Really like those display

Really like those display cases!

Hey Jay....

those are Ikea made, they sell around 50€ here. Here is another use I made of them, my "Star Wars" wall.

"May the force be with you........"
 

Wow

 Wow, thought you picked those up off a store going under.  Gonna have to hit up Ikea when I get back to the states.  Is that the lights on the top there?  Thanks!

They come without lights

They come without lights infact, all I did was, buy osram led, pick and stick, lamps, easy and no wires involved. On the Star Wars displays I also have put some raisers, easy on the cleaning underneeth, also Ikea. They sell those raisers for bathroom furniture. If you was refering to the bigg kinda TL lamp device tho, dipslayed on top, that's a lightsaber (functionnal with sound FX), lol.

Nice job

Nice Job! I like how you have your layout framed and lit. Its a really nice effect and sets it off well. I look forward to more pictures.

Chris

Ah, the shadowbox look ...

The shadowbox look - my favorite! My own Siskiyou Line has a similar look, which I find to be quite attractive. It really puts the layout in the limelight ... no pun intended.

Here's a shot of my HO Siskiyou Line that shows the shadowbox lighting:

Yup, gotta love it...

Also reminds me of that sharp look that your find in museum quality dioramas. This is the direction I am going with my layout too...

I see fascia boards in my future....

Shadow box effect

That does look great. And the fascia boards make it look even better. Those baglike things hanging below the fascia do detract but I assume that will be covered or replzced when construction is finally completed.

Irv

Jappe, Hey there my friend,

Jappe,

Hey there my friend, haven't heard from you for awhile. Your layout room looks spectacular, very nice work as you always do. Been busy here working on my layout room. I have about 4 feet of floor left to put down and the baseboard to do and then I'm finished. The layout in your pictures today is that HO scale layout you have been working on???

Yo...

yep that's my " a la Lance Mindheim East Rail district" H0-scale layout. For now I am gathering all the detail stuff I need to put on the layout, so I'll be set for winter time to come as for now it is still riding my HOG's season. I preview a cold winter this year, so with all the gathered stuff, cabine feaver will stay oustide. héhé.

Good to hear you are almost finished to, think this winter we are going to have to post alot of pictures....

keep up the good work but remember, once in while, step back, have a beer and contemplate.......

I like the shadow box look

I like the shadow box look too - except for the fact that it leads to poor lighting of things near the aisle (the front side of that deciduous foreground tree for example) - so I abandoned my shadowbox lighting in favor of in the ceiling over the aisle lights (easier construction too since there's no valence).

But that shadowbox look sure is dramatic (a lot more so than my lighting).

Cheers,

Charlie

+

I found the pot-belly more distracting !...

Sorry, could not resist it...

But, seriously,  a few questions come to mind.  How does he see the layout ?...  How do kids get an interrest in something they can't see?

Marc

Love the oil spur

Simplicity and wonderful scenic effects. You've been busy with Silfor.  I am going to break down and buy some. Joe has a great tutorial on how to blend the Silfor with "faux fur" too.  The LHS in Escondido, CA - now closed, Reed's Hobby - had an in store layout with just a siding, the loading platform and a small Rix building and it looked great.

Hi Chuck....

....thanks for the nice comment, infact the oil spur isn't realy finished yet, it's just , lets say, a mock up for what's going to be.  What I do in general is to put up the structures in their basic form, once I am satisfied on how they look on the layout then I will get to the painting and detailling. But not straight away, I usualy will wait a couple of weeks to a month, cause there is always a better idea out there and nothing is more heart braking then to disgard a nice building on which  you spend alot of time to make it look like the real thing. When I am doing my modeling I always think "less is more".......or like you said it "simplicity" is my key.

As for the Silflor, Chuck, believe me or not, those are double worth their money, I just love their products, overhere, they sell under the name of MiniNatur (Silhouette). The tufts are my favorite. Here is the link to the German site,  http://www.mininatur.de/de/index.php , I am sure if you can't find the minNature products yourways and contact them, they will be glad doing business with you through their website (did it myself infact, since in Belgium their products are hard to get).

