new layout progress

[wickman]

I got a pretty good start on some trees. I used mostly super trees, spraying first with cheap hairspray and covering in fine green.

I gave the road a one last coat of dirt, paint first then shake of fine dirt, you can see where the roads are still showing wet.

 I also added in a scratch built my son made last year. I've been pressuring him for a few more little shacks.
I have a long way to go in this section but at least I got a start soon I'll be able to go out and gather up some leaves to blend up for more ground fall along with some old dried up sticks. I think I may also redo the portals in timber, I seen a few shots in Paul Scoles dvd where he built his portals out quite a ways and liked it.

[wickman]

And here's the new hill with a wash of burnt umber and now I have a better idea of where Popa Wheelies, Harley and Son's and the Barrel factory will goe road will come in from the right up a grade and leave to the left down the hill.

[wickman]

Here's how it looks with a base of dirt the ground foam added. In the spring when the snow goes away I'll gather up some leaves and bake them and shake em for messy ground cover and add a bunch of other stuff as well.

[wickman]

I figured seeing as I was into the plaster anyway with the new hill I'd add a few small scenic hills to break up the flatness of the lumber and coal industries a bit. I decided to just grab last weeks advertising crumple it a bit and staple it down then I slathered on the tinted plaster of paris with a big brush. I did 2 coats so far I thik one more should do it the I'll paint it brown.

[wickman]

I got the hill all plastered up and ready to go. I decided not to have Mooney's plumbing on the hill , it was just too cramped. The Barrel Factory will have to make its way down the road to the siding for pickups and drop offs.I think its just about time to try my hands at some ground goop seeing as I finally got all the ingredients ,this should be interesting.
I got the hill all plastered up and ready to go. I decided not to have Mooney's plumbing on the hill , it was just too cramped. The Barrel Factory will have to make its way down the road to the siding for pickups and drop offs.I think its just about time to try my hands at some ground goop seeing as I finally got all the ingredients ,this should be interesting.

[wickman]

On this second post you can see where Mooneys plubling Campbell Barrel factory, Papa Wheelies saloon and Harlie and Son will go on the new hill.

[wickman]

I can't believe its been so long since I updated my progress.

I've been working on a couple things or should I say a couple areas of the layout.
I added on a bit of realestate to one area so my buildings would fit a bit better 4" deep to be exact. I put together a few dpm kits to fill the area I just primed them and put the walls up some day I'll detail them. I put together papa wheelies which is a two building setup, harlie and son these are both Gold kits with lots of castings,a work shop garage its actually a modular kit for learning,a natiaonal bank,skips chicken,  schultz garage and roberts dry goods.

[wickman]

Here's an update on the Barrel Factory.I'm presently working on the stair support frame work this seems to take forever because you can only attach a couple peices at a time , let them dry and move on to the next.
The stairs still need some trimming but they seem to fit in ok.

For the roof I used darryl Huffmans method for a dingy red tar paper roof. I'm waiting for the last 2 sections to dry I just attached the chimney. For the chimney I first gave a coat of grime then after an hour mixed up some black and red. For the smoke stack I gave a coat of grime then weathered black.

I haven't even opened the lid on the Bragdon Weathering powders , but when I do this building will look good and run down.

[wickman]

fThanks for the technical help Chip.

I got the dock roof front supports braced and glued and all the doors and windows in place.

[jjbmish]

That's a lot of progress!  It's looking very good.  Keep the pictures coming!

 

John

[SpaceMouse]

Oh that's what those pictures were. 

 

try [ url="http://www.url. com"]My Layout[/url ]  

 

[wickman]

Lots of progress. Can't wait to see the large versions of those thumbnails.

NP Chip I got them fixed up . I'm not sure why but when I paste the forum pic link from imageshack a .th gets added on the link , but I got them all removed Now any idea how I can get my signature link changed over to a real link in blue?

[SpaceMouse]

Lots of progress. Can't wait to see the large versions of those thumbnails.

[wickman]

Thanks Alan ,your the man . I'll fix them up it only seems to put the th on the links in this forum elsewhere it works fine . I wander if there's perhaps a special way of inserting pics here now since the site changed last year?

[Anonymous]

Sorry Alan I'm not sure why they come that size they never use to.

Your links are to thumbnails.  I went to this one

http://img150.imageshack.us/img150/5054/img12360pc.th.jpg

and removed the .th from the link and got this:

http://img150.imageshack.us/img150/5054/img12360pc.jpg

 

[wickman]

Sorry Alan I'm not sure why they come that size they never use to.

[Anonymous]

Ok so we're back upto date sorry about all the post I was unable to post pics until now for some reason. :(

Looks interesting; however, all I get is 150 x 113 thumbnails (even when I try to open the link).

Larger pictures would be nice.

 

[wickman]

Ok so we're back upto date sorry about all the post I was unable to post pics until now for some reason. :(

I got a start on the Campbells Barrel Factory

I cut all the pieces out of the cardstock first then glued the bracing and stuck it all together I still need more bracing added. And I'm not exactly sure what I'm doing with exterior finish yet.
But here's a few pics, sorry I don't have time to do a more in depth post I bin a bit busy. I'll have more progres pics in a bit.

Here's some experimenting I was doing painting the metal siding

 

Don't worry I actually decided not to go with the blue .

Here it is

For the metal I went with depot olive and a wash of A\I .

The front and side docks are prety much ready to go , a bit of weathering

As you can see I don't care much for perfectly fit metal siding I like the effect of it kinda falling off and in some places very unkept looking. I still have to attack it with the Bragdon weathering powders.

 

All the windows and doors painted up ,tonight I'll be installing them , I'm not quite sure if the plastic for glass should be glue from the inside before installing the windows frames or afterwards.

