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chooch41
Crew Chief
Canada
804 Posts |
 Posted - 01/15/2010 : 12:15:03 PM
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| This looks like it will be a fun layout to operate on. Keep up the great work and the updates..... |
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ebtnut
New Hire
USA
36 Posts |
Posted - 01/15/2010 : 3:39:33 PM
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| Neil: As Vagel noted in the tour narrative, the period is about 1938. |
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Vagel Keller
Crew Chief
USA
727 Posts |
Posted - 01/15/2010 : 3:57:54 PM
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Thanks, guys. Neil, to answer your questions, first the plywood deck surrounded by the HOn3 loop is the only place on the layout where all the vehicles, structures, and mini-scenes I built before this layout began can be displayed and be out of the way while we do track and scenery work. I guess I could store them away, but I like looking at them, so that's why the "transportation museum" is what it is right now. As to era, I haven't discussed this in a while, so it probably needs to be re-explained. Originally, I had narrowed it down to a month (October) and year (1938); nothing I bought (motive power, structures, vehicles, figures, rolling stock) would be inappropriate for that year, and I mean I went so far as to avoid buying rolling stock with build or re-packing dates later than 10/1938. Moreover, the standard gauge part of the layout concept called only for trains to come into the blast furnace interchange with the narrow gauge from hidden staging and return. My total standard gauge locomotive requirement for this concept was a single 2-8-0 and a single 4-4-0 or 4-4-2. For variety I'd have a WM Russian Decapod or a B&O USRA light MIke using trackage rights. But that was it. And then ...
... BLI released the T1, with sound and DCC, and I fell from grace.[:-hearts]
One day I woke up with a collection of HO Pennsy power that they only wish they had at Strasburg. But as long as the layout had to be built in our basement, there was no room for so much motive power from the wrong era; it would only be run on the FreeMo layout that Don and I participate in. But, then Debbie and I bought the apartment building across the street from our house and suddenly there was room for an HO scale PRR museum AND the 1930's era concept of interchange between standard and narrow gauge lines around a blast furnace complex. I won't spend any more time here explaining the operational scheme, since it's been written about before back several pages, but you see what I meant about the engine terminal being primarily a motive power railfanning location.
Chris, you're point about not overdoing the fiber fill and ground foam is well taken, as the following picture attests
This mat is pretty dense. I'm not wedded to it, since it's on the part of the hillside that's beyond the backdrop (that's just a temporary photo backdrop of poster board behind it), although I think it's okay as a patch of dense thicket. In this area I also experimented with some rubber rock castings I bought in a grab bag at a NMRA train show several years ago.
I painted the above outcrop with a combination of red oxide, raw umber, and neutral gray no. 5. It's a pretty close match to the shale one sees driving between Bedford and Everett, PA on the Lincoln Highway in the iron-rich upper Juniata Valley. The shot below shows a second outcropping that I attached just a couple hours ago.
I applied a liberal dose of high strength spray adhesive from Scenic Express to both the scenery base and the back of the casting, waited a minute or so, and pressed the casting into place. The rubber castings are hollow and flexible, but I had to hold it firmly for three or four minutes to get it to adhere to the irregular surface of the scenery base and left a map tack to hold a particularly pesky spot down when I left it to set.
Finally, I tried for a less dense foliage patch, and here are the results. This is what it looked like after drying:
And here is the same patch after I teased it out some more, then applied some more hairspray and another sprinkling of WS fine late Summer grass:
Again, Chris's point is well taken. I think this stuff is best used in conjunction with various textures of ground foam glued directly to the scenery base. In logged out areas of Appalachia (and we're talking thousands of acres by the 1930s), densely thicketed hillsides were the norm until state-level and CCC reforestation projects took hold, but even then when one looks at pictures from the era it wasn't a homogenous mass of underbrush, but patches interspersed with meadow and surviving trees too small to matter to commercial loggers or of no value to wood chemical plants.
Well, that's it for a while ... I'm out for the next couple days. Write if the muse strikes.
