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When building our modules, it seemed like every module was
going to be
"busy", not that there is anything wrong with that,
but my understanding
of the NG was that there was a lot of space between little towns.
Wide
open fields, forest running, and river hugging, where the hand
of man has
hardly touched anything except for the RR tracks that intrude
on the
scene. So a whole scene of just scenery seems ludicrous, but the
inclusion of a small town offered the challenge of giving us some
running
room between big towns, while offering a chance to switch a single
siding
and have a passenger stop for thru trains. Weeks Mills offers
us the
chance to build a second module with the wye track to split our
main and
offer more opportunity for point to point running if we so desire
in the
future. And lastly, there are some reasonable bits of historical
information available about the RR structures there, so that I
can
convincingly duplicate the scene. It is a pleasure having built
an entire
module and have someone recognise where it is you are representing.
I
accomplished it with my Claremont Junction module and can do it
again with
Weeks Mills.
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Lastly, I found a gold mine of information in my friend,
Harry Percival
of Sheepscot Maine. Harry lived in Weeks Mills some years after
the RR
left, but the buildings were still there, and he graciously spend
hours
writing out details of who lived in which house in the post card
copies I
sent him, whose barn shows up in the background, and a bit about
life in
the Sheepscot Valley around 1940. I have a standing invitation
to join
him going to (Masonic) lodge some evening in Weeks Mills as well
and will
try to take him up on that sometime. I would love to get Harry
and Ellis
Walker to join me retracing the path of the RR up the valley,
I think
that would be a living history lesson not soon forgotten.
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Details of my module:
2' x 4', built to the HOn30 module standards on the Mailcar
2" construction foam over plywood laminated sides, removable
legs, and
wired (so far!) per N-trak stds.
Foam was built up and sculpted to form the rolling land around
Weeks
Mills. The buildings so far have been scratchbuilt of styrene
following
plans in Peter Barney's book on Structures of the WW&F. The
station is
still to be built and then we will add other non-rr structures
per
existing post card scenes, pictures, etc.
Track is hand laid code 70 on HOn3 ties cut slightly shorter to
match 2'
appearances. More scenery to follow.