Good afternoon all, It's another hot one here in the Coarsegold foothills of Central Calif., a lot more so than I'd like but I'm hoping that this is the last of the really hot weather and the start of some rain and Snow in the higher mountains. It's 4:56 Pm so lets see what WW has to say: 94.3 °F - Feels Like 91 °F, my Android Cell Phone weather, which is supposed to be very local says 96 °F? The Hum-i-dity is 13% going to 34% at 11:00 Pm per WW and the nite time low is supposed to be 62 °F but if it like last night/ most nights recently the cool down doesn't really happen till about 3 to 4 in the morning.
Say Curt: Adding detail to a layout is what adds life to it and realism. I think your layout is based on 30's & 40's era? so there is plenty you can do to make it fit the time period. If your scenes are somewhat rural like mine Outhouses were quite prevalent as well as plies of trash and old tin cans. As far as Outhouses, they can be scratch built or Tichy offer a nice set of three of or four with realistic wood grain even on the board seat with potty hole and I believe the door can be mounted open also. As far as piles of trash due to no pickup service, many individuals used to just toss things in a ditch or down a hill side to weather away. Usually any old scrap can be used, just be sure to rust any iron metal pieces in most cases and cut small sections of wire insulation and paint a few old silver to simulate newer cans that were tossed out as well as the majority others rust color to create a pile of them. You could create various shape piles of trash that are glued onto some clear acetate which you have scratched of to prevent a shinny surface so the various piles could be easily moved around and some WS Hobby Tack used to hold them in position till you wanted to vary tings again.
Both the Outhouses and piles of trash were quite prevalent in those earlier times. If you want to get really authentic and have a surface you can make a small hole in to simulate the repositioning of an out house or even just a small square demarcation to show where it sat and then the new location of it is something else you can do along with a pile of dirt to cover up the old hole or leave it open and use some scrapes of art gum erasuer after erasing some lead pencil marks or even brown colored to more closely simulate poop along with old pages from the Sears & Roebuck catalog or even corn cobs. etc.
Don't forget to also add some paper scraps here and there as they also used to be almost everwhere, track side like I think you already have a bit of to more tossed on the piles of trash or some scattered around by the wind. don't forget to wad some up too. WS Hobby tack might be useful to hold some of these things down so they could be repositioned later.
Jeffrey: Congrats on becoming an uncle. Now you can start on building him a small layout to bring him into the hobby!
