Progress for 1 March 2008 Thanks for the vote of confidence (cor, March already?) With a little help, I've managed to hang the second sheet of hardboard, this time for the main deck. Being taller and quite a bit more awkward to handle, I definitely needed more hands for this one. Clamps that fit between framing and wall might also have been handy. | (Click to enlarge) I got to the point of considering how to paint it before deciding that the only way I could do such a thing would be to first hang the rest of the sheets to the left; as trying to line them up and blend the paint job after the fact would be less fun than Google Earth on 64kbit dialup. But since I don't know where the backdrop should end without the helix in place; and since I don't want to make the Helix until after the backdrop is up and painted; I just had to go ahead and put the backdrop all the way along the wall. Spot the missing nail. Actually, the nail is there already. I've added the missing filler since taking the photo. Everything left of the missing nail won't be visible thanks to Mount Helix anyway; but I'll probably paint it all the same!
Progress for 1 March 2008, Part 2 /\ The right end /\ from the helix looking down the line Something that no one would notice unless I pointed it out, but that I can see instantly, and that probably ranks up there in the halls of Stupid Mistakes is: the joint between the sheets. Of course if I cut all the sheets square and just butt them together, there will be almost no gap, and all will be perfect... Right? Being in somewhat of a rush (hey, those sheets are heavy, and awkward), the resulting joint (big white vertical stripe in the pics) is less than miniscule. I'm hoping to fill, sand, fill some more, and so on. By the time the paint dries, it'll never be noticeable! Right now, all the backdrops for Staging Deck and Main Deck (Stage 1) are on the wall, and the filler is curing. Next I will sand it back and apply more to the joints / anywhere else that needs touching up. With luck (and a new paintbrush) tomorrow I can apply the first coat of "sky blue" paint. Now that's Progress! In retrospect, and for next time, I think I should leave the room while the filler cures. It's got a rather nasty chemical smell that can't be healthy. Once the backdrop is up and Blue, I will feel justified in starting sub-roadbed and <gasp> tracks. A Home at last for the clitter-clatter of tiny wheels :thumbs_up:
This is the progress thread of the month! Really amazing what a few days will do. And you even took two weeks off! It really looks good. I used Masonite and had to splice large, vertical cracks. The only problem I have had is with one crack that split after a few years. The other cracks that maintained their integrity are not noticeable. On the fascia, I have read (somewhere) that the fascia should be the same general color as the basic soil behind it. That makes the fascia blend with the scene. For Arizona, I would use tan or some yellow color. My two cents on that.
Thermal expansion might be something to watch out for; the house isn't well insulated, and Winter is coming; so first it will all shrink. And then summer will come again and it will all expand. Should be fun to watch. I've heard two schools on fascia; one says like a theatrical stage, use flat black for things that the eye is supposed to just slide over. The second school says to approximately match your ground-cover colour; tan, brown, rust-red (for West Island Modellers) or Green. Since I don't actually know what shade of tan my sand will be, I've gone with matt black for the staging deck. I might review this when I get to the main deck. It's early days yet. My last layout spent a lot of time with light blue ground cover. Looking at my walls now, my backdrop would make a nice fascia for that. But, I'm getting ahead of myself. I've got my backdrop up and it's brown and smooth (not perfectly so, but close). I think it needs... Paint. And since paint is messy it will also need A Drop Cloth. .. Say, is that TrainBoard on the monitor?
Progress for 2 March 2008, First Coat .. Cute, I managed to screw the colour balance of my digital camera up. Seems it doesn't like "blue" .. Using a foam roller, I layered on one coat of Light Blue Acrylic paint. /\ correct, untouched colours. It really is that shade of blue /\ photoshopped somewhat to make it look blue. /\ photoshopped somewhat to make it look blue. Spot the baseboard join And since the can says 2-3 hours to dry, that means time to go watch a DVD! The blue paint is a little patchy, and I noted halfway through that my drop cloth does not protect the left end or the curtain. So I got to move the curtain out of the way and decided not to paint about 1" on the left most end - since this is all behind Mount Helix anyway!
