Thanks everyone! Here is a load of drywall I just made, with an idea from an old issue of 'N scale Magazine'. It is MDF wrapped in a heavy white plastic bag. I still have to make some tie downs for them. This will give the wall board plant on the layout a bit of traffic now.
There is a big bridge construction project down the Crowsnest Pass, on the Southern Alberta Rail line, I saw some huge steel beams at Golden today, they must be on thier way down there, take a look. ( they still have to be weathered, but the LHS was all out of rust!)
Mike, your layout just blows me away. The scenery is so realistic looking!!! Will you have a write-up in the future on how to accomplish it? Joe
Grant--er, Southern Alberta Rail's building a bridge? Must see pics!!! Mike, Does wallboard have printed coverings, or are they all white? I know most lumber companies have their logos on the wrapper. Nice stuff!
HemiAdda2d, the wallboard I've seen around here has nothing printed on the plastic wrap. Grant's bridge is going to be a big one, I think it is going to be about 5 or 6 feet long! There might be steel beams on the Laggan sub for a while!
Looking good Mike. Didn't take you long to get those cars into service. The bridge I'm building, if I build it to scale, will be 12 feet long and 11 inches high over the Oldman river at Monarch. I may compress it down to 8 or 9 feet though. You may be hauling steel for a while... grant
Mike, Those Plastruct beams seem to be on long flatbeds! Wouldn't actual beams be spread across two cars? They can get pretty long. Or am I just missing details here?
I saw a train go by a couple of weeks ago with huge I beams on 90' flats. So I figured, why not! I guess if they were really heavy, they would spread them out. The ones I saw were 240 000 lbs each, on 80 000 lb flat cars. They were definitely dimensional loads!
Mike, Your layout is indeed inspiring! I really like the ground texture that you have in many shots. How did you get the variation of thicknesses and densities and how did you apply it to the layout? NCDaveD
I got the steel beams weathered finally, (it's amazing what 1 week out in the elements will do!) here are a few pictures. The big ones are a scale 7 feet tall and 4 feet wide. They are bridge support beams, 240 000 lbs each. I weathered some of the gondolas too. -NCDaveD, any of the ground texture you see is just WS ground foam in either fine or medium. In some areas, I put play sand down first, glued it, then put the ground foam down on top of that. I'm still learning how to do the scenery part!
I got my ballast train weathered the other night. Now it looks a bit more realistic! Here are a few pictures...
That first shot of the ballast cars is my favorite. I like the variation in weathering - 456221 is just dirty, but 456224 has big scratches on its multimark. And that scenery is pretty good for just ground foam...
