Monday, December 17, 2012

The Flying Plank gets color and texture!

Welcome back to the Flying Plank RR. P1010908 

Recently I removed all the track, most of the wiring, and painted the whole thing.  The plaster casting material I used dried with a mesh texture, so the first coat of paint applied was mixed with plaster dust to make a thick brown paste.  This smoothed out most of the grid texture and also provided the base color for parts of the landscape.  For the rest I picked up a quart of sandy beige on the discount rack at Walmart and coated everything heavily with that.  Then while the beige was still drying I took a spray-can of brown primer and randomly sprayed it all over it.  This resulted in a nice uneven range of colors from streaks of beige to some large patches of chocolate brown.  The peak of the volcano I simply wetted with a spray bottle and sprinkled more plaster powder over it like a snowstorm.  As the whole mish-mash dried cracks formed here and there where the “sandstone” shows thru.  I also took the opportunity to eliminate all the Atlas snap-track in preparation to lay down Kato unitrack throughout.

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As you see, the left end of the layout will be a rocky gully running through hills.  The outer (lower) loop is complete and running.  So I grabbed some rocks from the driveway and hot glued them in as giant boulders.  I then spread around a bag of ballast and a bag of tan rocks.  Basically I dumped them into the canyon and then used a paintbrush to clear the track and mound it up.  Once the upper loop is running it will get the same treatment.

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Also visible in a couple places is the patch of green turf spread out on one of the hills.  Instead of bothering to glue it down I just shook it out up there to see how it looks.  Its pretty bright, so maybe it needs to be mixed into some darker green turf. I will suck it up with the little shop vac and reuse it elsewhere.  I mean to spread glue all around the trees and then sprinkle a mixed up batch of various green turf varieties.

This side of the layout is intended to represent a Japanese suburban train stop.  The outer loop of track is setup to accommodate a bullet train set.  Someday over the rainbow when I can afford one, I hope to be able to park it on the siding that runs through the inner side of the passenger station.

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Here is the Small town on the other side.  This provides an opportunity for me to use up the old buildings I had in the box of random n-scale junk.  I’m thinking an old industrial town that has seen better years.  The bank building has seen better days, as has the coal elevator.  But they could afford a modern fire truck at least.  And somebody in town is loaded, as you can see their Lamborghini parked behind the warehouse.  =)

 

The cars on the layout will all be Micro-Machines.  Maybe they are not perfectly to scale, but they are fun!

 

 

P1010907[4]When this whole thing is done, I may well have the first inter-continental, time-traveling railroad! 

Saturday, December 1, 2012

Luke Got Hitched

My Buddy Luke from work got hitched on Nov 3 2012.  Congrats!

Rawlings Gang-1