Better scenery

I have now started laying down some scenic effects. I rather lost my way doing this because I realised yesterday that I had intended this to be an industrial layout. However, SWBO (She who must be obeyed) has kept on at me about having 'real' scenery that I put some hills and grass in before I realised my mistake. Now I have a small switching layout with 2 x GE 44 Tonner, running around between green hills. This is going to take some ingenuity coming up with something that makes sense.

Anyway, here are the photos. Some of the effects made from cotton wool need to be coated with ground foam to give them some texture. There is a lot of airbrushing going on here to get the various shades plus the worn look on some of the grass areas.

Obviously, I still have to build the trestle for the Sand and Gravel company that will replace the strip of hardboard (masonite) track board.

The Freight House really is the Bachmann one from the early pictures - do you remember that monstrosity in bright red and yellow plastic.

Don't forget that you can get larger images by double clicking on any photo - if you don't use the Firefox option of a new tab, you will need to do a back page in your browser to get back to the main blog.

Comments would be good here!

let's get some scenery down

Two major moves forward so far this week.

1. I have built the extension for the left hand 'fiddle yard' or 'Storage Siding' as those in the USA call it, making it sound really boring - smile. I am planning on adding another extension to the right so that I can run trains off the board at both ends. As I have physically run a loco off the end already, this should also preclude any accidents!

2. I have used some plaster/material roll - not sure of the proper name - to get some scenery down. I have down this in the traditional way by putting down some scrunched up newspaper, wetting the roll, and laying it over. Having seen a Woodlands Scenics masterclass on this, I carefully overlapped each piece about 50% to add strength. I then painted the whole baseboard with Timberland Forest Floor dye to get a uniform colour. Now comes the experiment, which half worked and half didn't.

Tamiya has brought out some new diorama texture paints so I got some for the shop knowing that it was best for me to use them first so that I could recommend or otherwise. I used the darker brown earth mix on all of the plaster hills. This is supposed to have a texture to it. It worked quite well but I used nearly the whole bottle on the little I did - the bottle costs £10 ($16) so i won't be using that again! Unfortunately, the flash has washed out the colour so it looks grey, but it is actually dark brown. Secondly, they do a green grass paint which is supposed to have some filaments that give the effect of grass. I have to say that having used it, I couldn't see this effect - it just looked like green paint to me. So that is back to the green flock of old.

So here we are. The railroad works and it has some scenery down. It has the full track layout and one fiddle yard. I am leaving the trestle over the Sand and Gravel pit for now. I ave started planning the industries. i will provide a full list of them next time.

Here is the extension











and now the new scenery

All the track is laid

I have now laid all of the track and wired up and tested all the DCC. I had one problem with a dry joint but that was quickly fixed.

I have cut out part of the baseboard to make a Sand and Gravel yard with raised track for delivery by dropping from hoppers. Let's see if I can make a decent job of blending it all in. The hardboard (masonite) trackbed is temporary until I can build the trestle.






























In the process of testing, a couple of evenings ago, I ran one of the locos off the end of the track and broke one of the couplers. As these couplers are 'non-working', they would need replacing eventually so sooner will be better than later. I have been pointed at a Model Railroader article which recommends some options.