Category Archives: Scenery

Logging Branch Timber Tunnel

Working on my logging branch and scenery.

Timber Tunnel on Logging Branch

More to follow about using new shaper sheets

Great Scale Model Train Show

Always a treat to attend the GSMTS, in Timonium Md at the Maryland state fair grounds. Held Sat and Sun, Oct 25th & 26th at the 3-1/2 acre Cow Palace. – http://gsmts.com

Cow Palace @ Timonium

Some of my favorite dealers to visit,

Crusader Rail services – Scenic Express – Tichy Train Group – http://tichytraingroup.com, Motrak

Models –

Part of Scenic Express Display

Part of Crusader Rail services Display

Sorry Greenway products was not there as they always have lots of interesting and unusual detail items, and good buys on things like Classic metal works vehicles

Cast Concrete arch bridge

Picking back up on a much earlier post, I finally started casting my concrete arch hydrocal bridge in two halves.

Wood & Sintra Mold

My waxed wood and sintra casting form

Wood & Sintra mold showing thickness

Pouring hydrocal with steel rod reinforcements

Pouring requires working quickly as Hydrocal sets fast

Leveling to the face of the form

Level as close to flat as possible

Exterior pieces of the form being removed

Exterior parts remove easily

Casting removed from the mold and flipped over, with only the individual small arch pieces to be removed. These pieces have a 3 degree slope for ease of getting them out of the piece. Still required a few knocks with a small hammer on each to remove!

Casting lightly sanded at this point

First half cast, but I’ll add some detailing with a file, forming casting joints and other details, then cast the other half and place them back to back, with a spacer which is typical for this type of bridge, really two identical arches, connected at the top.

Casting before final detailing

Pop-up access scenery sections

Having made 4 pop-up areas in my layout for access to track etc, I made foam plugs to sit on strips in the access holes to support the scenery, or town, or hill. The foam is light and sturdy.

Layout of town on section

Here is the first section that will hold part of the town on my layout, in this case using a large sheet of styrene for the roads that lap over the joints of the plug to conceal it once settled into
the pop-up area.

Adding Styrene for roads and sidewalk

Access area to be filled with section

I also put some large bolts that will be hidden inside removable buildings, that make it very easy to lift the section from the area.

Setting section in place

Test fitting the soon to be town

New Log Cars

New log cars near the fishin’ hole, needing logs
Also the scenery around the area getting ready for grass, trees, and ferns

Making Conifers

Recently purchased a new tool and materials from Micro Mark, to create evergreen trees.
The idea is to run a bead of glue down a soft iron wire, then spread Chinese bristles relatively evenly along the wire, and let set up long enough to have the bristles tacked to the wire but not so long to adhere the wire and bristles to the wax paper they suggest you place under the wire.
Then you put another bead of glue on top of the bristles centered on the wire and add a second wire on the glue and let set for a time.
At this point you are ready to use the tool to do the next step.

I found this worked OK, but was a little awkward, seeing that the wire was just loose, and spreading the bristles on the glued wire tended to move the wire, and make the whole process a bit tentative, messy, and hard to keep the fibers where you wanted them.

So I decided to build a simple jig shown below to hold the wire in position during the gluing process, which I think really made the system work much better and with more control.

I’ll continue the process on the next post

1st Scenery Post

Working with my new Noch Gras Master as well as Heki micro flor, and some silflor products all purchased from Scenic Express, I started in on what is my favorite part of model making, the Scenery and what I would call the general mood of the place.
The rocks (Woodland Scenics molds)

Tunnel scenery

were colored with washes of the thinned valspar paint that I talked about in the last post, as well as thinned India ink.
This particular scene will continue to be worked on, but I wanted to show how the 1st section appeared after the initial go round.
I especially like the texture lent by the Gras Master and the hanging vine look from the Heki Micro Flor.
Of course the rocks up front are still just raw Hydrocal.

vines at tunnel

Scenery Paint

A really good source for scenery paint is a service that both Lowes and Home Depot are offering. They sell samples of any of the hundreds of colors in their Valspar(Lowes) or Behr(Home Depot) lines at $3.00 ea. These samples are in handy screw top plastic containers of approx. 8 Oz.
That’s a whole lot more than typical railroad paint, or even the colors that are sold in the craft stores in 2oz containers.
I would not use these samples for painting anything that the much finer ground pigments of the true railroad colors would preserve detail, but for ground color, thinned for rock staining, etc and the fact that you can pick any one of the hundreds, or even thousands of chip colors displayed in the stores, and then they make the sample for you is just great.
Next post I’ll put up my first scenery using this paint and the Noch Gras Master

Sample paints

A Test Casting

Shown here is a test casting, in Hydrocal, of a section of the concrete arch bridge. I wanted to test how the plaster would exit the mold. It was difficult, even in this small section, and even though I had built the mold with a 3 degree taper for the pieces forming the small enclosed arches. The outside pieces of the mold all are removable and that was fine, so I decided to make each of the individual small arch pieces separately removable, so one by one they can be eased out of the whole piece. Hopefully I will have a photo of a completed full casting sometime in the near future. I was pleased by the look of the piece and anxious to see a whole side intact!

Concrete Arch Bridge Test Sectional casting

Bridge Building

Designing my layout, I wanted to incorporate different types of bridges (I suppose that’s a thought of many model railroaders), but I wanted to design some of my own bridges in a freelanced but believable way. There are a number of concrete arch bridges in my area of NW Philadelphia including the Walnut Lane Bridge and the Henry Avenue Bridge, both Highway spans but seemingly constructed very similar to many railroad bridges of the same type. I also referred to the terrific book “Bridge and Trestle Handbook” by Paul Mallery to keep me building a basically sound engineered structure.

The Drawing shows my design for a concrete arch bridge to span a gorge that will be right in the front of my layout.
The photo shows the form I built to cast the bridge (actually half the bridge) as two castings back to back will form the bridge.
The form is made from Wood and sintra.

Concrete Arch Bridge Drawing

Arch Bridge casting mold