Great photos of a real nice layout. I will have one area on my layout that is similar to the area in your IMG1881 photo. Can you give us some detail on making your river bank leading to the elevated roadbed?
In the last three photos, are your river banks carved foam? It all looks very real to me.
Wow! That is outstanding! I remember you asking questions about the rock color. You did a great job with the colors. And the river looks great too, how it snakes along with the tracks in that area.
I’m jealous, that is what I want to do on my next rebuild project.
The river bank is cardboard rib strip hot glued to the sub roadbed and to the river witch is 1/2 in plywood. Then i covered the cardboard with plaster clothe. I used sculptamold and all the extra plaster pieces that i scraped out of my gallon bucket after making all my rock molds, i crushed them up in a pale and used lots of small rock mold fragments that were still good and pressed them into the sculptamold. Then sprinkled the finer crushed up plaster even if the pieces were bigger. I made sure to press them gently into the sculptamold. After i had it the way i wanted and it dried good, i then took some desert sand spray paint and gave it a real quick coat for a base color plus it gets into the crevices nicely. Then i used the acrylic paint mixed in water and stained the plaster and sculptamold till i reached the colors that i liked. For the river I painted it with a green color that matched some photo’s of the Colorado that i took off google earth. I used woodland scenic realistic water, (I was spending too much on that so i am trying envirotex crystal clear ) I have not used it yet but looks like it will work great and it comes in a two part gallon mixture. This was a fun project and obviously i have a long way to go. Good luck on your venture some of the most fun was the research.
I especially like the ripple effect that you have on the surface, and the color that you went with for the water. It has a very nice sheen to it and the reflections really add to the overall effect. What kind of paint did you use, and is the surface painted or did you mix the paint in?
Nice work I did Glenwood Canyon several times in the 1970s twice on the RG Zeypher and twice on a motorcycle your work reminds me of what I saw and photographed.
thanks, i just used cheap paint from my local hardware store. I took some pics of the real thing into the hardware store with me and matched it the best i could. 1 quart cost me like 3.00. I just brushed on the paint with old brushes. I think the ripple effect came on accident from the plywood base on the non sanded side.
Can you explain what all that stands for and how it recognizes witch photo’s to use for the slideshow. That is really handy and much nicer to view in photobucket format.
All I can say is, “NICE”, very nice. I am in the process of making my long river, but was a little hesitant because I was concerned about the rather steep riverbanks I will have. I thought the riverbed on my layout would be a little to low and to steep, and wasn’t sure how it would look. The banks of your river, are about the same steepness & dept as what I will have. Yours looks perfect to me, so now I’ll get going on mine.
Now if I only can get mine to come out looking half as nice as yours, I will be a happy fella.
