Building my Royal Gorge
HO railroad module diorama
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Start with a dream but realize your dream might not be realistic. Okay, forget I warned you. It's more fun not overthinking your idea at the start.
Hopefully the reader can learn from my experiences and enjoy a fun adventure building their own diorama.
I saw the Royal Gorge about fifty years ago as my grandfather and I drove through western Colorado. I was eighteen years old and having the time of my life driving my grandfather, a retired Rio Grande railroad machinist, through many of the places of his youth. After learning about the hanging bridge, I drove up the winding road leading up to the suspension pedestrian bridge, which at the time it was the highest suspension bridge in the world. This memory became my second major model railroading effort.
My first retirement model railroad effort was to design and build a wall-mount train track, a picture is on this web site in the page named My Wall-Mount Track. Just click on the link at the top of this page to see a picture of the track. You can click here to go directly to the Wall-Mount Train web site.
Note: Some of these photos are from the internet. You might want to visit Canon City, Colorado and purchase tickets to ride the train through the canyon.
Another part of my years gone by activities was attending model train shows. I don't remember if my first visit was when I was a child, or when I took my son to a train show. But the thought occurred that I wanted to build a module to model the Hanging Bridge at the Royal Gorge. Just look at those modules often seen at the Ogden, Utah Hostler's model train show.
My efforts began with designing a 3D model of the hanging bridge. I went through a lot of pictures on the internet trying to determine what my dimensions needed to be. I knew,
* The width of the canyon was 35 feet,
* The approximate height of the passenger locomotive was 16 feet,
* The width of the locomotive was about 10-1/2 feet,
* And the HO scale is on a 1:87 ratio.
Using this knowledge and the pictures I did my best to determine the dimensions for my bridge.
I probably spent about 20 hours using Tinkercad to develop my 3D model. Being too cheap to buy a 3D printer large enough for the bridge I found a company (JawsTec) to print my bridge. Okay, that was more expensive than I expected, but cheaper than a 3D printer.
By this time life was easy, but it was about to change. My artistic skills are not that good, and I have never created and painted a model of mountains. My learning began by going to YouTube and watching a lot of videos on building railroad mountain dioramas; everyone seemed to have their own method of doing things.
I ordered numerous topographical maps of the Royal Gorge, determined to make my model as realistic as possible. The futility of my idea came to light when I calculated that the distance from the suspension bridge at the top of the mountain to the railroad tracks below would need to be eleven feet on an HO model scale.
The picture on the right shows my second start on creating part of a diorama. I layered the foam sheets horizontally and placed some spray foam in the back to seal some seams better than the glue had done. You can see some of the yellow foam in the front of the diorama. I have seen permanent, immobile mountains built using strips of carboard, sheetrock mesh joint tape, and plaster. Since my module will be moved from site to site I used styrofoam for a stronger, more stable design.
This next picture was taken after the first layer of plaster cloth was applied to the form. A lot more shaping is required before I begin painting. The mountain will continue towards the left once the basic form for the right and left side of the canyon, on the two sides of the railroad track, are more to my liking. Some how-to videos show dipping the plaster cloth in water and then placing it on the form; I don't recommend this approach. I found spraying the surface of the mountain with water, laying the plaster cloth on the mountain, and then spraying the cloth with water was much easier. After the second spraying you can gently rub the water into the plaster cloth. - I highly recommend wearing vinyl gloves while working with the plaster.
Cutting and adding to the mountains continued, until I finally got to the point where I thought I was ready to put a thin coat of plaster on top of the plaster cloth. The easiest way I found to do this was to spray the mountain with water, lightly sprinkle the plaster powder on the hill, spray the powder, and then using my fingers gently mixing the thin layer of plaster and water as I spread it over the cloth. I also rotated the mountain to keep my area of work somewhat flat and on top. - - It looks nice, but in hindsight I don't think this step was needed for me; I wanted a mountain that was basically rock, not a smoother hillside with grass and trees. My next step was to apply the plaster in a thicker, rugged manner, trying to simulate a rock mountain.
On the left is a rear view of the mountains, notice that the mountain is hollow in the back.
More fun and adventures are described on Page 2, Diorama Part 2