Day 74 Tues Aug. 3

Posting a day late because most of Monday and Tuesday was spent under my stove/oven repairing a downdraft exhaust fan. Fun stuff that didn't leave me in the mood for writing.

My other "artistic" endeavor is model railroading. I model one of the first railroads through the Colorado Rockies, the Denver, South Park, and Pacific. The DSP&P was the first railroad to tunnel through the Continental Divide and this is the part of the line I'm modeling. The photos show a stretch of the eastern approach to the tunnel. The track here is on a penninsula, one town on one side, the track makes a180 turn at the end of the penninsula and then another town on the other side. A mountain range separates the two sides. The peak of this range will be almost 7 feet off the ground and on one side the peak is almost 5 feet from the aisle. That means I can't reach this area to do the scenery work if were to build it all at once.

So I'm building the peak of the range first and will fully scenic that and then build the lower slopes and blend the two.

First step is to build the support structure for the peak--a styrofoam box. All the substrate of the scenery is made from foam insulation.

The first photo shows a basic mock-up of the slopes that showed me the need for the two-step approach.
The second photo shows the box in place. In the distance you can see the enginehouse that was located in the valley at the tunnel portal.
The third photo shows the box from the reverse angle.
Tomorrow, it will look more like a mountain--I hope.