window castings, so I will try to find space to add one more structure...I don't know what it will be, though I'm considering a small office shack for my Coastal Barge Lines pier.

SEPARATING SCENES TO MAKE THE LAYOUT SEEM LARGER

My S Scale layout isn't very large.  It measures approximately 8' x 12'; the HO Scale equivalent would be about 5-1/2' x 8'.  With no obstructions to viewing it in its entirety, it would look pretty small.  That's why I have deliberately broken it up into scenes, with subtle barriers between areas to block a full view.  This fits in with what the layout represents, chiefly  a congested portside industrial area.  There is some portion devoted to the Gulf Harbor "downtown" but it's a minor part of the layout.  These subtle barriers require the viewer to consider one section at a time and, thus, the layout seems larger and the distances greater.

We'll start with the "downtown."  It is slightly elevated...maybe 7 scale feet above track level, with a gradual incline rising from the area of the depot.  Remember, this is the flat Texas coast, so any elevation change must be minimal to appear credible.  And 7 scale feet is just enough to draw the eye upward from the tracks.

 

Another thing I've done, as the top photo shows, is to conceal the ends of streets that run into the backdrop.  This done through angling the streets and blocking the view with trees and structures.  This gives the impression that there's more "town" just out of sight.

 

 

(Above) The building to the left, Southern Maritime Supply, is situated midway along the long (12') section of the layout.  It obstructs the view, in this case, to the north end of the layout, just as you'd encounter driving through an industrial area.

 

 

This is the area to the south of that building.  Note the edge of "downtown" in the background.  The roads in the industrial area do not visibly connect to the downtown streets, but are separated by multiple tracks.  This lends the impression that there's much of the city of Gulf Harbor that can't be seen and that the port area is reached from a different section of the city.

 

 

Now we're looking from the other side of Southern Maritime Supply, with the view to the south partially blocked.

 

 

And this is what lies to the north of Southern Maritime Supply.

 

 

I used an odd corner on the north end of the layout to add a small scene.  I leaned over the layout to get this shot; the edge of the backdrop at the end of the street shows in this photo, but is not normally visible to observers.

 

 

The roundhouse faces away from the room entrance, leading the observer to turn toward it and effectively making it a separate scene.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

USING RESEARCH TO CREATE A SENSE OF TIME AND PLACE (PHOTOS)

The Liberty Theatre movie marquee displays a film that was released in April 1947.

 

 

At the Gulf Harbor depot, the flagpole displays a 48-star flag and the Texas state flag.  Automobiles of 1940s vintage are parked nearby.

 
Billboards from the era advertise 1947 Mercury automobiles and Chesterfield cigarettes.

The shed on Pier 1 gives a sense of the location through a sign and the era by displaying a 48-star flag.

 Stop signs in 1947 were black on yellow.  Correct vintage autos are parked nearby.

 

 

On the layout room wall is an April 1947 calendar page I created for the fictional Texas Coast Railroad, an "off layout" line that interchanges with the Gulf Harbor Terminal Railway.

 

Vintage advertisements from an April 1947 National Geographic are displayed on the layout room wall.

I also created an April 1947 calendar page for the GHT.  The telephone number, PA-6-5000, is taken from the title of a Glenn Miller recording.

USING RESEARCH TO CREATE A SENSE OF TIME AND PLACE

As I've said previously, my model railroad is set in April 1947, the month and year of my birth.  I set out to create an impression of both time and place, and the research involved was actually pretty enjoyable.  I love history anyway, so maybe that's why I liked this part of planning.

The place part was the easiest.  I've lived in Texas for eight years and my wife Susie and I have driven the length of the Texas coast, so I've gained a pretty good impression of how things are in the ports.  Also, I've pored over historical photos and related material to get an idea of what type of rail traffic and industries existed in this state in 1947, as well as other details.  For example, because of our southerly latitude the tidal fluctuation on the Texas coast is much less than it is in my native Washington state, so I made the piers lower than I would have if I were modeling, say, a Puget Sound port. 

When it came to creating an impression of the time being modeled, the Internet was a tremendous asset in this kind of project.  Also, late-1940s movies and vintage magazines helped .  My earliest memories date back to 1951 or '52, and the postwar appearance of many things persisted well into the mid-'50s, so much of what I found was already familiar to me.  My objective was to convey the era well enough that a visitor could figure it out without being told.  To do this, I used buildings, signs, automobiles, a movie marquee and vintage billboards.  Details, no matter how small, all contribute to the larger picture, even something as small as the fact that in 1947 stop signs were yellow with black lettering, or a gas station would likely have a "mechanic on duty" sign.