even “less is more” is a moving target. At first I planned a
simple stub-end siding, and a country lane coming down a
hill past a Greek Revival country store. I played around with
several arrangements of these elements, but one issue I kept
running into was any sort of eye-catching element – like a
structure – would immediately draw the viewer’s eye toward
the end of the peninsula backdrop. As neat as the country
lane with the store might be, I really needed a scene that
wouldn’t draw attention to the end of that backdrop.
At this point I remembered a Pete McLachlan photo of the
Whiting Creamery in Waterbury, VT [7]. I used a Sanborn Map
of Waterbury to determine the basic footprint of the build-
ing and placed it on the layout to confirm the building would
fit the area. Then I created a three-dimensional mockup. I did
run into one problem – the photos I have of the creamery all
show these same two sides – so I had to use some modeler’s
license to determine the win-
dow/door arrangements on
the other two walls. Since
there’s a road crossing the
tracks on the far side of the
creamery, I added a road run-
ning from the fascia toward
the backdrop. On the layout,
this road will curve slightly
and disappear over a slight
rise and behind some trees.
I dedicated a few more eve-
nings to completely rework-
ing the landform scenery on
both sides of the bridge [8].
7. Whiting Creamery, Waterbury, VT. Pete McLachlan
photo, circa 1956.
7
The entire process of mov-
ing the bridge scene was a
lot of work, but it’s worth
the effort. Even though
the area is still very much
“under construction,” I’m
happy with how the sec-
tion of the layout is looking
more like rural Vermont than
some stylized model railroad
vision of sheer rock cliffs and
waterfalls. What of that area
around the end of the back-
drop that was going to have
MRH-Jun 2014
