I see Sculptamold on "th'm thar hills"

Yep - the last two nights have involved splattering scultpamold on the layout. What was pink, is by-in-large no longer pink as this photo attests.

There are a few patches of pink styrofoam left, notably around the joint for the removable hill top over the tunnel, and along the edges of the layout. The edges will get a coat of paint soon, and the tunnel will need a little more work later tonight.

I laid down two batches of sculptamold, one colored brown for the flatter, dirt areas of the layout an another tinted gray for the rockier spots. Some of the brown areas have even had a little dry brushing, which has produced a pleasant color variation. The rocky areas have some initial rocks cut into them, but more needs to be done as the sculptamold sets up a little more.

In addition, as I mentioned before, the last of the buildings got a primer coat, so here is the castle, sort of in place.

Its stonework is quite a bit lighter than that of the surrounding rock, but hopefully a little painting to both the rocks and the castle will improve things.

More important will be the fascia to frame the layout. I cut those six pieces over the weekend, and they have a coat of black paint. I like the effect of black fascia to frame the layout. Right now, the front pieces have not been trimmed to match the terrain, and the rear pieces that will ultimately support the backdrop need a little bit of adjustment, but I am waiting for them to dry first.

I did a couple of other things to move the layout forward as well. I got a deal on bump chenille. I ended up with enough for 3840 small pine trees for about $28. As a test, I prepped 8 that will probably find homes on the layout. They need a little final trimming, but I think that they will look good. Each one represents about a 60' tree, with a diameter of 24'. Small trees in T will be a challenge.

I'm also looking at some skewered furnace filter trees, and have prepped 1300 skewers by staining the trunks brown. They still need some grey dry brushing, and then I have a box of furnace filter squares. Right now I have skewers that are about 2.5", 4" and 8" in the mix. Many of these will be for my home layout in N and not this layout, but I will probably make a few smaller ones for the T layout.

So for those that are counting, I now have 5140+ trees in progress for the current and future layout. Definite progress. And I am glad that I have almost finished the scultamold, as I will soon have to go back to clean up the water where the sculptamold got a little wild. 

Per Shapeways, the concrete viaduct is printed and in packing. The other items have yet to go into printing though. I'm eager to see the bridges in my hands and installed on the layout. I've also made a bit of progress on the pedestrian overpass of the road. Soon, it will be time to worry about the harbor, and the station platform. But in the meantime, I am also eagerly awaiting delivery of scenic cement - which still has not arrived even though I ordered it more than 3 weeks ago. 

Progress - creeping along

Well I have been busy work out bridge designs. There are two large viaducts on the layout as I mentioned before. One based on the famous Glenfinnan Viaduct, which turned out to be simpler, as it is simply concrete. It is composed of two modules - a curved module and an end module. There are 7 curved pieces plus the two ends. Here is the completed CAD model.

I've got this bridge ordered. I'm printing it in PLA - while it will show layering, I am hoping that this will ultimately have the affect of looking like layers of concrete. We will see. Worst case, I can print it in a higher resolution, finer layer material. But it should be here for the show.

The second big viaduct is based more on the Ribblehead Viaduct. This is a stone arch viaduct, and in it, I have modeled the individual stones in the viaduct. It took a long time to get them all in in a reasonable pattern. The bridge has three modules, an end module, a straight module and a curved module. A total of 8 parts make up the bridge, but I was able to order it built in two halves.

You can see the detail down to the individual stones better in this view.

In a moment of minor insanity, I did do things to randomly vary the size and spacing of the individual stones, although I did take care to try to mimic the patterns on the existing bridges. These stone should each print, and some of them have different 3D bulges. You may not be able to see them, but I know that they are there. Of course, this means a finer, high quality printing process using Frosted Ultra-detail Acrylic. Each layer should be about 20 mil thick.

On the actual viaduct, there are several (copper) plates at various locations. Some are round, others rectangular. But they are small - I designed them at about 2-4mm so that they were both printable and visible on the bridge. I modeled these as a set of details, also printed in frosted ultra-detail plastic. Each has a small diameter rod, which I should be able to drill a hole for and mount on the bridge after they are painted.

Thinking about it now, they are almost certainly too large - but they will be very small on this bridge. so even if they are out of scale, the effect should be good.

That leaves one bridge to carry pedestrians across the main road - and hide the top of a mirror - and the wharf area to design for printing. Unfortunately, those are not done yet, and would not likely be printed and delivered in time for the train show. They are still on the to do list, but now I am looking at what I can get done before the train show. Since the wharf is not done, I cannot pour the water prior to the train show, although I may apply a gloss medium to the area, just as a temporary measure. Instead, I am going to focus on other scenery elements. The road bed is all painted, and I continue to work on the bottom detail/coloring of the water. Sculptamold is next.

More Layout Progress

Well, since last time, I have been able to do a little more carving of the foam to remove a few trouble spots, followed by some sanding and finally a good vacuum. Before I put down the sculptamold, I removed all the track and buildings, and decided to do a little painting of some areas that would likely not be completely covered with sculptamold, including the tunnel and the bottom of the loch.

