by Ken Scales MMR
Bluesky Valley Railroad is completely freelance ON30 layout. It is currently a permanent layout but could be converted to an exhibition layout. It currently runs on DC but can be run also be run on DCC. It could be situated in Queensland, Northern territory or Southern USA. There are four hungry reptiles (which could be Crocodiles or Aligators at this scale) together with tree snakes, eagles, large turtles and a lot of other creatures which all live in these areas. It is situated in small valley along the edge of a wide river infested with all sorts of deadly creatures and is the timeframe is around the late 1930s. It is a little collection of scenes containing a swamp, a garage, a fuel depot, a large boatshed, a station, a mine and loader and lots of trees, people animals and wharves, all serviced by a small rail line. I used lots of photos from my favourite layouts as inspiration. I built all the freelance rolling stock which is a mixture of kit bash and scratch built models.
I already had a few of the buildings which were built by Steve Pettit, John Montgomery and Paul Morrant. I did however build all the actual layout and fine detail, the scenery, bridges, wharves and the majority of the buildings on my own. I also built the large boatshed on a separate wooden base over a period of two weeks to test a new modelling bench I had just constructed in my workshop.
The layout is in 3 pieces and uses conventional ply and pine construction. The completed modules were reasonably light and only took about 3 hours each to build. I am happy with the size and ease of construction and intend to build more similar modules for future projects. Most of the scenery forms were made from yellow insulation foam with lightweight plaster castings and conventional material from the hobby shop mixed with a variety of natural rock and dirt.
Ken Scales MMR