Just Ranching

I had to go back to the ranch over the weekend to help with weaning and start bringing my cows home that I run up there all summer.  Weaning is when we separate the calves from the mother cows.  At weaning each calf gets weighed, vaccine boosters and then separated into pens based on their weight and sex. 

We contract our calves at a certain pound and if they come in above or below that point then we get penalized.  So heavy calves go into a pen that receives a bit less feed per day.  And light calves get the opposite treatment. Typically we just feed alfalfa/grass hay with some ground barley mixed in.  Also, heifer calves are sorted and we pick our replacements that will go back into the breeding herd.  The mother cows go out to the fall pastures.  It takes about 4 days to get through all of our herds and we have nicer facilities at certain places and old run down chutes at other places.  

This is a crummy photo, but (no pun intended) this is the business end view of a heifer calf heading down the chute to the scale.  This is at the original family homestead.  We don’t run a lot of cows through this setup so the chutes aren’t the fanciest like at the home place.

 

Alfalfa Field

 I have kind of jumped the gun a little bit lately and have started working on some scenery.  I had planned on putting an alfalfa field just to the east of Denton.  

I started out by painting the foam with a brown latex paint.  Before the paint has a chance to dry, I sprinkle on some very fine sifted dirt.  The dark brown dirt is where the alfalfa field is going to be.  The dirt came from one of my irrigation ditches in my hay fields.  The lighter dirt in the background will represent dryland cattle pastures and the area around a house.  That dirt come from the side of my road.  The very light spot in the upper middle of the first photo is where a house is going to go.  To apply the dirt, I use the lid from a can of spray paint and then put part of a nylon over it.  It works very well and allows for a very even coverage.  The second photo shows how fine the dirt layer is.

To represent the alfalfa, I mixed several different shades and heights of Silflor Static Grass.  I use the Woodland Scenics applicator and it seems to do a good job.  For my glue, I just use thinned Elmers glue and apply it with a spray bottle from Home Depot.  

I masked off my tracks, edge of road, and fascia before apply the glue.  It took only a minute or two to apply the static grass.  I let it dry for a little bit, and then went over it with a shop-vac to suck up any loose pieces and help stand all the fibers upright.

To finish off the alfalfa I used a fine sifter to apply some lavender highlights from Scenic Express.  I use hairspray to hold it all together.  Alfalfa in our part of MT is generally harvested when it gets about 10-20% bloom.  So if this was a real field, it would be ready to go.  I think the bottom right corner of the field is a little too ripe!  Oops!  

I'm not sure how happy I am with the results, so I may end up cutting it with an old bear trimmer and then throw a few round bales on it to call it good.  Also, like I said earlier, I jumped the gun by starting scenery and I'm sure that this will end up getting destroyed as a I still have a lot of foam shaping to finish.

Glulam Utility Pole

Glulam utility poles are quite common up here in Montana, and are often used in situations where standard round poles don’t work because there isn’t room for guy wires.  I need a few on my layout and decided to try my hand at building one this afternoon.  This pole will be used to make a 90 degree turn in a high voltage phase that bypasses the substation in Denton.  

I started by laying and staining several strips of 2x12 scale lumber that I got from Fast Tracks.  Once the strips were stained I cut them to length.  The main pole will be 72’ tall.  I have three strips at this length, and then each succeeding strip is 10’ shorter to allow the pole to have a taper.

I Glued the strips together with Elmers Wood Glue.  Once the glue dried I used a farrier rasp to file down the tapered side to give it a smooth face.  After sanding, the pole was given one more quick coat of stain.

The insulators are made out of leftover parts from Walthers’ High Voltage Transmission Tower kit.  They were painted with Testors Aluminum paint and glued in place.  I drilled the end of each insulator out so that I can string EZ-Line through them.  

Layout Update - July 2021

Between my job and then working here at home on our farm has kept me pretty busy for the last few months, but I have been able to sneak in some time to work on the layout.  Progress so far includes all of the benchwork being completed, most of the trackwork is in place and have started roughing in some of the scenery.  I've added a few pictures to show the progress so far.

-This picture shows the majority of what will become Denton, MT looking east.  The mainline and the siding that has the six hoppers on it are Micro Engineering code 70 flextrack.  All other track that can be seen is hand laid code 55.  I'm waiting to receive a shipment of rail and ties so that I can finish up the track laying.  The ladder going off to the left side of the main is the lead for the three bay engine house.  You can see a mock up of the engine house right above the turnout lead.  Most of the grain bins on the right side of the tracks wont be used, they are just there for mockup reasons.  The trackwork follows the prototype exactly (except it has been compacted obviously) and is limited in size, which is one of the reasons I opted for this plan.  I enjoy simplicity.  

-The bottom photo is a view of the prototype looking in the same general direction.  It was a lovely smoke filled September afternoon when I took the picture.

-A few of the turnouts that I've hand laid.  My first few attempts at building turnouts took forever to complete and were pretty rough.  But now I've gotten it pretty well down to a science and can build one in less than two hours.  This set of turnouts is used to access the small yard track as well as the industry track from the siding.  The red elevator will be used on the final layout, but the the other bins probably won't.  The red elevator will be painted white and heavily weathered to look abandoned, as it is on the prototype.

-This view shows the location of one of the elevators, known as General Mills-East.  Very little grain is shipped on the CMR today as most farmers haul directly to the shuttle loaders at Moccasin or Fort Benton for better rates.  However, when regular grain service was still a thing (before the Judith River Trestle washout in 2012), this elevator was generally only used once the other General Mills elevator in town reached capacity.  The building footprint in the front of the of the photo will be a division office of Fergus Electric Coop.  This building doesn't exist on the prototype (crews come from Lewistown), but I have way too many power company models to just let them sit and collect dust.

-Heading farther to the east we see where I have started to rough in some scenery.  As you can see I use insulation board for my scenery, and shape it with Stanley Sureform tools and a hot wire knife.  Another tool that works great is a farriers rasp.  I shoe my horses myself, so once I wear a rasp out on their hooves, it gets reassigned to layout service.  The strip of cork that runs to the left of the tracks is a road.  I like to use cork as it gives the road a little bit of elevation which we see in real life.  the white stuff covering the foam is regular old lightweight drywall mud.  This section of the layout will be hay fields and cattle pastures.

-Completed staging tracks.  Most of the staging action will take place on the tracks to the left of the mainline.  I've gone pretty far outside of the prototype's operations in one area.  On my layout, BNSF trains will occasionally come through Denton from Great Falls to simulate track issues on their prototypical Laurel Subdivision.  When the rail was owned by the Milwaukee Road, this was their mainline into Great Falls.  But the tracks were pulled up at Geraldine after the MILW bankruptcy.  The curved track on the left is the swing gate that goes across the door into the layout room.  The wall in the middle of the room was left in place because I need a place to hang a couple of lifesize taxidermy mounts.  It's kind of a pain to work a few of the staging tracks with the wall in the there, but I've gotten used to it.  

-View of the opposite end of the staging yard.  The four tracks on the right will represent Geraldine and Moccasin, MT.  I am going to simulate a unit train shuttle loader in Geraldine at the west end end of the CMR.  Moccasin is the eastern terminus of the CMR and is where the CMR interchanges with BNSF.