Big Thunder Mine Part 2: Ore Bins, Trestles & Retaining Walls

Howdy folks! Dave here at Thunder Mesa Studio and I am back with part 2 of the epic Big Thunder Mine build. If you missed part 1 you can click right up here and go watch it now or you can find it in the links down below. The shaft house was just the beginning of this project and now it's time for many of the details and smaller structures that will really help bring this scene to life. So basically what I want to accomplish this week is finishing a lot of the groundwork around the shaft house here and that can be broken down into two or three smaller projects. I've got the this retaining wall right here. I want to have a timber retaining wall so I need to build that and a sort of a loading dock on this side that faces the ON-18 track down here and then I've got an ore bin I want to build over on this side to bring ore to the ON-18 ore cars and probably also a little waste dump right about here. I thought about putting another ore bin there but I think it's gonna look better with a small waste dump and I could build some more cribbing and retaining walls around that. Lots of weeds and stuff and junk. I think it'll look pretty cool. So first thing I want to start on is this retaining wall right here. I'm gonna build that flat and then we're gonna install it on the layout. So I've cut a piece of cardboard that fits the profile of the retaining wall I want to create and I painted it with some dark brown and for the cribbing itself I'll be using dowels and I've got some 5 16ths and some 3 16ths doweling. So basically you got the big logs like this that are laid horizontally and then you have the smaller pieces that have been hammered in to the hillside driven in and then the next course is laid on top of that. That one doesn't want to stand up but I think you get the idea. And that goes on up up the side of the hill. And then once these are all glued into place I'll go back and fill in between them with real dirt and rocks. And I think the best way to achieve that is to glue the wooden doweling into place. I'm using some waterproof wood glue. Okay and then when I go back and add the dirt and the rocks and stuff like that and use a diluted white glue that water won't cause this glue to separate and soften and it basically won't cause the whole thing to come apart which would be a bummer. I'll just show you how I prepare one of these logs as an example. Cut it off. I have to be too precise or straight. My thinking is these would probably have been shaped with an axe mostly or an adze. It would be kind of rough. These kind of structures were generally built in a hurry and on the cheap. And I like to go the end. Add some axe marks. That's my utility knife. Sometimes I like to put axe marks in different places like that so maybe they were gonna cut it there but change their mind. All right. Get some stain on that. This is just India ink and alcohol. 70% alcohol wood stain. Well I think these pieces are dry enough now that I can begin on some assembly. They're no longer cool to the touch which means they're pretty much dry. And some of you might be wondering how I figured out how many logs I would actually need to finish this little project here. And I used what's known as the WAG method which of course stands for wild-ass guess. Well while I wait for the glue to dry completely on this I'm gonna go ahead and assemble the the dock which goes up above next to the hoist house or the shaft house. And for that I've got some... these are O scale six by twelves which I'm using to build the frame. And then I've got copy stir sticks which I've cut to length and stained for the decking. That's my one two three blocks here to try and keep things square. I'm using the six by twelves laid flat because I want a six inch height to the to the frame. And that gives me lots of nice gluing surface for the planks. Looks pretty good. Alright we'll go with that. Now I can start putting the decking on and once again I'm using my one two three blocks but this time as a stop so that when I put these planks on I just push them back up against the block. And this is the side that will go up against the edge of the building so I want this to be nice and straight and flush along the back. It can be all jagged and funky on the front but I want it to be nice and straight and flush on the back. Now I like to take a small nail and a pin vise like this and go down and I'm going to add some nail holes to each board on each side right above those beams. Just a nice little extra bit of detail. One way I like to weather decking like this is just take some fine sandpaper. This is some 400 grit. This right along the edges here takes off some of the stain, highlights the detail a little bit and it makes it look like things have been scraped and moved around on the platform. Alright now it is time to make a mess. This is dry. I've got my collection of rocks and dirt here that I want to use and I've got some good old Elmer's white glue diluted 3 to 1 with water. So I'm gonna fill in all around in between these logs. Pour this on here. This is unsifted dirt so that's a variety. There's some little pieces and there's some big pieces and I get this from a creek bed not too far from home. Obviously when I put