For some reason unclear to me, I often cannot see the photos you post, but I can today. I really like how that bridge came out. That is a nice piece there. The coal unloading dock is also very nice. I look forward to seeing more of this as it progresses. For the bolster pin issue on that car - I have been building some RSLaserKits cars and they, too, have these laser etched thin wood pieces for applying the bolster. I have been very gently filing them out with a small round file with frequent fit-check for the bolster pins. Just as it looks like they'd nearly fit I go ahead and throw the truck on and give it a shot. It's a really fine line. Of course, by now with all you've built you've also found a technique. I like the use of the destroyed car as scenery.
An ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS little layout. My hearty "congratulations" to you and your helper. Looking forward to more...............:tb-biggrin:
Thanks for the props! I just wish I could get more work done to show you KaiserW: I showed something about building the trees earlier in the thread, but I'll be doing some more today (if it's not too windy), so I'll take more step-by-step picts when I do. Adam: Your method of careful filing & test fitting is what I should have done. I put a smallish drill bit in my Dremel and ream out the holes, and normal apply only enough pressure on the pin to see if it's going in smooth or not. If not, then I ream out some more. Guess I ate too much spinich that night! So here's the cut of five, with the 0-6-0T at the helm: [hee hee: no motor in that engine! in the middle of "ultamating" it, but wanted to steam up the scene a bit ] And while I do like the destroyed car scene, I think I'd rather have one more operational car. The mine, siding and loading dock are all measured in units of two cars, so an even six would be groovy. But I have time to decide: I took out my last archbar truck along with the car, so, until the replacements arrive sometime next week (along with a new ten-wheeler! couldn't resist!), I got five working & one destroyed. On to the water tower!
Twirled Trees / Centrifugal Conifers – part 1 Definitely nothing new in my technique, but might as well document it anyway (especially since I think my amnesia is getting worse, but now I can't remember). So here's my recipe for "Twirled Trees": Using green floral wire (got mine at Michaels), cut pairs of 3”-4” lengths. Trees will end up about ½” shorter than length cut. Ten trees will take about an hour (not including drying time). Insert one pair into the bit of a variable-speed drill about ¼” deep. Secure. With flat-nose pliers, hold wire about 1” away from drill. Slowly spin drill to create trunk. Lift one wire up, and place the other in a shallow groove cut out from a piece of wood that is of level height to the drill (mine is two 1”x2”s stacked on top of each other, bound with tape, and placed on a piece of 1/8” masonite to reach drill height: not elegant by far, but gets job done). Note: for 10-20 trees, any jig made out of wood-scrap will suffice. As I roll past the 150 tree mark (on the way to 300-400), I should have set up a better jig: multiple parallel grooves on a board with tapered width, for various tree heights to allow the tops of the wires to extend past the jig for easier access for the pliers. Cut ¾”-1” sections of green twine (Ace Hardware). The twine is three bundles of strands. Take one bundle section and “fluff” each end while holding on to the other end: the twine seems to stick at the ends, and “fluffing” (lightly pulling away stray fibers), will help spread the fibers out to create individual branches. Keeping the fibers vertical in your fingers, gently separate the fibers horizontally. Then layout the spread fibers on top of the floral wire resting in the jig, keeping the wire centered. The fibers should be thinly spread, and perpendicular to the wire.
Twirled Trees / Centrifugal Conifers – part 2 Lower the top wire to sandwich the fibers and use the flat-nose pliers to pinch & hold the two wire ends together. Lift slightly (watch out the fibers don’t fall out!) and push the wood jig out of the way. SLOWLY spin the drill, until there is an even twist to the whole tree. Some fibers might bind up, but that’s okie dokie. Remove from drill. Hold by bottom, and use scissors to cut stray fibers into desired shape. You might need to use tweezers or a pin to unbind some fibers, or to straighten other out. Place in clothespin. Spraypaint with Grimy Black (or other dark / medium grey), especially at the bottom and top of trunk. Let dry. ***Notice: twisted wire will still be visible through the paint. For the mass of interior trees, this is fine. For more detailed foreground trees, coat the bottom trunk with a mixture of white glue & sawdust, or a wee bit o’ putty, or whatever to give a bit of thickness & non-twisted-wire texture, let dry, and then paint. [Unpainted on left, two painted at right: the droplets will disappear] In a well ventilated but non-windy area (such as an open garage on a calm day), spray the fibers liberally with hair spray ("extreme" hold, on sale at the drugstore), until white beads appear.
