James River Branch: Four Square Inches

Four Square Inches: Evolution of a Scene

Here's a very long photo-essay about a tiny patch of layout that's changed so often and so dramatically that I could not have predicted its final form. It's the space between the coal trestle and the front edge of the layout.

Once upon a time, the plan included two sidings, facing in opposite directions and crossing each other (patterned after a pair of real sidings in the town were I grew up). One was for a coal trestle, the other a small freight station. As I began tracklaying, however, I soon discovered that there was not enough space for two turnouts and a crossing, and since a coal trestle was the far more interesting feature, the other track was eliminated.

For a long time I'd intended the area around the coal trestle to simply be abandoned property. But things began to change when I decided to add a lumber yard between the coal trestle and the river; I saw an opportunity to fill the area with the detritus of the lumber business, as was the case in two places in my hometown.

At first the land was to simply slope down toward the lumber yard, and be full of weeds and building materials. Then I decided to add some interest by making a gravel storage area. This was fine until I suddenly decided to relocate the diner to where the lumber shed was being installed, at which point I tore out the gravel piles and moved the lumber shed there instead.

The lumber shed posed a small problem owing to the slope. So, I built a retaining wall from the same material I used for the area behind the diner: cast resin N scale stacked tie wall. To adapt the material for use in Z scale, I sliced it apart vertically alongside each joint, narrowed the sections to the approximate width of Z scale ties, then bonded them back together. (One of the images below shows the wall assembly from the back, so you can see how it was done.)

Meanwhile, I became dissatisfied with the trees around the coal trestle, and in August 2009 I tore them all out. Then a few days later I yanked the cinderblock stacks from under the coal trestle. These were replaced with weeds, grass, and stacks of pallets, lumber and other junk.

The changes kept coming. Eventually I scrapped plans for the lumber shed when I decided to graft two structures together to make one large new main building, which was oriented such that the extension (part of the very first kit I was going to use) sat in the area of the lumber shed.

The scene was finally finished, over two years after it was begun, looking nothing like it was originally envisioned—although completely satisfactory, nonetheless. Indeed, in some ways it exceeded expectations, although I still miss having a large lumber shed. Ah, well, perhaps on the next layout...