Anyone ever made a "removeable section" river with two or more optional river surfaces to install?

Terry  --

This is one of my most favorite scenes on our layout but it's not removable.  It's easy to install during initial construction and doesn't change the track plan.  I like it because it was easy to build and adds another level for eye to go to, kids really like it as it's at their eye level.  Just another option for you to consider.

Cut a hole in your table where the river will go, then build up and finish the river bank scenery right down to the bottom side of the plywood.

Make the river on a seperate piece of plywood or hardboard slightly bigger than the hole in your layout. Attach it from below with screws or some other means that is easily removeable.

Build your riverbanks up to the removable waters edge. Glue clump foliage or lichen along the edge of the removable water against but not glued the riverbank. Then glue more clump foliage on the riverbank against but not attached to the foliage on the water. This will give the effect of brush and shrubs hanging over the waters edge and hide the seam. The water will be easy to lift out. I used this technique, not on water but to hide access panels to hidden track on my layout. Any place where the seam is difficult hide you can put some loose clump foliage.

The grain silos are on a removable panel and there is an access panel in the hillside.

I saw the most realistic water at a train show a few years back An N gauger had set up a module with water effects. He modeled the water the usual way with casting reins etc. He then had real water flowing over the top of the. The results were stunning.

Sorry buit I couldn't resist. I NEVER understood the design of this unprototypical MTH bridge....

With that support pier in the middle, one might as well have a girder bridge as shown in the background.

The center pier was added to increase the load rating of an older bridge. A good BS story which is actually credible.

I would use glass for the river surface and underneath have various shades of removable color schemes that were interchangeable. If viewed from a distance, this might work. You could also use a reversible panel cut out for the river each side having a different scene..maybe make it rotatable with two pivot pins and a latch. A sort of revolving door. 

Thanks for all the suggestions.  I start on it later today.  I've decided to make the river a removeable section, but for now, make only a single section - a nice nountain trout stream.  This way I can get on with my "Streets country road (this river passes underneath a bridge it is on and completes the terrain/scenery in section II of it), but I leave myself the option of coming back and doing another river section in the future - rapids with some kayaks or perhaps bears catching salmon instead, etc..

Experiment with the easy ice with only blues for water- 2mm-4mm vinyl reverse painted and attached to whichever medium that you like. You could wrinkle it for ripples, flat for ice, etc.. Hardware store and the depot usually have it on the roll by the foot.

Easy Ice is a clever suggestionbut I've never used it and intend to use Woodland Scenics Realistic Water.  I've used this alot in the past and always got very good results. 

Several years ago I built benchwork for a logging RR.  It featured a drop lake about 30 inches wide by about 9 feet long.  I installed hinges on one side and bolt door latches on the closure side with a rope and pulley for dropping the "water" for passage.  The benchwork is 4 1/4" thick (3 1/2" + 3/4" plywood) so the decking was built to the drawing footprint and the customer will be foaming in the embankment. 

The effort was very basic due to limited budget.

Ace, I installed a couple of those MTH bridges along a blue  sky wall scene and used almost hidden metal shelf brackets to hold up the center.  I also fashioned Oak slates to mount/slide into the flanged trough roadbed of the bridge for added strength.  Has served well for years.

The bridge is a nice piece, it is a shame it was not made in one pieced.

Lee,

Will the river continue to the edge of your layout.  If yes maybe you can find some Z shape  steel or two pieces of angle iron back to back fastened to the underside of the table top beyond the river banks to act as a rail on each side then just slide in the appropriate river.  If you handle your scenery as Jumijo and Richard E stated above this would work very well.  If it wasn't so long I would try drawer glides available at the home improvement warehouses.

Joe

That's an ingenious idea to maintain good access and also create a completely scenicked expanse of layout. I wonder how it worked out in the long run?

I'd like to know more, too.  I've thought of doing something similar - very similar - "river" or port area that folds down just like that, and would really like to know how it works out in practice.  It's one thing to make something (beautifully made, too) and another to live with it a year or so  . . . any lessons learned or recommendations, etc.?

I've never hear of "Easy Ice", and can't seem to find it on the web.  Can anyone help with a link?  Thanks, Ken

The pictures below, which I had posted a week or so ago, show what I did in an aisle very similar to what Tom shows above.  The aisle is just under 30 inches wide and 8 feet long.  I wanted to have a harbor / canal area adjacent to the city.  I also wanted in that area to enhance the scene for photographic purposes.  So...I decided to build a frame, put it on door hinges, cover it with Masonite painted in a color that would make the water look deep and then top it off with glass to simulate the water surface.  It is hinged so that the water feature swings out of the way toward the city side.  The lowest swivel bridge made from a MTH bridge as well as the boats are lifted out of the way and stored under an adjacent area, the water feature lowered and then the aisle can be used normally.

Alan

Very nice "coverage" of the aisle space, leavingtracks.  I have a 25" wide by 20 foot long aisle I want to do this to: either a removable section like your water, or a hinged door-like water surface like Tom Tee posted.  I think I prefer the removable section, as a door blocks access to shelves on one side of the aisle all the time.  Anyway, I am thinking of a river scene on it - barges and tugs, etc. 

