Builder's Railroad Project: in the Beginning...

[Sanjac]

I'm still reading and greatly enjoying this. Totally gob-smacked; can't think of clever things to say.

[Builder 2010]

Some odds and ends

It's good to be gob-smacked. Glad you're paying attention.

Back to the topic. I got all the grass done and started building a little fishing pier that will jut out into the pond. I'm also thinking about ways of crafting some miniature cattails. I know that Scenic Express has them, but I wanted to have them before doing the resin work.

Putting on that W-S long grass is finicky work, but the results are pretty nice. It's a finer fiber than using sisal rope fibers, but those might work well for the cattails. Like everything else on this layout, I finally got good at it when I was near the end.



I drew the platform up SketchUp yesterday to see how I wanted to build it.



I kind of slapped it together out of various styrene strips. The frame is s strips plus 6, 3/16" sq. legs. It's just sitting there. To install I'll probably inset it into holes in the scenery.



To hold the planks in position for gluing, I spaced them onto some reversed masking tap and then turned the frame upside down with some weight on it, and applied solvent cement with the Touch-n-Flow applicator. I didn't spend too much time getting it perfect since this is supposed to be a very crude little platform.



Here's the assembled platform again sitting by the "water".



I used my scratch brush to rough up the styrene's surface to make it more "wood" like. I would have liked to have used real strip wood for this, but didn't have any and didn't have a good local source for it. Again, I didn't want to wait for on-line delivery. I attempt to do a faux wood paint job on it. This is now right in the critical path of getting the resin poured since all the other water features are fully cured and ready to go. I suspect that I'll sink the platform another 1/8" to 3/16" to bring it closer to the water.

[Builder 2010]

Pond has Water

I finished and installed the fishing dock today and then got the first layer of polyester bar-top coating.

To color it so it looks like aged wood, I first covered it with Tamiya Surface Primer. I'm really learning to like this stuff since it covers great and dries fast. It's also not alcohol based so successive coats of Tamiya color coats don't dissolve it. I then used a thinned Tamiya Dark Iron brown. This was after I had scratched the surface to give it some "wood grain". I left two planks unpainted which I then painted with some wood tan to show a couple of recently fixed planks. I painted on some simulated knots, but I realize now that I didn't make a nail holes. I can go back and do that if I want. I'm not sure I want to.



I trimmed the back two legs so it fit over the land area, shorted the other four legs a bit since it was sitting pretty high and then glued it down to the base with some W-S Scenic Glue. To hold it down till it dried, I added some handy weight.



When this set up I mixed the polyester. It's a "equal Part A/equal Part B" affair, plus I added three drops of Tamiya Olive Drab to give the water a bit of green tint. I poured the first amount in the center, but it didn't appear to be enough to cover the area. So I mixed up another small batch and poured it around the edges. It all blends together and flows like lava, eventually getting into all the spaces. I used a hot air gun to try and drive out the bubbles, but wasn't completely successful in this.



Here's the full pour in place and setting up.



The water is not dead flat! The plaster bottom is a bit high in the center. Tomorrow, when this sets up, I will make another pour and get it all leveled out. I didn't do a good enough job of cleaning the surface before pouring since some of the "Bubble" may actually be particles of ground cover, etc.

[Builder 2010]

Water... freaking Water!

Today was a milestone... of sorts since I was able to get "water" into the stream bed. There's still more to do.

I first took some fine emery stick and wet-sanded the pond surface to get rid of the bubbles and dust that was there since I hadn't cleaned the surface well enough. I then mixed another batch of the Park's product and added a new layer. It almost eliminated the high spot, and caused resin to extend well beyond the saw grass in a couple of spots. I'm going to re-landscape those spots after all is cured hard. There's still a bit of distortion where that high spot is. I may or may not go with one more coat to finally level it off. My grandson noted that high spot and I felt that the resin would have buried it long before now. I did get out all the bubbles and there's no more dirt in the pour.



I then mixed up a batch using some very old Envirotex from about the late 1980s. It will find out if it still cures. The two liquids looked the same as the Park's material so I'm optimistic. I just checked and it is curing.

To do the stream run I first brushed resin into the waterfalls and wetted the stream bed. The resin has a very high surface tension so it helps to pre-wet flow areas. I added the Tamiya O.D. paint to tint the water a bit of algae green. I may have overdid this effect a bit since as a mountain stream it probably would have been completely clear... oh well.



I didn't wait for this to set up, but immediately went ahead and mixed more and poured it from the top and let gravity do its work. It move like molasses or maybe like thick lava. It doesn't stop, but just creeps along.



I didn't like how the flow was not going over that rock in the upper mid-stream and decided that having a waterfall off that rock was completely unrealistic. The water wasn't going up and over that rock so there wouldn't be a falls there. I removed it. I added some more downstream to get it moving along.



As more material filled the void, I found some low spots that I thought were no longer there. I plugged these with some modeling clay to stanch the flow and will landscape the area after the resin cures.