Progress for 2 March 2008, Second Coat 3+ hours since the first coat, I decided to try for the second coat. Note to self: next time, sand between coats. For the second layer, my objective is/was to cover the medium blue with a feathered array of blue shades, to create an illusion of depth and so on. Now is a good opportunity to point out that I'm about as artistically inclined as a small furry rodent. One that hasn't taken up French cuisine. The staging deck is just three shades, and I actually think this didn't go too badly /\ Is it not pretty and blue? /\ Spot the baseboard join Light blue down low, to reflect the horizon, as seen through a heat shimmer and haze. Darker blue up higher; although not too dark - the staging deck is only short. The main deck will get darker as it's got more sky to represent. The main deck... Not so good. /\ Left end /\ Right end (hmm... looks different in person. camera hasn't quite captured the.. range.. of blues) I suspect a combination of innate painting ability, or the lack thereof not having a shade of blue between light and medium to go in the middle of the backdrop trying to do too much at once - the paint dried before I could get back to 'feather' the adjacent stripes unseasonably warm weather - paint was drying in 30min or less So the result is sorta.. stripy.. I suspect tomorrow I will lightly sand everything and look into a third coat, with more feathering to try to remove the stripy aspect; using brushes more and rollers less; and working on a 2-3 foot horizontal section from bottom to top before moving left and doing the next bit. The staging deck might just need a touch-up to fix the odd blemish.
I think it is an amazing job! :thumbs_up: Part of my amazement is that you are doing it with brushes to achieve the light blue to darker blue blending. My backdrop is similar to yours, but I used a rattle can and an airbrush which I think would be easier. More white spray at the bottom gives a lighter blue; less white spray makes a slightly darker blue, etc. My backdrop (40 cm tall) lighter near the horizon. If you look carefully you can see the brush strokes from the blue paint as I didn't take the time to sand it smooth. I can spot the joint only because the bottom edge is not exactly even. But I can't spot the joint above that where it has been spliced and smoothed. That is an excellent job, for sure. As you say, time will tell on that. Two level layout and a big backdrop like this is a big job.
Report for 12 March 2008 Can't really call it a progress report... Still here; been far far too busy to do much more than vegetate with Google Earth and try to spot NZ entries on the Google Earth Challenges I considered aerosol cans but decided not to; as even with the drop-cloth, too many things in the room would not react well to paint splatter I've built myself a palette card of each paint colour when dry, to combat the fact that these acrylics dry darker, so colour-matching is impossible. I've discovered it is difficult to get a blue between the light almost-white of the horizon and the deep azure of overhead; so I'm going to have to re-think the main deck... My current thoughts are I probably have to paint it all again - first a flat coat of a solid colour, and then try the gradient again working vertically instead of horizontally, to combat the problem of the first colour drying before the third colour is down! Possibly also mix light and dark colours off the wall to produce a middle shade. It's probably not really that bad for my first ever backdrop, but as always I am my own biggest critic! I've also sanded the top and bottom of the join more aggressively, so they don't give it away anymore.
Progress for 16 March 2008 Aah, March. Managed to get a fair amount done this weekend... Mowed the lawns Trimmed the hedge Weeded the garden Weeded the concrete... Oh, and repainted the backdrop I also purchased Valve's Half-Life 2 "orange box" thing, so I'd have something to do while waiting for the paint to dry Portal is one seriously cool game. And there is cake! | Having found no way to get a nice blend to anything darker than the shade at the top, I'm going to settle for a light-horizon-style scheme. My thought is it won't look anywhere near as bad once the layout is in place.
Progress for 16 March 2008, part 2 And some shots of the overall, first with the lights on And again, turning the tubes off and leaving the setting sun to light the room I feel the unlit version is a more faithful rendition of the blue. (Click any photo to enlarge, or here for the whole album)
So, now I just have to decide if I can live with the blemishes, or risk it all by trying to touch them up - knowing full well the paint dries darker and so colour matching will be close to impossible. If I stop painting and tear down the drop cloths, I can put all of the staging deck boxes back in place and start work on the next phase - track on the staging deck. Starting with drawing the centre-lines for the track curves (which really requires all the boxes to be in place - I realise now if I'd done this before starting the backdrop, I could have worked on the boxes out in the garage while the paint dried. Oh well), laying cork along the centre lines, and then laying track on the cork. Lots of fiddling and solder some feeders, and Bob's your Father's Brother.. After the staging deck, run some trains. After the trains, the helix. After the helix, the main deck framing and boxes. After that, I get a sceniced deck, and I have to find an N scale duck. Because it's not going to be The Duck River sub without at least one Duck! :tb-cool:
Progress for 21 March 2008 I decided to touch up the last major blemish, It's now much better - still there if you're looking; but then this is only the backdrop - eventually there will be trains to look at and everyone can look at them instead! Since today is the last day of the Layout Party, I've put some effort into cleaning up the layout room and taking photos. Down came the drop-cloths, back up went the modules, out came the camera. But, while everything was in pieces, I took a few minutes to try to reduce the number of head-on-helix collisions, by gluing some foam under the framing! With the helix base in place, it doesn't stick out as obviously; but the door still hits the foam before the timber: | (click to enlarge) Now I can stand up without creasing my skull and derailing every train on the layout - when my thinning hair no longer touches the foam, straighten up