Twirled Trees / Centrifugal Conifers – part 3 (end) Over a wide pan (that no significant other will ever use again), sprinkle Woodland Scenics “Conifer” coarse ground foam over the whole tree. Pile it on, cover it good. You can use your hand sprinkle and pat the foam on the trees, but I’ve noticed a distinct improvement in texture when I just shake it from the canister (lid off). Hold the clothespin in one hand while the other taps it firmly right where it pinches the trunk. This should rid the green blob of excess foliage, and reveal a lovely, airy pine tree. Should you want a pine with thicker foliage, sprinkle a little dark green static grass on before you add the conifer coarse ground foam (I said “a little”: too much makes for a very fuzzy Dr. Seuss tree!). Shoot it with a few light sprays of hairspray, then place down to dry (overnight recommended). Here’s a finished batch of 10: To install your trees, push a T-pin into the base foam (or plaster shell) to create a hole for the tree. Leave the pin in the ground until you’ve brought the tree to the spot, as the N-scale gophers seem to cover up the spot & create many misleading pseudo-holes all around the same area. Using tweezers, insert the wire trunk into the foam. Voila! If you don’t wiggle the T-pin or the tree around, you do not need to secure with glue. This will allow repositioning & replacing with an improved model that much easier. Try trees of various heights, with no ground foam on the lower branches (many pines have dead branches at the bottom), or with different foliage. Timberline Scenery’s “Deep Forest Floor” ground foam makes for a good “dead pine” look. I’ve tried a bunch of different foams, but I keep coming back to WS “Conifer”. Whatever looks good to you, and in relation to the other trees on the layout!
Wow! I just found this post today. Great looking little layout! I'm curious about your rocks. they look great. Can you tell us about your coloring techniques?
Yikes-this thread may only be 11 pages long, but boy is there a lot in it! Fantastic little layout MC, quite an inspiration. I love your trees, and while they're conifers I think I may try adapting the technique for my Appalachian forest. Just amazing stuff really, from the handlaid 3-way switch, to the trees, to the harbor... Just brilliant And best of all, so many things I can learn from! I feel at this rate I'll never be ready to do scenery-I'll be too engrossed with continued learning from here!
Thanks DiezMon, TrCo. I'm very much enjoying seeing both of your progess on your layouts. DiezMon: you got an amazing couple o' layouts! I really dig the tone/feel to your "winter" shelf. It rocks! As for my rocks, they're nothing special. Light hydrocal or DAP Plaster of Paris in WS molds. Initial paint is thinned WS "Granite" liquid pigment. Usually I paint the rocks too dark, so this time I thinned it even more. Actually, my kids painted most of these rocks (after I checked the tint, of course). After installing on the layout (caulk to base pink foam, then light spackle to blend), I brushed thin washes: sometimes of diluted brown / raw umber cheap craft paint, but mostly straight from my "Big Jar O' Stain" that I use for weathering lumber and everything else. The recipe is a highly classified secret (meaning I have no idea, exactly), but I've thrown in WS "Black" pigment, PolyScale "Grimy Black", cheapo Burnt Umber, Burnt Sienna, Burnt & Ernie (just checking!), India Ink all in a 70% alcohol base. When it gets low / weak I throw in the leftovers of whatever dark paint I'm using and shake! From the same jar I throw my lumber into to weather, I directly brush onto the rocks / drip into the crevices. Here's a closer view: Funny, while I was first washing them, I didn't think they took the washes very well, but now that you've mentioned them, they do look okie dokie. Before I installed my ten trees from the tutorial, I wanted to add more texture / bushes to the Big Mountain area. On the Little Mountain, I had been so excited to have trees that I didn't add stuff until after planting, so that if you look through the branches you see a bald mt top with only basic ground cover. I brushed on some slightly diluted whiteglue directly onto the ground cover, and then pressed some polyfiber fluff into the glue: Kind of looks like green mold. I tried to choose places where the slope is too steep for trees (the "mountain" is about 6" wide here in the middle), and where these could represent berry bushes, ferns or other low growth. It looks a bit spotty now, but with trees and other bushes around and along the ridge / hillside, I think it'll look pretty groovy. And with the bushes, I won't have a solid wall of trees, which would be a bore both to see & build. [to be continued]
LOL thanks! And you're too modest. I think your rocks look great. I seem to be inept in the creation of good rock color. mine are too tan... Yours have a very nice realistic look to them. Maybe I should get my kids involved
After pushing the polyfiber into the glue, I mist it with 70% alcohol. Then I sprinkle on just a wee bit of WS "Weeds" fine ground foam, to act as "shadow" or just variation: The main sprinkling uses WS "Green Blend" fine ground foam (both colors are also used in my base layer of ground cover). As much of the vegitation is near vertical, I had to "throw" or crash my loaded spoon into the polyfiber to get the ground foam to stick to the fibers. At this point I vacuumed up the piles of groundfoam that slipped past my papertowel: remove what you don't want down there, as the glue will drip / run directly down. Be careful vacuuming near the polyfiber! I accidentally sucked up one bush-to-be like a toupee in front of a jet turbine. Mist with 70% alcohol (actually, it's diluted a little with water), starting back and moving closer as it gets damper. If you start close, you'll blow the foam away. When damp, I use an eye dropper to slowly drip 50/50 whiteglue&water onto the bushes. Dripping the glue with make the bushes "cringe" and shink a bit, which is fine. I sprinkle just a little more WS "Green Blend" on top for texture, and then let dry for 1/2 day or overnight. The finished bushes on an unfinished hillside: Like I said: doesn't look great now, but wait for the trees! Speaking of which, here's the batch of ten (the group on the right) newly planted: These came out a bit thin, which is fine, as I'd like to see the trains move through the trees here. But up the ridge I'll want some thicker foliage, methinks.