[Builder 2010]

Water... freaking Water! Part 2

Continuing from the previous set, here were some more leaks that needed plugging.



Then the material started getting to the lower reservoirs, but I also added more there too.



And after adding even more resin, it finally found its way out of the outlet. I put a cup on the floor below to catch the drips as they worked their way out of the system.



After all this cures, I have more work to do. I have to highlight the falls with white paint mixed with W-S water effects and make some white water foam using the above and some CA filler beads. I will also add stream lines and more turbulence with more water effects. By this time next week, the stream should be done and I'll clean up the landscaping and the floor (again!).

[Ken_NJ]

Must have been interesting to watch the flow of something as thick as molasses. Faster than watching grass grow! You didn't mention anything about the white stuff on the pond surface. Love the look of the water!

[Builder 2010]

The "white stuff" is the reflection of the florescent lights overhead. It's hard to find an angle that showed the high spot without showing the lights.

[Ken_NJ]

LOL OK, did not think it would be a reflection. It all looks great!

[Builder 2010]

Bought some more Enviro-tex resin today. The 25 year-old stuff was Ultra-glo and it still worked great. It was cured solid this afternoon. I added the water effects which included three different concoctions: plain W-S Water Effects, Water Effects plus some Vallejo white acrylic paint, and then these two plus some micro-balloons filling agent to bulk it up. The plain Water Effects was used to give flow lines around the various obstacles. The white/Water Effects mix was used to add white to the turbulent areas and to the falls themselves, and the bulked up stuff used to create 3D foam at strategic locations. In the first instance, I wish I would have made that falls extend from the top to the bottom. I think it's too late to make that change.



This should be so white when it all cures. We'll see. I also built a little dam with Water Effects in case I want to make another pour of the resin to fill the reservoir more completely. I may need to add some gloss resin to the falls themselves to make them shinier. Water is not matte finished.



I'm also not too happy about the flow lines from the final rock in the flow. You really shouldn't brush the stuff on since it doesn't give the wavy feel that water would do. It gives the tops, but can't resolve the troughs. You can see in the following pic the areas that I added more plaster to fill the divots left behind by the modeling clay dams.



This plaster was a combination of Gypsolite and Hydrocal. I did this to hopefully accelerate the setting time. We'll see. I used this mixture to also revise the banks of the pond so I can re-pour the resin to finally flatten out that high spot without extending the "wet grass" even further.



For this next pour I'll probably leave it clear since there's already enough green in the water. Any more algae there and I'd have to put in an aerator.

Tomorrow, I'll take another look at all of it and see if there's anything else I can do. If not, I'll paint the bare areas of the foreground and add ground cover, thus finishing up this part of the project. I'm going to add more color to the area where the mine's going since I don't know when I'm going to build that and don't want to look at bare plaster.

[Builder 2010]

Montjuic Complete Part A

This is going to be a monster post since I took a lot of final pics today, probably 3 posts.

Well... the mountain's as done as it's going to get. I still have to put in trees, bushes, etc., but it can hold its own now.

Yesterday, I added the last bit of Envirotex on the deep pond and figured a way to get a little more motion in the stream itself by adding setting resin that held a shape (sort of) so it made a more animated and more interesting to look at. This cured hard and today, I went back and put ground cover all all the bare areas, redid the ballasting where it was damaged, ground-covered that little back section on the elevated track—which required me to come up in the open space I left in that rear section—and painted those last bits of rock along the stream bed and where the mine's going to be. Here's a set of pics I took tonight after putting everything away and sweeping the floor.









Here's a few other views. I do think I'm going to try to write an article on this build.

[Builder 2010]

Montjuic Complete Part B









On the weekend I worked re-drawing the Night Hawks cafe that I'm going to build for the town. I've spoken about this a couple of years ago, and I bringing it up again since I lost most of the building in SketchUp since I really didn't know what I was doing. I've since learned an important point about SketchUp (SU). Unlike Illustrator, Corel Draw or other typical 2D drawing program where you actually draw on different layers to separate parts of the drawings and determine what part of the image lies over what, in SU you do all of the drawing on Layer 0. Layer 0 contains all the math and calculations necessary to create a 3D image. Then.... after you've drawn whatever you're going to draw and you want to be able to show it or hide it as you're working, you then put it onto it's own layer. But, you never ever do any work on that object on any other layer than Layer 0. So I re-drew the entire project with this new-found learning and got a very stable project.

To refresh your memories, this building was a set of plans for a corner Victoria bar that was in a mid-50s Model Railroader magazine. I always wanted to build it even as a kid when my uncle gave he all his MRR mags. It has a mansard roof, gables and a neat turret. But I wanted to change it to try and duplicate Edward Hopper's American Masterpiece, "Night Hawks" which resides in the Art Institute of Chicago. It's one of my favorite paintings and he's one of my favorite artists.