Progress for 21 March 2008, part 2 Overview | | (click to enlarge) From the door beside the helix looking down the yard, and from the window looking at the "turn-around" ladder. There's more photos in my album, over here
Looking Forward So, that's what I've been up to, now to see what I can do next.. From here the logical next step is to try to transfer the track plan to the staging deck, and start the track-laying process. I've got a four-day weekend on account of Easter, and I've taken a couple of weeks off in April - at least part of which will be spent trying to recover from March, another part going for a drive - apparently New Zealand has some sort of Capital City. It's 8 or so hours south of here. . . With that sort of free time, it's probably not unreasonable to have the staging deck track down and trains running before April; with luck I might even get the helix started by then - it all ties together anyway. draw all over modules for centre-lines and so forth glue down cork roadbed glue and pin blank circuit board at module joints starting at the compound ladder, pin down points (no glue!) assemble flex-track with feeders and trimmed to length glue down flex-track, soldering to circuit board as required dremel between modules wire track run trains
I suppose it is just the internet and the photo resolution, but I'll be darned if I see any blemishes. It looks just fine. Excellent in fact. Just so it looks good to you; that is what matters. It's a very good backdrop. :thumbs_up:
Although not directly comparable, the human eye is said to be approximately 25M pixel, so I guess my little 0.3M pixel uploads are going to lack some of sitting here staring right at where I know the issue to be It's not so much of a blemish really, as just a point where the colours don't match perfectly. On the upside, the backdrop join is now so good that I have to look around to find it even when staring straight at it. On the downside, I did a height check, and the backdrop more crooked than I thought - at one end it has almost 1/8" clearance above main deck height, at the other, it's lower than main deck height. No problem, I have a surform rasp I will have to build the layout up to the backdrop to create depth illusions anyway, covering all the places where the backdrop is higher. Today I printed the helix-end yard ladder 1:1 scale and taped the sheets together... The plan is smaller than the space? Either it shrunk during the printing, or the dimensions of my room are ever so subtly off. No problem, I can fix this by fudging the curve from the ladder to the helix... Trying the acid test - put real points down on the plan and see how well they fit the space - they fit the plan, so it's not printer shrinking.. Just so long as I can get this ladder placed right: following an old rule of laying track - start with the most complicated trackwork and work outwards, in this case the compound ladder on a compound curve. So it's sort-of progress, but not much, and no photos.
Update for 24 March 2008 Pushed my "shrunk" plan around a bit more, and managed to get it to fit perfectly without alteration. So I sellotaped it down before it could escape! | (click to enlarge) Little circles indicate the ends of set-track pieces and every 15 degrees on curves, so I used an ink-pen that would soak through the paper to draw dots on the plywood at all the major locations: | (click to enlarge and play Join The Dots) With the height and toe-end of the first point thus fixed, I could start a ramp to support 2 along the curve: | (click to enlarge) Using Woodland Scenics foam risers up to support two, where the plywood helix will take over. Might trim the pretty white foam around the marked support points. With the area thus pretty well marked out, I started gluing down the roadbed. Using Midwest Products 3mm thick cork held down with Woodland Scenics foam tack glue - basically PVA. Not as strong as liquid nails, but adequate for the task. | click to enlarge
Progress for 24 March 2008, part 2 (lots my photos in my album) Small problem... cork is opaque! now I'm covering up all my meticulously drawn little black dots. My solution is probably not visible in the photos; but what I did was stab a little yellow pin into most of the important / useful looking dots, and then worked the cork around them - this worked well for the ladder proper, where the outside strips are normal cork roadbed, curved for the inner and outer tracks. The yard body uses cork sheets, so that was a bit more fiddly. Using the pins as guides, I placed the 1:1 plan back atop the cork and slid it around until it fit 'nicely', whereupon I sliced the plan up along the track centres to make drawing templates: /\ hey look, centre lines. Hope the ballast covers those. Low resolution covers the imperfections in my fitting of the cork almost as well as ballast will cover the whole thing in the finish
First track on the Duck River Sub, 24 March 2008 Having got this far, there was nothing for it, but to actually lay some track! (zoom in) (zoom in more) There's six Atlas code 80 points, most salvaged from previous layouts, as well as seven Atlas code 80 rerailers, probably not salvaged. At this stage, all the points are pinned down - not glued - glue and points don't mix well. Deliberately using the not-very-prototypical looking track down here, so I can save my shiny C55 for the main deck. So, that's as far as I've got as of Monday night. Unfortunately it's now the Working Week, so I probably won't get much done tonight / tomorrow. Fortunately, I've managed to liberate Thursday and Friday from work - probably as an apology for messing up my leave last week - so I'll either get track laid, or go for a drive and buy more track
