HP Officejet 6500A
That's the dirty little secret. Slightest bit of moisture and these models are done for!
Becky
Trains, trains, wonderful trains. The more you get, the more you toot!
What make/model of printer do you use?
Becky, it is very obvious that you really enjoy the various aspects of this hobby.
Bill T.
This was my layout in the 80's.
The United World Kingdom, the theme park I designed. The mountain in the rear was Mount Everest which was supposed to house a skyway station, log flume and a roller coaster using WW1 biplanes as ride vehicles. The big silver ball, a topographic globe covered in foil, was meant to be a hotel with silver windows. Famous landmarks were recreated using junk or posterboard including the Taj Mahal and Eiffel Tower. Way in the back was the Titanic pavilion, a full sized walkthrough of the ship. Over on the right the rocket ride was mounted on a record player and spun like crazy at 78rpm!
Colonel Sanders was right at home on MY main street!
The forward half of the table included the lake, parking lot and "monorail" which was in fact the Tyco Turbo Train. The USS Constitution found a home here too as did the Statue of Liberty. Just like Disney, construction was always going on someplace in my mythic kingdom!
That layout was dismantled in 1988 and replaced by this one a few years later.
It's fallen into disrepair in the last couple of years and is scheduled for replacement. I plan to replace the O27 with RealTrax and have 2 mains crossing the aisle on removable bascule bridges. That will give me longer mainline runs and clear space for more sidings on the main table.
At the end of the layout, behind Darth, is my model of a ship. It's also not unusual for me to set up temporary layouts down there as I had done here in 2005.
I have to agree with Bruce, this should be in the magazine! This is beyond belief. My hat is off to you Becky you are a true inspiration.
Patrick
Kudos to Beckymouse! This project when it's done is ( in my humble opinion) is worthy of a feature in CTT if any project ever was worthy. The craft and artistry and detail exceeds any layout I have seen considering it is largely handmade.
Bruce
Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he needs more of it than he already has.
MAPO of the midwest....
When all of this is assembled in the proper order it should really be something! But right now I'm just trying not to step on anything! BTW, because of the creation of this Disneyland project, the room you see here will house my displaced Standard Gauge holiday layout.
I've also been painting King Arthur's Carrousel. The carrousel itself was a simple birch plywood kit, but the horses were not very good. So I bought new horses from a different source.
The uh..."tree" is here too but not much progress there yet. However I was out on Friday at a nick-nack store and decided to replace the base of my Astro-Orbitor (the white 2 level thing with railings in the photo above) with a 35mm film reel and new railings:
The larger base makes it look more plausable that the ride cars can actually "land"! The railing is plastic canvas with a round styrene rod hot glued on top. It will have small (2cm) styrene tubes attached to the outside of the railing to accomodate 20, 120v grain of wheat bulbs to light the structure. Many of the details of the "kinetic sculpture" including the rocket nosecones are also painted with europium powder, which glows beautifully in the dark. Especially when exposed to UV light!
One other thing! Yesterday I decided I might as well also go ahead and slap together a pre-war style O gauge scenic railway on a cardtable for this Christmas too! That should bring my total to 4 operating holiday layouts if I'm successful!
Beckymouse
If this one actually works....
Somehow, I have to join this block of styrofoam, with...
...this pile of leafy greens, and make it look like a really big tree! A Banyan tree to be precise with clumps of Spanish moss hanging from the branches.
The trouble is the bark. I tried first to use Pla-doh, but it wouldn't stick to the foam. Adding glue is an option, but it may also cause problems. I have some Hydrocal on hand and I think that may be a better solution. The bark can be relatively smooth but I'll have to watch how it flows since Hydrocal can get globby on a pour over an irregular and graded surface like this. Like I said, if this actually works...
Unfortunately I have some time tight constraints for a project this size. And because of those constraints I won't be able to do everything the way I'd prefer. Here's a good example. I'm sure many of you may recognize this:
It's a wallhanging that Disney produced years ago. I found photos of one, since I don't have one myself, and enhanced and reduced them to the size I wanted. I glued them to illustration board and cut them out. I'll have some space between the track and the wall so I'll "install" this cardboard train on a hill with the word "STORYBOOKLAND" in flowers on the side. A few well blaced bushes on the other side of the track where the station will be:
...should help complete the illusion. Obviously I'd prefer to have a 3D train rather than a 2D version, but time and spacial constraints won't allow it for this year. So, this was just the simplest solution.
