NEB&W Layout Guide - Summit to Bartonsville

Last Update: 2008-11-16

Layout Guide Table of Contents

More on Summit in the Summit Photo Gallery.

More on Gassetts in the Gassetts Photo Gallery and the Proctorsville Photo Gallery.

More on Bartonsville in the Bartonsville Photo Gallery.

More on Cuttingsville in the Cuttingsville Photo Gallery.

More on East Clarendon in the East Clarendon Photo Gallery.

Summit

The summit of the Rutland RR's line to Bellows Falls was appropriately named. Here trains stop to turn up their "retainers," to retain enough air in their air brakes for the long descent. To the left, the water flows toward the Hudson River, while to the right (pass the cut), the St. Lawrence watershed is encountered. The scenery at these New England summits is quite distinctive, flat and somewhat marshy, with stands of small pines. The bushes in this scene represent the ones we actually pick for our deciduous trees. We call them "Summit weed."

Trees

The deciduous trees on the layout are made from a dried weed which we pick in wintertime. The weed is one long used by Rensselaer architect students on dioramas, even for much smaller scales. Known as St. John's Wort, or Culex, we call it Summit Weed, because we have to go to Summit, VT, to find a field with enough bushes to pick. While the weed is widespread, it rarely grows in enough abundance in any one spot that we know of, except at Summit, to make it worthwhile to stop and pick.

The sprigs are suitably bunched, dipped in diluted white glue, sprinkled with ground foam rubber, and "planted" while still wet, in previously drilled holes. We model the dense Northeast forests, where the trunks and forest interior are obscured by the foliage canopy at the forest edge. Our tree-making technique is shown in Allen Keller's video on our layout, Great Model RR's Vol. I, and in Kalmbach's Scenery Tips & Techniques. More on scenery construction.

The layout represents late September, when some areas, such as at lower elevations along the lake, or further south around the Troy area, are mainly green. Here at the higher elevations, the autumn coloring is nearly complete. When we first started the layout, we were concerned that the New England autumn coloring, so unbelievable at its peak in real life, would look phony on a model. On the other hand, we wanted to copy the colors of a Bartonsville postcard, hence the late summer-early autumn compromise.

Gassetts

Gassetts, VT, is just north of Chester on the Rutland- Bellows Falls sub-division of the Rutland RR. The talc plant was built in 1957, and despite its anachronism for this layout, is modeled here. Talc, or soapstone, occurs throughout the southern Green Mountains. This plant at one time was the sole supply of Johnson & Johnson's Baby Powder, but talc has other uses besides talcum powder. It is also an important ingredient in paper making and roofing shingles. Bagged talc is shipped in box cars, or shipped bulk in covered hoppers.

Bartonsville

This was an attempt was to duplicate a postcard view, with the covered bridge and fall foliage. The layout is set in September 25, 1950, when some of the trees in the higher elevations would have turned color completely, and other places would still be green. The covered bridge was built in 1870. The reason this or any bridge is covered is because it has a timber truss. The truss is known as a Town lattice, invented by Ithiel Town, a Troy resident. The easily-replaceable planking protects the structural members from the weather. This 120 year old bridge still stands, with new planking applied in the last ten years.

Cuttingsville

The only thing we are modeling from Cuttingsville, VT is the spectacular trestle over the mill river outside of town. The three span bridge has the end spans hung off the ends of the center span in a cantilever fashion, which looks like something is missing. But the bridge is still standing and being used by the Green Mountain RR, so it must be okay. The bridge was featured on the cover of Jim Shaughnessy's The Rutland Road, and was a must for our layout, although almost three decades later, we still haven't gotten any member to complete a model.

East Clarendon

This curve is modeled after the one at East Clarendon, as shown on a postcard. The barren hill, an oddity among Vermont's dense foliage, apparently has been overgrazed by cattle.