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I think Apple Acres Farm is now done. My wife brought a white gel pen back from shopping this morning, which allowed the detail work to be applied. The pen was much more easy to use than a paint brush. The inch rule gives scale to the building.
Based on the picture I was copying, the beginnings of the second farm building was started.
Five apple trees were added to the field in front of the farm, with their trunks blended into the ground with a paint/PVA glue mix, with a little fine sawdust mixed in.
Also based on the picture I'm working from is this rose bush archway on the path leading to the farm. Some square section brass tube was heated, formed into the arch and soldered. It was given a coat of white enamel paint and is seen here drying.
Another detail on the picture is a well. This is the start of my well. The base is 1/32 inch ply, while the main part of the well is turned modelling resin.
Some further gel pen detail was applied to the large backscene house.
Here's the well, heading towards completion. The well needs thread adding and some detail painting of the stone work, then that can be glued down. The rose arch is now glued in place, and waiting for the roses to be added. A path has been painted to the farm.
After planting the remaining trees in the forest, the swamp and river were varnished. So far, only one coat of varnish, but I think the river needs at least one more.
Since the early days of the project, my daughter wanted frogs in "Froggy Bottom Bog". Frogs proportional to the ponies was impossible, but for a child, scale and proportions doesn't matter, so I decided to have a go at a master frog that could be moulded.
It was carved and sanded from modelling resin block with the legs made from styrene. It was left tonight with filler hardening around the legs, and needs a final fine sand before moulding.
Once the moulds were done and left to cure, I turned my attention to 'Cloudsdale', the home of 'Rainbow Dash'. The screen capture of Cloudsdale from the TV was a tall thin building in the clouds. This didn't suit the space I had, so I reworked the image on the computer, making it much wider. As before, the image was transferred in pencil first.
There was lots of peering through the magnifying glass for this, as there were lots of small curved lines to follow with the brush, and the white paint not being particularly dense, required three coats to cover the blue sky.
With the artwork almost done, 'Rainbow Dash' visited to see how things were getting on. The rainbows had a white base coat painted with the colours added with gel pens.
The last painting for the evening was some detail work on the buildings and some trees and hedges on the backscene below the cloud.
This morning, the backscene paint was sanded away along the base of the Cloudsdale painting, and the cotton wool cloud epoxied on. A few more small painted clouds were added to the left side above the cotton cloud.
The well reel was painted and then some thread wrapped around and glued in place. It was then glued down to the layout and sand used to blend in the landscape.
The camp fire received some small stones around the base to stop the fire from spreading.
The last job done for now was sanding both the cone shaped sections on the boutique and using car body filler on the top cone. This was sanded smooth and some fine surface filler added after that. It is being left to harden overnight.
I wanted to say you are doing a mind blowing job on this layout. Your daughter is one lucky girl. At first I was not interested in reading about this but as I looked I couldn't stop reading the entire thread. Not only is this an interesting project, your work is amazing as well.
Thanks for posting the great work done here.
Thanks. When I first posted this thread, I did wonder if the thread title would put off any 'serious' modellers from looking at it. On the other hand, the curious title may well attract people who would normally pass by!
As with most projects, what you get out of it depends on the effort that goes in. While this isn't an accurate scale model of a real railroad somewhere in the world, putting the effort into it has certainly paid off, and there's some lovely details emerged and some nice scenes when viewed through a camera lens.
We'll said. I agree you get what is put into the project. Accurate scale isn't what only matters when you create art. You do have some nice details, great scenes too. All I can say is I'm glad I did look. If the title throws some off so be it.