Vagel |
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MarkF
Engineer
USA
9329 Posts |
Posted - 01/15/2010 : 8:14:04 PM
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| I enjoyed your tour of the room Vagel. Well done. You have had so much focus on the one area of the layout, I forgot you have an entire peninsula to tackle yet! The room has really developed into a very nice and comfortable looking workspace. Well done! |
Mark
See my homepage at http://home.comcast.net/~prrndiv/
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George D
Moderator
USA
10026 Posts |
Posted - 01/15/2010 : 10:05:07 PM
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I know what you mean about the T-1. She’ll steal your heart and lead you down a path of regrets.
George |
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AVRR-PA
Fireman
USA
4656 Posts |
Posted - 01/15/2010 : 10:22:50 PM
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Hi, everyone --
While Vagel was experimenting with the black polyfiber on the layout, I was doing some experimenting on the bench. Here are some photographs.
This is what a bag of the stuff looks like:
 Polyfiber black in bag
And here is some of it, straight out of the bag:
 Black polyfiber straight out of the bag
Here is that same tuft, teased out pretty thin:
 Black polyfiber spread thin
And here it is with various Scenic Express ground foams applied. For most of the experiments, I used just one color. On the last one, I combined two - which is probably more like what one would actually do.
 Black polyfiber and scrub grass blend 01
 Black polyfiber and scrub grass blend 02
 Black polyfiber and conifer floor blend
 Black polyfiber and farm pasture blend
 Black polyfiber and forest floor blend
 Black polyfiber plus soil brown and farm pasture
 Black polyfiber plus soil brown plus farm pasture 02
Finally, here are all the sample drying on tops of the ground foam jars -- looks like a lineup of bad toupees.
 Black polyfiber toupees
I'll keep experimenting with various combinations and take them along to Vagel's next Wednesday.
Along with ground cover, I suspect these mats can also be balled up into shrubs and, spread even thinner, can be draped over armatures to form mid-ground trees.
Don
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Edited by - AVRR-PA on 01/16/2010 06:52:56 AM |
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Frederic Testard
Engineer
France
16524 Posts |
Posted - 01/16/2010 : 04:03:56 AM
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Very enjoyable visit of your layout, Vagel. It shows the big amount of work you and Don have done since the beginning of its construction.
The art work on the walls and the fine furniture make a very pleasant environment for this layout.
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Frederic Testard |
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Vagel Keller
Crew Chief
USA
727 Posts |
Posted - 01/20/2010 : 5:14:58 PM
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Thanks for the kind words on my interior decorating; real men watch HGTV
I decided to re-do the ravine as a modular scene that could be worked on at the workbench, rather than building up the land form under and around the trestle while it's attached to the benchwork. So, today we removed it from the layout and cut the sub-roadbed back an inch from the cribbing at each end to clear the 1" thick styrofoam pieces that will form the ends of the the "box" that will sandwich it.
After that we did scenery work. While I got out the sponges and acrylics to try Dry Fork's backdrop technique, Don processed some of the Sedum that he brought over last Summer. Here are a couple shots of the autumn ridges.
I stopped with only the base colors applied to the nearer ridges.
I like this technique, although I think when I resume work I'll wear latex gloves.[:-dunce]
Vagel |
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AVRR-PA
Fireman
USA
4656 Posts |
Posted - 01/24/2010 : 07:33:09 AM
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I've been puttering away on the highway bridge that runs under the Ravine Trestle bridge.
Garth got a nice new bandsaw, which I used to saw out (and later refine) the wood block that will be the basis for the timber-cribbing approach road. Here's a picture of the new baby - cute, no?
Garth got it mainly so he could make his own veneers and I've been grabbing the scrap. "One person's scrap veneer is another person's scale lumber."
One of my first uses of some scrap was to build up and fair in the roadway. Here are a couple of pictures of a glue-up in process:
I think I'm going to need one more thickness to get it to the right height. Here is a picture showing the bent that will be glued to one end of the approach:
Here is the short bent that goes directly under the ravine trestle:
And here is a top and bottom view of the first section of decking. I also need to build a second, short section. The long section will have the skewed A-frames added to it. And the whole bridge, including the approach ramp, will have wooden guard rails eventually - but probably not until all the scenery work around it is done.
We have a combined Quilting Bee and Group Build today and I'm going to leave the Silver Plume Bakery in the rolling rack and stay focused on the bridges. (I'm also working on a very similar wooden bridge for my dual-gauge FreeMo module - and we have a setup/run coming up next weekend.)
