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jbvb
Fireman
USA
1864 Posts |
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Vagel Keller
Crew Chief
USA
722 Posts |
 Posted - 10/11/2011 : 10:30:00 PM
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Thanks for posting that picture of your styrene skewed arch, James. It certainly is more elegant than my solution, and not only is it a great technique for building in styrene but it's also shown me how to build a mold for casting a skewed arch in plaster or hydrocal at some point in the future.
George, thanks for the compliment; yes, I suppose the paper mache' does protect the foam, but that's a bonus. I like the rough texture it imparts, imitating the ravages of age and exposure to the elements and industrial air pollution.
Vagel |
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AVRR-PA
Fireman
USA
4600 Posts |
Posted - 10/12/2011 : 09:13:20 AM
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My thanks also, James; that's a neat bit of model engineering.
Only fainted related but maybe interesting - I did a bike ride on the southern end of the Great Allegheny Passage (former Western Maryland) last week, from Meyersdale to Frostburg and back. I got to ride through two tunnels - Big Savage and Borden. Also got to ride down and then back up 8 miles of Sand Patch. It was a very interesting ride through railroad history. Cold, though - fortunately the restaurant in Frostburg had a warm room and hot chili.
Vagel, those tunnel portals look very much like well-worn concrete.
Don |
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Vagel Keller
Crew Chief
USA
722 Posts |
Posted - 11/05/2011 : 10:08:25 PM
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Finally something worth writing about ... over the past few days I got the 3D backdrop hillsides shaped in behind the Buchanan Branch where it curves and passes over the PRR line and a base coat of earth color paint and red-brown for the red shale cuts put on. Here's a couple snap shots:
I'm borrowing from a technique published by Sam Swanson in a recent issue of MR. The "hillside" to the right is 1/2" thick insulating foam; the the left is 1" thick -- both tapered toward the top using a SurForm tool and rasp. To ease the stress on the foam when bending to the curvature of the hardboard backdrop, I curfed the backsides about 1/2 way through with a handsaw, which explains the notches you see in the picture below ... lesson learned: I should've waited until AFTER I shaped the hillsides before curfing.
Progress on scenery has been slow for a number of reasons, one of which is that I've been working through a long list of deferred tasks vis a vis rolling stock, such as adjusting coupler height and upgrading the trucks and wheelsets under my narrow gauge hopper fleet and test running the cars through a number of turnouts on the layout. The latest torture test was to shove a string of nine empty hoppers, a mix of C&BT Shops styrene EBT 3-bays and Gloor Craft wooden 2-bays with replacement wheelsets from NWSL, through the turnouts in the Richmond Furnace yard and up the grade to Cowans Back and back ... no derailments.
More soon, I hope.
Vagel |
Edited by - Vagel Keller on 11/06/2011 1:54:04 PM |
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AVRR-PA
Fireman
USA
4600 Posts |
Posted - 11/05/2011 : 10:13:05 PM
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Hi, Vagel --
Scenery looks good and I'm glad to hear that the rolling stock work paid off.
Have fun!
Don |
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Vagel Keller
Crew Chief
USA
722 Posts |
Posted - 11/05/2011 : 10:33:04 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by AVRR-PA
Scenery looks good and I'm glad to hear that the rolling stock work paid off.
Thanks, Don. I should've mentioned I carved the shale with a steel wire brush used for cleaning files. Vagel |
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bullbrauch
Engine Wiper
124 Posts |
Posted - 11/06/2011 : 12:33:07 AM
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| It's really looking good guys, can't wait to see more! |
Brandan
Living in Colorado,
home of the Rio Grande |
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Harsco
Fireman
USA
1101 Posts |
Posted - 11/06/2011 : 09:29:25 AM
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| Nice "in progress" shot, Vagel...that scene is going to be an eye-popper with the fall colors...please continue with the updates, I'd love to see the finished product. |
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MarkF
Engineer
USA
9272 Posts |
Posted - 11/06/2011 : 11:39:43 AM
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| Looks good Vagel! Progress is progress, whether it's scenery, or working on maintenance with rolling stock. |
Mark
See my homepage at http://home.comcast.net/~prrndiv/
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Vagel Keller
Crew Chief
USA
722 Posts |
Posted - 11/25/2011 : 5:57:54 PM
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Thanks for the encouraging words, folks. After a few weeks of incremental progress on the Buchanan Branch above and behind the blast furnace site there's finally enough change to justify an update with pictures.
Below is an overview taken day before yesterday. The butt-end of the long 3D foam backdrop that hides part of the hole for the empties-in/loads-out thru-the-backdrop cross over tracks has been shaped and painted, and the whole assembly has been attached to the hardboard backdrop. The foam base for the high fill and retaining wall that supports the narrow gauge ore unloading track is also done, and I built a mock-up of the shed that will cover the spot where the ore cars are dumped into the stockhouse.
Here's a closer perspective on the ore dump, with the stockhouse that will be served by the standard gauge PRR below and between it and the blast furnace. The idea came from the East Broad Tops's concrete fueling bunker in Rockhill, PA, which was built ca. 1930 and had concrete retaining walls holding back a high fill on either side of the car dump, which was located several feet above the top of the bunker, which, in turn was covered by a sheet metal roof on the same slope as the fill on either side. I'll add a sheet metal structure to surround the lower end of the skip hoist coming down from the blast furnace top to hide that gap in the fill and also to support the hoist house that will power the skip hoist.
