Getting Ready for the Final Push

I did not get much more accomplished last night, but I did spend a bit of time trimming the last fascia board, painting the backdrop sky blue, and doing a bit of detail painting on some of the other layout elements. Here are some pictures. First up is the tunnel portals. They needed a light wash to bring out the brickwork, and some of the concrete to be painted. Then some weathering. All of which I did with acryllic paints.

You can see in the picture, that I need to hit a little more of the concrete edge on the left and at the bottom right. And, since someone asked - just how big these are, here is the tunnel portal with a dime in front...

Yep, the dime does not even pass through the portal.

The other tunnel portal was also done, although from its location it is much harder to see.

Next up was the bridge over the road.

It's okay, I feel like it is quite weather beaten, but it captures the effect I was after. I have decided not to completely install it, as I still need to do the road scenery, but I will come in with a little brown paint to cover up the pink foam exposed on the left. I may also try to touch up the paint a little with a proper microbrush. I tried doing it with a small paint brush last night, and don't think the dried result is as good as I want. Behind this bridge will ultimately go the pedestrian overpass, with a mirror hidden underneath.

I also did some washes on the concrete bridge to bring out the concrete color variations a little. Here is where the layered effects of 3D printing can work in my favor, as they do lead to patterns that can mimic the effects of poured concrete.

I like the effect here. Looking at the pictures, there is still a lot of weathering that this bridge should see, but this isn't bad for a start. Like the other bridges, I am going to defer final installation until after the show. The backdrop is simply a piece of polystyrene sheet. Previously, I have always picked sky blue colors that ended up looking too blue. this time, I picked a sky blue color and then went one shade lighter. I'll have to see it in better light - but maybe not blue enough?

A good pit of the painting effort has gone to the final major bridge. The light tan coat of paint over the grey primer came out great. A really nice stone effect.

I have cleaned out the alignment holes between the sections, and have now also painted the details. They appear to be copper plated, or at least they have an aged copper appearance, so I mixed up some green acrylic paint to a suitable color, and painted all the details on the spurs. The details I printed appear at different positions on the sides of the viaduct, and generally, there are drainpipes that run down the center of the piers. For these I am going to use small pieces of polystyrene square stock. Again, here is a dime alongside the detail parts.

I am quite pleased with how this bridge is coming out. So, that is the progress I made last night. I did a little more painting of the stone bridge this morning, adding a red brick color to the bricks exposed on the undersides of the archways. Tonight, I need to finish the assembly of the stone bridge by installing the alignment pins and gluing the two halves together, and then fit it to the layout. I will probably defer installing the details until perhaps the show. After that, I will temporarily fix the track down for the show, finish a little bit of wiring, and install the backdrop and fascia.