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JUNE,
2004
(Continued)
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This hill has turned out very well. It has variety of shape and
texture, color and contour. The Blue Spruce were obtained on Ebay, but
other than those, I have constructed the additional trees from at least
7 different company’s kits. I think all this essentia is significantly
more interesting than “powder-puffing” the hillside. . . . |
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The layout will extend another 36 inches to the left of this
picture. (That black guardrail in the last photo was just a safety
measure until the table is extended.) The new area will contain residential elements, some highway businesses and a staging yard. . . .
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Track #2 begins its return to the straight-away as it passes what
will become a busy freight depot area . . . The city-block set-in will
be added to this side of the layout. Counting a few more inches added
to accommodate a main track and one siding for a passenger train, I anticipate about a 30-inch extension . . .
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Track #2 is the inside track of these two. I’m not really sure
what’s going to happen with this area scene-wise. You’ve probably
noticed that I don’t appear to use rock molds anywhere. You’re right. I use the “Michaelangelo” approach to stone. The famous artist always
insisted that he simply chipped away at the granite to get to the statue waiting inside. So . . . |
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Basically, I “slop” on the plaster and that which LOOKS like rock
. . BECOMES rock. I find contours that give the appearance of rocky
texture and immediately paint the sections dark gray. I feather-spray
black paint over the area and then dry-brush “cement” colored latex
paint on the jagged or craggy surfaces for highlight. After all, my
layout is a fantasy world and only has to give the impression of realism without being cognizable. Let’s face it . . people, trees,
cars, trucks are all glued in place and only the trains move. How real
is that? . . .
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Now we are looking at the inside of the bottom of the “J” . . .
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And we begin the long 2% grade around the MINE PENINSULA on which
we began this excursion . . .
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Another Athearn Santa Fe GP-50 rounds the upper ridge on the
opposite side of the mountain from the MINE . . .
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And we have come full circle. The standing portals on the lower
level do bring up the subject of tunnels. It’s always neat to watch
trains ENTER and EXIT tunnels, but the problem is, while the train is
IN the tunnel, YOU CAN’T SEE THEM! I had too many tunnels on my last
layout. In fact, I had too many tunnels you couldn’t get INTO on my
last layout. (It is too much to hope for, that your train will NEVER
derail inside a tunnel. This has to be well up on the list as one of
those “laws of” bad-things-that-happen!) Note: Never have three
tunnels go through a BIG OLD HOLLOW MOUNTAIN on skinny little ramps
with varying grades! When I tore down my last layout, I recovered
seven cars that had been lost for two years! . . . Let that be a lesson
to you! . . . |
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I had fun making this mine entrance. It actually has wooden
walls and support beams constructed back into the chicken wire about six
inches. I know it’s out of scale, but I used N-flextrack and N-scale
ore cars in the scene . . .
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You are on Trains Page 6. Click the
numbers below to navigate to other Trains Pages.
Trains: Page 1,
2, 3, 4,
5, 6, 7,
8, 9, 10, 11,
12, 13, 14,
15, 16, 17, 18,
19, 20, 21,
22, 23, 24, 25,
26, 27, 28,
29, 30, 31, 32,
33, 34
Page
1 - Box Canyon Layout
Page 2 - Any Time, Any Spring Disclaimer
Page 3 - Starting Over, December 2003
Page 4 - March, 2004
Page 5 - June, 2004
Page 8 - Layout Design
Page 9 - August, 2004
Page 11 - January, 2005
Page 16 – January, 2005 Redux
Page 17 – First Day of Summer, 2005
Page 20 – August, 2005
Page 21 - In the Farmland, February 2006
Page 23 - Layout Potpourri, February 2006
Page 25 - In the Cornfields, 2006
Page 27 - July, 2006
Page 30 – November, 2006
Page 33 - MARCH,
2007 –
A Break In The Action
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