My winter project BOK Sub will be on display at the upcoming Maritime Federation of Railroad Modellers Annual Convention. It is packed with unique and old school ideas and methods. It will be a work in progress for a long time to come, however, it is fully functional and fun already. I'll show and explain some of the features in this thread.
The BOK was designed to be very simple to move. It takes less than 15 minutes to assemble, and the same to take apart. It's a beautiful sunny day here in Dartmouth so I'll move the entire Sub to a table in the backyard to illustrate this portability. I am going to work on it outside all day.
My portable workstation for tools and accessories.
The kindling blocks are lightweight, stackable and fit inside a small box or case. All ready to assemble like a jigsaw puzzle.
Ravensburger it isn't but the twenty-six pieces are not hard to place (numbers on the bottom side in case I forget how it goes).
For the Truro show the BOK will be DC.
The roster for the show: Atlas CN Alco S2 #8113, Bluford Shops Canada Southern 14-Panel Rib Side Hoppers #74028 and #73305, Atlas CN Trainman 90 Ton Hopper #40111, Atlas IC 2-Bay Offset Side Hoppers #69477, #69454, #69460, Bowser CN GLa Hoppers #117377, #117385.
CN 8113 will be hauling two ore loads on the BOK Sub for the upcoming show. Many other loads will be in HO and O gauge cars. All loads are real Nova Scotia rocks and minerals mined or quarried in this province in the past and few still today.
Five hoppers will be loaded with aggregate made from conglomerate gathered and processed from the beaches of Tennecape. Particle sizes do not exceed 1.2 mm nominal.
Three hoppers will be loaded with native copper ore from the old mine in Cape d'Or.
The basic kindling block looks like this. A piece of wood rescued from the wood stove this winter, roadbed cut with a router, ground cover from the kindling sawdust dyed green, brown paint under the sawdust to represent mud/dirt where it shows, processed shale collected from the beaches in Walton (maximum dimension < 1.2 mm) for the track sub-bed, and strong ceramic magnet disks embedded in the kindling under the ground cover For attaching accessories and initiating animation.
The hidden magnets are found using a short stack of the same.
The sawdust ground cover is applied by coating the target surface with diluted white glue, then shaking the sawdust out of an old spice bottle.
The basic river block has brown river banks due to the underlying paint, as well as green sawdust ground cover. The sawdust produced when my router cuts the river and the roadbed is used for this ground cover.
It's a sunny spring day on the BOK Sub so the river reflects the blue sky. There is still some ice in the river which I make using white candle wax. The boulders in the river are graded pieces of shale from Walton.
I use Realistic Water for many things including, of course, river water.
The basic gypsum outcrop block has a solid piece of gypsum made from a piece of gray spar gypsum from the beaches of Cheverie. I drive the water out of the crystal matrix by calcining, a simple process of baking the piece in the oven. It turns white and is essentially a solid piece of dry Plaster of Paris, all ready to carve into shape.
Hematite is a real iron ore mineral that was mined in this province. Not only do I crush it for car loads, I use the powder for weathering. I'll use this bottle of Black Rock (near Truro) iron ore powder right now to weather the gypsum outcrop so it looks like the ones we have near Windsor, Nova Scotia.
Simple as painting with a brush and gravity adds more realism by depositing some of the powder at the base of the outcrop.
Basic farm crop block includes rows of plants. In this case, I have used the natural (i.e. undyed) sawdust from the exotic hardwood padauk from the Congo. I am working on a piece of this hardwood for another project but save and grade the red sawdust. I have planted red cabbage on this block of kindling.
The roadbed crosses the river on block #2. The buttresses for the culvert can be seen as light gray 'concrete'. I make this concrete using wet clay collected from the shoreline cliffs of Cheverie after a rainy day. The dark gray clay will stay wet in a sealed ziplock bag for several months. When the clay hardens it turns light gray and looks like concrete.
Since I am building farm land, I bought a used set of Branchline Trains Laser-Art Structures N Barn buildings from the back room of the hobby shop. Several parts were missing and the barn was in rough shape. I will rebuild the barn so I took it apart to facilitate repairs. In the meantime, I made a few drawings of similar size to build a rustic barn from scratch.
I decided to build the rustic barn using 100% coffee stir sticks for the wood, which I picked up from the dollar store.
So, using The Chopper and a striking knife I cut all the wood. Fast drying wood glue was used to put the pieces together. Here is the hayloft end of the barn.
The side of the barn. I still have to make windows and window frames for the two sides of the barn. When the wall was glued together, I made a paste out of processed red sandstone powder from Cape Blomidon, NS and wood glue, then applied it evenly over the outside surface of the wall. When dry, I sanded until I liked the rustic sandstone-filled wood look. Finally, I applied a coat of urethane to bring out the colours and protect the finish. The roof was done the same way, however, I left a thick sandstone coat on the roof wood and etched lines to look like shingling. No urethane was used on the roof.
The back end of the barn has a real glass window that I cut from my stained glass supplies.
The inside of the barn has a lot of timber support, including the hay loft and cross beam that make the barn strong laterally so it won't cave in when folks pick it up to look inside.
Working with beach grass for the BOK Sub today. I collected this grass from the beach in Cheverie, NS last year and treated it with glycerin and a little green dye. It has held up well.
Some of the grass will be left as hollow tubes and the rest goes into the blender.
Flat, thin sheets of shale scattered everywhere on the beaches of Walton make nice mini bases for structures and scenery items. I am building a small hill using shale and a ceramic magnet. The hill will stick to any of the magnets around the BOK Sub.
Added some beach grass and gypsum boulders, which will be mostly buried under some sandstone topsoil and sawdust grass.