Bright lights, small city

[Penny Trains]

Here's my summer layout.  Lights, trees, signs and an airport are some of the major changes.

Starting with the lighting, I added 110volt grain of wheat light strings to many of the towers.  The strings I used are Darice brand sold through and made for my local craft store Pat Catan's.  They come in several lengths but the majority of what I used had 20 or 35 bulbs per string.  As twisted the bulbs are only about 2 inches apart so I untwisted the wires to get 5 inch spacing.

Another dramatic lighting effect I developed here is vellum signage.  If you look at the first floor of this structure you'll see a familiar face for a familiar place!  Besides Colonel Sanders, there are McGolden arches, a Thai Airways logo and numerous other signs now lighting up all over the layout.  In the previous 3 pics it's also easy to see that the sign on the pedestrian bridge is also now illuminated.

To make the signs, most of which are using 14 volt rather than 110 volt gow's, I printed out the logos in varying sizes on white vellum.  You can find vellum in craft stores in the scrapbooking section, but mine came from Staples.  Through experimentation I decided "inderect" lighting was the way to go whenever possible.  So the best signs I did are the ones where the bulb is off to one side of the sign rather than centered behind the logo (It's easy to tell where the 3 bulbs are in the sign on the bridge).

The trees are the second biggest change.  OK, technically that last building with the KFC in it is also new, but there are more new trees than new buildings!    What you're looking at is 26 ga steel wire, hot glue, acrylic paint and flowers.  I had 2 spools of wire, one plain steel and the other had a white coating.  Of the 2 the plain steel was 10 times easier to twist so I'll be going that route in the future.  I looped out the wire into sections, most commonly in groups of 8 loops but all connected.  This tree has 5 groups of 8 loops: 2 long, 3 short.  I made the longer loops by wrapping the wire around a thick sheet of styrene but for the shorter ones I just spread my fingers and wrapped my hand.  All loops are twisted to make the main trunk and it just splits from there.  I cut the loops to make the smallest branches.

I inserted the bottom of the trunk into a hole in a scrap of foamcore and hot glued it upright.  After it was secure, I started building up the trunk with hot glue.  You have to work slow and let the glue cool because it goes on clear and gets white as it cools.  I didn't go too far out on the limbs but rather left that job for the paint.  After the glue, I glommed on the base coat of acrylic craft paint, very thick, starting most often with sable brown.  Then a 2 to 1 wash of slate gray and finally a 4(water) to 1(pigment) wash of lamp black.  Many of these trees have flowers rather than foliage but if you look at the pic of the "KFC building" you'll see one using Woodland Scenics clump foliage at the bottom of the pic.

There are 3 more upriver in the pic above.  One has long clusters of yellow flowers made from loofah scraps hanging from it's branches.  Also, take a look at the red/yellow tree in the upper right of this photo, it's at the base of the Buddha.  You can see here how I was able to make a root system for these trees by tapering the hot glue away from the trunk.  I peeled away the foamcore from below and cut the paper layer that the glue stuck to into the shape of the roots.  One of the benefits of this system is that the trees remain extremely flexible so it was easy to mold the roots into the established landscape.  These red and yellow trees are supposed to mimic Plumeria, which is what folks in the pacific make lei's out of.  The color is Woodland Scenics "flowers" glued to white plastic flowers I popped off of pics from said craft store.

Here's another one over by the entrance to the hotel.

A couple of other scenic elements I devised are shown here.  That sand dune looking thing behind the workmen was made from a scrap of spray foam insulation.  A while back I squirted some out on a sheet of waxed paper to see if I could use it to model a cliff.  Well, it didn't.  So I had it lying around and carved it into this shape and glued on sand to make this bit of terrain filler.  Speaking of filler, those grassy lumps closer to the camera are designed as just that: filler material for flower arrangements.  Basically they're styrofoam shapes (blobs) covered with some kind of plastic grass.  (I bought these at Dollar Tree.)  They come in irregular shapes but I found that if I sawed them in half they made nice little grassy knolls.

OK, upward and onward!

There's a dresser at one end of the layout (see large dark looming shape in first photo) and on top I built this little airport.

There's a "CLE" sign proclaiming that this is Cleveland Hopkins International Airport and I suppose you could make it to Canada from here in one fueling in that DC3 but not much further!    But that's OK, the runways are too close to the hanger and you'd lose a wing anyways before you got off the ground!  

Anyhoo.  The airport sign and the runway markers were made using the aforementioned vellum technique.  The runway lights are 110 volt gow's that I painted with Tamiya Clear Blue since I could only find clear or multicolor light strings in this size.  The hangar is lighted by one Model Power peel and stick light that I covered with a clear bead to diffuse the light in the hangar.  The Plasticville administration building has vellum in the windows to give an even glow.  I don't know what scale the New Ray plane is supposed to be but the vehicles inside the hangar are 1:64 while the red car beyond the flagpole is off an MTH flatcar.  It's all mounted to a 24 by 36 sheet of foamcore that I trimmed with a frame had lying around that the glass had broken.

So, there you go.  Aside from the Ready Grass mat, the track and it's ballasting nothing is permanently attached to this board.  I sprinkled fine ground foam "weeds", sand and ballast liberally and shot it with some hairspray to help it cling  to add to the overall appearance, but it will all go into the vaccuum in the fall.  The loose trees will pull duty at Disneyland as will the figures.  But otherwise it all gets stored and a new layout will go up next spring.  Hopefully by then I'll have some ideas for better looking palm trees.  Got any ideas?

Becky

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Major]

Amazing!  Just simply Amazing!  Fantastic creativity Becky!!!!!

[rtraincollector]

Outstanding as always keep up the great work.

[wrmcclellan]

Becky - as always - fantastic!

[rrswede]

Absolutely beautiful, Becky. Although your fourth and sixth shots were not intended to conjour up thoughts of cherry blossoms, my mind immediately went to Kyoto and its spring blossoms. Once seen, never forgotten! Could also say the same about your layouts. You are not just a hobbyist, you are an artist!!

swede

[Waynestrains]

As a regular reader of the forum and sometime poster I could not pass this without comment. Wow! Another excellent display(as usual) from a very talented lady. Thanks for sharing it with us.   Wayne

[Buckeye Riveter]

Very nice!   

[Firelock76]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again...

"Maestra, you keep sending us all back to school!"

Incredibly well done, you're the best!

[Penny Trains]

Thanks guys!    Some work in oils, some carve carrera marble.  I think my true medium is hot glue!  

[Firesteel]

Very impressive indeed Becky! I think your work also illustrates the fact that creativity is often more important than the amount of money spent.  

[overall]

Your work is beautiful as always. I love to read your posts. I always learn something.

George

[Frank-53]

This is a pretty slick building:

[overall]

I agree with Frank-53. I really like this building. It has a real 1930's art deco look to it. Is there a full size building, maybe in your home town, that inspired it?

[Penny Trains]

Nothing specific, more like an impression of several buildings I've seen and liked in my travels.  Here's a few from my second home town.