Scenery at the Op Session of 10/14/17 by Verryl V...
Verryl V Fosnight Jr's Gallery Verryl V Fosnight Jr's Gallery
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  1. Verryl V Fosnight Jr's Gallery
  2. Wyoming Division HO Operation LayoutWyoming Division HO Operation Layout
  3. 10 Backdrops Signals Scenery10 Backdrops Signals Scenery
  4. Scenery at the Op Session of 10/14/17Scenery at the Op Session of 10/14/17
Scenery 060817 03
When you first walk in the front door, you will see the mountain through which the twin tunnels of Aspen and Altamont were drilled. The west Altamont tunnel portal can be see in this view and the cut for the Aspen tunnel is behind it. Lenny has only planted a little bit of the grass here, and very few shrubs.
28 Scenery During Ops 101417 (4)
Here the west pportals are. Lenny is doing this, but he has left it for awhile to work on Dale and the twin tunnels at Hermosa on the adjoining aisle. He will come back and plant grass and trees and additional details when he has time. He is also working on designing and building the Cheyenne Freight engine round house,the so called "Freight House." He built the "Passenger House" 3 years ago, and it is in place on the layout.
28 Scenery During Ops 101417 (9)
This is Lenny's side of Dale and Hermosa. As you can see it is "done" (as done as any part of a model railroad ever gets, anyway. Dale starts just where the photo backdrop ends at this end o f the bench. Soome of the Sherman Hill rocks can be seen in the backdrop, and more modeled rocks are scattered all over the Sherman-Dale-Hermosa area.
28 Scenery During Ops 101417 (17)
This is and "aerial" view of Sherman-Dale-Hermosa. The Sherman depot is the shite stucture in the upper center sitting along Tracks #1 and #2. Dale is to the left. The Dale crossovers and junctions allow trains to change the current of running from right hand running from Cheyenne, in the distance on the far bench, to left hand running down the Hill through the tunnels into Laramie just around the right edge of the photo. Dale creek, marked by the bend ribbon of dark green foliage, flows through a culvert at the base of the massive and famous Dale Fill. A water tower is on this 1957 rendering of the scene, because steam engines were still in use, for a few more months, that is.Note that the signal mast has 5 signal heads on it, and it is placed facing the left hand track. That track is used for running up the Hill from Laramie and through the tunnel, and the crossovers are used t revert to right hand running at Dale. Lenny is in the yellow shirt, and Allen is the tall one with the cap.
28 Scenery During Ops 101417 (14)
This is the west portals to the Hermossa tunnels, #1 and #2, on the UP. Allen is working on the inside of this bench from where the camera is viewing the scene. Note the extensive snow fences Lenny hand built. It rarely snow on Sherman Hill at 8,000 feet, but there are lots and lots of blizzards. The brown dirt is the first ground cover to go down, and it is real dirt from the Sherman Hill area that Allen collected on a recent trip through Wyoming. He brought 15 buckets of dirt from 15 different places in Wyoming. The white area is a layer of Sculptamold, a water mixed modeling compound used like plaster of Paris to fill the cracks of the underlying Bragdon Enterprises Geodesic Foam Product, which is an epoxy mixture that coats large sheets of nylon window screen "wire" to cover landscape areas. The terrain is shaped with cardboard strips or foam insulation board glued on a bench on edge.
28 Scenery During Ops 101417 (5)
Here is a long shot of Sherman Hill. Tracks #1 and #2 are against the photo backdrop, and the Harriman Cutoff (Track #3) is near the edge of the right hand bench. At this point #3 is double track past the coal tower at Harriman, Wyoming. The right hand track is west bound up the Hill, and there is a yellow proceed-with-caution aspect tothe top signal head for the west bound (right hand track), and a red on the lower signal head to stop trains from using the left hand track up the Hill. The far end of the double track has a out of focus green signal for the west track to show that that west bound trains can continue onto the single track portion.There is a left hand signal mast and signals at each end on the other side of the tracks, but no signal lights can be seen, because they face away from the camera.
28 Scenery During Ops 101417 (7)
This is a large cut for tracks #1 and #2, made with a rock casting. but Allen has not gotten to staining and weathering it. Note his finely strung barbed wire fencing. Naturally, there are electric and phone poles along the tracks. All the grass is static raised fibers. Allen and Lenny have built their own static machines to shock the fibers upright.
