A Beginner's Journey Pt 2

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I'm trying to decide whether to include this truss bridge in place of the incline here. I feel like it should look purposeful, but it's too low to have a rail line go under. A road could fit comfortably, or maybe a river, except I don't have anywhere for a river to flow to or from. Some kind of marsh or meadow? I've been looking online for prototype examples and not finding any great inspiration. I'm inclined to put it in just because it would be hard to do it retroactively, and not worry about whether it ends up making prototypical sense...


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Jacob Z said:
I'm trying to decide whether to include this truss bridge in place of the incline here. I feel like it should look purposeful, but it's too low to have a rail line go under. A road could fit comfortably, or maybe a river, except I don't have anywhere for a river to flow to or from. Some kind of marsh or meadow? I've been looking online for prototype examples and not finding any great inspiration. I'm inclined to put it in just because it would be hard to do it retroactively, and not worry about whether it ends up making prototypical sense...


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By the way, did you do the wheels on the benchwork
 
logandsawman said:
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By the way, did you do the wheels on the benchwork
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Oops.

And I will post the benchwork a little later, if I remember

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GIve us a wider image of where you might put the bridge and I'm sure our combined imaginations came come up with a realistic and reasonable reason for it to be there.

Train bridges are cool. :cool:
 
Does this provide a bit more context? That hillside is going to continue around to the right until it meets what will be a tunnel mouth.

This is the kind of thing that just paralyzes me with indecision :-(

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OK, as promised a couple of shots of the benchwork substructure that will allow me to roll the layout out to the center of the room so I can (a) work around the back and (2) get into the closet it's blocking. Now I'm just waiting on my son to get home from college to help me move it upstairs.

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Well, I finally stopped havering and laid down foam underlay. I had been anxious for ages about whether I had all my clearances right etc. and finally decided that the only way to know for sure was to stop futzing in Anyrail and just lay it down. I think its OK, so next I will start adding some scenic elements like grass and rocks. I'm not going to lay track until last - it seems to make more sense, I won't have to worry about cleaning up glue from tracks and points, or other messes. It also means I can bring the grass right up to the edge of the underlay, and then ballast over the edge of the grass so everything will be completely seamless. I hope.

I also started experimenting with static grass, a dark green 1mm and a light green 2.5mm. You have to get up pretty close to see the effect, but I think it's pretty good. The attached pictures are zoomed in. At first I worried that the light green was too bright, but I'm warming up too it as a late spring/early summer kind of look.

(Ignore the big white blob of glue, I have plans for that!)

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Jacob Z said:
Well, I finally stopped havering and laid down foam underlay. I had been anxious for ages about whether I had all my clearances right etc. and finally decided that the only way to know for sure was to stop futzing in Anyrail and just lay it down. I think its OK, so next I will start adding some scenic elements like grass and rocks. I'm not going to lay track until last - it seems to make more sense, I won't have to worry about cleaning up glue from tracks and points, or other messes. It also means I can bring the grass right up to the edge of the underlay, and then ballast over the edge of the grass so everything will be completely seamless. I hope.

I also started experimenting with static grass, a dark green 1mm and a light green 2.5mm. You have to get up pretty close to see the effect, but I think it's pretty good. The attached pictures are zoomed in. At first I worried that the light green was too bright, but I'm warming up too it as a late spring/early summer kind of look.

(Ignore the big white blob of glue, I have plans for that!)

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Looks great!
Just an FYI, lay and ballast your track, then cover it with blue painters tape and you won't have to worry about the glue.
 


Marlin39 said:
Looks great!
Just an FYI, lay and ballast your track, then cover it with blue painters tape and you won't have to worry about the glue.
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Blue painters tape: it's for everything that duct tape or WD-40 can't solve ;-)

On a serious note, though, why does absolutely every video or other advice I've seen say to lay the track first and then work around it? It seems so much easier to put down the underlay so I know where the track will be, then put the track and ballast down last of all. I feel like I'm missing something important?

Also, looking at it again this morning, I like the static grass enough that I'm going to do it everywhere it makes sense - basically, anywhere the grass wouldn't be mown, eaten down by livestock, worn down, or on steep hillsides where there will be moss instead of grass.
 
Jacob Z said:
Blue painters tape: it's for everything that duct tape or WD-40 can't solve ;-)

On a serious note, though, why does absolutely every video or other advice I've seen say to lay the track first and then work around it? It seems so much easier to put down the underlay so I know where the track will be, then put the track and ballast down last of all. I feel like I'm missing something important?

