Becky,
Yet another wonderful effort. The sum is definitely greater than the parts and the parts are very well done indeed. Thank you for sharing your talents with us.
Keep on training,
Mike C. from Indiana
Finis!
Well, there ya go! Doesn't get much simpler than a square circle on a flat surface. I wanted to whip this one out before Christmas, but as you may know I got a little backlogged!
Ah well, on to other things...
Becky
Trains, trains, wonderful trains. The more you get, the more you toot!
Making the molehill.
I've included a tunnel. But it's very short! Anyhoo I built up the "mountain" with foamcore, newspaper and white kraft paper.
Then it was time for paint. Here's what I used:
First layer, Georgia Clay:
Then the blue:
Light green:
Dark green:
Yellow highlights:
And finnaly the white snowcap:
A reasonable facsimile! I still have to paint the back side of the mountain and a bit of the hillside. I'll make portals out of the same tan cardstock I used to make the bridge posts. The rest of the raised area will receive the same paint and foam treatment that I used on the table surface. Then it will be pretty well done!
Some great techniques here. Love the look of the buildings, they really "pop".
You're a real artist, keep up the great work!
Thanks for your time and trouble in sharing this good information about your technique for building trees. I have a area on my layout where this will work well. I will be looking forward to seeing pictures of your latest layout when you get it finished. Your work looks very professional, like you have had some art or graphic design training in the past. Anyway, thanks again for schooling us on your techniques.
George
How I'm making loofah trees.
I got mine at Big Lots for $1 each.
I'll also be using Rustoleum hunter green latex gloss and Woodland Scenics fine turf: burnt grass which I keep in a mason jar.
I start by carefully cutting down the side of the husk just to the side of where the inner core connects to the outer husk. I find that a rocking motion with almost no down pressure on the blade cuts through very well and minimizes the risk of cutting yourself.
With the husk removed, it's easy to see all the little pockets where the seeds were.
I trimmed the core down with scissors at this point to a reasonable facimile of a tree shape.
Now's the time to start glomming on the paint. A stiff brush makes it easier to get the paint to flow into the voids in the seed pod. I usually start about halfway along the pod and work each "section" one strip at a time from halfway to the point. Then I dunk it:
This is were the mason jar comes in handy as it helps with dust control. I like to dig around in the foam with the loofah and get it around to the side I'm trying to adhere it to. Then I roll the jar away from the painted section so I get a nice mound of foam built up on the paint. Then I shake away the excess while it's still inside the jar. I work half of the tree and then set it aside to dry, usually on a dowell since those will become the trunks later on.
And viola! A loofah pine tree! (Or an avacado popsicle if you prefer! ) You can see here also how some of the foam darkened as it dried and gave more color and texture to the tree. That's really all there is to it! Took me a long time to find out though! If you have any pictures of Lionel's prewar showroom display layouts, you can see these trees both on and off of landscaped plots right up through the T-Rail layout.
Yesterday I stripped off the vinyl woodgrain from the table and started building the land forms.
We'll assume that the owners of the railroad are they who live in that hilltop mansion!
Today I picked up supplies including 10 loofahs (loofii??? ) so I'll take some pics as I make more trees. I also decided that since I wasn't sure it would work 100% the first time around that I'd go with white kraft paper for the mountain instead of felt. But that doesn't mean I can't overlay the paper with the felt at a later date.
I think you are very talented and innovative. You have taught me alot and I've been in this hobby for several decades. I printed out your reply to me about your construction methods and saved it for reference. Thank you for your hard work on that, by the way. If you are a member of LOTS, LCCA or TCA, those organizations are always looking for articles for their publications. Maybe you could write for them?
Becky look at it this way it may not get in the mag but you definitely have a good following here on the forum. Your post always seem to gather a lot of lookers and comments. Like Mike said keep on training we enjoy it.
Life's hard, even harder if your stupid John Wayne
http://rtssite.shutterfly.com/
Do not feel too bad about the silence. I sent an article to Carl as well and I have not heard a definitive "yea" or "nay" either. Perhaps a write-up similar to what you have here with some elaboration could help sell the idea. For reasons detailed in other posts, prewar is not a major priority for them although that is one of the areas where CTT differs from OGR. I think your efforts are fantastic in my humble opinion.
Well, I'll tell ya. I sent in a few pics of Disneyland at least 3 different times by at least 3 different methods and never got any response or even an acknowledgement that the pics were received. So, I don't know.
becky I remember back some time ago carl asked you to contact him Soooooo the question is are we going to see your work in ctt?
Thanks for the great details.
Penny (Becky),
So cool and so fun! You have a great eye for proportion, color, arrangement, and combination for effect!
Regards, Roy
Thanks guys! Its A LOT of fun!
