Project Segway - T-gauge Highway Part 2

Well, the 2020 Central Train Show has come and gone. The attendance was similar to 2019 (good) and the general word from the vendors was that sales were also good. So, the show was a big success.

We ran almost the whole weekend on a single engine - changing over to a short freight towards the end led by a class 67. I have a video to get edited and posted, so when I do that I will add it to the blog.

The major addition in 2020 was the highway through the module, as seen above. The road is printed in color complete with markings on paper and laminated to first a 0.005" thick piece of styrene. To the center of the road I laminated a 0.010"x0.020" strip of styrene, and then laminated the whole thing to a 0.010" styrene strip that was cut about 1/4" wider to 1/8" wider for sidewalks. The result gave the road a subtle crown effect. Maybe too subtle , but I know it is there.

Where the sidewalks were, I laminated another piece of 0.010" styrene as a sidewalk - prepainted in a concrete color and scribed with expansion joints. A little bit of chalk weathering, and the whole things was done and I laminated it onto the layout.

Up to this point, I had followed the steps used in MR on the Canadian Canyons Layout to model Canada Highway 1. Here I messed up. I should have sprayed the road with dullcoat to seal it before mounting. I didn't. I also should have done a better job of smoothing the surface before mounting the road. As a result, I will have to do some rework on the road to eliminate a few bumps, and to fill a few extreme dips that the road and surface exposed. In T, these are all too easy to create. I do expect to be able to spray the road with dullcoat after I am done so that the scenery nearby does not ruin the road.

I will also need to adjust the pedestrian bridge. It is about an eight of an inch too far to the right in the photo above. After that, the buildings need chimneys, doors and window painted. Then, I will need to add a few driveways and little bit of road by the station and the garden houses at track level.

Cameron Turner

Project Segway - A T-gauge Highway

The second major project for this year's show is the completion of the main road. The road defines the village in the layout, and needs to be installed so that I can install a major pedestrian bridge.

It turned out to be a major bit ow work to figure out a road shape that worked, but with a lot of trial and error, I came up with one.

Road Template.

Once I had a general shape that worked, I had to turn it into a CAD drawing. And then I had to turn that drawing into artwork that could be printed. All this took a number of iterations for shape, line patterns, line weight and color. And then, there is the double and triple checks that it fits as drawn. But here is the result.

Road Artwork.

There is a little bit more to do with some of the traffic control lines needing to be added. However, with the template correct, it is time to cut the underlayment. Directly under the paper road surface will be a 0.005" thick piece of styrene. I plan to cut another thin 0.005" strip to run down the middle of the road to provide a slight crown to the road. Under this, will be a 0.010" piece of styrene that will support the road and the sidewalks (drawn in purple above). Some of the sidewalks are 10 scale feet wide, others are 5 scale feet wide. The sidewalks will be cut from additional pieces of 0.015" styrene representing. When placed along side the road, there will be about a 0.010" sidewalk height (4.5 scale inches). This is small, but I hope it will be noticeable. 

Cutting the styrene templates. On the right is the paper template, on the left is the 0.005" styrene foundation.

This is a project in progress as of this writing, but we will see if I can have it installed in time for the show. I'll finish describing my installation process in the next post on the highway construction after the show. 

Cameron Turner

Detailed Trees in T

Yes, I may be crazy. I've been thinking a lot about trees for the little layout, As part of that, I have been looking at different ways of making trees and seeing how well they work in T. Most recently, I have been working on some deciduous trees that would stand up to foreground scrutiny. The basic idea is to use stranded wire, in this case 18 gauge speaker wire as the basis for the trunk and branches. In my case, I picked up a roll of 18 gauge stranded wire which has 10 strands of 28 gauge wire. Lengths of this wire, with the insulation removed were cut and used to form tree-like structures.

The process was simple enough. I took a stiff piece of flower wire, about 3/4" long, and inserted into the stranded wire for the trunk. The flower wire extends past the bottom of the trunk to provide an anchor into the scenery. The speaker wire is twisted, and as you go up the tree, you can form smaller limbs and branches from smaller groups of wire twisted together, until yo get to individual strands. There is no particular pattern, just trying to get something that is tree like. A few drops of super glue, strategically located will hold everything together. A few branches may also need to be clipped to length as the tree takes its final form.

