weekend photo fun 11/3-5/06

[conrail92]

Heres a pic of the only foreign Power loco i own.



These are pics of some roadnames i painted on the wall the NS logo i painted 2 years ago the conrail i did 2 days ago.




And heres a video, i kno its weekend photo fun not video fun but oh well.
HERE

[howmus]

Better Nate than Lever, I guess.   I have gotten to work on some more scenery this week.  The photos are of a hand carved stone wall.  I poured the wall using Plaster of Paris, carved and then stained it.  The rocks coming out of the wall were added yesterday and stained tonight.  You may not be able to see it, but the wall is curved at one end.



A close up:



Looking down the wall to the overpass over the road (the white plaster).  The road will be a dirt road as it is still 1925 there.....

[Don Z]

Ray,
That's a great looking wall! Did you use some sort of form to pour the wall in place? Care to share some of your secrets with us? Once again, great work!

Don Z.

[howmus]

Ray,
That's a great looking wall! Did you use some sort of form to pour the wall in place? Care to share some of your secrets with us? Once again, great work!

Don Z.

Thank You Don!  The wall was poured into a form made of some scrap 1/8" masonite I had.  Styrene will work as well.  Make sure the form is well supported and will stay in place as you pour the plaster.  After the palster sets, remove the form(s) and let the plaster dry a day or two.  I then scribed the grid for the rocks with a fine pen (pencil will work) onto the wall measuring with a scale ruler.  Using a #11 exacto knife, I carved the morter lines into the face.  The technique is not hard but I would suggest some practice first.  All kinds of detail including cracked or broken cut stone can be done.  Then I covered the wall with a wash (30 or 40 to 1 water to stain) of WS Stone Gray paint.  Several washes may be needed to achieve the texture you want.  The protruding rocks are cast from molds using hydrocal and added to the face of the wall with Drywall mud.  They are then stained using various washes of the woodland Scenics paints.

[Tom Bryant_MR]

Well, this will be different. 

What happened!  You were going along so good.  Oh by the way how much dynamite was use to excavate your rolling hill side. 

Dynamite

For the rolling hillside it only took a putty knife working my way under the edge all around. Sections of it I could then pull away.  It was only foam, newspaper and paper towels soaked in plaster.  There was only a very thin layer of scenery.  I salvaged all of the rock work and most of the trees.  And I am salvaging all of the TO's and some of the flex.

As far as "going along so good".  Yes I agree I was making good progress for the nine months I had in it.  But, as I indicated, I started deviating from my plan of having this as a lower level staging only track and started scenery work and was working on some buildings/businesses.  Once I had put the first module of the upper deck in place I realized that the distance between the two decks was way too small to enjoy either the scenery or the new operations I was anticipating on this "no-longer-a-staging-only-deck".  So, rather than continue on and in the end be saying if I had it over to do again, I bit the bullet and took the axe to it.

I also realized from Don Z that my track work could be much better.  I made the mistake of using the rolls of cork one can get from Hobby Lobby and other places. It was a little too thin and each piece had to be custom cut and fitted ... a real PITA for curves.

I am much, much happier with my new plan.  It still retains the Taylor yard and I have gained a TT and RH for Smithville which really existed anyway.

This will be better.

Spent some time this evening clearing the ROW for the new track plan.  The track you see is all that will remain.  And for those who might attempt this - 1) Very hot water will dissolve the glue from any existing scenery/ballast, then simply scrape up with a putty knife, or I used a wet/dry shop vac. 2) A tool called a tile remover made quick work of scraping off any left over cork, glue, hot glue etc.

New plan is in my SIG.

 

Regards,