Don |
Edited by - AVRR-PA on 01/24/2010 07:41:25 AM |
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Frederic Testard
Engineer
France
16524 Posts |
Posted - 01/24/2010 : 09:15:11 AM
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Nice work, Don. Is there any special reason why you use this kind of material to make the approaching road?
I'm looking forward to see the finished trestle, and even more to see it on location.
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Frederic Testard |
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AVRR-PA
Fireman
USA
4656 Posts |
Posted - 01/24/2010 : 12:32:39 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Frederic Testard
Nice work, Don. Is there any special reason why you use this kind of material to make the approaching road?
I'm looking forward to see the finished trestle, and even more to see it on location.
Hi, Frederic -- honestly, there's no good reason for making the approach road block out of wood and veneer. It could have been done just as well with some pink foam. But I like working with wood and I have overflowing scrap barrels, so that's what I did.
It's almost finished - then I can start gluing hundreds of HO scale railroad ties to it to represent cribbing. Including hundred of tiny cut off pieces of tie to represent the pieces that are place perpendicular to the walls. And of course I have a 100 or so NBW's to do. [:-crazy]
Don |
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Vagel Keller
Crew Chief
USA
727 Posts |
Posted - 01/24/2010 : 8:08:32 PM
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I got to see Don's work in progress at the quilting bee today. Wow! When the whole thing (ravine trestle and overpass) is completed, it's going to be the most popular LP railfanning site in the HO world!
I've been doing a square foot or so of the painted backdrop at a time since Wednesday. Here are a couple of shots I took with my IPhone after coming home from Don's this evening:
My personal critique is that the results are a bit more "Impressionist" than Dry Fork's, but I'm happy with the overall effect. The gray-over-dark brown area to the right in the first photo shows how I put an overall sponging of medium gray No. 5 over the blocked-in red-brown background to try to tone down the foliage colors when compared to the nearer ridge to the left. I also used a damp sponge there, as opposed to a completely dry one on the left hand ridge. This reminds me of a burned-over mountainside we had near our home when I was a kid, and I wonder if this might be the start for giving the impression of a cut-over ridge with only some underbrush present. I welcome your comments and suggestions.
Vagel |
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Orionvp17
Fireman
USA
2847 Posts |
Posted - 01/24/2010 : 10:21:36 PM
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Vagel,
Comment: Looks good to me! 
Suggestions:
*Keep going
*Keep us posted!
Pete
in Michigan
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Frederic Testard
Engineer
France
16524 Posts |
Posted - 01/26/2010 : 03:58:08 AM
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I like it too, Vagel. I think the impressionist aspect is a good point, since too sharp backdrops (as are most photo backdrops, for instance) don't convey the feeling of the 'thickness of air' that makes distant things hazy. I learned it when I painted my Arizona Dream backdrop too sharp the first time, and had to tone it down later for a much better look.
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Frederic Testard |
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AVRR-PA
Fireman
USA
4656 Posts |
Posted - 01/26/2010 : 07:21:08 AM
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I'm a bit concerned about Vagel in his new role as Impressionist Landscape Artiste'. The big, professional palette was ok, but the beret and the long cigarette holder are a bit much.
Here are a couple of pictures of the work I did Sunday on the approach road to the road bridge.
Once one side is done and the glue is fully cured (about 3 days for Elmer's), I'll go over the wall with a sanding block and trim the itty-bitty pieces down so they are only slightly proud of the wall. (I tried cutting them to that size but they break up badly - there just isn't enough wood to hold together.)
I'm tempted to use the oscillating belt sander but I suspect that would be a really bad idea. Although with a 300 grit belt.... Nahhh. Not smart.
Then I'll get into weathering - I'm thinking of trying oil washes, which I haven't done much with and would like to learn more about.
I was applying glue to each piece individually, which was *real* slow. Vagel suggested that I just brush glue on a section of the form - worked much better. That's one of the advantage of the Quilting Bees, along with fun with friends.
I also got a start on two more trestle bents during the quilting bee but you know what they look like so I won't waste bandwidth on photographs.
Off to the gym.
Don
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New Home for the Blacklog & Shade Gap Eastern