I think I found a solution for my night time lighting, it's a very simple solution , a blue led above each segment. Simple but a wow effect (according to my Mrs that is, lol), to bad I am not an expert in photography, would love to share a picture with the blue leds in place. I called my Mrs. to show her the effect, with the background sound program running (I had set it on "Spannish night", western cicada with night crickets and a bunch of other night creatures,lol) .........she was "wow", how did you do that"? And when the Mrs is "wowing", you just know, you are on the rite track.........

Scenic Expreess carries Silifor

Scenic Express carries Silifor. Was looking at it the other day for use as weeds on the edge of a water scene. Kinda pricey, seems to start at $28 for a 12"x18" sheet with some being more expensive. I expect a little would go a long way..

Chris

Silflor

The stuffs name is Silflor and yes Scenic Express does carry it. I'd recommend buying a sample pack for the season you think you're interested in. That will let you see what the various lengths and textures are like.

The following scene made use of a Silflor sample pack (mixing it in with some ground foam bushes)...

An alternative to Silfor's prarie tufts is to make your own if you have an electrostatic grass applicator (such as a Noch GrassMaster or have built one using Joe Fugate's directions in his Volume 5 Scenery DVD model-trains-video.com).

Dribble white glue onto a cookie sheet (I'd think non-stick would work best). Don't make big pools, think little dribbles. Then use the Grass Master to sprinkle electrostatic grass onto the glue. Wait for the glue to set up and Voila! Instant little clumps of grass or weeds. Joe also covers this technique in his Volume 5 Scenery DVD.

If you were to get addicted to Silflor prarie tufts or grass clumps and had a large area to cover you might be able to pay for a GrassMaster (and certainly the parts to make your own) with the money you'd save by making your own 'tufts'.

Overall I'd rate Silflor as a 9 out of 10 as a useful scenic material (and it would be an 11 if not for its cost!).

Cheers,

Charlie Comstock

Silflor vs Woodland scenics

How do the Silflor products rate against Woodland Scenics? I also intereste din the how they compare for N-Scale railroad scenery.

Irv

Mix a good idea

Nice photo, as always!

I will look at trying out the mix when I go to order more super trees.

I have seen some good techniques.. the one you describe from the video as well as ones that are just cutting tufts and planting them.. cost is always an issue for me so I will definitely try some other methods.

I think they come in 2mm, 5mm, and 8mm? I am thinking the 5mm will be good for tall N water weeds.

Chris

Silflor vs Woodland Scenics

It's kind of an apples and oranges comparison since WS doesn't make anything like Silflor (they do make static grass) and Silflor doesn't make ground foam.

I find the ground foam is good for bushes and shrubs.

SIlflot and static grass are definitely superior for grass or tall vertical weeds.

If you use a mixture of the two techniques it works pretty well (for me in HO)

However, since I'm in HO I really am not qualified to speak about how well they would work in N or Z scale. Maybe Bernie or Marty can chime in here?

Regards,

Charlie

First of all...

Charlie needs to quit taking pictures of real railroads and calling them models. LOL..One of the new scenery ideas coming out of THE RAILWIRE.NET when I joined there is to shy away from the traditional Woodland Scenics products and develop your own style of scenery implementation.  If you go to http://www.conrail1285.com you will see what Ed did with his layout using some nice mixtures of Scenic Express products and real dirt and materials.

(Ed's layout left) You cannot get a real look buy simply doing the MR or Miles Hale thought process of shaking WS foam and turf everywhere. If MR wasn't up the you know what of WS, they would do real tutorials on that. The real innivators like Furlow, Selios, Frary and Fugate (bad law firm) have show us how to use a lot of natural products in the emulation of the real scenery.

Don't get me wrong, you can use WS products, they need to be mixed with natural accents and other material to create the real look of scenery. I like thier tree sprigs, the foliage ones and really don't use anything much of thiers and more, other than accents. I'm using real dirt to build up the roadbed and then ballast tops the dirt. I have sifted sand and sirt to create jars of real ground cover. As we progress I will submit some content on these processes.

