The 2-Yearly Update!

Over the past two years I've regularly 'seen' my Z scale Wassen layout but haven't done much to it. There are a few projects on the go, but there hasn't been all lot of progress for a very long time. Recently I have been tinkering with NZ trains again, but ...

Inexplicably, I decided to do something on Wassen today.

Other than some repairs needed to rewind several years of being stored vertically in a basement that isn't always dry, three obvious things need to be done. These are adding more buildings to the town, and doing something with.the two front corners, which have remained oddly unscenicked. 

I decided to start with the corner closest to the door of the room the layout is hiding in.  This is the 'upper' Wattinger bridge over the Reuss river, but in its current unfinished state, it is not a great first impression of the layout.

Above: some white plastic padding attached to the bridge before adding the sides. All of the 'visible'  track on the layout is flex track except for this corner (and of course the hidden spirals)

Some basic grass has been added in places under the bridge, and the its stone 'sides' are being added. These are the same photoshopped pictures printed out for the lower Wattinger bridge about seven years ago! Ballast is about to be glued down between the Rokuhan plastic track roadbeds.

Next it was time for tunnel portals. I'm almost out of the old dark grey Ratio roof slate sheets that were used for the other stone portals, but as this is a relatively self-contained little scene, I decided to use some cardboard cobblestone street sheets that I bought for my
N scale Brusio viaduct (another barely started project!)

And compared to the real location in the superb VGB Gotthard book:

Some trees, foliage and Woodland Scenics tallus rocks in the river will have the corner looking better than it did yesterday. 

I noted in the previous post (two years ago) about the upcoming Marklin Re 6/6. Two years later there is still no sign of these!

Mittlere Meienreussbrücke Centre Span

Work continued today on the big bridge behind Wassen with the missing middle span being built.

Although the pictures are probably self explanatory here, I cut off the bottom of the arch so that I could put 'stone work' in there, plus cut out the four arched holes. I'm sure that's not the architectural term...

Some cut up 'stone' segments were stuck onto the removed arch piece perpendicular to the edge and this was all glued back into place:

Any unevenness in these pieces hanging down below the arc was trimmed off after the glue had set.

And below, a start is being made on the inner walls that you will see if you peer through the arched cutouts.

Like the obere bridge, this has no back face to the bridge, as no-one will ever see it, but unlike the obere bridge, I put an underside on this one, to keep prying eyes from seeing the emperor's new clothes when looking from the sides. Alas I was running out of the gray Kibri plasticard for this main arch, so used some brown plastruct brick stuff. On the real viaduct the arch is actually prestressed concrete anyway.

And that's that. The main arch was snipped at the apex to allow the whole bridge to bend in two halves - for squeezing it into the tight space available, and also because the bridge is on a curve so needs a kink in it. You might also see inside the base of the cutouts that grey Kibri plasticard was used for the topside of the chord face inj these slots to match the other visible pieces of stonework.

Pinned into place for looks, using some small holes at the top of the side and pinned into the foamboard track base:

And finally, fixed into place with the Kibri capping stones along the top edge and some stone columns to cover the joins between the three sections of the bridge:

Big Bridge Progress

For unknown reasons, I built the 'right' (northern) end of the Mittlere Meienreussbrücke today.

The centre span of the viaduct is just a placeholder here, but completing both abutments should allow me to plant some trees and rocks in the gorge around the viaduct - this would be harder if the middle section was in place.

The abutment was built in the same way and from the same material as the left end, with vertical pieces of the stone-embossed plasticard used inside the columns to give the thing depth. A lot of trial and error was employed to have this mate up with the various slopes of the cliff face behind it.

Once it was fitting properly, a wash of black was applied to bring out some of the stone detail and it was glued and clipped and prodded into place using pins and the hokey items pictured.

It's neat to finally be able to 'see' the bridge for real, but perhaps a slight disappointment as this was supposed to be the layout's focal point - but here it looks a bit Lilliputian. I suppose it's 60-70% the size it really should be, but those small locos look larger than I'd hoped...

Perhaps when the centre piece is detailed and weathered it will look better.

A Bridge [Even Further] Too Far

The upper and least well-known of the three bridges in the tributary Meinreuss gorge above Wassen  is the top level railway bridge - the Obere Meienreuss-Brücke. This crossing isn't terribly visible unless you go out of your way to find it, being well hidden in the deep gorge, surrounded by trees and sitting between two tunnels.