this over in the scene I'll have to do some blending around the edges I think and just start slathering some glue on here. Try and soak up this excess glue with a little more dirt. It's almost impossible to make this too dirty. Alright now the hardest part leaving it alone and letting it dry. Okay I think that's dry enough now that I can actually install it on the scene. No signs of warping. Good, good, good. I love it when a plan comes together. Let's use some Eileen's tacky glue and I should be able to just glue it right in place below the mine. I want to get a good smear of glue on the back of this. Now I want to add a couple of braces coming up. I'm just going to use some of the extra timbers that I already cut. Let's see, right here. Alright now I can install the dock that I made just the same way. This is an important piece because it helps to key the shaft house to its spot on the layout and the spot is important because, well, it relates to a whole bunch of other stuff like the animated hoist we're going to have and all that so it can't move. It's got to stay right here. I'm going to add one more log down here at the bottom. Then all of this will be filled in and landscaped with real dirt and weeds and stuff. I'm a little closer to finished. So I've let everything on the retaining wall and the dock, I've let all that dry overnight and I'm very pleased with how all of that has turned out so far. So the next thing I want to start working on is the waste dumps. There's a track that I added that runs through the bottom level down here and presumably takes out the waste, the overburden, the stuff that they dig out that's not the ore to get to the ore, right? And if you've ever been to mining areas here in Arizona or anywhere in the southwest Colorado, these waste dumps can be huge. I mean just an enormous amount of material taken out of these mines. Unfortunately I don't really have the room to model a full waste dump at scale. It would be pretty overpowering as a matter of fact. So I'm just going to kind of suggest one right here so I know those of you out there watching who are familiar with mines like this know that these waste dumps are much, much bigger in real life. But we have a small one here. I've got a little room here next to the track. And then come right here to the other side and I'll show you what else I'm going to do. Over on this side I'm going to have another short span of waste trestle that comes out right here and just kind of is cantilevered over the canyon and presumably dumps down into the canyon down below, but it'll all just be implied. And I've started to lay the groundwork for that. This is some N-scale cork roadbed on some foam core to bring it up to the level of the base of this track here. So I'll create another piece of track coming out with a little trestle that'll mate up with this on this side. But first I need to carve out this material here so I can have a place to have the abutment for my short waste trestle bridge. So let's do that first. A little bit more cleanup around these edges here. Just kind of trying to blend it in. Now I'm going to put some paint on here. If memory serves, I believe it's the darker scenic base color over on this side of the layout. I'll find out in a minute anyway. I just want to cover up that foam and sculpt the mold before I move forward. While that paint dries over there, I can build my little dump trestle bridge. I'm just creating a kind of a jig for it right now. Put that on there. Now I want some clear packaging tape. I've already cut all the scale lumber, well most of it anyway, that I'll need for this little bridge. I've got some scale 12 by 6 which I'm going to use for the stringers. The bridge is quite short. It's only three inches or scale 12 feet long. I'll line these up on here and then I've got some scale 4 by 6 that I've cut to length for the bridge ties. So let's see. First, oh I need some double stick tape to make this work. Piece here and a piece. Look how dirty my fingers are. All part of the fun here at the studio. All right, I just want to kind of put this right on center and I'm pretty much just going to eyeball it because I want kind of a funky, you know, funky hand-built look. Use this to square it up on the end. The old trick, you use one of the ties as a spacer between the ties as you go so you know the spacing is correct. Now for the rail itself I'm using a piece of, this is some Pico HON-30 track which, you know, makes a pretty good makeshift ON-18 track as well. I painted it dark brown and I'm using some small rail spikes to attach it to my little bridge deck. I've left the ties on the far end here and what I'll do is that'll keep it more or less engaged while I'm spiking them and then at the end I'll just clip this end off. Now I've just added another piece of 6x12 as a brace here and this is one of the things that will help support it on the abutment. Now I'm adding some some scale 1x12 for some deck planking. I have a place for the guys to walk when they're pushing the minecart out there. I can build this sort of retaining wall abutment here. I started with a big beefy 12x12. Now copy stir sticks to finish it off. I'm just going to go ahead and glue this track into place. A little bit of Eileen's tacky glue. Get everything