BTW - the glue and paint on my removeble river section (what I posted to start this thread) is drying and I will post pictures of it this afternoon.  So far it is working out well.

Sorry Ken-Oscale, I coined a term that has no true reference. I got the idea from one of the scenery books or ThorTrains. I'll post the reference if I find it. You don't need to use glass for a water or ice effect. The thick, clear vinyl, around 2-4mm is available at hardware stores, the home store and at JoAnn Fabric. In leaving tracks example, you would use vinyl instead of glass. You can also paint directly on the material, the bottom or reverse side, so the colors are applied in reverse order. A few stripes of blue that typically show through and then a cover coat of white. Then flip it over and the glass like surface provides the gloss of ice.

I called it easy ice because all of the other water and ice methods require various products to create the effect. eg. frozen pond. I haven't tried rolling it yet for waves or ripples. There, you may need the acrylics or caulk.

I understood what you meant.  I've seen some of the articles on it, too, and I have seen vinyl work well in this regard but when I tried it a few year ago (for my lake with the moving boat on it) the vinyl would ripple in ways that did not look like waves.  I finally gave up.  It did take paint well and from underneath looked good.  Maybe I had the wrong type of vinyl.  

Lee, this is a pretty neat idea.  Good luck with it.  I want to see how it turns out.  Please post any lessons learned.

thanks,

George

The lake is an aisle or one could say the aisle is a lake .In either event it is not storage space.  So that leaves the 18" space behind the dropped 9' door/lake.  That space is reached by crawling under the raised lake.  Because the aisle is always clear for a lake drop it provides open crawl ability to access boxes stored in the 9' x 18" area. 

This shows my progress on the original river section I talked about starting this thread.  I'll have this section's dry-land terrain done tomorrow but will wait to do the water: rocks and vegetation, etc, will disguise the junctions of the section and the terrain edges of the hole into which it fits. 

After the dry-land terrain is done, I'll next do the 'Streets road section (about eight feet -- sixteen land feet) including through a tunnel on the left side of the photos.  Once it is  installed and completed (that will take several days) I will then complete the details of the river (it will have a sandy bottom except in several deeper pools and lots of rocks, etc., and fill it with water.   The removeable river section has edges all around feathered and sculpted so that it holds up to 1/2 inch depth of "water" (I'll used Woodland Scenics' Realistic Water).  It's going to be a trout stream - I bought some fisherman figures, etc., for it today. 

Looking good! Is the river going to be the access area or the entire module?

It's neither.  I'm just doing it because it seems like a fun and interesting twist to completing the terrain adn scenery on this portion of the layout, which is a 40" deep shelf portion of my layout, about seven feet long.  I decided to make this "removeable river" just so I can switch out the type of river.  The river section in the photos above will be a trout stream - a full stream  but rather quiet, with fisherman, etc.  Later on I want to make a second section - so I can remove this trout stream section and install the second - a turgid, white-water after-spring-rains river almost spilling over the banks, with lots of rocks and white water, a couple of kayaks shooting the rapids and maybe a bear swatting fish out of the river or something. Maybe eventually even a third, representing the dry season -- with just a tiny trickle of water rolling down the center of the streambed.  I've seen removeable buildings that can be switched out, but never a river like this - and thought it might be fun to do that.

Lee, your signature says it all."That's experience telling you, I may want to change this someday" nice job!

Early photos of a new river project.

When the river is dropped you can sit on the rolling stool and scoot under the raised bridge. 

Very cool.  Nice idea, well executed. I'd like to do something similar on my layout.

Thank you Lee, This was more of a necessity project.  My friend had a new 8' X 12' peninsula w/ no specific track plan in mind plus a Lionel lift bridge just kicking around.

I penciled in a branch line, checked for any wiring below then grabbed a Saws-All and cut up to a cross member which will become a dam.

Then we added cantilever supports to the cut out cross members and bendable plywood along the water's edge.  Due to the unique base of the Lionel bridge I left a finger to protrude from each side.

The lake above the dam is just a shallow angle cut out of the otherwise full cover  1/2" Homasote blended in with Ardex feather finish.

Dependable function of the lift bridge required absolute stability of the benchwork.  So I bolted a 2X4 to the floor between two legs and glued a pair of plywood skins on as a hollow core gusset .  All other braced legs are screwed to the floor.

Lee; any finished photos of the area?

Very nice.

The creek/pond was done on the work bench and then install from under the layout.

Note the hole and small Lionel Bridge.

Since you'd said "removeable", I thought maybe you were doing seasonal interchanging surfaces, like with boaters and fisherman in the summer and ice and

skaters in the winter.

That is what I intended.  So far I have not.  Too busy with other stuff.  But it all removes in 20 minutes, so in the future I can make a "dry season" arroyo there.  it would be an interesting place for some nice vignettes.