A pic taken on my first visit to the place in October 2015:

The distinctive (fairly recent) recent tunnel portal extension poking out of a dramatic dark rockface is prominent - this presumably shields the line from rockfalls. Although the bridge takes shape here, the other elements have yet to be modelled here (and may never be!!).

The bridge itself appears to be quite a modern concrete one with minimal stone decoration about the various arches. I decided to make it (rather un-prototypically) from some z scale prick-embossed plastic sheet.

As usual, a bit of random drawing was done ono the sheet with a fine marker until it looked about right (here using a plastic tub and the inside of a roll of solder to provide appropriately-sized arcs) :

And then it was cut out:

Trimmed to fit and a concrete top piece added (the VGB Gotthard book gives a decent picture of what the thing should be like, so I'll give myself a B for this (and would have scored higher had I bothered to paint more of the face a concrete colour:

Weathered lightly and glued in place among the growing forest of trees:

Being the lazy modeler that I am, it's only single faced of course, just like his little brother road bridge), but hopefully a few more trees will grow to hide that fact that there is nothing behind that face, and I'll come back to the tunnel portal and catenary poles later.

A bridge too far?

Quite a few things have been going on at Wassen in seemingly random spurts, so these posts might seem a little out of order...

You may have noticed in recent pics that a start has been made on the 'big viaduct' on the middle level - the Mittleren Meinreuss Brücke.

In a 'chicken-and-egg-like' quandary, it is hard to put a bridge in after you have laid scenery, but it is also hard to lay scenery round after you have installed a bridge. So I figured I might put in the southern end of the viaduct so that some scenery could be applied around it in the gorge, and then later on complete the rest of the thing.

For about a year I have been looking at and purchasing various stone and brick lookalike sheets and have settled upon this Kibri plastic sheeting. t is a little overscale for Z, but to my eye, doesn't look too bad. I'm not sure if the true Z scale sheets I have seen have enough detail to pop when seen from afar.

As usual I have no plan but made some guestimated measurements from pictures and drew some lines and curves til it looked about right.

As an aside, teh cutting mat here (found for $2 at the local recycling shop) is great for not only cutting things on, but also for helping my eyeball get 90-degree corners more accurate.

After cutting, some inner facing was added to the piers

the 'blanked off' arch at left in the pics below is semi-prototypical, and the middle arch is where the Sustenpass road goes under the railway, so I have added a black blanking piece at the far end in case someone tries to peer through this...

A few capping stones and washes of paint later:

Tacked into place and the far side (which will be cut down in height) being tried on for size:

A start being made on the middle arch... A paint tin providing an appropriate radius for the main chord!

Town Planning

Something I've been considering for a while with no actual action, is what to do about the tunnel under Wassen's church. I've been back and forth over two options:

1. Have a normal tunnel portal - the 'main street' will disappear behind the hill, the church sits on the hill, and a grassy slope runs down from it to the tunnel portal
2. Have the main road road run in front of all this on a bridge which hides the tunnel portal. The Church is on the hill and the grassy slope runs down to the bridge as usual.

There are pros and cons for both.

In the real Wassen, there is a big motorway that runs between the town's main street and the railway. It crosses the railway on a bridge in front of the tunnel we are discussing, and runs along and just above the railway, crossing over the Wattinger tunnel and Reuess river on another bridge. I've marked it in blue in the map below.

On the layout, I have pulled out my artistic licence (which seems to have expired) and 'merged' the two roads  - with the south end bridge over the creek and the upper Wattinger bridge as it should be, merging into the main road through town. In the below mockup, it then continues as the 'motorway' again over the Muhle tunnel portal.

This is reasonably realistic. It provides a visual break between the church and the railway (in the real thing the church should be higher above the rail level of course.

On the downside, the bridge takes 50 cm of an already short run of visible track on the lower level and hides it, making this the most difficult piece of the layout's track to clean.

Another negative is that being lightly coloured, it might make the vertical 'gap' between the tunnel and the church seem too small (underscoring the church not being perched high enough in the sky.)

It might be the latter that causes me to change my mind (now that I've already started building it).

As you can see, I've also started placing some mockups of building locations just to see what the town might look like.

Wassen looking south from the Church end - the main road through the middle of the pic, the motorway further left. Pic stolen from Vikas Chander