properly aligned so this will perfectly match up with the track that's coming out of the shaft house. Match those rails up. I've got a couple more pieces of 6x12 and you're just going to go in braces there right here. Now I want to add a couple of diagonal braces and I thought it'd be fun to have them be round like logs as if they were kind of just driven right into the cliff side here in that sandstone. Since this is foam down here it's pretty easy just to push that back in there. I've added a couple of little small nut bolt washer castings at the top end there. I like that a lot. Okay, cool. Well I'm actually ready now to start dirting in around the mine to start to adding real dirt and rocks and stuff like that with the usual diluted white glue technique. However, I don't want the mine of the shaft house to be glued down. I want it to remain removable so I can continue to work on it and add more details and stuff like that later on. So I've got an idea for that. Let's see if it works. So my plan is actually to put a couple of strips of clear packaging tape on the bottom of the MDF base just enough to cover it so that when I, you know, dirt in around it and add glue and stuff like that it won't stick. You could probably also use saran wrap for this but I don't have any saran wrap handy. I'm going to need to take a couple of strips. Yeah, I'm going to need to tape these down. I don't want any bubbles or kinks in it like that. Nice and straight. All right, now I should be able to just take this position it right on top of that. Okay, so far so good. Stuck down to the base. That should be enough to keep it from getting glued down on the layout. When I'm done I can just pull that off. Now I'll hit all this with a little bit of wet water and we'll drizzle on some diluted white glue. That's three to one water and white glue. I don't want to spray it, obviously, because I don't want it all over my model. You probably noticed this mock-up for an ore bin right here. This is actually probably the third or fourth version of this that I've done. I'm just kind of designing it in place to get the spatial relationships right, the size, the shape, the relationship between the hand push ore cart track up here and the ON-18 track down below where the ore is fed to. So it took a little doing, several iterations to get to this point, but now I think I'm ready to pull this off of here and make some drawings that I can use as templates to build the actual ore bin from. Just finished up my ore bin drawing, at least of the side elevation, and so the next thing is to turn this into some sort of a jig or template that I can use to build the sides right on top of this, and for that I will need some foam core. Glue on the back of this old 3M Super 77. All right. Now, with the help of some dress pins, I can build both sides of the frame for my ore bin right on top of this. So it's basically going to be built almost entirely out of O scale 1x or 8x8s and coffee stir sticks, and these coffee stir sticks that I have measure out to about 3x12, so a nice beefy timber. But I just wanted to mention another really nice thing about having a drawing like this is it makes it really easy to guesstimate just exactly how much scale lumber you're going to need. You can look right on here and say, well, I need the piece that big, and I need a couple of pieces this big, and then, you know, etc. You don't have to cut all the compound angles and things like that or the miters right now, but, you know, just get it in the ballpark, and then you'll have it all stained up and ready to go for when you start building. And one thing I wanted to mention before I really got into this was I'm building this to match this slope, this angle. Let's get this so you don't have a glare on that. This is the existing terrain as, you know, as close as I can measure it from what's there. And I don't necessarily recommend this practice. I'm doing it because I don't want to dig out all of this scenery and, you know, get it down to where it's flat. So I am building it to fit the spot. And, of course, it's much easier to build something like this to fit on a level spot and then, you know, backfill scenic behind it. But, hey, you know, I like a challenge, so I'm not doing it that way. So what I've done is I've cut these approximately to the length I need, understanding that there's going to have to be some fitting and fiddling and everything to get this to sit level and straight in the spot where I want it. But, you know, that's the way I chose to do it. Okay, now I'll let the glue dry on this and then pop it off and do an identical one for the other side. Now I've got the two sides done, and the next step is going to be to tie them together. I've got some more eight by eight beams to do that, and I've got some of the planks to help hold everything square while I then take it over there and get the final measurements that I need for the legs. Again, something you wouldn't have to do if you built this to fit on a level surface. And the question often with something like this is, you know, you're putting, you know, it's a balancing act. You're kind of juggling things in the air and trying to keep everything square, and the question is, well, where do you start? You just start. You