Stanstead Branch – Steady Progress

I don’t want to spend too much time on building Stanstead and it’s also a good excuse to unglue me from a screen and do something positive. The first steps of a module are generally quite straight forward when you know what you’re doing. Regarding Stanstead, I want to have it done in a timely manner, before Christmas. It means tracks, wiring, ballast and groundwork should be mostly done by then.

During the weekend, I had the chance to have a lot of free time and the project progressed at an unexpectedly fast pace. Knowing what you are doing help and also knowing how to optimize your time: painting when something is drying elsewhere, etc.

 

I was able to lay the tracks, including custom distorted ties (about 120 of them), shape the embankments with fiberboard, create landforms out of foam, install a fascia, build control panel (DCC and turntable) and cover everything with a generous coat of mud (Celluclay and latex interior paint). At this point, we can conclude the canvas is now completed and the funny artistic work is beginning.

You will also remark the fascia isn’t straight but rather follow the track geometry. I didn’t like the artificial linear limit created by the rectangular footprint and wanted something more organic and free flowing. I’m really impressed how a simple 2 inches variation can have so much impact on a layout.

 

I’ve yet to commit to a season for the layout. I’ve been seriously thinking about late summer or late October. Spring could be another good alternative. I’m not sure what I want but I know I’d love to have rich color variations applied in an impressionistic way. It will probably be October for this reason.

The next challenge will be to build the turntable. It will probably be a mix of hard wood, 3D print and a jack plug. It must be both sturdy, simple and efficient.

Finally, I’ve been also working on small projects such as telegraph poles and customizing an Accurail 40ft wooden reefer. Canadian Pacific reefers used to have wooden platform around the ice bunkers. I simply remove the hatches, shaved off the molded grabirons and straps, created new supports and added custom platforms made of styrene. The hatches were glued back in place and new wire grabirons were added. It’s an easy modification and while not 100% accurate, it add a layer of variety to a very generic kit.

Donnacona - The Conventional Approach

Indeed, I made a bold decision with this diorama. However, another option on the table was making it a fully-fledged North American switching layout. I take some time to share it here to show you how we would typically approach this project if it were to be published in some magazine or railroad planning book. It is not per se a bad design at all, but it tells another story and frame the subject in a way I didn't like. Also, I know I had no appetite for yet another paper mill layout as I am already building one with the club.

Donnacona and the river (credit: Yvan Déry)

However, I believe many people could benefit from a few ideas posted here as it propose a very interesting mill on a narrow shelf. It could be built as drawn or merged into a much larger layout. But first of all, I'll take no credit for that plan since I've built upon ideas already modelled by Yvan Déry, a modeller from Portneuf area who made a rendition of the entire subdivision in HO scale. Among it, was a replica of Donnacona including the pulpwood yard by St. Lawrence river which provided me with initial inspiration.

Another shape, another story

In this conventional design version, the layout would be L-shaped, about 10' x 10'. On the right leg, the mill is built as I did with the diorama version, but it would have a much longer switching lead connecting to the main line, by the depot. One leg would be industrial, the other one much more natural, with the depot acting as a pivot.

The old CNoR main line would be modelled, including a siding where inbound and outbound cars from the paper mill would be set. Another siding, by the river would hold pulpwood cars to be unloaded as was the case from the prototype.

Operation wouldn't be different to what I already have in mind. The locomotive would be stored by the depot, travel the main line, pick up a few cars and come back to the mill. The idea being that the locomotive can travel several times across the entire layout to provide visual interest.

While the diorama version put a lot of emphasis on the industrial canyon, this one puts forward the riverside nature of the mill, with a large sweeping panorama giving a sense of place and scale. The depot would act as our human connection to the scene, a role that is imparted on the office building in diorama version.

I do like this plan, but it doesn't fit my idea of a canvas. Too large, I feel it doesn't work as a small switching layout approached as a piece of art. The mill itself captures my interest and the idea of intricate brick structures isn't alien to it.

