Dagwood and the Embankment

On Tuesday night I came to a conclusion: my conceptualization for the Dunsel Line is all wrong. For the longest time I have visualized building a simple two track layout at grade level with a small clapboard station set between the tracks. This was “the plan.” And yet, whenever I thought about some nebulous future where I had a fully fledged layout with scenery and whatnot, I kept picturing the North Side “L” in Edgewater with the backs of apartment buildings and the briefest of glimpses into the lives of the people who lived there.

In my mind’s eye, this was what I would build. The neighborhood seemed “right.” Yet the two concepts of this thing I was to build clashed. The thing I was planning to constructing didn’t match the thing that my future self had already built. I was aware of the conflict but disregarded it.

Until Tuesday night.

While lying awake in bed waiting to fall asleep, I finally came to my senses and decided to scrap (or at least postpone) the at-grade portion in favor of the four track main line on the embankment. I began to see the possibility of a simple method of construction and how it (theoretically) could be easily taken apart for transport. Everything started to make sense and I was excited!

Wednesday was my day off, which was fortunate since that gave me ample time to go out and take some general measurements of things I had questions about while I was still in the “hot” phase of my enthusiasm.

Unfortunately, when I finally rolled out of bed and made it to the living room, it became rapidly apparent that something was very wrong. Dagwood, one of my three birds, was sitting on the bottom of the cage puffed up and breathing heavily. None of these things was usual and I knew an emergency trip to the vet was in prime order. All else was on hold.

I rushed Dagwood to Animal House of Chicago expecting a number of things to happen (labwork not the least of them). They took him in back to perform an examination and draw some blood (apparently they only need 0.3ml for an avian CBC—which was expected but still a shockingly small amount) but before they could begin, Dagwood passed away.

Dagwood was one of three very special birds from a flock of eleven. Woodstock (who had lived with Dagwood) left us in February of 2014. I watched both of them grow from the time their eggs were laid. Needless to say, I was hit very hard by this death and the hopeful concern I’d had that morning had soured to grief. I returned home and spent the next two and half hours in bed.

When I woke up I was still exceptionally sad (and feeling a little guilty for not having recognized any potential signs earlier) but decided that I couldn’t stay in bed forever and even though Dagwood was gone, I was still here and needed to act like it. The best way to do this was to carry out my plans for the day.

I had decided that the embankment shouldn’t just be a big box with tracks, so I added a viaduct in the middle. I toyed with the idea of putting a station in, but later simplified it to be just a street overpass. I chose Catalpa Avenue to represent the average side street crossing I intend to build and made my way out there. With Dagwood’s unexpected death the fire that I had been experiencing was extinguished, but I still got my measurements. (Most of them anyway. Someday I’ll actually get this right.)

The Catalpa Avenue viaduct and surrounding embankment as seen looking northwest. A third set of support columns is out of frame to the left.

Back at home I began scaling the numbers down to a close approximation of exact O scale and then began producing a 3D model of this section. This model is a digital mockup to enable me to see the “completed” project before I begin and to store the numerical values in their proper locations without needing pages and pages of scattered notes for me to lose.

The green pieces are sidewalk (or sidewalk level elements above the roadway in the case of the columns in the center of the street) while the black is, of course, the street.

An angle similar to that of the location shot. The columns are still being finalized.

As I currently see it, the embankment will consist of a long tray on top of two inverted boxes. All of this will be made from thin plywood. The plywood will then have styrene added for detail. A 13-1/2” gap between the boxes will form the opening for the street.

The problem, at present, is making the three rows of pillars which support the viaduct. I could attempt to make these from wood or styrene but I seriously doubt my ability to make these uniform enough to not look absolutely terrible. I am considering 3D printing one end column and one middle column from which I could theoretically make casts, but this sounds potentially expensive.

The other obstacle is creating the texture of the concrete. If there are large sheets of styrene with this texture, then all is easy, otherwise I’ll have to resort to some kind of trickery, probably with paint.

Note: yesterday’s post was actually written several days ago.