[Builder 2010]

Montjuic Complete Part C

While the drawing was created in SU, the renderings you see here are created in Podium, a SU add-in that not only does photo-realistic rendering of SU drawings, but has an extensive library of its own of 3D ready objects and textures. The chrome on the coffee urns was generated in SU and if you could get close enough, you'd see the whole room reflected in those appliances. Also see the reflections generated on the window glass, also a Podium texture.



Hopper's painting warped perspective. While the street corner appears normal, the inside of the building is sort of triangular so he could visualize the couple sitting over their coffee. Those folks are supposedly Hopper and his wife, and I'll have to sculpt the people myself. The room appeared to lit by then-new florescent lights so blue white LEDs will work well. I have created the missing art work for the signage and will make my own decals for it. The building in the painting looks like one floor which is strange since the street appears to have typical city brick store fronts.



This building will queue up behind the 2nd distillery for Heaven Hill, the Plastruct chemical plant, the engine house, and the under-construction Rick house. In other words, G_d willing I'll be building it in 2017 sometime. The nice thing about SU is I can do all the design and engineering work on a building before buying or cutting anything. If it can't fit together in SU, it ain't gonna get together in the shop either.

While waiting for River Leaf to cut the 2nd Bernheim distillery, I'm going to start planting some bushes and layout the parts for the chemical plant to decide on where it will go on the layout.

[Builder 2010]

A few Items before the Holiday

It's been four and half years since I started building the railroad. It's amazing that so much time has elapsed as it is amazing that many of you have been following the whole deal. So yesterday I did a quick before and after comparison shot. This was from the end of December 2012.



And here it is as of yesterday December, 23, 2016



There's about two more years of work and about 6 more structures before I can comfortably say it's a finished model railroad that would be worthy of being photographed for the model railroading magazines.

I explained something to my wife the other day; I was trying to help her understand just what drives my obsession with building the layout. What she can't realize is when I was building my 13 X 4' O'gauge railroad when I was 13 in 1958, in my mind I was building what I now have. In other words, I am realizing a dream I've had for most of my life and was unable to realize until I was old enough, had enough discretionary income, and the time to make it happen. I would pour over my 1950s Model Railroading magazines and Lionel catalogs and imagine having that in my basement. It took another 42 years for it to start materializing. But it wasn't until we moved to Louisville, in this house with its basement and being fully retired that this model railroad had a chance of being created.

Our daughter treated my wife and I to a holiday lunch at one of Louisville's many up-and-coming restaurants, Butchertown Grocery, so we didn't get home until after three and I didn't get too much work time, but what time I had I made good use of it.

I first had to vertically realign the inner loop track on the gate's hinge side where it meets the new switch on the fixed platform. I woke thinking of all the ways to do this since the gate track needed to rise about a 1/16". I was thinking about relieving the risers underneath to jack the gate side's sub-roadbed OSB a bit, but worried that this might be harder than usual since it's now locked in place with more structure and plaster. I thought about lowering the fixed side using the same method, but again, all that plaster would make it difficult. Then I chose "Achem's Razor" The simplest solution was to use a putty knife to open a space between the Flexibed and the OSB and slip in two piece of cardboard that raised the track the correct amount. Didn't even need any glue. Problem solved. After I did this I decided to run the trains and make a movie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEL3T_16G18

I also wanted to finally get my favorite steam engine of all time running, my 3rd Rail Pennsy T-1 Demonstrator which was having some troubles. First I installed a new BCR to replace the now-discharged battery. I put it on the outer loop and it kept derailing as it crossed that same gate junction as I had just fixed on the inner loop. At first I thought the lead truck was too light and wasn't tracking properly so I stuck a self-adhesive 1/2 oz. weight on its bottom. This didn't work completely. It took the truck off the engine to see if the attachment bar was bent since it seemed to be tilted, but it was okay. Then I noticed that this track was also just a little bit high, about 1/2 the amount of the inner loop, so I didn't waste a moment, got the putty knife and inserted just one piece of cardboard. The truck then tracked perfectly, which led to the final problem. The tender was uncoupling from the baggage car as it was leaving the far portal. The coupler alignment was a bit off, but not easy to fix. What solved this problem was a couple of strategically placed orthodontic rubber bands (left over from my kid's braces). As you'll see in the movie, this engine now ran great and is back in the stable after a long stint as a shelf queen. I'll just have to remember to remove the bands when I want to couple up the Santa Fe F-3s



So this is the last post until after New Years (unless I answer posts on the iPhone) so here's wishing all y'all a Merry Christmas; Happy Hanukkah; and happy, healthy, safe and wonderful New Year.

[Ken_NJ]

Absolutely love following along on this project! The before and after is amazing on what you have accomplished. I showed my recently new girlfriend some of your posts and she asked what is it about men and miniatures? She enjoys seeing me with my scale model boats and encourages my work. Didn't really have an answer, just that we like to build things. It engages our mind and keeps creativity moving along. Keep up the good work Myles and happy holidays to all.

[jgbackes]

I don't visit as often as I used to. Today I spent about an hour catching up. Your work is just amazing. I only wish I had the time and talent to complete such a project. Please continue to post!

jeff