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Coal Cars - 8
The Mt. Coffin & Columbia River Continued ...
12. Here's a turn-of-the-century early 1900s cannery
along the Columbia River in Oregon. This is the feel
I wanted to capture with this layout (University of
Washington Digital Collection).
12
The inspiration for this layout was some period scenes along the
Columbia River in Oregon. Although freelanced, I wanted to have
some Columbia River signature scenes in there like this cannery (12).
I also wanted to get the steep, conifer-covered slopes and the rock
tunnels that are common along the Columbia River (13).
On the wall in front of my workbench I posted up these and many
other photos of the Columbia River for easy reference while working.
One of the most satisfying moments was when I showed photos of
the half-finished layout to my 92-year-old Grandmother and, with-
out me telling her where I was modeling, she said, “Oh, that’s the
13. One of the signature scenes along Oregon's
Columbia River that I wanted to capture with this
layout. Looks like we're going to need a lot of
fir trees (Photo by Jim Nieland: panoramio.com/
photo/4373679).
13
Columbia River, isn’t it!” That’s when I knew I was doing something
right!
Part of the challenge I gave myself on this layout was "nothing under
the layout". So even though there are some wood supports under
this one, I told myself nothing goes under the ply support, to mimic
the real shelf conditions: all wiring and power block/lighting toggles
are all in the fascia and in channels in the foam (14).
Since I was planning to use DCC for this layout, I created a space
for the NCE DCC panel in the middle of the mine side of the lay-
out, mainly because that was the only area that had room for the
electronics. While the riverfront scene is the “front” side of this
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MRH-Mar 2013