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A few final details for the signature scene of The Hills Line, the Iowa Interstate's deck-girder bridge over the Iowa River and surrounding area in Iowa City. My favorite material for modeling scrub and weeds is poly-fiber fill. I'll take a small patch and dust it with Woodland Scenics Blended Turf, then seal and attach … Continue reading Finishing Touches
All model railroads involve tradeoffs. The supposed logic for smaller setups is that we trade size for detail. So while I'm running five cars trains instead of 50 car lineups, I can take the time to detail the scene to the Nth degree. But as I've mentioned numerous times before, I'm lazy. For me the … Continue reading Watching Paint Dry
"Compromise is like the middle of the road; always safer to walk on than the edges." -Dwight D. Eisenhower- The north end of the modeled portion of The Hills Line features what I believe is the signature scene of both the prototype as well as the entire Iowa Interstate Railroad: The IAIS's deck-girder bridge in … Continue reading The Curve
If you take a good look at the plan for The Hills Line, you'll see the oft-mentioned segments that make up the layout. Joining them together is a set of custom built lift-out sections assembled from whatever scraps were left over from benchwork construction. Since the sections are supposed to represented unmodeled portions of the … Continue reading Filling Gaps
The Hills Line 