Hi Shop Dwellers, condolences to all you
Packer fans! I've been in "deep-sea-diving" mode these past two weeks - using every spare minute of free time to sneak out to the trainroom and work on the scenery. Didn't leave me any time for chit-chatting here, sorry about that..!
I haven't posted any photos here in a while, so I figured I should pause from working on the scenry project and share what I've done so far. IIRC, the last pics I posted were of the foreground area having been cleared of all the tools, materials and miscellaneous clutter and transferred to a makeshift tabletop across the aisle. Now, I'll show you all what I did with the cleared area.
First thing on the list was to get solid "earth" under the highway surface. I started by making a few sheet styrene templates that were identically shaped like the two long halves of the asphalt road. (I learned a painful lesson a few years ago on another crossing, that contaminating the acrylic-painted asphalt surface with isopropyl alcohol and/or white glue will
ruin it irreparably!) I then took the templates and put some WS Mold-A-Scene plaster mix under them, shaping it until everything was the exact shape and slope I wanted:
Now I was ready to tackle the rest of the foreground area. Starting at the leftward side, I applied WS white [actually
light gray] ballast as a gravel "parking lot" over the entire area occupied by the Houghschnaegel Pipe & Duct Company. But first, I had to spend a couple evenings clearing away the medium gray ballast from beneath the spur track to make room for the white stuff; since this was an embedded track, the ballast had to be the same color as the surrounding white surface. (I didn't waste time shooting any pics of
that unpleasant diversion!)
Next, it was time to cover the undeveloped so-called "wild" area between the main line and the spur tracks with earth terrain to eliminate the artificial-looking flat surface. I used Mold-A-Scene for this; but, since it has a short "working" time (~5 minutes after mixing in water), I had to apply it incrementally in small areas:
While the Mold-A-Scene was curing, I covered the so-called "team track" with medium gray ballast. This was a much quicker job since the original track ballast was already the same color. By the end of the first weekend (Jan. 11 & 12) that area was done, and I spent the next few evenings applying earth-colored paint over the "wild" area...
...and test-fitted the painted asphalt segments onto the new roadbed, I was quite pleased to see that they fit like a glove:
It's incredible how someone can spend 12 hours working on a project, and barely have anything to show for it...but
that's the way things worked out this past weekend!
My original plan was to make the pipe company's spur lead-in track look like it had sunk into the mud over the years, then apply static grass over that and the "wild" area. The fly-in-the-ointment was the
team track turnout - I had to use a pin-point brush to carefully apply "dirt" paint between each of the exposed ties, without messing up the moving parts. That used up all of Saturday afternoon; later that evening I noticed that the painted track roadbed seem a lot darker than the adjacent wild earth terrain, so I slapped-on a coat of dark gray latex over the entire wild area and left it to dry overnight.
I was feeling slightly nauseated on Sunday so I didn't get back out there until later in the afternoon, at which time I put down the remaining "sliver" of Mold-A-Scene along the edge by the aisle, and applied the second coat of earth-colored paint over the dark gray surface. Once it dried, I discovered that the repainting had been a waste of time...it STILL appeared lighter than the track roadbed because of its smooth surface, ARRRGH
! So in the end, the only thing visibly different about this whole foreground area was the new aisle-facing earth sliver, and that the spur run-thru track roadbed was earth-colored:
Here's hoping I'll have enough free time next weekend to do the static grass.
Dang, it's already bedtime!