Damming Watson Bayou

To put some "water" into Watson Bayou, a dam needed to be placed at the edge of the layout. 

It would have been neat to use a sheet of plastic so the water could be seen from the side, but after trying a saber saw, score and break, and other such approaches plastic was given up.  A sheet of 1/8-3/16" plywood was much easier to cut into a 2X40" dam.

Installed with several screws.

Added just a little white glue around the shoreline and silicone sealer along the dam hoping to keep the realistic water from flowing out before it dries.  

Needed to paint the dam first, but Walmart no longer carries the paint previously used -- besides, their color mixer was out of white paint so wouldn't have been able to mix up a quart or so, anyway.  Picked a close spray paint.

Spray painting meant the layout around the bayou needed to be covered as well as the classic 442 nearby.

OK, so not an exact match, but don't tell anybody and we'll be fine.  Maybe fill with water after Christmas,

One if by sea, two if by land sort of

 Found a Tichy tank car kit some time ago.  Pulpwood racks by Tichy had me so worked up, the tank car stayed in storage until this year!  Pulled it out for something to do at in-laws and made some significant progress, but it was NOT easy.  Lots of gobby gluing, some close-enough, etc., but from a distance, it might look OK.  Still need to apply decals.  Was interested in a Staley starch set that would fit with 1956 era.  Apparently Staley changed logo since then and had to get a set of Walthers decals from ebay that the seller suggested should work but might disintegrate since they haven't been available new in the past 25 years!

The decals were white so the tank was painted flat black.  In the meantime, the memory returned of a white Staley tank car from an earlier period of model railroading.  In fact, the car was so old (probably 1950's vintage) that it had the hook and loop Mantua couplers!  They have been replaced but now I have TWO Staley tank cars without really realizing it:

A little hard to see, but the white tank is significantly larger than the black tank.  Hmm, if the white had been labeled 100,000 gallons, I could have used the 80,000 gallon decal on the black.  No such luck.  Oh well, we'll just place them on separate tracks at some distance from each other -- one loaded, one empty to return.

So, that's the two if by land.

Another project was to put a boat and skier on Watson Bayou.  The closest thing to the AlumaCraft outboard runabout that we had in the 1950-60's was this green and white model:

Besides the boat not being aluminum, the outboard is obviously a Mercury, whereas ours was a Johnson.  But with a little aluminum spray paint, we got close to the correct color.  Just couldn't help leaving the outboard a Mercury, but used a little bit of chrome paint to make the Mercury "hood" stand out.

Our boat had bench seats from side to side whereas the green boat came with benches along the sides,  A sharp Xacto and a little glue and the second seat was "fixed".  In the '50's outboards often had red six gallon gas tanks.  An attempt was made to install two of those.

The water skier figures came with a captain sitting (never seen in our boat) and a guy in swimsuit.  But we needed a lady as well, so the "stacked" pair was separated and the blonde fit just right on the second seat.  Not sure how to rig up a harness and ski rope, but wondering if 7X fly fishing tippet would be small enough,

So, now there's one if by sea, sort of. . . .