know, you just pick a corner and start gluing things together. I'm going to start right here, right there, and try and keep this all as square as I can while I go. That's the challenge. Another little trick I should mention is that when you're doing something like this, you know, you want it, you're trying to keep everything as square as possible, but you want to get the whole assembly together while the glue is still flexible so you can make minor adjustments without breaking the joints, and that's something that's easier said than done also. Pretty close. Pretty darn close. Drum roll, please. Not bad. Well, I just checked it over in the scene and only had to make a couple of small adjustments to the legs, amazingly enough, and it actually fits really well. So now I've been staining up the rest of the planks for the floor of the bin, and I'm just going to go ahead and install all those because those are going to get a little bit harder to access after the following step. So let's install some planks. All right, so now I need to add some stringers across the top here for the minecart track that will mate up with the track that's coming out of the shaft house. So I've gone back to the Atlantic Cable Mine kit that I used to build the shaft house and assembled a couple of stringers from the laser cut pieces that are included in the kit. They're already laser notched right here to mate up with the track that's coming out from the shaft house. So I just have to assemble these on here. I already made a start on the ties up here, but before I get too far, I want to go ahead and plank the sides, both sides of the bin, while I can still get in there and access them. Wait! Stop! Back up! Actually, before I finish the sides, I need to finish the front because you see it overlaps right there on the corner, right? So I've got to finish the entire front, including the little chutes, the ore chutes that come out where the ore would be loaded into the minecarts. I also want to divide the bin into two sections with a little partition down inside. So I've added this piece in the front here as the beginning of that. For the ore chutes, even though I'm not using the ore bin from the Atlantic Cable Mine kit because the geometry was all wrong, it just didn't fit right, I am going to use the parts for the ore chutes. It has parts for two ore chutes, and they're nice laser-cut plywood, so I don't see any reason not to use those. I just stained them, letting the stain dry, and then I'll put those together, and we can finish the front of the bin. Moving on to the sides. A rare shot of me actually, uh, RFTM, reading the freaking manual. Um, you know, I prefer to make things up as I go along rather than following other people's directions. It's a fault, I understand. Usually I like to use a paintbrush to apply glue, but in cases like this, where it's really fine work, a toothpick actually works better for me. I'm going to cap those corners with some one-by-stock just to make it a little bit more clean-looking, I think. All right, a couple of things. I wanted to, um, improve both the look and the functionality of these ore chutes that come from the Atlantic Cable Mine kit. Um, so, you know, the first thing is, they have wooden gates, and, um, that just seems impractical to me. I don't think, I don't think they would have had wooden gates. I think, you know, they had access to iron, so I think they would have had steel gates. So I, um, had some pieces left over from another build. Uh, this is some, uh, twenty-five thousandths of an inch thick, uh, laser board, and, uh, these are cut to shape, and these will be the new gates. So these will be iron, and they'll be weathered and everything to, uh, resemble iron. Let's just slide down in there like that. And they also have a way to open, um, on these wooden gates. There is no provision, there's no hardware or anything to, you know, to lift them up or open them. So, um, these will actually have a line going up to a block and tackle so that an operator can, you know, pull the gates open, uh, by pulling down on, on a, uh, on a cable. So that's, uh, that's one thing. Also, I'm going to extend the length of the, uh, trough out here, because I need it to be a little bit longer to reach my, my ore cars. And so that's all I'm doing now. I'm getting ready. I just stained some lumber. I'm going to build these troughs on here and probably add a little bit more trim to these pieces, kind of box them in a little bit with some, uh, I've got some one-by stock over here I'll use for that. And, uh, yeah, then we'll, uh, we'll put them on the front of the bin and see how it looks. Well, I'm just about done with these chutes. Um, but before I install the gates, I want to do a little, uh, little age and weathering on them. Um, this is a cool trick, actually, if you're, uh, trying to model, you know, rusty old iron. I just painted these a flat dark brown, right? And I'm going to mix up some light gray and just a little bit of silver metallic. Whoa, not that much. Didn't want it all to come out at once, but there we go. Mix those together, get, you know, 99.9 of the percent of the paint off the brush, and then just going with the direction that they're pulled, you know, they go up and down. So you want to have some, some