Friday 23 February 2024

Ballast, cinders and ashes

After painting and dirt texturing, the last layer (before greenery) was the ballast. Because I'm modelling an engine servicing facility, I wanted to add some ashes around the yard. I know railroads often ballasted yard tracks with cinders as they had plenty of them. But I also wasn't sure how it would look, I didn't want the whole yard to be dominated by the dark cinders. I added cinders in front of the roundhouse tracks, and the ends of the turntable approach tracks, with some spilling over into the turntable pit. I also added some to the caboose track (foreground closest to layout edge) and the Maintenance of Way train track (rear beside the coaling tower). 

The layout ballast is a mix of woodland scenic fine buff and a little fine brown ballast. I also added some buff ballast from a New Zealand scenic material company (Scenic Textures). Their buff colour dried a little too much like a light grey for my liking. 

I misted wet water over the layout and glued down the ballast with scenic cement (Mod Podge and water 1:3 ratio). Because there is such a large area being ballasted in the yard and there were so many switches to be mindful of, it took me several attempts to make sure I had glued everything down. 

I'm modelling a different style of ballasting on my main line, which I'll cover in a future post. 


The ballast in place before gluing down with Mod Podge. It dries every so slightly darker. 

Again, ballast on the left before glueing. But this shot gives a good view of the buried team
and stockyard tracks. 


Friday 16 February 2024

Earth texturing begins

After covering the hill forms in a thin layer of coloured plaster I began adding the scenery on the first two modules by painting an earth-coloured paint on the modules. The next step was to add layers of dirt. 

Getting a colour that I was happy with was challenging. On my holiday I harvested some dirt from the area we visited that was close to what I wanted on my layout. I put it through my blender for making scenery materials and then screened it for various grades. The finest was a nice dusty dirt powder. Of course, natural materials always go darker when glued down. So I experimented with adding plaster to the dirt until I found a result that I liked. 

In the area around my team track and stockyard, I wanted the rails to be buried in the dirt. I've always loved the look of the buried track, but have not often seen it modelled. I couldn't find any good articles about how to create this effect, so if you can point to any I'd be interested. 

I used some masking tape to cover the inside of the rails and the rail head. I wanted the painted rail side to be visible after and not just a plastery mess. Then I mixed up some more batches of my dirt and plaster and spread it under the tracks, then pressed the tracks down into the mixture. The plaster/dirt mix oozed up between the ties and I used a large flat pain scraper to add more of the mix from the top and smooth it all out. 

As the mixture dried I found it cracked revealing the presence of the ties underneath. As the mixture dried I sifted more of the dirt onto the area, brushing and pushing it into the cracks. Once the base looked about right, I sifted on a final layer of dirt mixture through an old stocking. 

The cracking was probably because the ratio of plaster to dirt is a bit low, but it held together well. But it wasn't working "zip texturing application" of the final dirt layer. Zip texturing is where the plaster, usually mixed with powder paints, sets up hard and is enough to hold the scenery in place. I had to mist on some scenery cement (I used Mod Podge and water in a 1:3 ratio) to set everything up nicely. 

Earth-coloured paint was applied to the ground surfaces (those are stray small rocks not paint drips!)



The dirt mixture, still damp, shows signs of cracking around the buried tracks. 

Dirt spread around the yard area, with tracks masked off so they can be ballasted later. Dark areas are where the dirt application is thicker and takes longer to dry. 

Another view of the buried tracks. The area in the foreground will be a street and is here awaiting texturing.


Friday 9 February 2024

Town planning

I am reusing the buildings from the original layout. Before I got too much further with the ground cover, I wanted to decide more or less which buildings were going to feature in which of the two towns. I tried different combinations of buildings on the module and then set up the other buildings on a piece of foam with the same dimensions as a module as a mock-up of the other town module that is yet to be built. I made sure I placed a piece of track on the mock-up to get an idea of how the train would run through that scene. 

I had a few criteria when arranging the buildings:

  • The side of the buildings with the most windows or detailing should face the edge of the layout. This will help when I add lights and interiors later.
  • There were several buildings I liked better than others and so I wanted those closer to the viewer. For example, the saloon, the bakery, the bank/land office, the Gunsmith/Lawyer and the Four Sisters Hotel. 
  • In general, I had a preference for taller buildings nearer the edge of the layout and smaller ones further in, to help create a slight forced-perspective effect.
  • I did not want the street to be perpendicular to the layout edge. 
In the end, I settled on the building arrangements in the following photos:

Clockwise from top right, Assayers, Dry Goods, Columba Hotel, Bank/Land Office,
Bakery, Hay & Grain, Shoe shop. 

I avoided placing buildings or boardwalks over the join between two modules.

