Lee University

In The Cornfields, 2006

One of the biggest issues of farmland modeling for me was “How do you make cornfields”? In June of 2002, MODEL RAILROADER magazine ran several articles on modeling corn. One article about Dave Rickaby  and Lyle Beck’s “Wisconsin & Michigan RR” showed a picture of the “Dunbar Turn” which featured corn modeled from artificial turf as Art Curren had described in the April 1993 MODEL RAILROADER. It does  have a great effect from a distance, but it’s still “artificial turf”, a quickie substitute for corn. Later in that 2002 magazine there was an article entitled “Make your own Brass Cornfield”. This concerned photo-etched sheets of brass corn. These were designed to set in front of a backdrop painted with “cornfields”. Unfortunately I couldn’t use either idea on my layout.

There are a number of layouts on the NMRA site that feature large fields of “corn”. All these “fields” have been in the background of the layout pictures so I have written several of these gentlemen MANY, MANY times, asking how they went about “making” corn. However, over a two year period, not a single person has answered my queries! Is this supposed to be a secret?!? This lack of response led me to several speculative conclusions: One being, that unknown to me, the making of model corn just might be an issue of “National Security” and I am unaware of the ramifications of that knowledge. (They COULD tell me about making the corn....but then they’d have to KILL me!...) OR, worst than that, I have, unwittingly uncovered the authority of the present administration and actually revealed the fact that, yes, there are WMD’s on the pages of the NMRA Website! “General, Go to DEFCON 3 - WEAPONS OF MAIZE DESTRUCTION have been verified!”

Ok, so maybe I’m reading more into their lack of communication than I should. Still, I had to figure out how I intended to make fields of corn on my island-type layout. At this point in my construction timetable, there was no such thing as a “ready-made-out-of-the-box- cornfield-kit”. Obviously, I was going to have to figure this out  myself. So, in a fairly complicated nutshell, here’s how I went from this.....

...to this. Since my fields are in the FOREFRONT of the layout and not in the background, there needed to be some sense of singular pseudo-realism to each field.

No, this is not the carcass of a dead porcupine. It is, in fact, 4000 flat toothpicks dyed dark green. (This pile represents about half the toothpicks eventually used in the farmland area of my layout.)

The next job was to draw quarter-inch grids in all the areas where I wanted to have cornfields. (Why quarter-inch? Because I measured the distance between the planters on the “life-like” corn planter in my “farm implement” box!) The little person standing here will eventually help me decide the height of my corn in the fields. I originally thought I would use “Cracker Barrel” toothpicks because they are flat on one end and I could simply glue them to the table. But I soon realized that, at full size, these toothpicks would represent cornstalks about 45 feet high, 3 feet in diameter, and not even the BEST Iowa corn grows to that size! I decided on restaurant  type flat toothpicks.

The first of many tedious jobs was then the drilling of holes....In the case of this small field, a bit more than 1,240 holes.  Continue to page 26.

Trains:  Page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34

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