Well, for starters, you can get the free kit for the lithographed bungalow here: http://www.bigindoortrains.com/primer/buildings/lackie/tinplate.htm
With a premade "kit" structure, I print the parts on 65 pound cardstock and cut out the parts with an X-Acto knife and scissors as you might expect. "As is" they make excellent models. But I wanted lighted structures so I went a bit further. I removed the windows from all 4 walls and traced the walls onto illustration board, which you can find at craft, art, stationary and office supply stores. It's 1/16th inch thick chip board much like cereal box cardboard and often has one white side and one natural gray side. To amplify the lighting, I face the white side in and glue the walls on the less pretty side. But before I glue the walls to the i-board, I insert replacement windows with all the individual sections (panes, lights, muntins) cut out and I back each window with vellum, which can also be found in the store where you got the i-board. For large surfaces (like printed walls to i-board) I prefer 3M's Scotch brand non wrinkling glue sticks. They have a low water content and the glue won't warp the board nor will it soak through the cardstock and damage the printed graphics. Just be careful that too much doesn't get on your fingers! That WILL mar the surface!
The station, the bridge and the large villa are a different story. There are no kits out there that I'm aware of for making them at home. Books, catalogs and magazines are an excellent source for info but you may be surprised where I get most of my best info from. Ebay. Bungalows, villas, stations, tunnels, landscaped plots, even complete scenic railways show up on ebay from time to time. If you're using the windows os, all you have to do is right click your mouse to save an item photo for your own personal reference. A reproduction AF Union Station came up on Ebay 4 years ago with photos of all sides and complete measurements. I printed the photos and all pertinent information at that time and stored it away until I was ready to build my own model. Yesterday I printed out some excellent tunnel photos I saved over the years so I can decide wether or not I want to try my hand at painting one by hand. Which, I think I'm going to do!
Anyhow, back to construction. The 3 structures I mentioned had to be drawn by hand. All walls, all trim, all windows, everything. I decided on a size for the station that was roughly 1/2 the size of the original. Despite the fact that I'm the offspring of an accountant and a bookkeeper, I'm not so good at math! But I'm OK with a ruler, especially one that has both metric and imperial markings! So, I just drew the building faces one at a time to the inside of the orange cardstock I used for the station walls, then transferred those measurements (backwards) to the illustration board and sheets of white cardstock. Then I was able to create the white trim after I knew ehere doors, windows, etc. would end up. The blue vellum backed windows were glued between the outer walls and the inner i-board wall. The inner end walls were 1/8 of an inch shorter (1/16th on each end) than the outer pieces to allow for a bit of overlap o n the front and rear walls and prettier corners. Everthing is assembled with hot glue including the installation of 14-18 volt light fixtures under the station roof. (The lights in the bungalows are attached to the front wall between the door and 2nd story window.) I also use quick connects on the wiring so I can remove the structures easily from the table for cleaning.
That's building construction in a nutshell. Cardstock is available in just about every color and texture you can think of. You'll have the best results looking in the scrapbooking sections of craft stores like Michael's. It comes in packs, tablets and even individual sheets. It comes in single colors or complimentary color schemes like pastels, primaries or specialties like seasonals.
The trees, hedges and flowers were the biggest mystery for me when I started studying Lionel prewar layouts. I had my suspicions, but it took Ebay and a lot of other sources to help me confirm most of them.
The "pine" trees (or cypress trees) are made of loofah. Loofah is a gourd that looks like a cross between a cucumber and an eggplant. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luffa ) When you dry out the husk, it acts like a sponge, albeit a very tough one! It's often used in the bath or shower as an exfoliant either in soaps of just as-is in it's natural state. Check with your wives, there's a pretty good chance she has one and you never knew it! What I do, and what I assume Lionel did, is slice down one side of the dried loofah so I can get to the inside. It's the core of the usually 3 chambered plant that makes the tree. The outside is often soft while the core where the seeds grew is extremely tough. So once I've sliced into the gourd, I can work my way around slicing the outer shell away from the core. Once that's done, I trim the core to look like a pointed pine tree with sharp scissors. (Save the outer shell! That's where the hedgerows come from!) I brushed on paint liberally then I dipped them in Woodland Scenics burnt grass fine turf mix. Lionel used sawdust but that can be hard to find in quantity these days. I keep my turf mix in a mason jar so all I had to do was paint the loofah one section at a time, dunk it in the jar and shake off the excess. Before mounting I'll install dowels painted brown to the bottom of the trees a'la Lionel.
The leafy trees are sisal rope and that's where photos on Ebay became invaluable! Many of the items you see on Ebay are in FAR from mint condition, and a few lanscaped plots with bent and chipped trees told me exactly what they really were: rope! I'm still not positive what the outer (bark) coating of those trees actually is, and if anyone can tell me I'll be eternally grateful! But what I did was I cut a segment of natural fiber rope to the length I wanted. (By "natural fiber" I mean sisal, hemp or jute tanish rope like twine.) I inserted pieces of heavy gauge steel piano wire to help the rope stand up straight and to keep the individual "branches" pointed where I want them. Decide where you want the limbs to start based on the height of the tree you're after. (Most of mine are 10 inches tall since my buildings are bigger) Sisal rope is made of 3 to 4 smaller ropes of sisal twine tisted together. Unwind the major segments to create your tree limbs and insert the steel inside.
