Welcome to Trumansburg
determine how I wanted to build my benchwork. Going with a combination of one-half inch Homasote placed over one-half inch plywood and open grid with foam was my final choice. This gave me the option to use a router for the dikes of the right-of-way into the Homasote. For deeper ditches and hills I used the foam on open grid. I made it in modular sections no longer than eight feet and no wider than two feet eight inches so it could be easily trans- ported to rail fairs, train shows and eventually to its final resting place in the local museum. Once the benchwork was complete, I laid my enlarged map over it and carbon paper traced it onto the surface. Using this technique gave me “scale real estate, the visual and spatial relationships of the location with no compression. The backdrop was to be a very im- portant part of the diorama, so I con- sidered its creation next. Again, with the help of Jay Hart, we found a loca- tion on top of a barn near the old rail yards. From there he shot a panorama consisting of nearly one hundred pic- tures which then were stitched togeth- er on a computer. The time of day was ten thirty a.m. which matched the an- gle of the track lights where the diora- ma was displayed. The final back drop was 46″ wide by 38′-6″ long. This gave plenty of length for angular photogra- phy. I mounted the photographic back- drop to one quarter inch Gator®
board
and glued magnets to the back so the pieces would “stick” to a steel stud frame behind it. This allowed me to re- move the backdrop for cleaning. Building the structures was to be done completely from scratch using only the materials they were originally built from. I used wood, concrete, metal and stone. Many of the original struc- tures were still there. For those,
I
measured every stick and stone and built them exactly to prototype. For the structures that were not still there, I scaled them from pictures, counting clapboards and even shingles. In one case I eventually got an old blueprint of the building and was within three inches of length, six inches of height
The Maple Leafpasses out of Trumansburg on its way to Buffalo and connections to Toronto, Detroit and Chicago (top). No. 455 takes a cut of cars from the tail of an east- bound freight at about 10:30 a.m. (page 57, top). It will take two cuts off the eastbound before it gathers empties to place on the rear of the eastbound. No. 455 continues its morning chores spotting cars at Heb- bard’s Feed, Grain and Beans (right). These cars will be loaded today and picked up by a westbound freight later this evening. The grains will then be taken to the flour mills in Buffalo, New York.
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