I can't belive how much you have accomplished in such a short time!! Now your going to finish this in 6 weeks...... That would take me ten years. The land of Big Chuck and Hoolihan sure moves fast!! I can't wait to see the next pictures.
Thank you!
There's A LOT more to come!
The short list:
And I need to get it all done in the next six weeks or so! Oy! It's going to be quite the building binge! It's already hard for me to believe how much I've done and how fast!
I hope his spirit is with me when I tackle the Matterhorn!
Becky you are amazing, lovely job! And once again, thank you for sharing your photos.
Ya' know, the more pictures you post, the more I suspect that the late John Allen once had a milk delivery route in your neighborhood...
BIG THUNDER MOUNTAIN RAILROAD
FINISHED TODAY!!!!
I think I'll take a break from mountain building for awhile!
I got tired of painting rocks, so I figured now was as good a time as any to start the trackwork on Big Thunder Mountain.
The ties are matchsticks and I built the "roadbed" up in sections so I could cut, warp and fit them on the model. BTM isn't exactly a "wild" roller coaster but there are steep grades. The lower track is just laying on the creekbed for photos. It will slope down from left to right on trestles and the creek and town will be flooded. The rails will be coat hanger wire hot glued to the ties after I twist them.
This is how the 2 trains will be placed when the model is complete.
In this close-up you can see what happens when inkjet toner meets water! Needless to say I'll have to replace those. But that's a good thing about working in paper! 2 lights are hidden on the backs of the buttes and more will be installed.
More mountaineering
On the back side of Big Thunder Mountain, there were huge gaps between the foamcore uprights I installed and the Life-Like tunnel. How to fill them?
Looking around the house, I decided this may be a job for the thousands of styrofoam packing peanuts I've been hoarding for some time! I always thought they'd be good for mountain building! I pulled out three types and set to work.
The pink and white ones on the left are the typical brittle polystyrene curly-q's you see all the time. But the one on the right is highly flexible and malliable. So using hot glue...
...I filled in the gaps! You can also see how I was ablt to use those squishy, maliable, slightly stretchy peanuts to jump gaps and help contour the surface a bit better. As on the rest of the mountain I'll glue brown paper on top to create my "rock surfaces". Then they'll get a coat of acrylic paint and detailing just like the upper part of the mountain.
The "other" mountain I finally finished:
Complete with the "Tri-lon" sculpture that stands as it's sign post:
And of course we all know where the devil lives in the model railroading word. The details:
From garbage cans to plaques and ride vehicles to costumed characters it's all the little things that bring a layout to life. So I've been building or acquiring them here and there and I'll continue right up till the time the layout finally gets "finished". Whenever that may be!
Last but not least, here's a suspension bridge!
Now all I have to do is figure out how to build a "Disneyodendron Semperflorens Grandis" and stick a multi-level treehouse in it!
Becky,
This is really impressive. Please keep the progress coming. One of my cousins would love this thread. She has been to Disney multiple times.
Big Thunder Mountain: painting
Here's what I decided to do. Monday I sprayed the foam, Tuesday I carved it. On Wednesday I painted the foam with undiluted Americana brand acrylic paint, sand. The small squeeze bottle covered more than I thought it would, but not the entire foam section. Yesterday I was out so today was the first I got back to it.
Using acrylic paints thinned with water....
...great use for those old pill bottles by the way, I started applying washes of color to the mountain. Working from the top down, I first applied color lightly since I've never done this before. The effects looked good, but as they dried and I stared at them from accross the room, I realized that while the light color application may look more realsitic, I was going to need stronger colors for a small mountain that needs to stand out for itself in an amusement park landscape. So going back over it again I used stronger mixes of color and created more contrast.
Calling this "painting" is a bit of a misnomer. In truth gravity is doing 99% of the work. I wet the area first, then apply the thinned paints and add water a little at a time till I like how it looks. Since this is all water based it dries very fast and the next color can follow very soon. I apply slightly thinned black last and add water a drop at a time to make it flow into the cracks and crevices. I probably put about 4 hours into it today to do the large central spire. But the technique worked!
Also under way, I've been adding flocking to the Skull Rock Cove diorama.
Skull Rock Cove was the home of Captain Hook's "Jolly Roger" from 1955 to 1982. It was a seafood restaurant. Since I had to build up, I created a crazy staircase of flat stones going up the side of the hill and a 3 stone path leading to what will eventually be a door in the hull of the ship.
