Building the Rio Grande Southern, All 10 programs

In Volume 1 we begin to model Durango of the 1930s. We’ll show you how this massive layout begins at Durango. We’ll cover benchwork, track laying, scratchbuilding the roundhouse, the car shops, the ash pit and more!

By use of archival motion picture film and prototype slides by Mallory Hope Ferrell, as well as video and slides of the finished projects, we’ll detail the complete building of the yard through Parts 1 and 2, including all the major structures found in Durango of the 1930s. A major feature of this series will be prototypical appearing action shots of the finished sections of the layout, similar to the popular Green Frog video, “4 Narrow Gauge Layouts”.

The layout construction is hosted by John M. Koch, an award winning model railroader who has been building layouts and writing articles for the model press for over 50 years. This very entertaining and informative series is professionally narrated.

VOLUME 2
We continue the building of Durango on the huge ON3 Rio Grande Southern. We’ll be showing how to add a fascia board to the front of the layout, how to lay down the ballast in the yard, and a great way to build a disappearing drop leaf access hatch in the middle of the yard, and another lift up hatch behind the roundhouse.

Also covered is the building of the scenery which will tie the backdrop to the layout, and we’ll detail that scenery with shrubs and bushes to match the backdrop. Next we’ll tackle the scratchbuilding of the Durango station. Then we’ll construct a retaining wall for a small mine, and build a tunnel portal to take us to the next room, as well as construct scenery around the portal and next to the mine. We’ll also build a rock retaining wall between two tracks, make some rubber molds, and apply castings from them to our roughed in scenery. Then we’ll detail the area around the tunnel portal.

Next we’ll show you a very unique way to construct a flat backdrop to represent the town of Durango….and we’ll place those flats onto the backdrop. The details inside the car shops are important too, and we’ll add those.

VOLUME 3
We cover the beginning of the town of Dolores, Colorado. You’ll see some unique features in the following portions of construction:
‘ Benchwork’ Track laying-including the stub switches and their wiring
‘ Photo Mural Backdrop installation’ A very unique access door to the layout that carries the backdrop, tracks, sidings and the bulk oil plants at the southern end of town
‘ Wiring’ the tracks.

We also will begin the scenery that ties the photo mural backdrop to the layout, as well as the planning of the rest of the town, parts of which will be done in Bas Relief with photos of the real structures in Dolores!

VOLUME 4
We’ll build the river that flows through the town of Dolores including some beautiful Cottonwood trees along each side of the river….and construct an additional part of the town that runs perpendicular to the Dolores River. We’ll tackle some bridges to get our trains over the river, including building a Wye in this area….and we’ll build a canyon to separate our town from the New Mexico logging area.

Then we’ll plant a stand of pine trees on a hill constructed near our canyon, and show you how we blended the live scenery at this end of town into our Dolores photo mural backdrop and against the new sky backdrop where a distant hill was constructed. Last, we’ll construct a retaining wall made of stone and logs to hold up a portion of our hill and our logging branch, plant some Aspen trees…and blend the real trees into the backdrop trees. We conclude this DVD on Dolores with some prototypical running shots.

VOLUME 5
We’ll cover the construction of two plaster buildings to be used as logging camp structures..and next we’ll build a standard company house just like the buildings that appear in the town of McPhee…this structure was constructed from styrene. We’ll also take you step by step as we frame out the house and add the important details to it. Construction of a small plaster cabin to be placed near our mill pond is next….and we’ll scenic the area around the cabin. The logging camp has a tunnel and turnout located under it, and we want to add access to that turnout in case it needs some maintenance.

This video shows you how to build a slick access hatch from foam board, and add the basics of scenery to hide the access hatch.

VOLUME 6
We’ll show you how to construct the Company Store at McPhee..including an interior. Then we’ll build a highly detailed Donkey Engine to load logs in the woods. Next well add that photo mural backdrop behind the woods we built in the last volume. Our town and mill need a source of water, and a high water tank, built mostly from a Plastruct kit, we will provide that need.

VOLUME 7
Covers the installation of the photo mural backdrop in the logging area, basic construction techniques used for the huge sawmill, complete construction of the slash burner and the engine house, and finishing up the scenery at the town of McGhee, including some great trees along Main street, and even a herd of sheep being herded downtown! We’ll also show a great deal of train operation on a typical day at Mcphee and on the logging branch. This is a really full program worth viewing over and over.

VOLUME 8
We’ll take you back to Durango, where we’ll cover the construction and placement of the buildings that make up Graden Flour Mill to the northwest of the roundhouse, as well as scenery destruction and re-building so the mill complex will fit right in. Then we’ll build the stock pens that were found south of Durango. We’ll show you how to build some realistic working stock gates as well. Next we’ll tear up some more scenery in order to add a return loop around the roundhouse to turn passenger trains. During the re-building, we’ll modify that lift out section behind the roundhouse.

Since there is not enough room for storage of passenger cars in the main yard, we’ll add a small yard to store those cars just to the west of the roundhouse. Now Durango will finally be complete! Don’t miss this rare opportunity to add some structures that are not usually modeled by anyone in Durango!

VOLUME 9
We take you along the RGS from Dolores to Rico. We’ll cover the construction of a huge 10 foot long, 8 foot high rock wall towering above the RGS tracks, complete with hundreds of rock castings, and a long tunnel to get us toward Rico. At Rico, we’ll remove an old paper backdrop, and add an 18 foot long photo-mural backdrop. We hand painted some scenes to help blend the backdrop into the ‘live’ scenery. Many shrubs and trees will also be added to help this blending process.

The installation of photo-mural backdrops, and the blending of them into live scenes has rarely been covered in any magazines, or videos! A large sampling mill, and an ore bin complex complete with a trestle will also be added, along with the scenery around this area.

Scratch Building Structures, Volume1
In this video program we’ll show you how to build four structures from scratch. We’ll show you:
(1) a small boiler house;
(2) offices attached to a roundhouse that house the shop foreman and that include great detail and interesting roof arrangement:
(3) a repair facility with complete interior detail, including lighting, an interesting removable roof, and a small lean-to attached to one side. This building also includes some rather interesting window arrangements
(4) a passenger and freight station which is built as if it were sliced down the middle…since there was not enough room for a complete building.

The construction of these structures were taken from the original programs of our very popular series on Building the Rio Grande Southern, but more detail about the construction of each item is shown in this program.

DVD BONUS — Put this DVD into your Computer and get access to High Rez Photos which you can Print Out.