Sunday, November 27, 2016

Montmorency in 1986

David Mira-Landry, a regular visitor of our layout, sent me this link via Facebook a few months ago. Since I generally don't visit my profile, it went unnoticed until tonight.

In 1986, John F. Borklund took a fantastic picture of a westbound train crossing Montmorency River and running by Dominion Textile. The phot owas shot from a spot in Boischatel just at the top of the famous Montmorency Falls.

I find this picture interesting because it confirms my memories of endless brown boxcar trains running on the Murray Bay. Better, you can see the roofs, level of weathering and how the caboose was quite clean then.

This is a scene I really wanted to model on the layout, but the lack of space made it impracticle. Not that the scene would be very large, but we just couldn't cram it. Also, as great as this scene can be, the backdrop would be extremely hard to be convincing. Having the falls on a photobackdrop near the tracks would be hard to blend with the scenic elements. A view point similar to the one of the picture - looking toward Orléans Island and St. Lawrence River - wouldn't be very convincing either. Given that, I'm not that much bothered to not have included that spot.

However, I must admit I would have really liked to build that bridge full scale!

No comments:

Post a Comment