Lagoon lighting is also installed! This is a string of 110v grain of wheat bulbs that I got at a craft store. A lot of crafters use them to light up Christmas wreaths, wedding centerpieces and small home floral displays so if you go looking for them check all of those craft departments. The nice thing about them is that you don't need a transformer. The bad thing is you do need an extension cord unless they're displayed near an electrical outlet. But they're tough and here I hot glued them directly to the base, and hot glued polished stones right on top of them. I also built up around the wires with more hot glue to blend them into the hillside. Then I covered the entire mess of hot glue and wires with Woodland Scenics ground foam. On the left of these pics you can see the wires glued directly to the masking tape shell and on the right you can see how well the foam blend covered everything. There's also a "crokagater" in the water!
Well I'm off to hunt for the "right sized, right priced carousel"!
Thanks guys!
Today I carved the foam with an assortment of X-Acto and wanna be X-Acto knives! It's hard to get a good pic of it, but I cut in a lot of crevices and took away the "globby marshmallow" look it had. Down below, the foam shavings and some packing peanuts are bulking up the previously open areas. It's an old trick, but Brown paper bags and thinned white glue can be an effective and cheap way of making mountains!
I checked my stocks and I only have less than half a box of Hydrocal on hand, so I'll need to get more if I decide to go that route. However the carved poly spray foam has a texture that resembles sandstone, so I may just paint it and let all those little holes show. It's also sand colored in it's natural state so maybe I'll leave it alone? The lower half could easily look more like fallen rock whereas the upper needs to show individual rock strata. Here's a pic out of a book. This is the larger WDW version of the ride btw.
What I'm thinking is to give the entire thing a coating of a sand colored acrylic paint, then create the rock layers from the top down with thin washes of color. I've done something similar with Hydrocal and Woodland Scenics Earth Colors on castings, but I've never tried to do it on an acrylic base. I'm worried that the acrylic base may run when I start applying washes on top of it.
Well, it's an adventure! I have some "craft sticks" which are just matchsticks without the heads and they'll become my ties. I plan to lay them on posterboard and then install them with the flexibility of the pb intact. Then I'll install coat hanger "rails" form fitted to how the roadbed ends up, all on trestles of course.
HELP WANTED:
Becky I wish I could help you. Even though I am a stones throw south in Amish land, You are so many levels above me, I couldn't offer you any assistance....... I am blown away, I couldn't wait to see updated pictures. But I never in my life expected anything as amazing as these.
Please please please keep us updated.
I don't know if this is any help but several years ago I built a Xmas layout with a tunnel with that foam. I used a Zona razor saw to cut it into flat planes. Of course there were voids and gaps in that rough shaping. I used painters latex caulk ( meant to fill small gaps and which takes paint but not stain) to adhere to the foam and then shaped it. with a slightly wet putty knife. Of course my goal was a winter scene, not a desert.. I then used fast drying acrylic paint once the caulk dried. I know that my daughter uses this paint from a craft shop and it comes in a variety of desert colors. For what it's worth.
Big Thunder Mountain
OK it doesn't look like much! But, that's how far I got with one can of expanding spray foam. On the white base section you can see a line of hot glue at the base of the buildings and the edges of the board. This will bea flooded town. I'll build up the mountainside with newspaper, masking tape and etc. till it almost touches the rear walls of the structures. The BTM train looks pretty small next to all this doesn't it? It's pretty to close to S gauge in wheelbase but I'd be hard pressed to call it scale!
HELP WANTED! This is pure desert scenery with rock outcropings and lots and lots of layered effects. If anybody has any tips, tricks and suggestions how to get polyeurethane spray foam to look like desert terrain I'd sure appreciate the help! I've worked with hydrocal before but never with foam. I need to keep it lightweight yet durable enough to handle being stored 10 months out of the year. So plaster is probably out. However I do have white sand at my disposal and if anyone has tried to use it this way please let me know! I had Malcolm Furlow's book on the San Juan Central but I loaned it out and can't get it back. Which is too bad because the SJC had tons of this kind of scenery!
BTW the pirate ship clock thing in the foreground is the Peter Pan ride from a 1999 Polly Pocket Disney playset. I motorized it and the Dumbo ride from the same set and they with a carousel will provide a bit of animation in Fantasyland. And I also acquired 2 more James Gang baggage cars recently to act as the Santa Fe and Disneyland Railroad. Unfortunately all 3 cars have problems!