I ordered my first Silfor (California grass tufts) for N scale, I will let you know how they work for me. 24.99 and 8.75 to ship, they better rock.

First of All

Thanks for the information. I have never tried using the real stuff. I am not sure my wife and kids would let me put that stuff in either the micorwave or the oven in an case. But I am far from doing landscape at this point anyway.

Irv

Diversity of scenic materials

Aw shucks Chuck. It's a picture of a real model (but with real sunlight and some real hillside - with too large trees - in the background)

It's very rare that any sort of scenery in real life is uniform (a freshly mowed lawn comes to mind). Don't be afraid to mix some different textures together. But don't spread glue evenly then shake out a layer of what ever material you're using evenly. Even an even/regular layer of Silfor or static grass won't look natural. Mix it up! Use some coarse ground foam for bushes. Accent the ends of some tree branches with the fine ground foam. Mix different lengths of static grass and add some weed here and there (ground foam or Silflor). Joe Fugate points out that grass is never uniform so mess up the static grass - make some places where its standing on end - make some others where it's been mashed down by the wind or maybe some deer came along an lay down there.

Diversity!

If you can get materials in similar but different colors try dying them. Or try using some light passes with an airbrush on the scenery. The picture of the creek with the RS3 suffers from too much of the same colors in it. There should be slightly different shades and hues.

Diversity in the ground too! A flat sheet of plywood is good for modeling the tarmac at an airport or the local Department Store's parking lot but not a whole lot of other places. Mix up some plaster or spackle and spead it on thin to make little hills. In HO 1/8" is close to a foot of elevation difference. Even in Kansas you see that sort of thing. In N it's close to 2'. I sometimes cut little slivers of pink foam no more than 3/8"  (5mm?) and glue those down here and there then smooth the ground up and over them with plaster or spackle usually (but not always) making the height changes very gradual/gentle.

Don't despite woodland scenics products. While their ballast looks kind of funny to my eye their ground foam stuff is quite useful and the boxes of bushy shrubs/small trees can really speed up making a tangled mass of foliage at the edge of a forest. Even their silly tree armatures don't look half bad when painted and covered with foliage netting (not fore ground quality but decent). Mix in a few Super Trees from Scenic Express to introduce a multi-species look and if area appropriate some connifers. Heikly makes bottle brush conifers that look funky out of the box, but have a go at them with some tin snips or diagonal nippers so they're not so darned regular. Cut the trunks off randomly so they're not all the same height too. Then hose 'em down with extra hold hairspray and sprinkle a good dose of ground foam (medium or fine) on them. Presto, the ugly treeling now looks sort of like the arboreal equivalent of a swan. If you've got the patience buy a cedar shingle from the building supply store, split it into pieces about 3/4" square at the thick end then use a plane, surform file, and utility knife to carve 'em into a roundish shap. Make 'em all different heights (I have some 2' trees on my HO layout). Paint the trunks flat black with a spray can then scrape it down with a saw blade to bring out the 'bark' texture. Paint black again then lightly spray a light gray/brown bark color. Get a mat of furnace filter (not the kind that comes in cardboard frames - the good stuff is blue at my local home depot. Cut it into pieces of about the right cross section then tear those into layers no more then 3/8" (5mm?) thick and impale them onto the trunks. Dribble some white glue onto the trunk to hold them in place. Hole the trunk and swirl it while painting the branches black then dribble on (generously some more of the ground 'conifer' foam.  If you have some extra bucks you might consider ordering a special confir or two from canyoncreekscenics.com. Pete really knows how to make good looking trees but unless you're a millionaire you won't be making a forest out of them. But no matter. Diversity! All Canyon Creek trees probably wouldn't look quite right either!

Jeez this post got long somehow. Hope it's useful.

And remember what your financial advisor says - Diversify!!!

Cheers,

Charlie Comstock