Last visit to Coon Creek Lumber
scale Union Pacific Sherman Hill lay- out, and they had become close friends. They came up with a process they called “dirtizing,” which did work. To pre-color the base, the paper tow- els were dipped into a mixture of Hy- drocal, water and powdered concrete colors. After this set, plaster rock cast- ings were glued in place and colored with washes. Most of the molds Lou used produced rounded shapes, simu- lating rocks that had been smoothed over time since narrow gauge logging railroads tended to follow the land- scape rather than blasting through it. Mike Brock explains the next step, which was to mix up “. .
. significant
Lou Ullian understood his subject well and studied photos to create authentic scenes on his On3 layout. As at typical woods sites, the bunkhouses and cook shed at his woods camp (above) were adjacent to the tracks so they could be moved to the next location where the company was cutting. Likewise, the landing was squeezed into a flat space on a mountain- side (opposite page). The intense level of detail at the landing and camp mirrors what such places looked like; there is a lot of “texture” here. Between the main scenes, the track winds its way through the trees to provide a visual “break,” as well as physically separating them. The forest floor, cut-over areas and undergrowth are done well and photograph realistically.
the cars, kits or scratchbuilt. Lou en- joyed building structures, and, other than the sawmill and car repair shed, which were built by friends but de- tailed by Lou, he went through a lot of stripwood. (If only his sawmill could have cut enough scale board feet. . . .) Most structures had interior detail- ing and lighting. The layout was very complete, yet not overcrowded with “clutter” for its own sake. The main scenes, like the logging camp, landing, mill and shop, were filled with tools, vehicles, machines, scale figures and the like, but they were separated by ar- eas of single track winding through rugged, forested areas. Such counter- point added to the visual impact of the layout, which had relatively narrow aisles and was dominated by the scenery. The object was to enjoy watch- ing trains in their natural habitat, the scenery of the Pacific Northwest. Lou especially liked doing scenery. A
friend, Jon Cagle, said Lou started out with the usual cardboard lattice cov- ered with paper towels soaked in Hy- drocal®
, then getting out a bucket of dirt and sifting it in place. The problem was twofold. First, most of the dirt did- n’t stay in place–it rolled down the steep slopes and left the plaster bare.
42 NOVEMBER 2013
Second, Lou approached this task like ballasting track, with diluted white glue applied with an eyedropper. An- other local modeler, Mike Brock, looked at the railroad and decided this wasn’t going to work. Lou had teamed up with him to do the scenery on Mike’s HO
amounts of Hydrocal plaster colored with concrete colors mixed about half with actual dirt previously run through a filtering process to eliminate larger particles. (Jon Cagle notes that small chunks of broken, pre-colored Hydrocal were also added to the bucket, calling it a batch of ‘debris.’) We then sprinkled (Jon says ‘dumped’‘) the mixture on the base in quantities such that the rock appeared to be exposed from the sur- rounding terrain. After this we sprin- kled on much smaller rocks. Then we applied the decisive step, which was to spray water on the plaster, dirt and rock castings using hand pump garden sprayers
(‘no squeeze-bottle misting
here’). This produced an effect similar to natural erosion, the water actually moving the mixture around the various castings and washing
ditches and the base of cliffs.” The
Hydrocal secured
it down into everything
when it set. Vegetation (some live, some dead, some from the hobby shop) came next, along with trees and stumps. The
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