Some of the trees use one length of wire strands, others use two or more bunches. The lengths do not need to be identical, but probably need to be close to look right.

After the super glue has set, I use a little bit of caulk adhesive for projects to fill in the trunk and eliminate the stranded look. The key is that whatever material is used, should be paint friendly. At this point, you have a bunch of shiny metal trees. Next up is to paint the trunks.

I first painted the trees with a brownish color, and then followed up with a dark grey. The exact colors don't matter, as long as the look like trees. Most trees have much more of a greyish he to the trunk, but most also have some dark brown or black features. The key with the second grey coat is that this coat focuses more on the trunk, and does not need to cover everything. I follow those paint coats up with a little bit of another grey acrylic paint, brushed onto the trunk and major branches. I used a lighter grey paint, but again, the exact color is up to you, and again, the goal is not full coverage, just adding some color.

This is the result. The trees have some texture due to the colors used int he paint. For a dead tree, or a leafless tree, this is a decent model. Most of the first set of trees I made are in the 25-50 foot range in T. That is about 5/8" tall to 1.25" tall. This approach is much easier in larger scales.

The next step is to add some foliage. I used some polyfil fiber that I had previously painted a dark green color. Darker green is better here than lighter green, as we will add more texture and color. The key is not to make a big piece of polyfil and wrap it all over the tree, but to make a bunch of little balls, that tie into the ends of one small group of branches. Again, a little super glue to help things stay in place is useful. Note also, that sometimes, you can get a spread of roots at the base of the tree from the twisted wire trunk.

Next up, I spray the tree with adhesive spray glue, and sprinkle ground foam on the tree. Try to avoid glue or ground foam on the trunk. Fortunately in this case, the tool used to hold the tree will cover the trunk. Also, make sure to sprinkle ground foam on not only the top, sides, but also the bottom of the tree to get the undersides of the branches. Allow the tree to dry and shake the tree to remove any loose ground foam.

The neat thing about the finished trees is that in the right light and angle, you can actually see through the tree a little bit in places. But at a distance, and not backlit, the trees are solid, just like the real thing.

At this point, a few errant strands of polyfil may need to be trimmed away with scissors, but we are almost done. The last step is to spray just a little yellow spray paint over the top of the tree. The goal is to slightly lighten the upper leaves to achieve a highlighting effect. Generally though, the goal is not to turn the tree yellow. It is easy to overdue the effect. If that happens, a little ground foam on the wet yellow paint solves the problem.

Two nearly finished trees. I need to prune one or two errant fibers still, but these trees are almost ready for planting on the module. Overall, I did a dozen trees in a week. The first night was about two hours of work getting to wire trees, and the remaining nights were 10-30 minutes. The slow part is allowing things to dry between steps. If done in an assembly line fashion, I could probably make 60-70 trees a week this way, with an investment of about 15 hours of work. A little slow, but the results are fantastic.

T is for Trees

Well, one thing I know I am going to need for the layout is some more trees. I planted my first one at the show, which has since been removed to allow for scenery to proceed. I have 7 more just like it, ready to go, however, that is no where near enough.

In addition, the tree is close to 100' tall (2.5") in T. So, I have some work to do. It seems feasible to cut the height down a bit, and get maybe two trees, instead of one. But ultimately, I need more trees. So, that became the project last night, getting those trees going.

Proudly hanging from my "tree-line" are another 112 trees like my first 8. I added another 40 after the picture that are simply painted, without ground foam as an experiment. All are made from Bump Chenille, and I think this gets me going on evergreens for the layout. After all, 160 evergreens in less than 3 square feet should be plenty...

Of course, researching the actual composition of trees in Scotland led to the quick revelation that evergreens are but a small minority of tree species in Scotland. Most of the types there are Deciduous trees. So, I will need to make some of those. I have a plan to make them from homemade wire armatures, with polyfiber and ground foam canopies. I've made one sample in N scale, and I was quite pleased. Now to see if it can be scaled down for T. And so, out came the polyfiber and the green spray paint.

I think this will produce enough for a small forest of T scale trees. And while I was at the paint work, I took the opportunity to paint a few T-scale British freight cars, as well as a few passenger cars and a few engine bodies I found in a box that I had ordered years ago. So, the roster is expanding.

Tree details to come!