On the other hand, it shows a same prototype can be translated in various scale and can dramatically change in terms of tone and ambiance give the focus we choose. There is now better option here, but it's a matter of knowing what you want to achieve and selecting the right approach. Yvan Déry chosed the more conventional approach with his mill and it was a perfect choice given is large layout based on substantial operation. His way to replicate the dark and menacing skies over the river, the quaint little depot and the pulpwood siding should be enough to prove us it was well done.

But I don't want to replicate what others have done, so I went forward with my own personal approach.

In the next installment, we shall deal with the diorama and how it is developed from sketches using an iterative process. It is a mix between sculpture, theater, architecture and historical investigation, which isn't generally how we approach a layout. It leads to a non-linear building process which wouldn't be really suitable with a large layout, but which can be possible when dealing with a smaller footprint... here again proving it is indeed a canvas.

Donnacona - Crafting a Narrative

I’ve taken my sweet time to update my work on Donnacona. With an increase workload but also due to a lot of online conversations with other modellers, mainly about his project, it kind of killed my inspiration to write. It seems there is a limit to the number of channels on which you can share your ideas before they start to distort themselves and falters! With that said, let’s move on!

***

 As I previously mentioned, Donnacona is based on an experience at railfanning a typical early 20^th century paper mill. The word railfanning is important because I wish us, the spectators, to approach this layout from a certain distance. Yes, we operate the layout, but in such a way we still are the lurkers. We can’t see everything from our vantage point, online what is accessible to us without trespassing the property. This is, truly, a timeless experience most of us can relate...

We have all – at least most of us – witnessed real operation at a plant. While we can understand what is happening, a big deal of the action is often out of our sight and only the sound of a roaring engine let us know something is happening. Walking down a road, we try to track familiar noises to locate our target. Then, it makes its entrance…

A 0-4-0 switcher at St. Anne Paper Co. (credit: Bill Grandin Collection)

To achieve this goal, two big challenges must be addressed: 1) the subject must be framed, 2) the scene composition must guide our sight. These two key elements must then blend together into a coherent picture, just like a neat painting.

For years, I have admired Chris Nevard’s work on small British layouts. Chris isn’t a prototype modeller in the sense he doesn’t replicate real locations and most of his diorama are quite compressed. However, he informs his work on reality, working with shapes, colors and textures to create a realistic and compelling world. For this reason, he is able to create organic compositions that work flawlessly.

Railway bridge in Stanwardine in the Fields, UK (credit: WikiCommons)

As mentioned, the main trick with small European layouts is to hide the layout ends. With its overbuilt environment and impressive railway infrastructure, this is easily achievable with such prototypes. The same could be said of many Asian railways too. In these countries, bridges, overpasses, ditches and tunnels are a common occurrence and you can see many of them crammed along a single mile of track. In North America, except in a few very select places, such infrastructures are qui rare. Most railway lines don’t have tunnels. Farms have plain gravel grade crossings and not fancy brick or stone overpasses (and if it is the case, they are underpasses). It’s at this moment that Donnacona starts to shine.

 

Indeed, the industrial canyon created by the mill and its boiler house is perfect to hide the right side of the layout if you are looking south. The boiler house height creates a natural transition with the front and end of the layout which frame perfectly that part of the scene.

 

At Donnacona, freigh cars disappear between industrial structures (credit: BaNQ)

On the right side, the tracks on the prototype were running parallel to a small cliff. By having the cliff in the foreground, similar to what Mike Cawdrey did with his Calais, ME layout, it helps to make the sidings disappear into staging gradually. This is a useful visual trick because it provides a place to hide and park the locomotive. When the layout power is turn on, you can hear the locomotive, but barely see its chimney or domes above the grassy hill. More on that later. Then, what to use to frame the exit to staging? A bridge won’t do and tunnel neither. However, Donnacona used to have a series of pulpwood conveyors moving logs from the St. Lawrence shore to their piles behind the mill. These conveyors can then be used to cleverly hide the staging and frame the right end of the layout. A small reservoir or some other structure or object is used to hide the spot were the conveyor hits the backdrop.

 

Donnacona's GE switcher running parallel to the cliff (credit: Massey F. Jones)

The next element is scene composition. This layout, like a written sentence, is read from left to right. From a virtually unbuilt environment toward a highly industrialized site. This gradient creates a vertical diagonal that draws our attention toward the mill.