At the bottom of the tree, plan for the last inch or so to create your roots. I wrapped my "trunks" with masking tape (since I couldn't think of anything better to do) and then painted them brown with acrylic paint. By using acrylics, specifically FolkArt brand's Nutmeg, it gave me a bit of a mottled color on top of the masking tape. I made a base for the tree out of illustration board and then pulled the steel wire through the center. Size and shape of the i-board doesn't matter at this point and I prefer to have it just a bit bigger than I need. I hot glue the rope at it's very center only to the board and splay out the wire accross the bottom and likewise hot glue it to the opposite side of the board. Remember to glue the rope only at it's very center because that last inch or so of the rope will make your roots. Once all of that is done, I unravel the rope completely at the base of the tree up to where the masking tape "bark" begins. With lots and lots of matching brown paint, I paint the unraveled fibers down to the i-board in a pattern splaying out away from the trunk of the tree. I also add some Elmer's Glue-all if the paint isn't sufficient to keep the rope and board together. I trimmed the bases to an irregular shape with scissors after the paint/glue had dried.
The "leaves" of the tree are made in a very simple manner. You unravel the top ends of the rope and either paint them green and dip them in sawdust or turf, or paint them with glue and dip them. Either way works well. The 4 I have for my little layout were made 3 years ago using Life-like brand green sawdust "grass". Because the sawdust was SOOOOO green, I went with the glue only method. But since I don't have any more dyed sawdust on hand, and because the results are equally good either way, any future trees I make by this method will be painted green and dipped in a complimentary shade of fine ground foam.
Flower beds are similar to the trees. I used 2 inch bits of rope and unraveled all but 1/4 inch of it after I inserted it through a piece of i-board painted green. I used the same flocking technique for making "leaves" on the trees to create the individual flower stems. Make them bushy! The flowers themselves are tiny bits of sponge glued to the rope tips. (My victim sponge was light blue by the way.) Then I painted the sponge bits red, yellow or white, which seems to be the only colors Lionel's display department used. The hedgerows are cut from the outer husk of the loofah and I painted them with Rustoleum hunter green latex. Lionel also made shaped shrubs for the landscaped plots with loofah husk.
The mountains and tunnels are a bit of an enigma. As I've heard it large sheets of wool felt were dipped in the hot fish glue and applied to the mountain/tunnel forms (made of plywood, chickenwire and newspapers) where they shrunk to the final shape. They were trimmed and hand painted after they hardened. Generally speaking, I don't think I can reproduce that process for my layout. I know that some pipe organ repair companies will sell the fish glue and the required hot pots for using it, but that seems like a lot of trouble, not to mention expense, for one little hill. Wool felt would also be hard to find as most of what we see these days is acrylic. While I'm considering the use of acrylic felt on this project, I'll be using an ordinary adhesive to attach it to a preshaped mountain made in ways I'm more accustomed with. (ie a form made from foamcore board covered with kraft paper and stuffed with old newspapers.) BTW Lionel also made "rocks" for the landscaped plots using scraps of felt.
Other sections of Lionel's Scenic Railways of the 1920's were made of steel. The roads and track roadbed were usually just tan paint on the surface. The grassy areas were painted green and dusted with sawdust (usually undyed). Since the landscaping was often steel, Lionel even suggested putting goldfish in the rivers and ponds they built under bridges!
Well, that's what I'm doing and you can see what I'm up against! I'm trying to get something that looks at least similar to if not accurately portrayed!
Very nice affect. You did a very nice job on the buildings . I wish you would write a step by step article with pictures on how you built them. I have to confess some ignorance on the materials you used on the trees. What is "sisal rope" and "loofah"?Also, what is "fish glue"? Where would you get those things? Micheals maybe?
Thanks,
Very cool. What are you using to make those buildings? They look great, very nostalgic.
Very nice, Becky! Your buildings are fantastic, a perfect complement to the Marx trains. I love the trees, too. Looking forward to more photos as you progress with this layout.
- James
That is way cool Becky! I really like the miniature AF station. You are one of the most creative person currently in model railroading! Keep up the great work!!!!
This one was in the cards...or ON the cards....or, something like that....
Card TABLE anyways... This is the placement phase to check clearances etc. The station will be at track level. The 2 bungalows will be raised about 2 inches and the red villa another 2 inches above that. Behind the red villa will be a tunnel.
My rendition of the AF Union Station. O gauge in my favorite colors too! Trees are sisal rope or loofah. Flowers are sisal rope, green dust and bits of painted sponge. While a circle of O31 would have fit, I stuck with O27 because of some issues with age-ed engines.
The next step is to strip away the woodgrain contact paper from the table surface so I can start building the terrain risers. I haven't decided yet what to do about the tunnel. I could use Life-Like mountain paper which gives a similar illusion to what Lionel did on Scenic Railways back in the 20's. Or, I could try to hand paint it. Wether or not I end up using fish glue doped felt is another story!
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