Inspired by the Monkey

Watching M.C crank out his module inspired me to get off my duff, and get back to work on my own layout. 

With the problematic track work of module 3 behind me, it was time to extend the layout out. This module features a bridge and river scene (the Dog river for our purposes), and while not shown on the original plan, a turnout.

The turnout addition is due to my lessons learned from the earlier track work - I'm not stressing the exit point of the modules as much as making sure the curves are smooth on this one. I thought by adding a turnout (curved) here, I can still make the layout work as designed.

The bare module. It had served successfully as a bare storage space for months! I did mark up desired exit points on it's edge.

The scenery goes in. Folks may be surprised at my choice of terrain materials, but note that I'm down to one sheet of foam (should have brought more!) and it's very hard to find here. The cardboard is exactly as thick as two sheets of the 1 inch foam I brought, and it's very rigid. And it was free (I saved it from a shipping box).

Here, the river shape takes place. The "high" line is the branch to Barre, the rear track is the "hidden" staging.

Looking down the Dog river. I'll need to put in a fake background (photographic?) to hide the staging track, not that you can see it from here anyway.  The right bank still needs to be built out, and than it gets covered with plaster cloth.

I found when removing this module from the setup, the tight is very, very, very tight. When measuring things to pre-build back in New Hampshire, I hadn't thought of a background solution - with the one I've chosen, I've lost any play along the width of the room.  Due to that, this module is going from above - it is already screwed tight to number four, and I will be using a caboose ground throw for the turnout.

Monkey See, Monkey Do

"Watching M.C crank out his module inspired me to get off my duff, and get back to work on my own layout."

That's funny, Tom, as seeing you work on all your modules helped me get off my duff and start my first module 

I hope that cardboard is sooooooper strong.
I guess I'd be worried that it would warp / degrade over time, especially under the track.

Do you have enough foam for just under the track?
Then you could use the cardboard as filler around it.

Or just have the next person to visit you from the States smuggle a sheet of foam for you.
(Probably not in their carry-on) 

Looking forward to seeing your progress!

[Another funny: when I saw your heading "Inspired by the Monkey" I thought "how the heck did he know about me & my love of monkeys?"  Then I remembered that my handle on the MR forum is "mcfunkeymonkey".  A-ha!  Well, go bananas!]

Pink Foam in the UAE

Module 5 is looking good!

I think I have found where to get us Pink Foam from.  After the helpful comments about the manufacturer and trade name for foam on the Forum here, I made contact with a relative of a colleague and on Saturday he gave me the names of three companies he had found in Dubai who supply it.

Not had chance to contact them this week yet due to work, but will be doing so and will see what they have.....

Norman

Foam

Norman, that's great news! I hope they'll sell small orders.

M.C, the cardboard should be fine - it will support a lot of weight, a lot more than an HO scale layout. I don't use a lot of water in my terrain due to the mess factor, so saturating it shouldn't be an issue, and our apt, is generally always climate controlled for humidity and temperature.

I don't have enough foam to finish the track work areas, but who knows, maybe we'll get lucky with Norman's supplier in Dubai.

If it falls apart on a move, well, ca la vie - I'll just have to make a new section!  Making is half the fun (clearly from watching your work, you agree).

Last night felt like a fair amount of progress, but it doesn't look like that much.

I got the right hand side bank of the Dog river roughed out, including an area that can be used as a beachier scene.

the train on the staging line/main line is there to check lines of site.

the upper level cork is in place, and the switch, fits.

just another piece or two, and than the first layer of plastercloth can go in.

Not too much last night

Not too much work on it last night, but the sub-terrain is roughed out and ready for plaster. I realize this is a bit more shaving to do around the bridge abutments, but it will be better to do that once their dry anyway.

The road bed is now in place as well, so I'm going to try and get the plaster cloth down, and maybe even the bridge painted.

No Paint for the Bridge

Well no paint for the bridge last night - but I was able to spend a good hour and a half, and got the plaster cloth down over the sub-structure. I thought I'd try painting it as well while the cloth was still a bit wet, I was hoping it would wick the tint a bit deeper into the fabric.

Results?

I don't know if the painting idea worked as I had hoped, but it is a lot more pleasing to look at than plain white plastercloth!

I also glued down the turnout template into location, so I can begin putting down ties this weekend. This makes it so easy to get ties in place.

I'm planning on using wood ties on the bridge surface instead of the short section of ME bridge flex that comes with the the kit. My current idea is to use three PC ties (ends and middle) to hold the rail and guard rails in place; maybe we'll find out this weekend if it will actually work!

Sad, how it doesn't look like much

It's sad how you can spend a fair amount of time, but it still doesn't look like much work was done.

Got the ties down, finished assembling the bridge, put a base coat of black on it with the airbrush, and painted the river bottom and banks with a coat or two of paint.

Not overly satisfied with the river bottom; I need to sort out the color blending a bit more .

Washes?

