Modeling the Mine #5 Fan House

 

The original purpose of the East Broad Top Railroad was to transport coal and iron ore to the iron furnaces at Rockhill.  When the iron furnaces closed early in the twentieth century, the railroad continued to carry coal, but not to Rockhill Furnace.  Coal was mined on the east slope of Broad Top Mountain, some 32 miles south of the EBT's northern terminus at Mount Union.  There it was washed, cleaned, sorted, and transferred to standard gauge hopper cars destined for the steel mills of Pittsburgh and Steelton.  

By the 1950's, the Broad Top was a maze of tunnels and surface mines.  Mining coal was both dirty and dangerous.  Miners working far below the surface needed to have methane and other gases pumped out of the tunnels and fresh air pumped in.  One of the few surviving structures from those days is the fan house pictured above.  Constructed of cinder blocks, it contained an electric motor that drove the huge fan still visible in the ruins today.  Here is another photo, taken a few years earlier.

 My East Broad Top model railroad is set around the end of common carrier operations, in the late 1940s and early 1950s.  The fan, located between the tipples for mines #1 and #5, was a short distance west of the EBT main line.  I had a spot picked out for this unique structure, but there were few photos of it in operation, and scratch building it seemed difficult at best.

Then I discovered a 3D laser engraved basswood kit of the fan house from Monster Modelworks.  It was a simple build with four walls and a couple of large screened openings for air, all of which created a structure only 2.89" by 3.5" by 2.65" high.  Construction took just a couple of nights.  After assembling the walls, I spray painted them with a dark gray color.  After the paint dried, I brushed on Pan Pastel neutral gray shade, that highlighted the cinder blocks.  The base was painted with some leftover Floquil aged concrete applied with a brush.  Frames for the screens, a wooden door, and shingles for the roof were laser cut with an adhesive backing.  The result came out better than I had hoped.

 

 

 

 

I placed the finished structure in a wooded area not far from Mine #1 and next to a surface mine, which were rather common after the underground mines began to close down.

 

 

Scenery for Closing the Gap

 In my last post, I illustrated how I constructed a foam mountain to act as a scenic block while covering the entrance to the HO gauge loop on my East Broad Top Railroad.  The mountain did the trick, but I still had the problem of finishing off the scenery.  Here is what it looked like with the mountain in place. 

 My plan was to use a plaster two track tunnel portal for the entrance.  I sprayed the stone portal with a dark gray, then gently brushed a light gray Pan  Pastel over the stonework.  The portal looked terrific, but I still had that gash in the hillside. (Did the pink give it away?)  I played around with several options, but finally settled on wood cribbing using a resin casting that has been in my spare parts box for years.

 

The next step was to build up the terrain by gluing paper strips to support plaster bandage that would be used to create the hillside.  The cork on the left below is the level of the town of Orbisonia just behind the station.  The HO tracks are descending on a 2% grade.  

 I covered the tracks with plastic drop cloth, then gently cut the plaster bandage to the proper size and shape and draped it over the paper supports.  I decided that rather than dipping the bandage in water, which would be rather messy with all the scenery already in place, I would use layers of dry plaster bandage and then spray them gently with water.  It worked like a charm!  The plaster cloth dried in place with very little plaster dust and mess to clean up.

After the plaster dried, I painted the newly scenicked area with a brown latex hobby paint.  

After  the paint dried, I slathered on a layer of matte medium, then sprinkled various shades of ground foam to create a landscape.

 

 The rest of the project was relatively simple.  I still needed to ballast the tracks and add trees, shrubs, structures and people.  The results were, to my mind, rather pleasing.  Here is a long PRR coal drag emerging from the tunnel and working its way upgrade.

 

The upper level, which had been unfinished for years, is now endowed with a lovely gazebo, where the local German band is entertaining some of the inhabitants of Orbisonia and Rock Hill on a lazy summer afternoon.  The um-pah-pah of the orchestra is occasionally drowned out by the roar of a passing coal train.

While the gap has been closed, and the layout is now completely scenicked, there is still work to be done.  As every modeler knows, a model railroad is never finished.  But at long last I can turn my attention to running trains and adding details that give that very special sense of realism to what has been my joy and entertainment for the last 15 years. From time to time I will fire up the blog if something turns out to be worth sharing with the world.

 

 

Closing the Gap

 

The last unfinished section of my East Broad Top model railroad can be seen in the above view.  To the left is the back of the roundhouse.  The opening in the center of the picture is a pop-up for access to the roundhouse and the HO gauge tracks that descend below the coal mines at Robertsdale, circle around and reappear on the right.  Above the HO tracks is the HOn3 track that allows the narrow gauge loop to access a high bridge over Aughwick Creek before its descent on a long grade back to the dual gauge yard at Blacklog. 

Here is a photo of the same area with the drop-in cover that holds a small church,, cemetery and house in the background.  You can just make out the HO tracks behind and below the church.  The tracks in the upper right are the HOn3 main.

 

 I decided to begin by adding a foam mountain that would cover the HO approach to the hidden loop.  Using two inch blue foam insulation, I cut and layered four sheets of foam, then used a saw and a Surfoam brush to shape the mountain.

  

The curved end would eventually descend to a two track stone tunnel portal,  The opposite end was cut flat to blend in with existing mountains above and behind the pop-up.  The next stop was to paint the foam with latex brown.  I then applied matte medium to glue clumps of lichen foliage to the foam. I collected the lichen from alongside a road where it grew in abundance, cleaned it, immersed it in a solution of hot water and glycerin to preserve it, finally spraying it with Aileen's Tacky Spray followed by an application of green foam.  Looks pretty realistic, if I say so myself.

The foam mountain was designed to fit behind the cover of the pop-up service access, covering the HO tracks that ran beneath it.  Here is a view of the pop-up hatch with the mountain behind it.

 And here is a view of the mountain taken from the opposite side of the layout.  The tracks in the foreground are the HOn3 wye on the left and the sidings for mine number 1 at Robertsdale.  The new mountain fits snugly against the EBT tracks leading to the return loop.

 

In my next post, I will share how I detailed the scenery to this yet unfinished part of the EBT.