Weekend Photos - August 2025

[healey36]

The Marlines Jubilee looks mighty impressive from that angle.

I find layout photos at ground-level to be the best, especially for tinplate stuff. Goofy wheel arrangements, toy-like details, weird colors, etc., tend to get mitigated at a more realistic visual angle. Now if I could get my camera settings squared up, things might be even better, lol.

[gregj410]

Got the Marlines Jubilee a bit of track time out on the mainline before packing it up to clear space on the layout:



Seen here heading south off bridge #305, the train's a bit short. Need a couple more coaches to throw behind it.

Is that Santa at the depot for an early visit?

Working on this large lake scene. This is one of the few sections of my layout that can support my full weight, so finishing up along the back wall is a little more forgiving.

[gregj410]

Playing around with this idea of a dock or platform between the 3 rail and the On30 sawmill. Seemed odd to cut it off at the angle along the cliff line. I decided to extend it out over what would eventually be water. Maybe another scenic opportunity will present itself. I can rarely think these things out from start to finish.

[sarge]

How 'bout putting an icehouse there on pilings off the end; locals cut the ice off the pond in winter to fill it, stored through the year in the icehouse and loaded on both railroads (usually shipped in empty refrgerator cars or boxcars with straw or sawdust used as insulation, sent to icing plants/platforms and other commercial applications) during the summer months. You can back trucks to it too, so the iceman can deliver to the local residents.

This is the supply end no-one models, though there are kits for icing platforms to re-ice reefers. Those platforms are usually seen in division point yards rather than along the source of the ice, so the destination for the cars you'd load at the icehouse itself.

As far as the icehouse itself, usually a reasonably tall thing about the proportions of a barn or a wooden grainmill building. No windows of course, as they had double walls with sawdust filling in between. Usually a simple rectangular footprint. A signature feature is a louvred cupola or two up top. In summer the louvres would be adjusted to get airflow passing completely through the cupola so warmer air trapped under the roof would get pulled out by a venturi effect. Dam clever; folks back then weren't idiots by any means.

[healey36]

Is that Santa at the depot for an early visit?

Working on this large lake scene. This is one of the few sections of my layout that can support my full weight, so finishing up along the back wall is a little more forgiving.

Kinda weird...I'm not really sure where that Santa came from. I suspect that quite a few years ago one of my tinplate buddies deposited him as some sort of joke, when I wasn't paying attention. My kids would move him around for fun. They (my children) have moved out and nearly all of my tinplate friends have moved on, yet Santa seems to still move around rather randomly. I'm not sure what's going on.

Man, that is one big lake. What's the plan on "filling" it? It looks like you have some sort of light blue material in the bottom. Making realistic looking "water" has been an interest of mine (not for the layout here, but for a few other unrelated projects). There seem to be a number of options.

Sarge, your description of an icehouse is pretty dead on. I recall having a look at the icehouse at Hyde Park some thirty years ago, and it was built much as you describe, albeit on a smaller scale. They would cut ice off the Hudson, haul it up to the icehouse where it was packed for use year-round. The walls were double partitioned with straw and sawdust packed in the cavity, and I seem to remember the roof being insulated similarly. There were vents at either end with a couple cupola up top, all of which could be adjusted to regulate air-flow. It's hard to imagine one cutting ice in February and having supplies remaining in August, but they clearly knew how to do it.

[sarge]

There was a good sized one up on Richmond Pond west of Pittsfield Mass I'm familiar with. In winter the local farmers would get together and crack out the saws for what could be called a winter version of hay-baling and they'd fill the thing. In the period before WWII things even got sophisticated enough for big gas-powered circular plunge-saws mounted on runners.

That house was big enough they shipped ice to Pittsfield for residential use, this back when folks had iceboxes and the iceman delivered in the manner of the milkman, the coal man, and the diaper service. There were probably hundreds of these icehouses in Western Massachusetts all supplying a bit to keep Boston and Springfield supplied through the summer.

I have to wonder if refrigerator cars hauled more harvested ice to southern cities in the US than they did fruits & veg from the south back north. It's an interesting and forgotten industry.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

I have to wonder if refrigerator cars hauled more harvested ice to southern cities in the US than they did fruits & veg from the south back north. It's an interesting and forgotten industry.

There were cars in "ice service" so it was an industry in the background that's faded into memory.

On the branch line of the CVRR that I model (sort of) there was massive ice storage facility up in Richmond Furnace where the RR also had its own ice harvesting operation on the lake there. While there was probably an icing facility for reefers somewhere on the CVRR, I suspect much of that ice in that facility went into residential use.

[healey36]

The lake at the former Fort Ritchie up in Cascade was constructed by the Buena Vista Ice Company in 1900 or so. Ice cut there went to Baltimore and Washington. The Maryland Guard took over the site in the mid-1920s, so I guess they cut ice there for about two decades. Ice would have shipped via the Western Maryland.

