Adding town areas,including streets, lighting etc.
Tracing paper planning for styrene town base, including placement of street lights
Continuation of Town Planning
Category Archives: Construction
Working on scenery
Starting to flesh out scenery in the Logging Area.
Adding TCS wow sound decoder to Bachmann Heavy Mtn
After receiving my package from Tonys Train exchange, with my DCC system and sound decoder etc, I started the installation in the Vanderbilt tender which has limited room in width to install a round speaker. So here are some shots following Erik from Tonys Train Exchange advice , using 2 new mini speakers.
Amazingly small TCS Wow sound decoder to install in tender
This decoder has many choices of bells, whistles, engine types, all manner of mechanical injectors, pumps, generators, brake squeal, air release as well as light control and great control of the running engine including very slow speed right out of the box.
Drilling sound holes on drill press
Holes need to be drilled through the tender bottom to allow the sound exit.
Holes drilled for sound and test fitting speaker enclosures
Checking the fit of the mini speaker enclosures.
Engine and Vandy tender, showing TCS sound decoder installed, before mounting speakers.
Showing the decoder installed in top of tender with strong double stick (Scotch exterior mounting tape)
2 Supersonic Mini speakers installed in Bachmann C&O Vandy tender bottom
The 2 mini speakers and their enclosures mounted and wired in the tender bottom.
Bachmann Heavy Mountain engine with Sound decoder installed, and the sound and control are really terrific.
Engine after install and really pleased with the result, the sound and control.
New batch of rocks
Rocks cast in Hydrocal, from many different molds from several manufacturers, and from my own mold shown in last post from a previous casting. Most will be used in the mountain area around the logging branch.
Batch of cast rocks and the molds on the right
Large casting from one of the molds
Large cast Rock
Hydrocal rock casting
I use a lot of different rock molds from various manufacturers, including Woodland Scenics, but I just came across a rock mold I made a while ago from a fine grained piece of rock found in the garden.
Latex rock mold
Nice detail in the rock and think the cast from it is going to make a nice outcropping in the river valley. Just needs some coloring and weathering plus some small evidence of vegetation.
Hydrocal Plaster cast made from latex rock mold
A new forest
Started creation of the forest for the logging area of my layout. The Scenic Express trees look pretty realistic, but I’m going to try some various methods for enlarging the trunk diameter on some trees, which I’ll show in a future post.
Scenic express trees for start of forest in logging area
Ready to start forest
Here are Scenic Express trees after soaking in matte medium, then they will get sprayed grey/tan, then more matte medium, followed by Noch leaf flake flock in varied greens.
Scenic Express trees
Logging Area Continued
Ongoing building out the mountain in the logging area
Logging Mountain area
Removable mountain
Starting to get whole logging area working, and I needed a mountainous area for logging but it should be removable because it would be over several fairly long track tunnel sections. I thought a base of foamcore would work, be light but strong enough with a structural frame above, making it more ridgid.
Foamcore base of mountain
Thinking about how I would do this, I decided to try the new shaper sheet material, but even though Woodland Scenics says it needs no under support, I wanted to visually rough in the mountain and thought a hot glued cardboard strip web would also give it more strength, since it would be movable. Actually I do not think it will have to be moved all that much because even with a derailment under the tunnel, you can pop up inside the mountain enough to retrieve a car or engine.
Web of cardboard strips to support shaper sheets for mountain
The Shaper Sheet material shown is interesting as it has a very heavy foil backing with a fabric adhered to the foil, that mechanically bonds with applied plaster. Woodland Scenics has a Plaster made for it which I believe is lightweight Hydrocal with a retarder to slow the hardening so there is time to work a soupy mix, and get it into all the crevices.
Shaper sheet showing Heavy foil and bonded material on opposite side
Here is the mountain partially covered with the Shaper Sheet material and matching plaster
Mountain partially covered with shaper sheets and shaper sheet plaster
Timber Tunnel and track access panel
Back to the timber tunnel project:
Tunnel with cover
Here is the tunnel and the piece of Woodland Scenics Shaper Sheet material. I thought I would try it to produce an removable access panel. The Material is a bendable heavy foil backing with a fabric (the white to the left of the tunnel) bonded to the foil. This is then coated with thinned plaster. Woodland Scenics sell a special plaster for this that has a longer working time, so you can coat the whole sheet before it starts to set up.
Removing Access cover
The plaster has not yet been added in these photos, but you can see that it still holds it’s shape pretty well, and will get much stiffer and stronger once the plaster and other scenic material has been applied.
Showing Track that is covered
Here you can see the track that the panel will cover, giving access to an area of a long tunnel in case of derailment. Edges of the panel will have bushes, small rock areas etc to hide the edges of the panel. I will enter a post in the near future when I complete this section with scenery, ballast and cliff faces.