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John masks off finished areas in preparation of laying plaster land forms around the Whittier depot. |
After pouring the plaster John uses his hands to smooth it out. Once the plaster dries John pulls up the masks only to discover the level is too high in places. Both he and Terry use heavy grit sandpaper to get it to the proper level. |
Afterwards John paints the plaster brown. Next, he glues Woodland Scenics grass over the top. It looks pretty good! The depot is put into place and John adds parking blocks, stripes, Jersey barriers and a couple of vehicles. |
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| Here is a front elevation photo of the depot. In the future, fencing and bushes will be added. |
Here is an aerial view of the Whittier depot. |
Over five years ago when John and his brother-in-law Mike Cooper began discussing building the layout, Mike envisioned each of John's grandsons having a controller and running their own train. Now that twin grandsons Shane and Cody White have turned five years old Grandpa John knows it is time to begin their individual training as locomotive engineers. Shane's first session learning the RailPro system earns him an A+ rating with the added praise as being "perfect." |
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| Cody is just as eager to learn the Railpro system as his brother. The touch screen controllers are super easy to learn. Cody receives an A rating, but gets so excited he forgets not to run with the controller. |
Each of the boys are so excited to control the locomotive's speed as well as blow the whistle and ring the bell. Each had the opportunity to add four brand new flatcars to their train. |
Towards the end of his training Cody boldly asks to add a tractor trailer to the flatcars. How could grandpa resist? |
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| Cody is running F7-A #1510 with four flatcars. He stops the train at the Anchorage yard saying, "The train is taking a rest." |
If one if good then four must be better. "Grandpa, can we add those four boxes to my train?" A smiling grandpa replies, ""Highball it out of here!" |
Cody's train ends its fun run near the future Portage Depot. Let's tie it down for this session and make plans for next time! |
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| Supervisor Max gives his nod of approval to each of the budding locomotive engineers. Job well done! |
For train night Terry prepares a pot roast, mashed potatoes and homemade bread. These boys are on standby as they know they will get a tummy full of trimmings. |
Rick continues work on the N scale layout. He discovers the layout is too big for the table. Rick and John head to the garage to trim the protruding sides of the layout. |
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| Putting the layout into place the team discovers the bottom support needs the center removed. Rick takes this piece home to cut. Hopefully, next week we can finally put this project to rest. |
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