West Forge Layout: Recovery and reconstruction

Well over the last few weeks I got back into working more on my n-scale West Forge, PA layout. I added some new 1x4 lumber to the base to strengthen the module after the "Earthquake" ripped a fault line across the town. Since that time the town has rebuilt itself.

The station has remained the same near the the railroad cut through the hillside. WF Tower likewise hasn't really changed. Along main street we have a new machinery and equipment supply vendor that receives flat cars, box cars and tankers at semi-regular intervals. Next to that is still St. Patrick's Church, a local landmark it survived the earthquake unscathed. The local general store is still next to the church, it's received a new coat of paint during the towns reconstruction, but otherwise is the same old store with a small Railway Express office on the side. Across the street from the store is sill the lumber yard. It was farther away from the fault line and really didn't take any damage, it's mostly unchanged except that they tore down one of their old sheds. Where the old lumber shed was is now a small warehouse that receives mainly boxcars of LCL goods that go out via truck to other local businesses that aren't rail attached. The row buildings along main street are pretty much all the same still, the corner bar, the hardware store, and the soda/candy shop are all unchanged. There does appear to be some construction planned for the far end of main street just before the railroad tracks.

Back out into the real 1:1 world I've finished a few buildings including a new warehouse card kit that I got from Scalescenes.com. If you have not read about them in the latest Model Railroader magazine or haven't been to the website do yourself a favor head over there and download their two free kits. I will say that I recommend using a glue stick over spray mount to mount the pages to card stock. My spray mounted pages began loosening from all the folding and stuff needed to build the kit. Also since the page weights are in metric I mistakenly used too heavy of card to build mine and ran into some issues, so for those interested I recommend that for light card just use standard ink jet printer paper (around 20 lb), for the medium card I think his recommendation is about 80lb card stock. I used a poster board which was a bit too heavy. For the heavy card though laminate two or three pieces of poster board together to get the right thickness. I will say that even with the issues I had my kit came out great, and hence I made room for it on my layout.

Shortly after I finished my card kit I went back to scalescenes and looked at their texture sheets. I picked up the US roadways kit. It's worth the $6 USD that I paid for it. The asphalt looks great once it's cut out and flanked with sidewalks or dirt, and the sidewalks came out really nice when I printed them. I'll attach a picture of my road and tree test from the other night to the end of this post. This was just a test so I used only one sheet and that's why the road markings are a bit off. my only real complaint about the roadway kit is that there isn't just a sheet with three n-scale sized two lane roads with a single white or yellow line down the middle. The addition of that to the kit would take this from a should have to a must have in my opinion.

Anyway, before I run on too long that is what has been happening on my layout. I will try and get some additional pictures of the new structures soon.