These are the barn doors I glued wood for detail and I'll cut each of the 3 in half and attach them as swinging doors.

These are the roof front braces setting up.

  I think for the roof I'm not going to use the metal I think I'll do a tar paper type .

So on the agenda is to first get all the windows and doors in, attach the dosck permanently, attach the warehouse doors and then the dock roofs. Oh yes and weather it up.

 

 

[wickman]

Here's a couple more wooden bridges in place obviously I still got some scenery work to to around them but at least there in LOL.I may do a bit of weathering on them with some bragdon chalks.
I've been plugging away at my Campbells Barrel Factory so of course there's not enough time in the day for working on the rest of the layout, errrrrr that and I have to go out and make a living.

[wickman]

fFor the roads I'm venturing into many different methods ,what you see on previous post were just plaster paint brushed on to make the general contour but now I'm really trying out different methods. I've tried adding sifted baseball diamond  sand and cementing it with water/glue mix this gives a good base then I've tried in different areas with first brushing the width of the road with laytest paint then sifting the same  sand and adding several more layers of the same paint and sand but I'm finding it to course looking unless you go along with your finger to break up the top layer , this looks good. Now I've tried one other top layer which is take the same sifted  sand and now put it in a yogurt style plastic container with a panty hose screen ( hope the wife doesn't read this) and shaking this on the paint layer.

Here's some pics I took as I went along
My paint is just some white paint I had left over and I added some brown dollar store paint to give it an earth tone color

This is how I sifted the gravel for the finer sifter

The sifter with panty hose screen

This is how the road looked after the previous coat I gave of paint and sand well at least the road on opposite side of bridge

the opposite side of bridge I just painted on wide enough for road and shook on the roadway with sifter

Using the shaker to add the dirt it comes out more like a dust then anything heavy

I then give the fresh roadway some ruts with the wooden end of a small paint brush

I finish by giving the raod another layer this fills in the ruts

[wickman]

fbeen working on the 4 single lane old wooden bridges. I just put them in place to run the plaster up to the ends then I'll start applying the road dirt.

As well as I decided to reroute the road a bit to cut out one bridge across the creek.  I figured while I was at it I might as well try out the new weathered brick wall molds.

before the molds added and more road plaster contouring

I think my next step will be devided between building a kit and working the roadways a bit , maybe get the ground goop mixed up.

[wickman]

basiclly the ballasting is almost done , the waterfalls cleared up real nice, I added a couple rail bridges I just need some railings now. I will also be spending some time making some regular vehicle bridges out of timber.
I took a few shots.

 

[wickman]

I got a change to try my hand at ballasting. It took a bit but after a while I got the hang of getting the ballast in just the right place. I painted the rails with box car red (2 coats) and the ties with railroad tie brown then when I painted the rails I gave the ties a brushing of box car red as well. I experimented a bit with the grey ballast by giving it a spray of alcohol and india ink it darkened it up quit nicely. I'll probably go back to the ties with some weathering powders. I also went at one of my diesels with the airbrush to dirty it up a bit , it'll be quite some time before I weather the steam engines.

[wickman]

I worked on the bridge a bit more I found the brown leather dye and alcohol a bit too brite so I gave it an airbrushing of black the went over it with bragdons dark rust and a bit of bragdon soot here and there. No flash was used for these pics

this pic is with flash on just to show the color a bit better
Seems hard to get a descent natural picture.

[wickman]

IHere's some pics of the waterfall area to show how its been clearing up.
The creek didn't change much at all which I didn't expect as much.





Here comes the track cleaner 3 units consisted together does the job , right now it makes frequent runs down to the staging yard . It seems when the track isn't used its harder to keep clean. I use the diesels only because when there is a crudded section between the 3 of them there's a better chance of the track power being tranfered .

[wickman]

I gave the bridge a brown leatherdye and alcohol once over , let it dry them went over it with alcohol and ink .So what will be next step on the bridge , I have some floquils on the way and I have some pastels and bragdon weathering powders...
 The falls is still not cleared up but the creek came out real nice and clear I also added a bit more ground stuff I think it just needs some trees.I gotta get the rail back in at the bridge so I can run some trians a bit.

[wickman]

I added the water to the creek this is after 2 days and its still gooey and of course the waterfall still isn't clear ... no rush.

I added a couple more castings and as soon as all the water hardens I'll add more ground foam and trees and maybe more well you know , stuff .

[wickman]

After venturing in with the airbrush on my own to paint the surrounding area of the river black I added some ground foam and rocks in the river along with some wood that got washed up in the rocks and wood along the shore.I've set the 2 seperate strips of water effects in place for a trial to see how it looks , and came to the conclusion it still needs some tweaking, but I think I'm getting the feel for how it may be able to look. I'm basicly just doing enuff scenery in this area to get the waterway poured. I still have 3 bridges to make that will cover a good portion of the water way and more bushes and trees yet to add.

OK so I'm ready for critique and suggestions are more than welcome.
Oh yes anyone please give me a suggestion for how to color dye or what ever to that darn bridge.

[wickman]

I was actually thinking for the effects for the falls to first stack up some rocks for the face then lay the sheet of water effects over that, well that is if the sheet of water effects ever becomes completly  clear , the rocks should show through a bit.

[IMG]http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/8348/img1042lw7.jpg[/IMG

[wickman]

Well it was my lucky day my buddy dropped by and broke out my new airbrush  and was nice enough to teach me a few things with it including repainting the river bed and waterfalls backdrop.

So now its just a matter of giving it a bit of time to dry, and actually he had done 3 different colors one afer anither having me drying it with a hair dryer as he continually airbruashed. I was looking for a slow moving deep river effect.
The waterfall is still not clear but I think I will work on getting the banks rocked in and gravel on the shoreline as well as some old trees that got pushed up from the waterflow.