Teeswater

Cataract Junction

It took me three bench work attempts and two track rebuilds to get Cataract correct. The problem with Cataract is to get the perspective correct. The track runs along the side of a gorge were the Credit River runs through. The station sits back against the slope of the gorge (the road runs up the slope). Thus this makes it difficult to get at the town from the main part of the walkway. So I had to pull the town away from the wall and add a place to sit and control the trains. You can still control the train from the opposite side, but only for trains running through town.

The other problem I had was in getting the track correct. The curve is much tighter than the prototype, and the switches available are too tight as well.

Photos are not hard to come by. Several steam excursions stopped there in the mid 1960s for scenic run pasts, so people took lots of photos. By that time, however, the station was gone. I have a couple of photos of the station, and I measured the foundations that still exist. So I was able to easily built the station from sheet styrene.

I added a siding that was removed at the turn of the century. That siting contains a small freight shed and cattle pen. Both were scratch built.

A spur once ventured out across the Credit River to Dufferin Construction that had a gravel pit located. I put back that spur, crossing the river with a spindly bridge, to the same company but it is a cement mill. This was built from the kit-bashing of two kits to product one large facility.

The Elora mixed train services this town.

Shipments outbound from this town include:

From Industry	To Industry	Load	Frequency
Cattle Ramp	Cattle Pens and Transfer, Orangeville	1 CT of Livestock (Beaf Cattle)	Fridays (All Year)
Cattle Ramp	Lambton Yard, Lambton	1 CT of Livestock (Pigs)	Mondays (All Year)
CPR Freight Shed	Lambton Yard, Lambton	1 RF of Food Products (Dairy Products)	Thursdays (All Year)
CPR Freight Shed	CPR Freight Shed, Orangeville	1 BX of Clean Lading Only (Freight)	Fridays (All Year)
Dufferin Construction	Lambton Yard, Lambton	1 BX of Cement (Drums and Bags of Cement)	Fridays (All Year)
Dufferin Construction	Lambton Yard, Lambton	2 CH of Cement (Bulk Cement)	Wednesdays (All Year)

Shipments inbound into this town include:

From Industry	To Industry	Load	Frequency
CPR Freight Shed, Orangeville	CPR Freight Shed	1 BX of Clean Lading Only (Misc freight)	Mondays (All Year)
Lambton Yard, Lambton	CPR Freight Shed	1 RF of Food Products (National Grocers Ltd)	Tuesdays (All Year)
Lambton Yard, Lambton	Dufferin Construction	1 BX of Clean Lading Only (Empty Drums)	10 (All Year)
Lambton Yard, Lambton	Dufferin Construction	1 BX of Clean Lading Only (Empty Drums)	20 (All Year)

Layout Photos

As you can see from the photos, quite a bit of detail scenery was done to Cataract. This was a testing area to try out some of Woodland Scenics products. I have to say I like their products very much will most likely do the whole layout. The road was done with sifted road gravel. I first sifted it with wire screen to remove the large rock. Then sifted through nylon stocking stretched over a bowel. The mid sized material was laid on the road first, then the fine stuff sprinkled on top of that. Tire marks were made with the back end of brush dragged through the wet road surface.

The ground cover was done in this sequence. After the plaster dried, painted with light brown house paint. Once dry, brushed on 50/50 glue and water. I then laid sifted top soil on the wet glue. I used ordinary cheep garden topsoil sifted through screen. This gives the uneven, dark, underlying topsoil of natural ground. Once dry, I soaked with glue mix again and sprinkled fine ground foam. Two main greens were mixed into patches, with some other colours sprinkled around. Are you can see from the picks it makes a nice ground base.

Looking down the road towards the station. More trees have since been added to the right.

Bit of an awkward shot, but you can see the stages of ground formation top left

Close up of the ground prep process.

Mixed train from Elora arrives at Cataract Station. The station agent must give this train clearance before proceeding to Orangeville.