Vic, looking good man!!!
You going to hand brush or air brush it? (color) What is the foam stuck with liquide nails?
Toad
Just standard latex house paint with a brush and ground cover added while its still wet. Its called “Zip Texturing” in HO I beleive.
I used standard carpenters glue to glue the stuff together, cheaper than Liquid Nails but I have to wait a day for it to dry, but what the heck, if I glue it down the night before by the time I get back out there the next night its dry.
PS I watched this on Youtube very helpfull.
Thanks Vic! He sounds like the Dark Knight at first [:)]
Had to keep him in my fav’s folder.
Guess I will have to look through u-tube more for good stuff like this! You think they have some on fireworks [:-^]
Toadster
Progress:
the buildings on top are just there for ideas, I’m still deciding what I want to do there. The Piko buildings may be OK but the HofB hotel looms a little large, I really want to build a series of very narrow buildngs winding there way up the hill, so these would only be temporary anyway. Even the station would eventually be replaced. But I only have a little over one month to get this ready.
I’ll be building strap-iron on wood (actually copper strips) rails. I’m going to try using cut-to-scale furring strips, boiling and forming and letting 'em dry and ‘take a set’ before putting them down. I have some suspicion the furring stripwood rails might ‘writhe’, even w. glue and nails at every tie. They may not: I’ll coat 'em with linseed oil right after I figure the glue’s dry, it might help. The copper strips will go on next, soldered and spiked.
That’s where the idea of removable ‘keepers’ came to me, as a way to hold things in place for a bit but be easy to remove.
Keep posting the good stuff.
Saw your railbus–wish I wasn’t in the pre-IC era!
Les
](http://gold.mylargescale.com/vsmith/Portable%20Scenery%202.JPG){kind=link}
Small test area for scenery, Woodland Scenics stuff, guess it works for large scale, no ballast yet, gotta get some stuff without the blue “ore” in it.
Photo came out too bright, it doesnt look this washed out in person
What about something besides a town up top. You could add a little ho track and have it go off the side, and model that to a “mine dump” scene where the HO cars are unloaded on the top of the mountain, then the ore is brought down by wheelbarrow or donkey-carts to the large scale trains at the bottom of the hill?
Or, why not model a piazza up top (an open area in a city) and presume that the buildings are all “out of sight.” You could have lots of vendors with carts of fruits and vegetables and wares… all brought up to the town by the little road from the train looping below. A sort of “piazza pizza.” (My own little play on words)
Or, what about a desert scene with a bunch of people surrounding a camp fire (you could incorporate lighting and smoke effects) and maybe some cattle, and maybe a wagon or tent or throw-together shack. The cattle could graze up top and then be brought down the mountain to be loaded into the train for shipment to the city.
Just ideas, but none of them would require extensive buildings to be constructed.
All good ideas, I just dont think I have the time to do if I want to finish this by June 5.
Vic,
Why are the ties so far apart? All I have for a frame of reference is the plastic track I’ve picked up, but even as a kid walking the MOPAC tracks, the ties were less than a normal stride apart.
Could it be because you’re in a hurry to finish? And, it doesn’t matter at all to me if you have just 3 per section, ala Lionel 027. I’m curious, is what I am.
Les
Cheap, is what I am.
Bought the basswood stock , thought I had enough, cut it down and was short, it was late, on a weekend and I didnt want to wait to get more, so I just spread’em a little wider…
Its not unprototypical for poor tram lines, besides you should see in the back, theres a reason theres a tunnel, hides where I ran out of full ties and had to use sections!
A tad more progress
I added highlight colors to the bluffs on the layout above. Going to go with 3 facades at the top with the watertank as shown, and the “house of relief” next to the water tank (eeewww!) [:O]
Got a bag of “Ballast” in the pet aisle of the local Theftway… dam stuff has pink “scent control crystals” in it, another had blue ones, geez well at least pink looks more southwesterny than blue. [|(]
I think if I had one full day I could finish this, fat chance I’ll have that kind of free time [:-^]
Well a hard push this weekend squeezing time in between yardwork and chores, yields results, I give you
Tincan Junction
Overall view
Station looking up the hill
Looking up the hill from the crossing
View of Brien’s Pinnacle
Tincan itself, a one horse town and they had to borrow the horse.
Still lots of little detail stuff to add, I thought this would take another month to do but it went surprisingly fast, BTW this is a full dress rehersal for the big indoor layout.
Vic,
Looks great man! Lotta work and just great results!!! [tup]
Is that a Indian Motorcycle I see?
Toad
Thanks, its an HD, I got it long long ago at Pic-n-Sav before they changed names.
Great work, it looks awsome. It is amazing what you did in such a short time. It would have taken me a year to do something like that and it still would not have looked as great as yours. Keep up the good work. I cant wait to see your indoor layout when it is complete as well.
Need a break from all these “hom’impruvm’nt” projects, so…
Began construction last night on building the permanant structure I had wanted to do for the BTS this year, but ran out of time for, the 3 “town” buildings were only “temps” for the show, I need them for the big layout. BTS 2008 display:
When I began finishing this I had planned for a mining structure on the top of the hill, so after some quick sketching I drew this up on the com’fuser:
Its a large facade that will go along the back in the same place the 3 “town” buildings were located. Construction is basswood on a foamcore backing, one nice thing about being indoors is that I can use much lighter, and much easier, construction technics, its going faster than I thought since I discovered I could cleanly cut the basswood siding with a large scissors 
Pics when I can [;)]
In case anyone mssed BTS, here is a vid of Vic’s layout at BTS.
Burnin’ thru my Bag-o-Balsa and Bag-o-Basswood, but sorry, no pics, camera’s gone awol.
Time to go to the store for a new one! Unless ofcourse you would prefer to spend the cash on the RR, which is understandable.
I finished the Mine, its basswood and balsa stripwood on a backing piece of 1/2" foamcore, and am painting it now, My wife left our camera at a family members house, and now its gone AWOL [B)]
So no pics for now, I’m considering just getting another one, a cheap backup camera, for just such a situation.
Vic, your sick…think I am gettn like you now! Sick!!! Will post the Mule at later date, but she does run!
Sick Toad