It has begun, sort of...


There was a point today where I stared at things and started thinking I was getting carried away with the whole mountain thing, or at least taking the freestyle thing a bit far considering the reach problem I'm on the verge of creating when it comes to easy access for finishing work. The top of the ridge is 13" off grade, I think perhaps that's high enough with some details, maybe a small peak or something a bit higher on one side or the other. I'll clean up everything and stare at it tomorrow.

20160126_174409.jpg
 
It is looking like you're really making some progress and it is looking fine. When it comes to scenery, the only thing that can hold you back is your imagination. Well done.
 
That's looking fantastic. Do you have any reference images of the type of mountainside you're planning to model? I've always been curious what the underlying structure looked like on some of those great mountain scenes I've seen.
 
Not really, I kinda just started cutting and gluing as seemed appropriate ") I've spent the most time in the Badlands/Black Hills on vacation, so I suspect that geography will make it's way into it, did a 2 week blitz last year, CO,WY,MT,ID,UT, Yellowstone, Big Horns, Rockies, Firehole, have a few visions from that trip too if I want to make a geologist cry ")
 
One thing I would point out Happy is that it appears you have a lot of vertical faces . I found when I did mine that the more vertical , the more difficult it was to get to look decent. Atleast that was the case for me . You can see on my build thread where I had some that were pretty straight up and down and I found those , to me , to not come out looking as realistic as I would have liked. Just an observation . Have you decided if you will use plaster cloth or sculptamold or ???
 
So far it is looking real fine, but I do agree with Jim. From experience I have found that it can be difficult to get large vertical surfaces to blend into realistic scenery.

Keep up the good work. Looking forward to your posts.
 
The vertical surfaces won't be all that vertical when I'm done adding detail pieces and carving, I'll be building up the slope a lot from the base. No plans for plaster cloth or anything, going to paint the whole thing with a mixture of white glue, latex paint and cellulose
 
Got my roadbed today, so I'm progressing forward with the siding/branch line since the mountains interact with it. Had I been thinking at the start, I would have laid out all the radii when I had a flat table with nice clean foam on it. As it stands I'm going to have to kind freestyle a bit so I started with sectional in the first section where I could still get my compass into play and I'll finish with flex, which will make the connection at the other end easier anyway.

20160201_222920.jpg20160201_222952.jpg
 
Nicely done
I do the same thing by using push pins. For the last 3 days that's all I've been doing, now I need to take a break cause I can't feel my thumb anymore.
 
The siding/branch is done , glue drying, thanks to errors in planning not exactly what I'd wanted but it's close enough for government work and now I can finish the mountains and make a token start on the switch/industry section.

20160203_230356.jpg20160203_230418.jpg20160204_125319.jpg20160204_125329.jpg
 
Progress is looking good . What are those white rectangle looking things between the ties? Is that glue?
 
Yep, white glue, I fill the space between the ties level with the top, it shrinks substantially when it dries completely so ballast will easily cover it, and it holds the track securely unless I want it to come up, at which point a knife under track is enough to pop the joint without damage to the track, and you just pick off the glue blob left with minimal damage to the cork. I can't remember where I read about doing it that way, but I found it works great.

I was bit concerned about the arrangement of the snap switches and derailing but I just got done running two trains over them at full throttle which I won;t be doing in practice with no problems by some miracle.

The bad news is, the snap switches I bought along with the boatload load of sectional track awhile back have issues I'm unfamiliar with, as soon as a train hits them something shorts and trips the controller they're all metal except for the ties, so I had to order some new ones, puts a damper on the switch/industry section, oh well.
 
I need some kind of abandoned building/buildings here, perhaps an old mine or something perhaps that would have existed during the railroads construction, any ideas for kits?


20160301_234121.jpg
 
You must log in or register to reply here.



Back
Top