At antique shops around here, you can still find those little signs one would put in his/her window to tell the iceman what size/amount of ice to deliver. I recall my grandfather telling me what a PITA emptying the water out of the bottom of the icebox was (although nothing compared to the efforts required to keep the coal-fired furnace running).

[Rufus T. Firefly]

........what a PITA emptying the water out of the bottom of the icebox....

Glad I'm not doing that with the icebox upstairs,

[gregj410]

How 'bout putting an icehouse there on pilings off the end; locals cut the ice off the pond in winter to fill it, stored through the year in the icehouse and loaded on both railroads (usually shipped in empty refrgerator cars or boxcars with straw or sawdust used as insulation, sent to icing plants/platforms and other commercial applications) during the summer months. You can back trucks to it too, so the iceman can deliver to the local residents.

This is the supply end no-one models, though there are kits for icing platforms to re-ice reefers. Those platforms are usually seen in division point yards rather than along the source of the ice, so the destination for the cars you'd load at the icehouse itself.

As far as the icehouse itself, usually a reasonably tall thing about the proportions of a barn or a wooden grainmill building. No windows of course, as they had double walls with sawdust filling in between. Usually a simple rectangular footprint. A signature feature is a louvred cupola or two up top. In summer the louvres would be adjusted to get airflow passing completely through the cupola so warmer air trapped under the roof would get pulled out by a venturi effect. Dam clever; folks back then weren't idiots by any means.

I was thinking more like a boy fishing off the end of the peer However if someone is going to make a suggestion that clearly has some modeling skills it absolutely worth pondering in my opinion. This lake area is one of the largest more unfinished parts of my layout and getting it completed would allow me then to drop back and start working on other details while the layout has a mostly finished appearance to it.

Moving on, an ice house has potential with a few exceptions. One is finding a model or kit to build that would look more realistic and then finding time to complete it when there are many others still in the queue. Shoe horning a road in between the track and the wall for trucks to enter poses another issue as there is not very much room.

When I did a search for ice houses this flat came up which could be an option with the exception that it now sits on the opposite side of the tracks from where the ice would be harvested. The photos show almost exactly what my scenario would be with the exception of a mountainous region behind it.

One other little side bar is, when I was married 32 years ago we honeymooned on squam lake in New Hampshire. They had an ice house there, where the ice was harvested and stored in saw dust as you mentioned. There are some photos of that online and maybe it’s worth looking into. I will do a search and post a few pics.




Here is the Rockywold Ice house

[gregj410]

Kinda weird...I'm not really sure where that Santa came from. I suspect that quite a few years ago one of my tinplate buddies deposited him as some sort of joke, when I wasn't paying attention. My kids would move him around for fun. They (my children) have moved out and nearly all of my tinplate friends have moved on, yet Santa seems to still move around rather randomly. I'm not sure what's going on.

Well everyone loves Santa, and I for one vote that he stays

Man, that is one big lake. What's the plan on "filling" it? It looks like you have some sort of light blue material in the bottom. Making realistic looking "water" has been an interest of mine (not for the layout here, but for a few other unrelated projects). There seem to be a number of options.

Well I was going to paint and pour over the plywood when I realized my lake elevation needed to be higher so I added a layer of 1/2" green insulation board. My plan is to use the woodland scenics system. I had pretty good results with that on another area of the layout. You basically paint the bottom with their pre selected colors and then pour their pre mixed resin. I recall it being pretty easy, the hard part was getting the water color just right.
One other factor is making sure that everything around the edges is sealed so the resin doesn’t run out. The resin isn’t cheap, like 20-25$ a bottle and a bottle doesn’t go very far. The upside is the painting creates the depth so if as long as it flows well it should be a one and done pour.

WS also makes a ripples effect that you can apply to the resin surface to make it look more like a lake on a windy or breezy day. Undecided on this one but the first one I did calm water. It may depend on the success of the pour as to what I decide. I think the ripples would help hide some imperfections if the pour doesn’t go well. I had a little issue on the first one I did and discovered you had to re pour the whole thing for it to flow right. We’ll see, it should be interesting when I get to that point.

[healey36]

I think I used some Woodland Scenics heat-n-pour type resin for one of my kids' Titanic school project some 25 years ago. It looked good when done, but I seem to remember it didn't flow very well, especially around objects. You had to heat the stuff up in an old pot, then pour it into the area that you wanted to fill. It took a day or so to set. It sounds like their "system" is a bit easier to apply these days.

I've heard of folks using Mod-Podge to good effect, but not seen the results in person. I might give that a try the next time I need to make some wargame scenery. Gotta be easier and cheaper than the WS stuff, but does it look as convincing?

Hmmm...that icehouse flat could, in my opinion, stand a bit of work, Greg. Even a flat can have some 3D elements incorporated (i.e. the arched entryway, the windows, maybe some of the trim, signage, etc.). Not much layout space, though, and I realize that. Probably can't go full-on icehouse without a lot of work, possibly some reconfiguration.

Those two other photos, is that the icehouse up at Squam Lake? That's probably about the size of the one at Hyde Park (if my memory isn't total rubbish).