To start this week's Weekend Photo Fun is...
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Darth,
I prefer to add the ballast last, that way is spills more naturally into the surround. I'm not a big fan of grass mats, preferring to build texture with ground foams and other grass materials. I have not seen the new grass mats in person so they may be a lot better.
Simon Modelling CB&Q and Wabash See my slowly evolving layout on my picturetrail site http://www.picturetrail.com/simontrains and our videos at http://www.youtube.com/user/MrCrispybake?feature=mhum
Nice engine. Good start on a layout.
I would get a bottle of white glue, a can of latex paint the color of your ground, three colors of ground foam and a can of hair spray. I would Paint a couple of square feet with the ground color and cover with the greenest of the ground foam. I would repeat until all is covered. I might add the second color a few places to keep the color uneven. When dry I would sprinkle the third color on so it looked right and set with hair spray. Others will recomend spraying with diluted matte medium.
I would then step back and start imagining bushes, tall grasses, trees and shrubs. These can be added a little at a time with white glue. It takes me many looks to finaly see what is needed. I do a little, look a little and do a little more. I might never get to the ballast, but thats just me.
Let the fun begin.
You need some elevation changes to make your scenery look more realistic. This is an old shot of hills around a corner of my layout. They are carved pink foam (still visible in the background) with the surface covered with gypsolite, into which I squirted cheap brown acrylic paint to give it a tan color. The gypsolite is naturally gritty and looks like natural earth:
After the gypsolite sets, I use a green wash, but only on parts of the hill, leaving the rest brown. This gives me a "camouflage" pattern. When it's dry, I then take a mixture of 1 part white glue to 3 parts of water and brush it on to the surface with a cheap paintbrush. Then I sprinkle on several different ground foams and turfs, mostly (but not completely) keeping green on the green paint, and browns on the unpainted gypsolite. I add bigger clumps of shrubbery and dribble on some more of the glue mixture. With a different engine in the picture, it looks like this:
First, though, plan your roads and buildings, so you won't end up with a road ending in a cliff.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Tubing Gunner's River...
Full Steam Ahead...
Trekking past the Gasping Desert...
Bolting Towards Spitwater Motel...
Heatwave...
Have a great weekend everyone!
Homepage:
http://home.mchsi.com/~ironmaster1960/wsb/html/view.cgi-home.html-.html
"Rust, whats not to love?"
I'm going to pick up a layout that I purchased about a month ago from an old guy. Its about a two and a half hr drive one way, a lot of work for a 4 by 8 :-/. That's not this w/e though, hopefully its next. As far as the current layout, its still not looking good to me, I wish I could just start over...
-beegle55
Life is simple - eat, drink, play with trains!
Go Big Red!
PA&ERR "If you think you are doing something stupid, you're probably right!"
Here are a few pictures from Friday. Our model railroad club was invited to set up a 16'X'40 modular layout at a local mall in Nashville. The Amtrak, SP and modern freight cars are mine.
All looks good so far guys!
Espee engineer...I see we have the same taste in motive power. Looks VERY sharp!
Keep up the great work everybody!
Rich
Nice pics Guys! looks like i have my work cut out for me this Weekend .heres a couple of pics before i start
Carl..
East bound NS Dash-8 40C leaves the El Paso yard passing a Geep 9 yard switcher while the caboose of a west bound freight heading for Sierra Blanca waits on the siding for the train to pass.
It looks and reads like all of you are having fun at this point in the season. Nice photos, everyone.
Here are a couple of photos from me. I am definitely having fun!
Carl here Are mine
I cannot wait until I get to the scenery mode! Your pictures are really great.
Super-evelating this 29" radius curve. I use the 14" strips of styrene straight out of the package vs. cutting and gluing down smaller pieces. On other elevated curves I used .010, .020 and .030 but they don't have quite enough lean in them. We'll see on this one.
Regards,
Tom
45T-2 wrote:All looks good so far guys!Espee engineer...I see we have the same taste in motive power. Looks VERY sharp!Keep up the great work everybody!Rich
Thank you 45T-2, those are my favorite SP engines, I love running them. Good work everyone, have a good weekend!
Morning all, Some great pics this week as usual.Not much new on the RR this week but will share a few pics I took this week of the layout. Some of you veterns here may reconize the layout and some of the newer folks may not have seen them. Enjoy and comments are welcome.
Mike, those are some really cool shots. Love the lights!
A shot of my RS-18 (Canadian version of the RS-11, converted from an Atlas model):
Bob Boudreau
CANADA
Visit my model railroad photography website: http://sites.google.com/site/railphotog/
sledgehammer wrote: Carl here Are mine
Those are Real Nice I hope mine turn out that well .
Carl.
Thanks Carl, There all DCC equipeted and that is the consist I run as well.
I notice there was no road number on Your loco, did you take it off or did it come that way.
Great stuff guys, I love this thread. I am still hooked on trees. Made my first pine tree out of a super tree and static grass. I painted the ST with brown paint, added the larger sized static grass, lots of hairspray and here it is. I also made some more Supertrees with Noch leaf material, as seen in the background.
Also added some small pine trees up the side of Green Mountain, sure did add a lot.
Darth, hate to go against what others may have said, but I ballast first and add ground cover later.
Anyway, have been putzing around on photoshop today. Trying to learn how to add steam and smoke effects. Here's a first bash at it. With time and good criticism (always welcomed), I imagine I'll get better at it. Every week, this is the thread I like the most. Cheers.
Another great weekend photo show!.....here a few from my camera.
Arthill
Love those trees! Do I understand correctly that you use static grass on them? Also, how high is that rock face, and how far away is it from the aisle? Are you HO?
Cheers
Darth--
Neat photos. I like what you did to the Rivarossi. How's that little devil run, BTW? Always seemed to me to be one of the smoothest running of the Rivarossi locos.
As to your question--I don't know how others feel, but I always put the ballast in LAST, after I've done all the other scenicking and made sure that the track is working well. The reason may seem odd, but I always figure that the landscape was there first, and the ballast for the railroad was put on over it. Others might have a different opinion, but ballasting last has always worked better for me, after you're sure that the MR is running smoothly. Even then, you have to do a certain amount of 'clean-up'.
Tom View my layout photos! http://s299.photobucket.com/albums/mm310/TWhite-014/Rio%20Grande%20Yuba%20River%20Sub One can NEVER have too many Articulateds!