In addition the the rocks themselves, I also painted the foam & spackle a "tuxedo" color (as opposed to brown / dirt) as base. Helps make everything look more granite-y & rocky. BTW: the plaster rock, light spackle and pink foam all take paint & washes differently. This results is some good varity of rockwork textures, but can also look really fake if not washed well (use same wash on all to tie together). You can get some good rocks outta the tan: just start washing! And it's always good to get the kids involved! Mine (9 & 5) both love making trees & painting rocks. Now if I could only get them to have the skills & patience to ballast...
Wow! those hills just look awesome... Reminds of "Pandora" Joke's apart, great modeling... keep up the good work.
Funny you should say that... Early on, my daughter & I mocked up a "Hallelujah Mountain": But we decided that, by the time the layout was finished, her arms would get tired. That and she'd really rather run the trains. I am still insearch of good fern material. The closest I've come to is this stuff from Joanne's: [Yes, that's "Tinkerbell" brand feather boa material] Great detail and texture, eye-blinding wrong green (hmmm, unless TBX 3401 passed slowly by....). And that's why it's called a "test diorama". Thought I could stain it or color it somehow, but any contact with moisture creates a clumpy mess that looks too much like a shag carpet I knew in the 70's. I'm still looking, though! Maybe some dark green parakeet feathers...
Water Tanked pt.1 DiezMon: tried it, but any moisture clumps it up better than nacho cheeze sauce. Even tried laying some fiber NEAR some dye and letting it wick up, the same way I created green roses for my prom date umteen kabillion years ago. But no go. Not that big o' deal here for this layout, though it would be a nice touch, but later I want to model the Olympic Rainforest, & for that I'll need some ferns. At the LHS today I saw some plastic-ish ferns in HO, but too big and too, well, plastic. Anyway! Today finally finished the JV Models Branchline Water Tower that's been sitting on my workbench long enough to grow mold: Now I'm a wood wonker, as opposed to a styrene queen, so I was baffled at how long it took me to do this thing. I guess it's all the mood / timing / flow. Part of it had to do with the expectations / directions. This is one of my first kits, and the directions were more like "suggested hints". Which forced me to figure out a lot by myself. Which was cool, and I'm happy with the results, but I was sick for a couple weeks, and at that time I just wanted to be told how to put the darn thing together. Back in April, I put the barrel together and made the roof (strips of semi-matte black paper from the kit): Then early May I think I built a couple bents. Or at least drilled the holes for the support wire. And then built them (six). Then I layed out the tank supports on top of the drawing: Or, on top of wax paper on top of the drawing. [Can I take a moment to laud the wonder that is wax paper? It's amazing! How did I model without it?] Usually I'd use double sided tape to hold the supports in place, but the odd shape would mean a lot of tape, and I had this gut feeling that things would get sticky/broke if I used tape (it's a bit strong sometimes), so I gave the wax paper a shot of spray adhesive, and that provided the light tack that proved the trick. To properly set the inner walls at 90 deg angles, I used my FastTracks point filer tool, which proved the proper height: [cont.]
Water Tanked, pt.2 Last week, I finished the lower supports, so at least I had the major pieces done: The pipe frame was a tricky drill & glue, being 1/32" square wood: No weights were included in the kit, though the picture on the box had 'em (I suspect that pict was of the HO version), so I made my own out of toothpick chunks cut in my chopper: [notice another handy use for the point filing tool!] To glue them to the chain, I put a drop of CA on the top of each weight, and then a drop of fixer on each chain end, and then brought the center of the weight up to the chain end. POOF! Attached the frame to the barrel (which I weathered with stain, some bragdon powders, and some white colored pencil), and then I planted it on the layout: Hey! Where'd that Ten Wheeler come from? It just showed up today, as soon as I finished the Water Tower! If you build it, they will come! I'm just happy to have a structure other than my bridge on the layout. Even just the tower makes it feel more like a town is in the works. And, there's nothing on my workbench right now, so no excuse not to start rebuilding that trackwork with powered frogs.
More picts of my fab new Ten Wheeler? Well, if you insist... And, of course, you noticed the 11 more trees my daughter & I put up on the ridge My LHS was out of Grimy Black spray, so at ACE I found Krylon "Ultra-Matte Brown" Camo and Flat Dark Gray Primer, both of which are good for the trees. I did 5 of each, so I'm wondering if I'll notice the difference later. The Ten Wheeler is groovy, but the blacking on the pilots is splotchy, and there's a lot of stutter and clicking at low speeds. Part of problem are the rods knocking against each other. Need to adjust, or just call for service. And why is the headlamp green???? After that, will swap out tender for the BMann Short (the stock tender is HUGE!) But nice to have steam back on the layout!
Congrats on the new tenwheeler! The running problems may be from the stock tender. I've heard that the dual-mode decoder isn't very good. A new spectrum tender (and a new decoder if you run dcc) should help with switching speeds.
