Finally finished layout track and before I start wiring (DC) I am thinking about track tie color. Growing up near a creosote plant in suburban Mpls, I saw wood ties treated. They invariably came out black from the creosote process. As they aged they appeared to maintain that black color. So-should leave them as is-black- or paint them (what color?) prior to ballasting?
Second- I laid my track flat on cork sheet. Should I paint the areas between track runs and if I do; would that adversely impact adhesion of subsequent ground materials? Also what would be some good color choices for painting these areas if I do so?
Cedarwoodron
cedarwoodronFinally finished layout track and before I start wiring (DC) I am thinking about track tie color.
Wire the track first and make double sure everything works--as in, fixing all the derailing spots.
You can then paint the track any way you want. With a brush or with an airbrush. The ties can be cresote. The rails can be rusty. The ground should be whatever color ground is where you model with your layout.
Chip
Building the Rock Ridge Railroad with the slowest construction crew west of the Pecos.
I paint each tie an individual color. It takes forever, but it looks great and is worth it. This was an experiment, and tan ballast did not look as good as gray ballast.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
As has been mentioned, make sure that your track and turnouts are working flawlessly before adding ballast and lineside groundcover.
I paint some ties, mostly to represent those which will soon need to be replaced, but some others are painted to represent newly-installed ties, too....
Likewise for rail, but the colour varies with the locale and the type of use to which it's subjected.
As for painting cork, why bother if it's going to eventually be covered with ballast anyway?For the areas between the track, you might want to paint them an appropriate dirt colour, but again, those areas will likely get an application of ground foam, in various colours and sizes. Here are a couple of track and between-the-tracks areas before application of scenic stuff...
...and the "after" views (none of the bare plywood in the first two photos was painted)...
Painting the cork shouldn't have any effect on adhesion of scenic materials. I usually apply multiple applications of very fine dirt or gravel (basically dust), followed by multiple applications of ground foam, varying the colours and textures to get the effect I want.When it looks the way I want it, I give it a spray of "wet" water (tap water, if it's not too "hard" or distilled water (available at any supermarket), with a few drops of liquid dish detergent added.Use a good quality sprayer that will emit a fine mist, and make the first spritzes upward, so that the droplets simply fall onto the scenic material - a direct spray will blow ground foam and ballast all over the place. Once the upward spraying has sufficiently wetted the scenic material, you can spray it more directly. The water must penetrate right through all of the scenic material, to whatever material forms the surface of your layout. Once that's been accomplished, you can add the diluted white glue.
I use this dropper-type bottle...
and thoroughly saturate the entire area...
...it may take a few days to dry, but it will eventually do so, with no sign of all that glue...
I always use "wet" water, rather than alcohol for the pre-wetting (it's cheaper and doesn't evapourate as quickly as alcohol, an important consideration if you're doing a large area of scenic work or lengthy stretches of ballasting).
I also prefer diluted white glue (one part glue to two or three parts water) rather than matte medium - both work well, but the latter costs more, and is more difficult to remove should you wish to later alter the scenery.
Wayne
doctorwayneI always use "wet" water, rather than alcohol for the pre-wetting (it's cheaper and doesn't evapourate as quickly as alcohol
In case there is some grumbling from the peanut gallery, see this link which derives authority from the OED:
https://www.lexico.com/definition/evaporate
As usual, though -- all teasing aside -- the actual advice on ties and ballasting is flawless.
Remember that unless the track in question is either reasonably new or has recently been rebuilt extensively by something like a TLM, there will have been periodic tie replacements. Instead of having track predominantly well-creosoted brown, you might have mostly weathered ties, with a smattering of ghost ties (they are predominantly white and have 'given up the ghost' in holding spikes) and recent square, black replacements.
I might add that ties sometimes swell, or their centers collapse, as they age, and this can be duplicated in model track with care. I believe we've discussed how to provide effective 'grain' effects in ties, which is another thing that can add realism.
My own opinion is that ties and rail painting need to be done in almost a trompe-l'oeil style, as if the track were in hard sunlight and the web in partial shade from the railhead. Diffused paint in the normal sort of diffused railroad-room light leave the track looking muddy at best. There is as much sharp and fine detail in most track construction as in any rivet-counting model, but most modelers don't take the time to put it there.
Don't bother painting until all of the wiring is finished.
Newly treated ties are black, but weathered ties fade. Even to a gray color as the creosote/wood weathers and ballast dust embeds in the ties over time.
I paint ties (and rails) using cheap acrylic walmart tube paints applied with a small chiseled edge brush. Just mix black and brown as I go. Color matching is not important, in fact, poorly blended paint adds color variations and to the random look. Saves time too.
I have noticed on real tracks that the color of the ties immediately adjacent to the rails tends to be the same color as the rails (does the creosote splash up onto the sides of the rails over time?...does the oxidation of the rails fall off onto the tie near the spike heads?...do rails just happen to oxidize at the same color as creosote laden ties?).
That's why the chisel brush application works for me, because that crease where the side of the rail meets the tie is an easy place to apply the paint, and it tends to be the same color on the prototype.
Later, I will take a larger chisel brush and apply lighter grayish toned color down the middle of the ties. Very quick swooshes. No time at all. That represents the grayish/brown (still brown though) color from the ballast dust mentioned before.
Since paint can be latex-ish, it acts as a natural bond. You can actually pain the cork, then apply ground cover over the wet paint and a lot of it will stick.
I don't think painting the cork, or any subroadbed, matters one way or the other.
I like painting the cork with green patches and brown patches representing grass and bare spots. It helps to visualize the final scenery and also allows me to move the green and brown around to where I think it looks best. Also, if you go a little darker than the ground cover it could provide some degree of depth in case your coverage isn't complete.
- Douglas
doctorwayneI always use "wet" water, rather than alcohol for the pre-wetting (it's cheaper and doesn't evapourate as quickly as alcohol....
OvermodI wouldn't mention this except for a previous Wayne post piling on in a thread twigging the United States for 'broken English' spelling of words like 'vapour'. In actual, real British English rather than Canucklish, the word 'evaporate' is properly so spelt; the 'u' from the noun form being elided.
Yeah, I made a mistake on that one, as my Canadian dictionary has the "u" elided from "evaporate", but not from "vapour", although "vapor" is also offered.Surprisingly, my Webster Universal Dictionary (1963) shows "vapour" rather than "vapor", although I wrongly assumed that it was, because of the name, an American publication. In fact, it was printed by Collins, with operations in Toronto and Glasgow, but printed in Great Britain.
Obviously, this is not the first time I've been wrong, and it certainly won't be the last, either.
I'd guess that my dislike with the simplification of spelling likely dates to the era of my schooling, where British spelling was the standard-form in Canadian schools.I also think that posting on-line has helped me to better-express explanations of procedures, about which Forum members might ask. That usually entails lots of revisions as I compose a response, and often, several more after I've posted and re-read my initial offering.