Chesapeake Bay in 9 Modules, all in 1:220 // NEW MODULE

What is the white material on the trees used for covering?

Dirk points out, that a tree is about 1 hour of work and that its design is different whether it is supposed to be a part of a group or a solitary tree:

The old oak tree is quite impressive. 



The younger one is nice, too.



or do you prefer the pine tree?

I would like to draw your attention today to a very special construct which you usually don`t find on model layouts - a dyke gate! The people at The Chesapeake Bay call the sea walls "dykes" (could be derived from the Dutch word for sea wall).




A dyke gate was usually open and would allow the trains to cut through the sea walls. However, when high floods are expected the dyke gates could be closed in order to protect the inlands from the sea.



(zoom in and allow your view to walk along the dyke to the horizon.....)

Since we are in the middle of the summer and the weather is brilliant, our dyke gate is open for the traffic. You may have noticed that the gate is used by all kind of traffic streams....... 

Peter Nolan just posted the announcement in another thread that the prototypically correct tug boat for this layout is available now, as the "Chessie" for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad of Richmond, Virginia. Please take a look at his post.



Here some prototype pictures:





Tugboats
The marine operations C&O and B&O were the tugboats since they were in use in Chesapeake Bay, New York and Baltimore into the 1970s. The Tugboat Enthusiasts Society of the Americas lists nine types of tugboats such as docking tugs, harbor tugs, canal tugs and seagoing tugs. Railroad tugboats are defined as a separate type with the following definition: Railroad Tugboats were built in a variety of sizes and configurations depending on the towing tasks they were intended to handle. The most widely recognized railroad tugboats are those which were built to handle car floats (barges with railroad tracks on deck) in harbor service. These tugs have a number of distinctive features including high pilot houses for visibility over railroad cars on the car floats, rather flat sheer with low freeboard forward and very heavy hull construction to handle the compressive load operating between floats. Many railroad tugs were originally equipped with gasketed dutch doors that allowed leaving the top section open for ventilation when standing alongside a pier, rather than watertight doors. They were also virtually all “day boats,” manned in shifts, and fitted with locker rooms for the crew to change from and to street clothes rather than having sleeping quarters. As railroad car floating was phased out in the 1980s, many railroad tugs ended up in ship docking service, often with their pilot houses and stacks reduced in height. Some of the larger railroad tugboats were originally designed for coastal coal barge towing at a time when coal was still being widely used in home heating and power generating applications. A number of railroads used their tugs for ship docking work at the company’s piers, and a few railroads had tugs that were designed specifically for ship docking.

Karl made me aware, that there is one more scene divider in this layout. And this divider separates the fore dunes not only from the middle part of the layout but from the pier part as well.





Dirk planted even a fence to underline this „stay away“ message of the scene divider.

It's very green but looks good. Do you have a real picture to go off of?