Yeah, as near as I can figure they must have decided that railbound parking lot transportation would have been too big of a hassle. Too many traffic tie-ups with grade crossings and all, that sort of thing. So they developed the trackless tram system instead. Still, it would have been cool!
I don't have pay TV, just a couple sets of rabbit ears. (No cable, no cell phones, dial-up internet...what century am I living in anyways? ) Too bad the layout isn't still at Disney!
I also heard that for a time, for entry into the park, the railroad was to be the main conveyance for this purpose, from a remote parking lot but this concept was discarded as impractical. Did you see the documentary on CNBC on Disney where he and Kimball went out to the Chicago Railfair? There are scenes of them in the diesel cab en route and it looked like Walt was in 7th Heaven. Building a layout in the Disney offices by Walt Kimball was another interesting short segment. I wished I could do a screen capture to have gotten a better view of it. That would be neat to recreate.
That's no lie! Take a look at this very early map for a park that was originally to be built accross the street from the Disney studios:
It bears very little resemblance to the 600 acre park that became Disneyland in 1955, but it did have 2 separate train rides.
This later concept drawing by Herb Ryman shows that the park had evolved by the mid 1940's much closer to what we know today:
One of the most interresting features is that the original plan was to build a scale model of Neuschwanstein castle and have all of the Fantasyland rides within it's walls. Adventureland is on the opposite side but in it's place was an operating roundhouse, backshop and turntable! Clearly Disney wanted to teach kids about the importance of railroads and how they're maintained. The trains are also traveling in the opposite direction from what they do today by the way. Sadly the demise of US steam had become so great by 1955 that the Disneyland Railroad's importance had been downgraded to a simple around the perimeter ride.
But that's not to say Disney didn't keep trains at the forefront at Disneyland. The Santa Fe and Disneyland Railroad is still the first thing visitors see on entering the park. And Casey Junior has plied the rails of Storybookland since opening day. In 1957 the Viewliner arrived in Tomorrowland only to be supplanted two years later by the Alweg monorail. The latter is arguably the most recognized train Disney ever built. Even moreso than his Carolwood Pacific live steam railroad that Ward Kimball helped with. And we can't forget Disney's Omnimover system. The railroadesque propulsion system that's been moving guests through dark rides since the 1960's. Or the Mark Twain for that matter! it runs on rails too!
As a component of a themed layout, your castle has to be at the top of the list of creative projects brought to a really impressive conclusion. The lighting is wonderful. Walt Disney himself would be impressed, no doubt about that. Walt was and is one of my childhood heroes who has not lost his luster, and I just recently became acquainted with his love of trains. One of his "old men" said that Disneyland was an excuse to build a 1:1 layout, and once I heard that comment, it made perfect sense, and so when I saw your progress, it was, in a sense, a model layout of his dream layout. Keep us posted.
SLEEPING BEAUTY CASTLE
And, at twilight
When the polyeurethane is "just poured" is when it looks most like water.
Top down.
The biggest piece of realestate to be sure!
Sleeping Beauty Castle. I started this model 3 years ago and today it finally got mounted to the board which will have the moat and gardens.
I did several simple modifications to the original kit so I could have this lighting scheme. Most basic of all of them was the backing of the walls in the lighted "rooms" with heavy black cardstock to keep the lights from illuminating the entire wall instead of just the windows. The windows were printed on 20lb paper which gow bulbs illuminate very well. The light fixtures in the tunnel and rear alcove and foyer areas are also just paper with gow bulbs inside them. The 4 streetlights are MTH while the 2 floodlights mounted at ground level are home made fixtures. On the roof of the lower level I installed 2 peel and stick lights to better illuminate the upper portion of the castle and provide contrast not available from the cross-moat floods.
She has a long way to go, but finally getting to turn on the lights after 3+ years of work is like icing the cake! Before it's out of the oven! The next steps are to finish laying the brick paper pathways, cover up the hot glue I used around the base of the structure and finish the landscaping before I pour the polyeurethane water.
here is a really fun and interesting fact about Disney... the castle that you see in the beginning of all the movies they make is modeled after the Spanish castle in Segovia Spain. It is also the castle that Queen Isabella gave Columbus the famous jewels
I was able to do a bit of "twiggin" in the woods yesterday, so I finished the landscaping around the Haunted Mansion:
The Mansion itself is closer to S scale than O, but the MTH lamps work well. And I think it's sufficiently foreboding in the dark.
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