Photo fun!

Mark, Doug, Bert and Eric running first trains thru the wye ..

Adam soldering under the watchful(?) eye of Brian ...

Eric's module, Mark's curve with some static grass, Bert's wye ...

Doug and Bert with his new section of Sequim - new ballast and roads!

My 44 Tonner posing on Eric's module ...

Mark running his RDC down my module.

Hope to see you all March 30th!

 Toni

Did not forget you Darrelc and Larry B.

  I saw an earlier thread where there was some miscommunication swirling around "commercial use" on the site and thought I'd ask permission first!  Here's Joe's reply;

Quote:

Go for it. We always like to hear from a happy modeler what they think of various products.

--Joe Fugate

Endquote

 

  SO without further ado, I'll give you the rundown on what's in the kit!  I haven't actually made a tree with it yet, but Hopefully I'll have a bit of time this coming week to get stuff lined up for a tree making session this weekend.

  I spent $42 retail for the kit at my favorite hobby store (and I really need to tell them to get their butts in gear and take MRH up on their free listing!! - they all read MRH after all!!).  Anyways -

 

The box: Roughly 18" x 10"x 4"

 i

inside - pretty chock full O' stuff!

Basically a heaping double handful of "Super Tree" armatures - VERY NICE detail in this natural material.  Much nicer for up close, foreground style trees.

Two handfuls of different colored NOCH leaf material,

A spray mister

Two 32 oz. shakers of fine foliage foam in two colors,

Good sized bottle of matte medium,

A pair of plastic "sandwich" trays for soaking armatures and catching foliage sprinklings,

Seven smaller bags of accent foliage colors - good for fall, dead trees, flowers, or just general variety,

Four sets of self closing tweezers - can you have too many?

  Just rough estimating prices, I come up with around $40 of stuff - NOT INCLUDING the "Super Tree" material!  From building my twisty trees I KNOW there is WAY more supplies here than you need to build all the trees they supply, this stuff really does go a long way!

  So for this "mini review". I'll build these trees following the instructions, using only the supplies provided (well I will be providing the paint for the armatures), and we'll see how they look, how easy it is (or hard), and what we have left over at the end.

  ... Stay tuned ....

Toni

Super Trees

Well I must say there is a lot of material in that box. It looks like the forty bucks was well spent.

I like the way you laid everything out so one can see exactly what you get.

Thanks for sharing the info with us beginners. I am looking forward to your first trees and

how they look. I hope you can show us some steps along the process.

Thanks Toni.

Larry B.

Running Trains = Funning Trains!

Glad to see the modules & modelers come together and trains running!

You guys are about where we were two years ago (a year before I joined) in terms of modules available and extent scenicked.

A return loop or two will work wonders, until you realize you need more places for trains to pass, and then a yard, and then....

That wye will come in very handy: looks pretty compact, too.
(22" radius??)

What are you guys using for legs?
Look very thin.
How's the wobble?

Always fun to start getting some ground cover and trees and bushes down too.
Remember to blend to brown at the ends of modules so there isn't that jarring patchwork effect.

Portland 2015 should be a groovy year for Free-moN

M.C. you work much faster than I ...

It was a lot of fun, and we all seem to pick up a thing or two from each other each time we get together.  It is definitely invigorating and inpiring!  

Yes Bert's wye is 22" radius and he designed it to fit into the back of his fiat 500!

  We have quite a mix on what folks are using for legs.  Mine are 3/4" electrical conduit and it's much stouter than it looks.  A single curved section adds and amazing amount of stability!  While the whole setup isn't rock steady, it's not horribly shaky either.  Your can rest your forearms on it, but I wouldn't try and lean against it.  This was my first time transporting the modules with my spacer plates, which worked well.   I do want to add some clips to them to snap onto the leg tubes and add some more rigidity.

  All of us were really excited to see Eric's work on his module.  The ground cover he did looks so nice!  I asked him to put together his recipe of colors so we can all try and match his work.  That's one reason I started with trees, I can always pop them out and move them around if I'm not happy.

I'm looking forward to 2015 as well.  You'll have to look us up if you come!

Toni

It's all about the curves

Yeah, it's amazing how even a slight bend can firm things up.

That's one of the reasons I bent the Effett Yard insert 15 degrees.

