The place I work encourages employees to decorate their desks for the holidays, and I have a filing cabinet with a pop-out 12”x40.5” shelf. So I figured plenty of space for a layout. I happen to have enough extra scenery supplies and track sitting around that I figured I could build a layout in 2-3 days. So here is day one. Got pink foam from the big box home store and cork sheet from the craft store. I glued two layers of foam together. Layer the cork and track plan over it. The I cut out the track plan from the cork. This way I wouldn’t have to bend strip cork around the right 5 inch radius curves. I slit the centerline periodically with a razor and then used a sharpie to bleed through and mark the centerline of the tack to the cork. With the centerline transferred to the cork, it was then just a game of connect the dots to draw the centerline. Matt
More Day 1: Then glued down the cork. Used paint bottles to hold it down while it dried. Then soldered leads on to the track and started laying that down. Used just about anything available to hold it down while the glue dried. Then added some elevated areas and started carving the pond/creeks. By the end of Day 1 I was running trains, which is pretty good.
Day 2 Started the morning by carving the rest of the hills I filled in all the gaps and smoothed it out with lightweight spackle. I painted the sides with a whiteish primer. Then I covered all the slopes in white glue and put down express scale natural soil & dirt ballast to cover all the pink foam.
Day 2 Continued. Drying time is my enemy right now, so I’m just layering all the scenery materials and will glue them down later. I want a layered look to the scenery. Ballasted the track Green foam grass and some tuffs And Snow! Moving on to gluing this all down. I’ll have to repaint the sides.
Day 2 Added some silver trees I picked up at Target for $10. Well going fast has its problems. In a few spots I have blue from the sharpie I used to mark the cork bleeding though. I was building the trestles and the track un-glued and lifted up. Part of the risk of not letting it fully dry. Still much to do. I think it will take me a few more days as I will only have nights to work on it. I’m planning on using canning wax for the frozen over pond, and I need to paint the pond bottom more of a blue/grey. And do all the electrical work.
Day 3. Saw what things looked like in the morning. Went to the craft store and got Mod-Podge Matte, and EnviroTex. I couldn’t find canning paraffin wax, so I figured I would just use epoxy and add some white to fog it. And once it dries clear and glossy, I can airbrush it with a matte finish and sprinkle some more snow on it. So started off with painting the pond area a sea grey. Last nights snow ended up looking like a melted mess. So I re-did all the snow. This time using diluted mod-podge rather than white glue Looks much better now And I let it dry well under a fan this time to speed things up.
Day 3 Moving onto electrical, I learned this from someone on this forum. I always though this offset splice was a cool way to avoid shielding or electrical tape. I’m using a Medvend panel mount controller. Just something I had laying around from Z scale. I cut channels in the bottom for all the wires. I don’t like using plastic rail joiners. They bend/give too much when laying flex track. I just cut the gaps after the track is laid. I’ll need to fix the scenery a little. Power is coming in from a jack in the side. Electric done.
Day 3 And moving onto the pond ice. Epoxy time. Mixed in color on the fly. I may have gone too far white. I can always hide that latter with more snow. Well see in the morning. For now I’m just sitting here with a mini torch, popping bubble in the epoxy as they rise. Then I’m done for the day.
Day 3, Lesson Learned. So the EnviroTex epoxy instructions clearly states to pour no more than 1/8” thick. I think I was more in the 3/8-1/2” thick range. I handy used this stuff in a while and forgot about that. Do what happens when you pour to thick? The epoxy gets too hot an cooks itself. Here is what my ice turned into. A hot puck of epoxy that cooks itself into a new color. I pulled the puck out, but the damage was done. I think this is the new bottom of my pond. I can fix this
This is wonderful. It's also a big signal to those of us who do not have layouts. I have some premade Roco track. Maybe it's time to lay out an oval layout just for fun.
Day 4 I’ll update on how I got here later. I’m beat and need some sleep. But the layout is working and done. Here is a short video.
Day 4 To fix the pond, I ended up using paraffin candle wax. I melted it and then used a flake of a blue crayon to color it. Ended up a little too blue. I figured it would look ok once the wax went back to white so I tried it. It still was too blue. So a made a new batch and put a white top coat on it.
Day 4 Continued Because this would be placed on a metal shelf, I cut groves and hot glued magnets onto the bottom to hold it to the shelf. To clear the snow from the rails, I made a tool from excess rail and a grinder. This worked really well. I’m going to use this for every crossing I do in the future. Despite this useful tool. There were some areas where the snow wasn’t glued down well and it just flakes off while clearing the rails. Cleaning up the track was a pain in the rear. It’s like cleaning the flange groves on a 6 foot long crossing. So I relayed all that snow, and then added a ring around the pond, and I was all done.
Day 5! The layout has been moved to the office, and is working well enough. The filing cabinet has a pop out shelf and the magnets are holding it in place. It’s been running in circles for two hours now with only 1 stall, so not bad. -Matt
Days 9 and 10. So I figured my layout would need something added to it. I was looking to add a little depot. I got some winter and Christmas figures too. The design is loosely based on the Sierra Railway Keystone depot; a flag stop on the line. As this is a snowy area, my version has a higher pitched roof. I built it all out of strip wood. I winged the whole thing. I put legs on the platform with points cut into them, so it could be easily installed on the layout by poking it into the foam. I put the siding on the inside of the frame to make the outside more interesting and because it hides my quick and sloppy lumber cuts. Then I covered the thing in snow and added the figures. Looks good installed on the layout