Panel 3 is Walton, one of the busy ends of the Cheverie Mountain layout. Driving into Walton on the 215 one passes the wilderness road that leads to the now abandoned barite open pit and shaft mine. I will be bringing this facility back to life with lots of animation. A bridge crosses the tidal Walton River where the 215 swings left and then off the layout to East Walton in the NE. There are two barite silos full of processed barite from the old mill that used to operate here - the silos are all that is left. A new mill will be built on the layout but not here. I am friends with the owner of the silos and have full access to the interior of the silos so I can model them. The owner has also allowed me to collect barite from inside for my layout (she helped me collect it herself).
A small road leads up to a lighthouse (museum) that overlooks Minas Basin from the top of impressive shale cliffs slowly eroding from the Bay of Fundy tides. This is where I have to pick a moment in the tidal cycle to model because the tides are extreme. I'll choose low tide so I can make lots of mud! All structures will be built on bedrock made from real shale slabs gathered from this very location.
The Walton Woods Road heading SE is where the rail action begins, so the next panel will lie on the SE edge of this one.
Last night I attended the craft night at the stained glass store and watched my friend and others work on their pieces. Some of them were using aluminum L-blocks to hold their pieces on a plywood base. I bought a pack of L-blocks to use on my roads. I measured out fixed weights of Cape Blomidon sandstone powder, Walton shale particles, and fast drying wood glue and made shoulders that look like the real thing in the Cheverie area. Will let the shoulders dry before removing the L-blocks to see how they look. Will need to make my own curved L-blocks (possibly out of cardboard) for the road curves.
Field trip into Cambridge, Nova Scotia today allowed me to finish my second layout panel that lies NE of Cheverie (Panel 1). There will be a ficticious shale factory that makes shale products for local, provincial, and international markets. A rail line will run to the back of the factory where one or two containers can be loaded for shipping to the Fairview CN Intermodal Port in Halifax.
There will be lots of horses and cows on the Minas Basin side of Hwy 215. An old shed and woodpile will be modelled after the prototype (I took pictures). The farmhouses, barn, farm outbuildings, old shed and shale factory will be built on real shale plates collected in Cambridge.
Large thin sheets of shale will be used in the Walton area of the layout for building/structure bedrock.
All that crunching under my boots is a superb ground cover of small thin pieces of shale erroding off the cliffs from the action of extrordinary Bay of Fundy tides. All of my rail beds and ballast will be constructed from Walton shale.
The folded shale cliffs in Walton, Nova Scotia are a sight to see. Very easy walk along the harbour beach and you are looking into the distant past of the planet Earth. There is also barite, gypsum, and pyrite to be found in good quantities.
Field trip to Walton today so I can complete my layout planning for two more foam panels NE of the Cheverie panel. The freelance revival of the old Walton barite mine, mill, and gypsum quarry are located at the end of my layout to the NE. The Cheverie Mountain Railroad Yard will be nearby.
Two subterranean conduit bundles will be run to distribution boxes EEP #1 and #2. These independent conduits (within a bundle) will supply electrical, electromechanical and pneumatic energy to lighting and animation devices on this panel. These conduits are not associated with the track power.
Very happy with Cheverie clay as asphalt for the paved roads. Can also use this technique for roofing.
Sanded the surface of the hardened clay and applied some black paint. Looks promising as an asphalt road surface so far.
It's 2:30 am and I woke up with an idea on how to connect the two Cheverie gypsum quarries on either side of Hwy 215. The highway will pass over a bridge. The basin-side quarry will haul its gypsum under the highway bridge by dump truck to the NE quarry for crushing and loading into hoppers.
Clay road section applied with a spatula. Will let it dry overnight. The clay contains larger stones that I removed for this roadway experiment. When building a cliff or other rugged scenery these stones will stay in the mix.
Here is a clay sample from the sealed bag used in the shelf life test.
I have drawn a similar section of Hwy 215 on a block of foam and will apply Cheverie clay to dry overnight. The clay in this bag is only a few days old but will stay moldable for over a month (result from running a shelf life test with another sealed bag).
In the materials lab I am going to carry out an experiment with Cheverie clay that I gathered from the beach (during my muddy boot episode shown earlier in this thread). You can see some of this gray clay in the small sealed bag. I have used this natural clay for ground cover and plan to use it to make rugged cliffs and other scenery items, but in this experiment, I am going to investigate how it holds up as road asphalt.
In this section of the layout, the church and private residence foundations will sit on brown shale slabs sunk into the layout base. The gravel parking lot will use crushed shale from Cheverie.
Bedrock for structures in and around layout Cheverie will use real shale slabs like these two gathered from one of the Cheverie beaches. Two colours were collected: gray and brown.
Coastal highway 215 runs through Cheverie. I will make this road 9 cm wide. The real compass points have been placed along the foam edges. Two gypsum quarries have operated in Cheverie in the past so I am bringing them back with mining equipment and appropriate buildings. Based on historical geological mineral resources data, the approximate locations of these quarries is shown on the foam. A very old church still in use will be modelled. On the southwest side of a small creek there was some core drilling exploration for manganese and barite in the past according to the literature. I will model a drilling crew of five plus their drilling equipment. A track will run SE of the road.
Here is the basement area I will have available for my layout. About seventy of the foam boards on my desk fit into the basement layout area. I have lots to work with.
When I go to sleep tonight, I'll probably be dreaming about the width of the HO road going through Cheverie versus the size and shape of my basement.
This 10 cm measurement is a kilometer on my accurate topo maps.
This is my layout design desk. I have the most accurate topographic maps available, geological data for all of Nova Scotia, drawing and measuring tools, and a working piece of foam to draw features of interest on.
And the most beautifully-coloured satin spar (a form of gypsum) I have ever seen. I call this colour salmon.
You never know how deep the mud and clay are ... until you step in a soft spot. Yikes!
Stunning rock and mineral combinations.