28 Scenery During Ops 101417 (13)
This is view from a ladder looking down onto the east side of Sherman Hill. The summit is at the building beam that the backdrop is wrapped around. Here the two signals can be seen on Track #3, the west track signal facing east, and the east signal a ways away facing east. The latter is a two head signal on a mast, the lower signal head is for the left hand not-to-be-used down-the-Hill track on the right in this picture. The upper signal head is for the correct route into Cheyenne, the right hand track on the left from this view.
28 Scenery During Ops 101417 (8)
Here in this detail photo of the Harriman coal tower, the green signal for a train up the hill running right handed on the right hand track of the Track #3 pair.
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At the foot of the west slope of Sherman Hill is the yard at Laramie. Cheyenne, Laramie, Green River, and Ogden-staging are at times very busy places, requiring a Yardmaster and a Classification foreman, each his own hand held radio (or tethered) throttle and switching locomotive. The work these yards from each end. A major benefit of our stacked mushroom bench work is that any operator can only see the tracks ahead or behind of him; he or she cannot see the tracks on the next bench, because of the backdrops, or the tracks below (or above ) him. Wesley is on the lower level, and he is unaware of the operators at Laramie, and they of him. The heights of the backdrops were designed so that an operator could see the heads of operators on adjacent aisles, but not the layout. This way no one feels closed in, but yet a feeling of being out on the wide open spaces of the prairie is attained.I designed all the aisles to be 41" wide, so operators could easily move past each other; no yards are across from another yard
28 Scenery During Ops 101417 (31)
Here is a slightly different view ofHarriman, and now the far signal shows yellow, signifying that a train occupies the second track ahead, that is at Dale. It can barely bee seen in the very far distance (right at Ted's mustache). A pair of GP-7's takes a train of oil tankeres down the east side of the Hill on Track #2 toward Cheyenne, probably to the Frontier Refinery there. I think Allen has left some bard dirt for buildings at Harriman, probably the string of line crew sheds that can be seen in old photos.
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I took this photo standing on the stairs leading up to the viewing mezzanine. The other stairs with yellow hand railing is at the far end of the building. Here Allen has spread genuine Wyoming dirt down the hill all the way into the west end of Cheyenne. The hilly part going up Sherman Hill is built up with a Geodesic Foam layer hot glued to strips of foam insulation glued down on the flat plywood bench tops. The insulation board is cut or carved to shape, and the Geodesic Foam layer is bent down to stick to the fresh hot glue. The Geodesic Foam sheets can be reformed with a heat gun years later if required. Wycon Chemical is the blue and white roofed structures just outside of Cheyenne. in 1957 it turned the Wyoming mined trona (soda) into fertilizer. Now, as Dyno Nobel, it makes explosives.
28 Scenery During Ops 101417 (33)
This is Isaac, currently our youngest operator bringing a train (out of seight) into the busy yard Laramie. The high school boy Alex,with the clipboard) is following him closely driving the PFE Special Forwarder out of Hanna in the distance, and past Medicine Bow, Wyoming. Laramie is behind them on the next bench. Isaac may be only 10, but he runs trains completely by himself. He does his part of switching in the major yards, moving his train as directed to help the YM there to help him as needed.
28 Scenery During Ops 101417 (32)
Here Isaac concentrates on his train as it approaches Laramie. Guy in his Wyoming Division shirt is the Laramie YM this day, and he is watching to shepard Isaac through the YM controled signal at the yard limits.
28 Scenery During Ops 101417 (37)
Here are two older operators. The B&O guy was brand new to layout, so he ran as one half of an engineer team with the other man who has been to a few Wyoming Division sessions. The appear to be bringing the Hanna-Cheyenne Coal Extra down toward Harriman. There they will ask the Dispatcher for time to work on the main, so they can pick up empties at the Harriman coal tower, and set out replacement loads there. Then they will continue into Cheyenne and leave loads there for the Cheyenne coal tower, the yard power house, and probably Frontier Refinery, Wycon Chemical, and maybe the City Coal and Ice business. All those loads will be left with the Cheyenne YM who will distribute them to those locations. The YM has previously gathered up the empty hoppers to hand them off the these fellows for them to return them to the Hanna mines.
28 Scenery During Ops 101417 (38)
Here they come into Harriman. They must come down Sherman Hill on Track #3 to be able to pull the empties from the stub track from the trailing point direction, and also to push the loads in as replacements.
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Another view (from the Mezzanine) showing the terrain of Sherman Hill better. The hand made rocks do not photograph to show how well their color matches the photo backdrop.
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