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In
The Farmland, February 2006
There’s
a little bit of seasonal latitude in the Farmland on the “Any Time”
Layout. It’s more like late spring, early summer in these parts.
The cornfields are still green, not yet really to tassel and the
soybeans are just beginning to grow toward that first bloom.
It’s that moment in time between planting and harvest, close to last
days of school, when just the right amount of rain and heat make for the
perfect world.
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Since the beginning of last summer, I’ve spent time being a farmer again. Well, at least, in mind and spirit.
The first task last July was to put down mini-highway on the bare
table at the bottom of the “J”. On my last two layouts, I had used balsa strips to make every road crossing, but on this layout, because 50% of it is out of my sight at any given time, I felt that it would be better to use rerailers for crossings. There are many straight Atlas rerailer crossings and a few curves like this one that I salvaged off of old train sets all over the layout. It was one of those, “better safe than sorry” decisions. |
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| Once the road was in place, I pulled the table away from the main
layout and began by placing buildings and fences, etc. in general
areas and, with a magic marker, indicated their positions and planned
fields, forest areas, driveways and such. |
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| At that point it was time to paint the primer colors on. (For your
information, it only took about one hour of skinning my shins on that
protruding brace before I sawed it off.) I wasn’t about to step over
that board for the next six months! As for scenic work, I started at
the rear of the table and worked outward from the hillside. And
after July, August, September, October, November, December, and January, here is the fairly close to finished product..... |
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| Life along Route 22 - basically what we called in Texas a “farm-to-market” road - is centered on agriculture. Along this secondary
highway are farms, fields, and an elevator complex like many found
around the “countryside”, especially in the Midwest farm belt. |
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| In my previous layout, I had a rather romanticized version of the
stock loading area. I had green, flowing, grassy pastures with flowers, bountiful trees and lots of room for the livestock to frolic
about....! ... Well, if you’ve ever seen a holding stockyard along
I-70 in Kansas, you know that these corrals are cramped; either hot and dusty or wet and muddy, depending of the weather. Hey, it’s the
last stop before the slaughter house! How romantic can that be!?! I
disposed toward a little more realistic picture this time. |
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Of course, that ‘mercy bug” inside me had to show itself in one
small detail.
There’s always hope, that in the midst of these dumb, panic stricken, huddled bovines, there is that ONE relatively wiser steer
that has an inkling that the best way out just might be the way he
came in. So here it is, contemplating his situation . . . . and
wondering just how he could manage his escape. All the while, having
this foreboding nano-thought, that if he takes any other exit available, he is “dead meat walking”! |
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| Next door, at the Red Fence Farm, the kids have just come home from
school and are greeted by Tippy the Dog and Mom in the front yard. |
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Page
1 - Box Canyon Layout
Page 2 - Any Time, Any Spring Disclaimer
Page 3 - Starting Over, December 2003
Page 4 - March, 2004
Page 5 - June, 2004
Page 8 - Layout Design
Page 9 - August, 2004
Page 11 - January, 2005
Page 16 – January, 2005 Redux
Page 17 – First Day of Summer, 2005
Page 20 – August, 2005
Page 21 - In the Farmland, February 2006
Page 23 - Layout Potpourri, February 2006
Page 25 - In the Cornfields, 2006
Page 27 - July, 2006
Page 30 – November, 2006
Page 33 - MARCH,
2007 –
A Break In The Action
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