If 3/4" conduit works, that's great! Because the leg sections we use made out of 2" x 2"s do take up a bit of room in the car

As for the scenery, blending towards brown at the edges, in addition to being a Free-moN standard, really helps with the flow of scenery between modules:

Not the most interesting photo, but nothing really jumps out and jars the flow from module to module.

And that doesn't mean all the modules need to be brown all the way through!

Most of my Shoofly module is deep Springtime green:

But by blending in the brown at the edges it flows with the other modules.

You guys as a group might decide to "go Green" all the way through and it'd look groovy when you guys are showing together, but then they wouldn't be real Free-moN modules able to flow interchangeably with other modules from outside your group.
(And just like you can't be "a little" or "mostly" pregnant, you're either a certain standard or you're not )

For example, say we come up to Portland in 2015 to rock the National Train Show together
Sure we could have "our" and "yours" with a scenic "adaptor", but part of the point of Free-moN is to be able to adapt to any space with modules in any order and not look like an NTrak patchwork.
It's also easily "fixed": you can share base-coat paint, or, when modules get basic ground cover on, clamp them together and apply the same color of static grass across the joints to blend things together.

Perhaps a bit of a nit-pick, but it is nice (and many viewers have complimented us) when things flow scenickly throughout the layout.

But the most important aspect of Free-moN is getting together with other Free-moNsters, creating larger-than-possible-at-home layouts, running trains, and having fun and learning loads from each other.
Sounds like "mission accomplished!"

Will be fun to see your modules grow!

FreeMoN standards

  I agree that it's nice to have a standard and it will make a nicer looking setup when a bunch run together.  That said, it doesn't let me model the area that I want, unless I build a really LARGE module made of sections that go together.  The relatively treeless rolly grassland look is great for the midwest, eastern WA or OR, but nothing says PNW like a a branchline running through a tree lined cut.  I think it would look weird to have it transition at every module joint, but, we're not there yet, so there may be a way to do it!

  The "public opinion" portion of a setup is of less importance to me than the opinion of the group we regularly set up with.  My personal opinion is that hopefully the modeling on the individual modules if of high enough caliber and "eyeball grabbing" details that the brains don't focus on the module joints.

  I also agree with you that the most important aspect of FreeMo is the getting out and doing of it!  I have pretty much been of the "lone wolf" my entire hobby experience, and it is really wonderful to get up close to others work, bounce ideas off each other, and inspiring each other to do our best work.

  Our group has adopted a Freemo "compatible" standard for our first sets of modules.  I think that Bert and Greg are the only two who have built Freemo "compliant" units, and even those have odd width endplates (16" for Greg's and 18" for the wye)

   So that is a bridge we'll have to cross when we get to it.  I DO plan on building a fully compliant module for the  2015 meet, but right now it's mainly testing my abilities and methods to see if I be "good enough".

Keep Ball (and trains) Rolling

Hey, whatever works for your group is "good" as you guys are the ones that spend the time together.

Just trying to share some Free-moN experience and show that, with a little thought and creativity, you can usually have your cake and eat it too.

I think you're over estimating the amount of space or abruptness of the scenic transition.

You can definitely have forests and rock cuts and still blend it towards brown at the edges:

All it takes is a little shift and layering of colors so the joint line isn't highlighted by a sudden change of very different colors:

Think of it as a little bit of "feathering" rather than major scenery or local shift.

BTW: a lot of our "prairie"-looking modules are like that because, like you guys, we haven't gotten to finish scenicking them

So many modules, so little time!

Anyway, just bringing it up now because I know how those "practice" modules can, after investing a lot of time, money and scenery in them, quickly become "permanent" modules

16" & 18" aren't "odd" widths: Standards call for any width between 12" and 24".
In addition, the experience of our group has found that 18" is a pretty optimal width for modules: still plenty of room for scenery yet much, much easier to transport.
But, whatever works for your group is groovy.

Glad you guys are getting together and getting trains rolling!
Looking forward to seeing what magic your guys make .

Now I have to re- watch all your videos again ...

 ... Paying closer attention to the trees and module joints!  Maybe if I mute the groovy music?  

Part of the reason I have been procrastinating about getting ground cover on my modules, is that I'm not sure what I am doing! Or where I am going!  I have a vision of how I want the modules to look fully scenic'd (apparently that's not a word).

  Hopefully I'll be able to get ahold of some of the guys who have already done stuff I like (not that i don't like yours, M.C.).  I was really looking forward to talking with Dave Salsberry some more about the scenery on his modules, but the meet got canceled.

Toni