Also, after much procrastination - which involved a significant funk - I finally got started on the scenic base for the embankment to either side of and between the two concrete arches that carry the Buchanan Branch over the PRR and the coke oven spur. Here's what things looked like Wednesday, when I had finished applying paper mache' veneer to the carved foam arches and retaining walls and painted them a concrete color mixture of medium gray, white, and yellow ochre:
I decided to try the Howard Zane method using rosin paper supported by a basket-weave grid of thin cardboard strips. The vertical strips are hot glued to the sub-roadbed and the horizontal strips are left loose.
Based on experience, I found the best method for applying the rosin paper to the grid was to hand tear small pieces of 2 to 3 inches square rather than to cut them with scissors; tearing leaves a "feathered" edge that isn't as pronounced as the cut edge. Take a large piece of rosin paper, crumple it up, then open it back up and tear your "patches" and soak them in water before laying them on the grid. As you lay each patch on the grid, brush a thick coat of diluted white glue (1:3 is what I went with) over the patch. As the covered area expands, I make frequent passes with the glue brush over the whole area, paying particular attention to the joints between the new area and the sub-roadbed and with adjacent scenic base. For larger areas, larger size pieces of rosin paper can be used, but I would still tear rather than cut the edges of whatever size patches you use.
Here's the result while still wet:
Finally, in the new additions department, no PRR museum, HO scale or otherwise, is complete without a L1s "Mikado," and based on the fact that nothing of the kind has been done in HO since United's brass imports many, many years ago I despaired of ever finding one without getting into a bidding war on Ebay ... that is until this Summer, when one popped up at my LHS ... beautiful custom paint and a good, smooth, quiet (by open frame motor standards) runner. I was finally able to get her DCC'd up (alas, without sound), and here she is riding the Chambersburg turntable:
No. 1376, in 1931 assigned to the Philadelphia Division, is not TOO far from home. |
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AVRR-PA
Fireman
USA
4600 Posts |
Posted - 11/26/2011 : 05:58:57 AM
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Hi, Vagel --
Great progress! It will be exciting to see the mill come together in its permanent home.
The concrete arches looks very much like the real thing.
Don |
Edited by - AVRR-PA on 11/26/2011 05:59:49 AM |
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bullbrauch
Engine Wiper
124 Posts |
Posted - 11/26/2011 : 7:44:39 PM
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| I love it when brass pops up in the LHS!!! Keep the updates coming and have fun. |
Brandan
Living in Colorado,
home of the Rio Grande |
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AVRR-PA
Fireman
USA
4600 Posts |
Posted - 11/30/2011 : 7:58:49 PM
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I had a nice visit with Vagel and John Polyak this morning. Vagel is making a lot of progress on the area around the blast furnace.
Our visits are pretty much social at this point - my "strong suit" areas (wood-working and large-caliber wiring) are pretty much done for the moment.
I'll crank back up again when it's time to add the fascia to Phase B.
Don
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Vagel Keller
Crew Chief
USA
722 Posts |
Posted - 11/30/2011 : 11:21:24 PM
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I do feel guilty not having projects lined up to keep my team's hands busy these days. Don brought his laptop with him today so I could give him an Intro-to-PowerPoint tutorial about how to create signs suitable for HO scale, so there was at least some team-building vis a' vis layout construction today. But Don is right; it's getting to be more and more of a bull session than work session these past few months.
Next week, though, Don is going to bring some water putty and we're going to experiment with using it as a veneer over a corrugated cardboard base representing a concrete retaining wall behind the stock house. The following two snapshots show the results of today's outcome, done while we BS'd:
I cut and glued wood 10 x 10's along the top of the cardboard to represent caps, then brush painted the whole thing with concrete color mixing acrylic Med. Gray, Titanium White, and Yellow Ochre on a pallet as I went. I like the result, except for the obvious showing of the corrugation, which I hope we can fix with a thin coat of water putty spread over the whole thing and then repainting. (As of 12/8/2001 after trying water putty on a section of the wall I've decided to leave it alone.)
Also, Don I think we might plan on a puff-ball tree foliage assembly line next week, too.
Vagel |
Edited by - Vagel Keller on 12/08/2011 5:20:56 PM |
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Vagel Keller
Crew Chief
USA
722 Posts |
Posted - 12/08/2011 : 5:17:58 PM
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We made a bunch of foliage puff balls yesterday using the pre-blackened batting I bought more than a year ago, and I spent some time putting them on the layout today.
Here's Don at work with a bottle of hairspray before dunking a puff ball into one of the foliage materials we used:
And some of the results:
The fall colors are Scenic Express foliage products, while the green is Scenic Express Spring Grass Flock and Turf mixed. I also dipped a bunch of toothpicks in Mike Chambers' No. 9 stain to tone down the bright wood color that sometimes shows through the puff balls.
The image below shows the difference between untreated and treated toothpicks. Note, also, that the Woodland Scenic foliage mats from which the existing puff balls were made differ from our home-made versions in that there are no black "branches" showing through the "leaves."
So when I replaced the untreated toothpicks with treated ones, I also intermingled the Woodland Scenics and home made puff balls to avoid a sharp demarkation in the viewer's eye. I think I pulled it off:
Here's a closer view, where you can see a few places where the toothpick tree trunks show up but in a subdued way that is more like a tree trunk than a freshly milled plank - they really stick out because I had to use a flash to take the picture - and you can see the obvious differences between the Woodland Scenics and the home made puff ball trees.
One last thing I did was to brush some 50:50 diluted white glue on the "hillside" in the open areas between and below the trees above the shale cut and blew some WS earth colored fine turf onto it to give some texture to the exposed painted base. Also, there's a seam between two pieces of foam hillside behind the flatcar and just forward of the rear truck, which I hid with some coarse turf - light green from WS and dark green from Scenic Express. I glued some coarse turf randomly in other areas of the shale, as well. |
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New Home for the Blacklog & Shade Gap Eastern