streaks on here because these, uh, iron gates would get rusty, right? But then as they're pulled up and down, that rust gets scraped off. That's probably good enough right there. A little bit stronger down towards the bottom, just like so. And there are our completed ore chutes ready to install. You know, that was a little bit of extra work, but I think it was worth it, don't you? Now, before I move on with this, I want to, I want to talk for a second about modeling economy. And by that, I don't mean necessarily, you know, what things cost. I'm talking more about time, time management and modeling. You only have, you know, so much modeling time. I am very lucky. I have a lot of time to spend on this kind of stuff. A lot of other people don't. Even so, I prefer to spend my modeling time on things that show, you know what I mean? I was, I was very willing to spend some extra time on these ore chutes because they're right out in front of the model. They will be very, very visible, so I want them to look good. With that in mind, I'm getting ready to plank the front of this. Now, of course, on a real ore bin, there will be openings to match up with these chutes, right? Of course. Well, there's not going to be any openings on mine. It's going to be solid wood straight across for the simple reason that they won't show. You know, no one will know except for you and me. You'll know now that I've told you. But this is a very good example of modeling economy as it applies to time. I could take the extra time and create those openings. And if I was creating this for a museum or something, I probably would. But for my layout, where this is a non-operated, operational, non-operating feature, it just needs to sit there and look good. There's no reason at all that I can justify to cut those openings. So, I'm just going to plank right over the front of this and glue these bad boys in place, and we'll call it good. Now, I want to create a center divider to basically divide this into two bins. So, I've taken apart my mock-up, because I don't need it anymore, and use one of the sides here as a central core. And I'll just glue some stir sticks to both sides, plank it up, and I think that'll work nicely. Expedite matters. I've decided to do something I almost never do, and that's I'm going to glue the pieces in place first using waterproof wood glue, and then stain them afterwards after they're already all in. And I think if I, you know, take care and take my time and not get any glue on this surface side, I think that'll work. So, the way I'm putting this together is that the boards are horizontal this way and diagonal this way, which in the 19th century was actually a construction technique. You put boards back-to-back like this, and it makes for a very strong, stable structure. So, that's what I'm doing right here. Now, I can take the sanding block and just make sure everything's nice and square and straight. We'll meet up with the sides of the bin here on the bottom. Now, I can finish the sides. Well, I just finished this side, and now I need to cut and stain and install all of the planks on the other side. And I, fortunately, I have this drawing right here. So, what I can do is use some double-stick tape like so. See, I've got to cut that angle, that miter, in all of these pieces, and they'll all be the right length. So, up here. And then when I get all these lined up, I can just make a mark straight across there that shows me exactly where to cut each piece. That one's way too warped. All right. Now, with the sides done, I can start putting the finishing touches and details on this. First thing I want to add is some diagonal cross bracing back here on these rear legs. Cut some 4x6 for that. Now, finish up the cross ties. Cut all the, these are also 4x6, and I'm just using a scrap piece of 4x6 to space them apart properly. Now, I'll just bring you all up to speed here. I've been working on the dump trestle here that comes out from the shaft house. This is a hand car track. I put in some, these are 4x6 wooden ties, and then I put in some code 80 rail up on top, scale 18 inches apart, so 18-inch gauge. I painted it kind of a rusty red, and now I've glued it in place. I actually used some cyanoacrylate to just glue the rails to the ties. But now I'm going back and putting in small rail spikes. These are mostly cosmetic. I mean, they do help hold the rail, but so I'm putting them pretty much just every other tie and alternating sides, and to do something like this, I don't want to put a lot of downward force on it. You know, I don't want to force the spikes in, so I'm drilling pilot holes. I use my spiking pliers, but I cut the end off of the spikes. I cut them right about in half so a bunch of it doesn't stick out below these small 4x6 ties. Now I'm adding some catwalks up on top for the operators, and this is just some O scale 1x12 planks. Just gluing these into place, and I also want to add catwalks down both sides here, and I have little support boards. These are 4x4, and then the treads, the catwalk treads, will be glued on top of these. I'll put these on about 24-inch centers I've already marked here, just like that. So similar to like a roof walk on a boxcar, and I can put two 1x12 planks side by side and have a 24-inch wide