A mock-up of the yet-to-be-built town. Clockwise from bottom left: Saloon, Stove & Tin Shop, Doctors rooms, building under construction, Sheriff's office, Rooming house, Livery stable, Four Sisters Hotel, Gunsmith & Lawyer

A street view of the mockup. I am of a mind to adjust the rooming house footprint to make it better fit the space available. But I'll build the module first to see how it looks. 


Friday 2 February 2024

Painting the rails

Painting the rails really helps our trackwork look a lot closer to the prototype. Painting the rail seems somehow to lower the visual profile of the rails. Even code 100 rail that has been painted (and then ballasted), like on the first version of my Thoroughfare Gap Railroad seems to look pretty good. 

There are different products available like rail paint markers and other things that can help with this task. But I used a simple can of Rustoleum camouflage brown spray paint, which I found worked great on the last layout. This gives a nice matte dark brown.

I covered the toe of each of the switches with a little masking tape to help preserve electrical contact later. After spray painting and the tape was removed I used a little of the paint on a brush to touch up the outside edges of the stock rail. Painting the turntable pit rail was tricky. But I managed to mask off the bridge and stone walls and work my way around with the spray can. 

I dry-brushed the ties with a tan earth colour acrylic paint. This dulled down the solid colour and created some variation by bringing out the moulded texture in the ties. I'd forgotten that ballasting also weathers the ties, so I'm not sure if dry brushing the ties was an unnecessary step, but I guess it means that all the ties have received a similar treatment. 

I did think about varying the tie colour by hand painting every few ties a different shade of brown, but decided against it for now. Perhaps I'll try that out on another module sometime. 


The yard looks better already with the rails painted. 

The foreground track has been dry-brushed. The plain spray-painted tracks behind do have a flatter look to them.

An overhead view of the difference between a plain spray-painted track (top) and one that has also been dry brushed (bottom).



Friday 19 January 2024

Bridging the ravine...

While I'm a little way off building the bridge for the ravine, I'm considering what will look good in this space. I plan to have one other bridge on the layout, but it will be lower than this one. That one will be a wooden trestle, so here I have an opportunity to explore a different sort of bridge design. 

I really like the look of the spindly steel girder bridges on the Georgetown loop and the Colorado Midland lines. The steel supports are noticeably thinner during my chosen period, which to me adds interest and drama. My family members bring a non-modeling perspective often based on gut feel and aesthetics, and they are not huge fans. Still, I remain drawn to modelling something like this. 

The other options would be wooden or steel truss bridges, like the two bottom photos. They look to be a bit more of a challenge to pull off. But would make a rewarding project. I think I prefer having the train run on top of the bridge, rather than through the trusses. But then some days I really like the through truss look. Perhaps this means that I need to find a way to add a third bridge to the layout somewhere!

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What do you think might look good over my ravine space? Feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments below.






Monday 25 December 2023

Merry Christmas from New Zealand

Merry Christmas to you from New Zealand, or as we say in Te Reo Māori (the Māori language): 

Meri Kirihimete!

It's summer here, and the Christmas season here is traditionally a time to gather with friends and whānau (family) around the BBQ and head to the beach or lakes for some quality time in the sun and sand. Given so many of the traditional images of Christmas come from the northern hemisphere, we like to call ours an 'upside down Christmas'. 

Wherever you are in the world, thank you for following along on my blog. I hope you continue to find something here of use or interest in the coming year. 

I'll resume posting sometime in January. Until then, and regardless of whether or not the birth of Christ is something you celebrate, I pray you find peace and reconciliation where it's needed during this festive season.

Many blessings,

Luke

Image courtesy of Bible Project video: The Birth of Jesus: Luke 1-2



Friday 15 December 2023

Landscaping

The last few weeks of railroad work sessions have focused on building the hill and mountain formations spanning two modules. I like large imposing landscapes with small trains running through them. But I do want the terrain to look realistic like it was there before someone decided to put a railroad through it. 

I've made the land formations out of extruded foam, cutting and shaping it with a craft knife. A hot wire foam cutter would have been useful but I got to where I wanted to go with the knife. The terrain functions as a view block between the town and yard from the rest of the modules. As the line exits the tunnel, it crosses a deep ravine that has been carved out by a river. I've purposefully tried to make the scene deeper than it is by making the river turn behind the hill. As always, a painted backdrop will help. This ravine will require quite a few rock castings. I also have to settle on the design of the bridge for the gap. I'll another post looking at different options. 

The next step is to add a thin layer of earth-coloured plaster over the hill, to fill out any humps and bumps, and then I can get to work applying scenery. 

The hill formation separating the yard and town from the rest of the layout.


I've made a section removable for access to the tunnel. 

...with the access hatch removed.

The deep ravine module on the other side of the tunnel.

Now I have to decide what sort of bridge to build here...

The river winds its way around the corner, hopefully adding some intrigue.