 

To this is superposed another narrative drawing inspiration from the railfanning perspective. In Donnacona, the office building was located right next to the warehouse, by the sidings. Small and quaint, this ivy-covered brick structure had all the hallmark of a house; a place where humans live. In this industrial mess, this is probably the closest place to our daily experience, making it the perfect point of entrance. The boiler house on one side and the grassy hill on the other one both frame our view toward that office which is even more emphasized by the presence of an access road. In some sense, you could say the layout is composed of three separate parts. From left to right, the grassy hill (nature), the office building/access road (humans) and the boiler house (industry). This is an interesting progression from nature to industry, following a common tripartite trick used by photographs and illustrators since eons ago.

 

The homely ivy-covered office acts as an anchor (credit: unknown)

As a railfan, after walking the access road nearby the office, you try to hear some locomotive noises… You can’t see it, but behind the grassy hill, you can unmistakably hear the sounds of an idle engine ready to work. Your keen eyes can see the chimney puffing smoke and the top of a dome or tow. Slowly, you climb the hill, walking on top of its crest until you can see the locomotive in all its glory. After waiting a while, it starts moving on the steel rail and disappear beyond the conveyor… you can no longer see what’s happening, but it can only mean they went to the nearby yard to pick up some cars.

 

Framing the staging entrance (credit: Matthieu Lachance)

After emerging again under the conveyor, a fresh cut of cars is ready to be switched at the plant. The crew runaround its train, disappearing again far beyond the grassy hill. Then, they start their job. Switching the boxcars at the warehouse is quite straight forward and the access road provides a great viewpoint on the action… However, when the start to shunt the boiler house, almost everything become invisible behind the large brick structure.

The boiler house is another way to frame trains.

Knowing cleverly that boiler houses are real life infernos, you venture in the gravel lot and try to spot moving cars through open doors and windows. Certainly, the place is filled with boilers and pipes, but it’s still possible to get a good idea of what’s happening. The acid building platform is wide opened, offering a rare glimpse on a tank car spotted at the unloading dock.

 

Scene composition: suggesting and framing the action (credit: Matthieu Lachance)

Then, the locomotive and its crew run back to the yard with loaded boxcars and empty coal hoppers. They parade in front of you, whistling at the grade crossing and probably annoying a few office workers nearby! It then proceeds to disappear for a while… Maybe 20 minutes later, the locomotive emerges from beyond the conveyor and stops by the grassy hill as always. A crew member then jumps off the tender platform and take a large hose to fill up the tender again until the next work shift. It’s time to go back home… They won’t move until much later this afternoon when the monstruous mill will have consumed a few tons of coal and churned out tons of newsprint bound to New York City.

A Canadian Layout "à l'anglaise"

The time has come to introduce a new series of article based on a less conventional approach to layout design in North America. Which is the reason for the title: Donnacona: A Canadian Layout "à l'anglaise" because I'll draw a lot of ideas from the UK small layouts tradition and will merge them with North American prototypes in a French Canadian context. It is no secret here, this blog made a name for itself over the year by challenging received ideas and experimenting unusual approaches. Nothing was new, not everything worked as can testify my layout cemetery, but if I can judge by the limited but insightful feedback I got over the years, I know it rang true with many of you. One one my best work has always been the "Thinking Out Loud" series based on my inquiry about an early 20th century layout inspired by Temiscouata Railway. While this project has yet to come to fruitition, it was an excellent way to test my limit and the new project inherits the same state of mind.

I hope this new series, with the going on pandemic, will provide inspiration and start meaningful discussions about our hobby. Instead of retiring myself in the basement and fill empty space with meaningless scenery I'm not sure I care about, I thought it would be much more relevant to explore new techniques, new approaches and a different way to see our hobby. It probably won't be that great, but subjects will be balanced so everyone can find something to think about. This is a global design process, meaning that artistic ambitions will have to take into account realistic train operation and other traditional questions raised by model railroading. It is also a collaborative effort, in the sense that what you see and read is the result of intense discussions with talented modellers and layout designers. You can't create something from nothing and they know that.