catwalk. And that's how it looks with all of the catwalks and platforms in place. Now I have to figure out a way to rig these chutes, and what I want to do is add a beam across the front here, an 8x8, that'll be supported by a couple of diagonal pieces, and I've got some O scale water tank hardware, actually, that I'll use. I think will work nicely for raising and lowering the chute gates. So let's go ahead and put this together. Now while I wait for the glue to dry on this this yoke up here, I can go back and add some nail holes to all of these boards. Now I can apply the hardware. Pulley assembly from a, I think it's from Wiseman Model Service, white metal part. There's little faint pencil marks, you probably can't see them in the video, but they are there. Tell me where to put these. About four scale feet in from the end. And a little thing I've learned is that when using cyanoacrylate, it's a really good idea to scrape any paint off first, if you can. Much better adhesion. My pencil marks are saying that you can't see it, I can't see it. There it is. I've got a couple of small cleats. These are from my scrap box. I think these are left over from the build of the river steamer. Using some black thread to represent cable. A lot of CA on the back. Just clean in so I can thread this through. Also it's a nice trick, just a little CA on the end. Do that. It's a lot easier to thread through things. I want these taut. I'm going to glue them in place. The last thing is we've got a counterweight, which is logical, I think. Now I'm just going over all of the metal parts with a little bit of rust colored chalk. Some clear, clear, matte clear coat on there. Now I'm just putting together a trestle bent for the end of that push cart track. Comes out over the end of the bend. And this is, I'm just using leftover pieces from the Atlantic cable mine kit. Enhancing them with some extra bracing. Just using some O scale 4x6. I'm adding some good old nut bowl washer castings, where appropriate, on the cross pieces. Now I should be able to just slide this up under here like so. Okay. Well, I spent the last couple hours building a few more little components for the mine. I didn't bother to film it because it's basically using all of the same techniques that I've already covered in other parts of the build. So let me just show you what they are. There's another length of trestle. This will come out the front of the mine for the ore dump, or not the ore dump, but the waste dump track. Then I've got a ladder for the side of the ore bin, so you can access it from track level. You can climb up to the top. And then I've made some little track bumpers. These are for each of the push cart tracks that come out from the shaft house. And they just go right on the end like that. And hopefully that'll help the little miners keep them from tumbling off over the edge to their doom. I think the first thing I need to do going forward is to glue this in place in front of the mine. And then I can go from there. Basically, I want to glue this to the base, but not to the shaft house. And line these tracks up. Make sure everything is where it needs to be. Oh yeah, nice. Just fits like that. Trust no muss. One last trestle bent to put in here. Okay, now I want to build up some timber cribbing and some railroad ties to make a little retaining wall. So now I want to backfill behind this, but I don't want it to be really heavy. So I don't want to use pure dirt and rocks. It would add a lot of weight to the layout. So I'm actually breaking up some styrofoam packing peanuts. And those will be the first layer of fill behind this retaining wall. Now I'll cover that up with dirt and rocks. You never know what's there. Now I can start filling in behind this with real dirt and rocks. I'm going to mist on a little bit of wet water. Hold this in place. And now I need to just basically slather everything with diluted white glue. This white glue is diluted three to one with water. And I'm not too worried about gluing down the shaft house because, as you may recall, it's still got the packaging tape on the bottom. Let all that dry for a bit and see how we do. Now inside the ore bin itself, I want to have a representation of, you know, what's being mined, right? That's going to look a little bit different. This is coming from deep underground, deep below these sandstone layers. And I found a deposit of some iron pyrite mixed in with some quartz. And so I collected some of that and I smashed it up with a hammer. And that represents the ore. And I, you know, I just think it's kind of a funny joke that, you know, the common name for iron pyrite is fool's gold. So maybe that's what we're mining there. And that's probably a good place to wrap up part two of the Big Thunder Mine build. In the next installment, I'll be working on the hoist house and tackling all the wiring for lighting and the animated hoist. Don't forget to like and subscribe if you want to see more. You can also follow along on Instagram at Thunder.Mesa or check out the studio website at ThunderMesa.Studio. Many thanks to Thunder Mesa's patrons for helping to make this project possible. You can find out more about that at Patreon.com slash Thunder Mesa. Until next time, keep moving forward everybody and adios for now.