Any suggestions on when to place buildings and such. If I place them after ground cover they don’t want to sit to level, but of course I don’t know this early exactly where they all will be placed. Do you scrape off ground cover when they are placed or do you just build it up somehow around the new structures ?
Hello and may I be the first to welcome you to the forums. What I have been doing is I have already placed my ground cover and when I deside to put up a new building, I simply wet the area and scrape off the ground cover and attach the wood base, (I scratch build everything) then the building will simply sit on the base. Hope this helps, I will post some pics of one I have been working on later. Mike
Here are a few pics
Hello,
Yeah, I did the same thing on my last layout and will probably do it with this new one. Remember, God put the earth there before man built structures, so I fully texture and scenic the area before the structures and roads go down. When I figure out where and what structures are to be placed, I just use a putty knife and/or assorted other tools to “excavate” the earth, and “VOILA!” there’s a new building going up.
Respects,
To the extent practicable, I try to have a good sense of what will go where as I do the scenicking, and if necessary, I will place a cardboard “footprint” of the size and shape of the building in place while I spray and pour foam. When I will no longer mess up the ground foam, I lift the cardboard form and place the building. If necessary, tidy up with more foam and bushes, trees, etc.
And I’m just the opposite. I put my buildings in place, draw the borders with a sharpie pen, and then put down the ground cover up to the line. I may add a little touch-up ground cover after the building is down. Once I know where the track and buildings will go, then I can also put in roads and hills. Of course, I’m starting from bare pink foam, so I have the luxury of planning. Those with more mature layouts who want to add a building, or move one, will probably have to displace some scenery to do that.
Same for me. I put in the land formations, then the buildings and then the ground cover. I think either way will work. I too am starting with bare plywood. I paint it brown right after the track goes down and before putting anything else down.
I put the structures down first on the bare base and then work the groundcover in up to the foundation. It saves me the trouble of doing the touch up step if I did the groundcover first.
Once I know the general area where the structure will go, I hold back on the ground foam/dirt etc about 2 inches around the perimeter of the foundation. I do my final ground contouring with Sculptamold, covering the whole area. While the Sculptamold is still moist, I take the building and press it into the surface, making sure it’s even. Now I have a perfect imprint to set the building into rather than on top of. After the sculptamold has dried, I know exactly where to build my ground foam up to. I set the building in for a perfect fit. The Sculptamold wipes easily from the base of the structure, so there’s no damage.
Richard
I generally figure out where the buildings are to be placed first. Find a good arrangement, mark the roads and sidewalks, and then mark where the buildings are to go. Once that’s done, I build up the roads, sidewalks, and building FOUNDATIONS (everyone seems to forget about those!). Once the roadways and foundations are built, I’ll add the ground cover. Only after the basic cover is in will I actually add the buildings. I make them seperate from the foundations (usually) so I can remove them if need be for maintenance, cleaning, etc. Once the buildings are in, I’ll add the final scenic elements (bushes, weeds, junk, etc).
This technique isn’t mine: Bob Smaus wrote about it in a couple of RMC articles years ago, and I tried it. It worked so well that I’ve been using it ever since!
Whichever order you choose to use… and one might be better in one place while the other is better in another…
When you’ve located your building(s) and brought the ground cover up around the base of the building… it is best to not make the “join” a perfect right angle… this very rarely happens in the real world. Even with ba=rand new buildings there is very quickly a small fillet of crud in the angle. this is a combination of whatever washes down the wall and whatever gets blown or splashed acrsoo against it. This need not be more than a scrape of filler material… or even just a brushing of a thick paint… just enough to hide the actual line where the angle changes.
You can add tiny bits of green for weeds, moss and mould if you like… this fillet of dirt just doesn’t get walked on or otherwise touched so stuff will grow here out of harms way. Anything bigger, weeds, waste paper or whatever is up to what you want to represent… it all helps to blend the building in.
I’m with Orsonroy.
We “built” the entire town with cigarette packs, Baggie boxes, Cloraseptic containers, etc, and auditioned it for several months, moving “buildings” here and there until we had them just where we wanted them.
Now the foundations are built and installed, and two of three speakers have been placed. As soon as the third speaker goes in, the spackling compound will be used to establish final grade, then paint and ground cover, with the buildings being set on the foundations last.
Lots of good info. I think I will do the ground cover first. It’s easy to forget about a good foundation. I will use the scrape method and then try and put together a good foundation.
Thanks
Arden
one thing i learned on my layout was to not simply “set” the structure down…but to make sure it had a realistic looking foundation with earth,brush ground foam and what have you…i learned by mistakes that buildings shouldn’t have a “gap” in the foundation…it looked real stupid having light shine out!!!