To put things in context, a few months ago I tried to build a rural module to be connected with a continuous loop, but it was too big and looked clunky in my hobby room. My fault! It seems I didn't follow my own lessons about the perfect size to be immersed in within a scene... 10 feet is a lot of real estate to fill when it's not your goal. Recall when I said after 7 feet, your eyes could no longer distinguish anything? So, I came back to what I generally do better: plan small scenes. I wanted something as we often see in Europe and UK, well-framed and focussed on a specific aspect of a railway. Looking at the already built module, it was evident a 6 foot lenght was more than enough on my plate!

I made it clear to myself from that point going on that I didn't care to represent all the rail operations, wanting only to work with what made an enjoyable scene and was considered enough to have a decent operation session. I first started with the idea of a small switching layout with a runaround and sidings on both side. On the right would be an industrial plant, maybe a paper mill, and on the left would be a small loco shed and a hidden staging. Overpass, structures and landforms would provide the required elements to hide how the railway would connect with the module ends.

This decision was linked to my oldest design experiments. When I was in high school, I had to practice design with almost nothing. I recall my father gave me a 36" x 14" particle board on which I often laid temporary tracks and used boxes, wood blocks and a few plastic structures to compose scenes. One of them was an urban main line with a station located in a trench with two road overpasses on each sides. Unfortunately, back then, I didn't had the skills to materialize the design into something that would work. I was also unaware of such concepts as fiddle yards, stagings, cassettes and sector plates. I built solely on my intuition and artistic senses to make something that felt real.

Over the year, I came to embrace prototype modelling. After a while, I became convinced replicating as close as possible reality was the single and surest way to achieve realism. While true in some sense, it was a  diminutive approach and slowly, my layout designs started to be stiff and lifeless. The many compromise with Hedley-Junction made me realize you had to reinterpret reality through a narrative lense. Without a story to connect with, the layout was stalled. If too whimsical, it was bound to loose realism and be no longer able to provide a mean of immersion. The answer was somewhere in between... and I started to see layout design as music composition. This wasn't a surprise because since my formative high school days, I always wanted to create a layout like to sketch a drawing or paint on canvas.

But as you know, the bigger a sketch is, the harder is it to keep it focussed. Worst, if you start to bother too much to get every detail orthogonal you end up loosing you create impulsion that connects all the parts together. It means that for a layout to be highly artistic, I had to keep it small. Certainly, this is a rule that applies to me, I'm better at design smaller things than large one. After a certain size, I loose the sense of scale... while some others excel at working with large canvas. Confalone is certainly a good exemple of this second kind of people...

Donnacona Paper Company in the 1950s

Armed with this knowledge, I knew I would do something small, achieveable, that could fit my space in my old house full of windows and doors and implementing a good canvas for scene composition and artistic license. Quickly, this idea evolved from something totally freelanced until I discovered the track plan I was designing was strangely looking like the old Donnacona Paper Co. in Donnacona, QC. That mill formed an industrial canyon. On the north side were the heavy industrial processes associated with pulp making, including a large boiler house, acid tanks, a digester and a wet room, all served by a siding for unloading raw materials. On the south side were the paper making processes from treating pulp to newsprint manufacturing. It was also served by a siding, mainly dedicated to shipping finished products to New York City as Donnacona Paper had lucrative contracts with The New York Time. According to Hunter Hughson, the Donnacona mill was somewhat original in it's vertical integration of the wet processes. Don't ask me the minute details about these since my knowledge of paper making is sufficient to grasp the general processes but not more, but this arrangement made for a geometry perfect for a layout.

Donnacona Paper Company in the late 1910s

Indeed, how often, with three parallel sidings, can you capture without noticeable compression, the entire paper making process? Add to that the office building was also located in this nevralgic spot, meaning averything that matters occuring at that plant was centered on that office, from receiving coal to shipping newsprint or keeping tab on employees punching their work shift at the time office by the warehouse...

