Cougill Studios

For a small community, Cedar Grove had a big impact on my modeling

choices. Casper Fohl’s feed mill (shown below), was a must-have item

on the layout. In fact, this was the second time I modeled this mill. I

did it in HO scale too and in the smaller scale I was able to model both

buildings. In O Scale, I was only able to include the left-hand storage

building with the stone pier footings. I didn’t mind this at all because

that’s the one I was most interested in. 

The mill sat on a double ended team track that served at least one

off-line industry, as noted in Keith Corman’s article. It would have

been nice to include that aspect on the layout, but there wasn’t room.

Cedar Grove also has other interesting features that would make for a

nice scene. For one thing, clearances are often tight as the railroad

worked its way through town. There were, or still are, two houses that

snuggled up close to the tracks. At one time, there was a siding on the

west edge of town that served the Brown Lumber Company, however,

it was long gone by the time I took a serious interest in the line.

There is a light plate girder bridge west of town that can be seen from

US 52 that would be neat to model someday too. Cedar Grove also

suffered heavily in the 1913 flood. The tracks were destroyed along

with the depot which was not rebuilt afterwards.

The photo below is my model of the mill. It's made of a styrene core,

overlaid with styrene strips for the wood siding and heavy duty

aluminum foil shaped over some corrugated styrene siding. I used

double-sided Scotch brand tape to fix the "tin" to the building. This

worked well. It's been five years and counting and the siding is stuck

fast. The stone piers were cast from plaster as a strip, then cut into

individual sections and carved while still semi-soft. I'm still pleased

with how this one turned out.