Also, looking at it again this morning, I like the static grass enough that I'm going to do it everywhere it makes sense - basically, anywhere the grass wouldn't be mown, eaten down by livestock, worn down, or on steep hillsides where there will be moss instead of grass.
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Putting down the road bed and track first because there is a lot of pounding and adjusting in most cases. Putting down the ground cover next so it is nice when the layout is done. Putting down the ballast simultaneously with the ground cover so they go together well.

That is my reasoning after building several layouts, it simply works best for me.

If going in a different order works well for you, there are no written rules (at least that I follow) ;)

Dave LASM
 
logandsawman said:
Putting down the road bed and track first because there is a lot of pounding and adjusting in most cases. Putting down the ground cover next so it is nice when the layout is done. Putting down the ballast simultaneously with the ground cover so they go together well.

That is my reasoning after building several layouts, it simply works best for me.

If going in a different order works well for you, there are no written rules (at least that I follow) ;)

Dave LASM
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Well, I guess I'm about to find out whether it works well for me :-)

Experience is a great teacher, a wise man once said.

Experience is that thing you get right after you could have really used it, an even wiser one said.
 
Having almost literally painted myself into a corner with the tightness of my clearances, I needed to scratch-build a tunnel portal to fit. Given that I have lasted tried anything like this - quite disastrously - 40 years ago, I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. After looking at examples I decided that the key to a good result was "dimension", i.e. not to have the front completely flat but to have a couple of layers of projecting bricks to add depth. I also added some soot powder to dirty it up a little.

I don't know what I'm going to do about those holes in my plaster (top right), although it's not as bad to the naked eye (this pick is zoomed in. Lots of ground cover, I think. The same to hide any gaps between the rock wall bottom left and the grass above it.

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More buildings. The sills on the machine shop were an absolute pain, but worth it in the end.

ETA: the rectangular hay bales are a little outsized, but I think they still look OK. The round ones are well within the range of prototype hay bales.

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I'm not having much fun with decals. On the plus side, I have managed to situate a handful of tiny decals without tearing or distorting them. That's much more success than I ever had as a child building model aeroplanes.

On the negative side, these decals seem to take five minutes or more to float off. And after I've done 2 or 3 it seems I have to change the water. Is the adhesive that holds the decal to the backing making the water ineffective? Bear in mind, these decals are absolutely tiny, so how much adhesive can there be? (These are the decals that came with a Walthers kit.)
 
About one quarter of the layout - basically the elevated part - is now pretty much fully scenic. Haybarn and grain elevator in the foreground, and just visible behind the trees a little shack. And if you look really closely in front of the trees, you might be able to make out my mountain goats. On the right you'll see the beginnings of a pond, I'll post more about that later as it progresses.

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When I started out on this log, one of my intentions was to explicitly call out Lessons Learned.

I would say this is the most important one so far: after starting out with great trepidation, I have now come to embrace the idea that eventually, you just have to try something and see what happens. Videos and articles will teach you a lot, but at the end of the day you just have to build and see how it looks.

And sometimes things won't work. That's OK. And it's also why you should try things first on a scrap of insulation foam, or on the backside of the model parts or ...

Also, thanks again to all the advice and encouragement. The next thing I'll probably be posting about is my pond. I'm doing it completely wrong, but I think it's still going to work out.
 
My pond is finished. I think it's OK, not great. Here's a series of pictures showing my progress.
  1. Before. I decided to cut out the pond from the foam board. (I tried originally doing the thing most videos describe, i.e. put down a bead of glue then pour the Realistic Water inside. I did not like it at all.) My foam cutter has a u-shaped insert, which seemed ideal. When I practiced on a scrap piece of foam, I could not get a consistent depth, but then I struck on the idea of attaching a depth stop (normally used for drill bits) and it was a lot better.
  2. After cutting out the hole. I forgot to take the picture before I started painting. It's about 4 inches across, or a scale 50ft or so.
  3. Painted. Aqua blue in the middle, Earth Undercoat around the edges. I tried to blend the two colors where they meet so as not to have a harsh transition.
  4. A few layers of Realistic water go in.
  5. Finished. For the last couple of layers I added a few drops of Earth Undercoat to the Realistic Water because I wanted it to appear murky rather than crystal clear.

    I am thinking about putting a small conduit in the hillside behind the pond with a trickle of water "feeding" it, but I'm terrified of wrecking what I already have in place :-(

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Ballasting this morning including my first turnout (terrifying experience) and thinking "screw realism, next time I'm doing Unitrack!" ;-)
 
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