Better than these pragmatical observations, it meant that if Donnacona was a layout, the first thing you would notice, your connection to the industrial world, would be the access road leading to the office. This office was also interesting because its proportions were very home-like. A large two-storey brick house, 30' x 36', with a warm enclosed porch welcoming visitors and providing protection from the cold winter winds of St. Lawrence River. Not only this detail was homely but it created an interesting narrative surrounding the harsh canadian climate and how it was dealt with in Quebec. And why I stress this cozy feeling is because as humans, we always search for a connection with railways. Most of the time, grade crossings, rural roads and stations provides such a connection. If you want to realistically be immersed by a model scene, it must start from one of these plausible connections.

The "home" office provides such a connection. Both by its central location on the access road, which if often the only place you can see operations at a paper mill in real life, but because the building offer an experience close to what we feel about a welcoming and friendly residence. For some reasons, from construction until very late in its existence, the board of directors at Donnacona made a point of pride to let their office be covered in lush ivy. Set in the middle of a see of messy industrial stuff, this cute enclosed porch and ivy-covered brick walls were an oasis of humanity and nature which seems, to me and Chris Mears, the perfect place to start your journey exploring the beauties of a mill in action.

Another human connection is the era and rolling stock use. According to documentation, back in the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s, Donnacona Paper used to acquired old locomotives from Canadian Northern, Grand Trunk and Canadian National for switching duties. Most were 2-6-0 and 4-6-0, and they also had a 0-6-0T. Some photographic evidences also show 4-4-0 were also used from time to time. These small steamers from the late 1890s and early 1900s were also at a human scale. Still large, but not beast, and their old time look was also another connection point. Indeed, for most people, old steam locomotives are generally characterized in popular imagery by what most you call erroneously "Far West". While due to a lack of knowledge, everybody can connect with these while they would hardly connect with a GE 44-ton switcher or a Big Boy.

A cute 0-4-0 at St. Anne Paper Co., Beaupré in 1962 (credit: Bill Grandin Coll.)

On the layout, such a locomotive would wait on a service track by the cliff. Only its smoke stack and domes would protude over the landscape for the casual viewer... creating an interest to walk down the access road up to the grade crossing whre it would be possible to have a better glimse at the steel horse ready to feed the mill. 

An ex-CNoR 4-4-0 switching at Donnacona in 1927

Another interesting aspect is the second hand nature of these locomotives and their provenance. By the early 1920s, CN was in the process of melting together various railway networks of different kind. Canadian Northern provided the original backbone of Canadian National to the point the reused the paint scheme, the classification system and various other practices of this underdog railway gone bankrupt. The line in Donnacona was itself one of these whimsical CNoR rural railways built to link smaller cummunities together and provide new accesses for goods and passengers. For this reason, setting the layout in the late 1910s or early 1920s, let's say 1923, we are able to capture that fascinating era of Canadian history when industry was booming and railways were in mutation, making it more than simply trains rolling on tracks.

Incidently, who says 1923 says old freight cars of small dimensions, which is perfect to amplify the size of the mill in a narrow space, but also to relate to the human scale which is central to this project. It was also an era of experimentation with early all-steel cars, single sheathed designs, old 36ft boxcars and newer 40ft beasts.

So, basically, this layout is an exercice in framing to tell a stronger narrative and offer an immersive experience in a small space. Certainly, it's not all about aesthetics and several considerations must be taken into account such as:

-Must replicate a plausible rendition of a real place

-Must offer a modicum of operation challenge in a realistic fashion

-Locomotives must travel all over the layout

-Scene composition must have a strong focus point which initially draw the eye and connect us with the theme

-Buildings must replicate a convincing industrial process

-Topography must create a natural environment

-Color palette must be consistent and shared by backdrop, structures, scenery and rolling stock

These aspects will be explored in future installments, but they provide another way to look at layout design. I don't pretend all these ideas are new, they aren't. While I don't read that much about layout design (magazines, books, videos, etc.), I draw inspiration from others' work which I try to understand, my training as a professional architect and also from discussions. In that regard, I want to thank Chris Mears which is probably one of the most interesting voices in Canada on small layout design. He is able to merge his historical and technical knowledge with out of the box concepts that you would find in arts circles, while keeping it accessible. He provides a different perspective which, at the end of the day, help to make a project progress while keeping coherence. In that regard, our recent discussion on shapes, composition and color palettes were all grounded in this day to day experience of railways;the human connection.