I painted the tunnel black with acrylic paint, including the mating surfaces. The top of the mountain is designed to be removable in case I needed to access the track. I went ahead and brushed the paint out along the roadbed, even though this too will be painted again later.

The loch I painted a dark blue - but it doesn't look dark enough to my eye for the deep water I wanted to show. Easy enough to fix with more paint, but at least there is an initial coat on it. I really thought I had picked a dark enough blue paint, as the chip was even darker than I thought it should be - but clearly the results are not what I wanted. However, at least there is now an initial coat of paint down, and the sculptamold can go in along the banks even while I color the water more to my liking.

Next up on the list is the sculptamold, and to pain the track sub roadbed. Since the ballast is grey, the sub roadbed will also be grey so that anything that shows through will still look like ballast. In addition, CAD work is proceeding on the bridges. I started with the bridge over the road. I picked a bridge with some character from Glasgow.

Searching online, I found this bridge in Glasgow. The deck girder bridge is surrounded by a blue and white truss (resembling the Scottish flag), which I thought was near perfect for the scene. In my case, the bridge is straight at one end, but then begins to curve. Since the curve isn't much, I built the bridge as a single skewed section. Here is my creation:

The skew is not very apparent from this view, but from above, you can see it, even though it is only a few 16th of an inch.

I also got a start on the design for the harbor, with its docks and boardwalk, which I will show in a later post. But at the moment, my CAD time is being spent on the two large viaducts. After laying both out carefully, I was able to model them with a total of six modular pieces, 3 ends (one of which is used on both ends), 2 curved sections, and a straight section. One is going to be a stone arch bridge similar to Ribblehead on the Carlise and Settle line, the other is a concrete bridge based on the Glenfinnan Viaduct famously seen in the Harry Potter films.

Ribblehead Viaduct

Glenfinnan Viaduct

Glenfinnan Viaduct in Harry Potter

I haven't decided if I will include the flying car or not yet. But it is a thought. The Glenfinnan Viaduct will be on the left side of the layout (as seen from the front). I am hoping that the resulting scene will resemble this view of Glenfinnan.

In my case, the loch will pass under the viaduct, but I love this view. The bridge modules are still being worked on, but here is a shot of my progress on the straight section needed for the Ribblehead inspired viaduct on the front of the layout.

A lot of effort with the stone work, but I hope it will be worth it in the end. Ultimately, several of these projects will also make their ways to ModelWorks. Anyways, back at it, with the train show only three weeks out, there is a lot still to do...

A Project for 2018...

Well, no new progress in the last two months on my layout, but I have been making progress on a side project, a layout for the Central Model Railway and Historical Society. The received a donation of a T gauge starter set, a couple of years ago, and it was handed to me last year to see what I could do with it. I have been following T for years, and have a bunch of my own, that I have not quite put into use yet. It took a while, but eventually I settled on a small simple display loop as the layout will be used to show T scale to the public. Since much of the available equipment is either Japanese or British prototypes, I decided to set the layout in Scotland. The track plan is below.

The resulting loop is simple, but represents in (1:480) about a half scale mile. Not bad for a layout with a 24" by 24" foot print, with 3 square feet of scenic area (and another half of a square foot for the controls in the upper left). The plan includes two major viaducts, one in stone, one in concrete and a short tunnel.

One of the keys I have learned over the years is that the smaller the trains, the more important a solid roadbed is to operation. Small irregularities that are tolerable in HO, will lead to derailments in N or Z, let alone T. So, construction started with a lightweight, but stiff frame with adjustable feet. I plan to simply place the layout on another table for viewing.

Scenery followed, build up with foam layers, with masonite subroadbed under the tracks. Add a few buildings, obtained from Shapeways or from TGauge.co.uk, and it is starting to come together. All of the Shapeways buildings have been cleaned and primed in grey, while the buildings from TGauge are laser cut plywood, that I assembled with CA. It is quite amazing to put together kits in this scale. The results can be seen below.

The masonite in the bottom will become the base for a loch, complete with a small village and harbor on the shore. The viaducts still need to be designed and built, and a third bridge will cross the road in the town by the station. An old castle even overlooks the scene. You can also see part of a British HST set positioned near the station.

Next up is a sculptamold layer to cover the foam, as well as ground cover. I am also planning a small pedestrian bridge in front of the backdrop to connect the station and the town gate (across the main road). Under this bridge would be a mirror. The train crosses the road on a bridge - which I need to fabricate. In addition, there are the two large viaducts, and the waterfront and harbor area to fabricate. Finally, there are the tunnel portals. Right now, the track just disappears into the foam above, and a portal will make this look much better. Those have already been drawn up.

Yes, those are actually bricks in T scale. Once I get the test prints, these will be coming to ModelWorks. I've also got the test print of the station I previously designed in T, but I still need to clean it, prime it, paint it and assemble it - complete with interior detail!

Yes, I may have gone off the T-end. Look for updates to come.