Something

Something would help, I'm not happy with either of the brown paints I have, or how the colors blend. The washes idea isn't a bad one, although I'm considering breaking out the airbrush for this one.

A break in production

I've suffered a break in production; as I was setting up my airbrush to hit the bridge with a light coat of gray prior to any rust treatment, I snapped the plastic adapter that connects the thin Aztek airbrush hose to my compressor.

I'm going to order a replacement braided hose and an adapter set for the Aztek (and yes, I should have bought one years ago, yada yada yada) but that will take a few weeks to arrive.

In the meantime,  a repair has been attempted,but I can only hope it will actually hold pressure.  I have a dedicated, low pressure compressor, so it might work....hope to give it a test tonight.

Back to basics

My repairs on the airbrush hose, failed.  A new one is to be ordered.

In the meantime, I simply can't wait that long. Too impatient, mostly, and I was having fun with the process, so I broke out some weathering powders and touched up the bridge in a few spots (some dust, mildew, and slight rust) before adding the top ties.

The ties are real wood ties, glued to a slight plastic shim to make them the same height as the PC ties. I intend on soldering the rails to the PC ties in situ, once I'm ready to lay rail, and than paint the PC ties to match. The outside guard rails will be made of basswood, and will go down on the bridge as a final step.

You can see the PC ties on the bridge, ends and center. One shifted while drying, I'll need to pull it and re-glue.

The bridge abutment has been touched with the base coat of PolyScale aged concrete; this will get a Woodland Scenics stone gray wash, and a final India ink wash before the bridge goes in.

In preparation of the rail laying process, the ties were ballasted, I hope this weekend to be able run feeder lines, and lay the rail.

Oh yeah, pictures!

Busy Saturday

Saturday is Sunday in our work week, meaning I had some time with good light to continue work (even without an airbrush...)

Being a "gun-jumper", I probably should have done some other things to the module first, but I wanted to run trains!

That means laying track.

I decided to make my under layout time easier, by running all of the feeders off the turnout, and soldering the other rail to the turnout.

I use red and black for the main feeders, and green for the frogs. Note that there isn't a bus yet on this module, I need to pick up some bigger, appropriate red and black wire.

The turnout received a N-scale Caboose ground throw. Power will be routed through a frog juicer.

I spiked down the turnout, and than started on the main section.

I measured and cut the inside rail and bent it to match the curve. Spiked it down, and than did the same with the outside rail, checking gauge every spike. Once the rail was down, I soldered each in turn to the PC ties on the bridge.

Once that was secure, I added a code 55 (the main rail on the branch is 70) guard rails to the bridge. They were done in the same fashioned, spiked on the ends first, and than soldered to the PC ties.

Naturally, I had to run a train across to check!

As  there is no gap in the rail (it's one solid piece from module 4 to the turnout), it's pretty smooth running.  Oh yeah, that's hard to see in still picture.....

so here's a video! (Don't get too excited, it's not that great. First time I've shot video with this camera).

cheers!

Looks good.

I think that Central Vermont hopper needs to have the coupler height adjusted.  Those knuckles are just barely holding on to the caboose the box car!

Coupler height

River Bed

Since you've indicated some dissatisfaction with the river, I searched for some images of rivers around Barre and in Vermont generally.  One thing that strikes me is that your brown looks much more red than what I'm seeing in the prototype, and that your dark coloring is so confined to the center it looks like the water will be very shallow, with extensive muddy banks.  Maybe changing to a grayer color, and extending the black towards the banks, would do it.  While you're waiting for airbrush parts, try thinning the colors and blending by "scrubbing" with a brush along the boundaries.  Get the look about how you want it, then finish up with the airbrush if desired.

Rob

Rob, your spot on. The brown is too red, but I haven't been able to find brown here - just two tubes in the last couple of years.

It hasn't mattered much elsewhere, as the brown is just to take the foam shine off of the terrain before other materials go down, but it is glaring in the photos. That's one of the reasons I was looking to the airbrush, I wanted to be able to use roof or rail brown instead.

I'm calling this the Dog river, but the real dog river is a clean water (great for trout) river. As I can't find other water supplies than the gloss medium, I was going to model it more after the Winooski (which is clean, but much siltier, making the bottom pretty much invisible) as I think I can get away with it.

Sigh. For want of a nail.....

Rob got me thinking

Rob got me thinking - why can't i make it a clear river, even with only gloss medium? What's the worse that happens - I have to tear it out or redo it.

I'll still need a better brown around some black/blue painted deep holes, but a lot less...

Thanks Rob!

Sounds like a plan

And FYI I was looking at photos of the Winooski River before commenting above, so maybe we're both thinking about almost the same thing!

So full of...

So full of...enthusiasim!  Moving in this new direction, I recalled that I may have actually planned for this - and lo and behold found a ziplock bag full of river rock I had brought from home.

Now, of course, I'm worried about what else I've forgotten...

I hit some "deeper: pool areas with a black/royal blue mix, and than used poly scale roof brown (as I had some) to go over the river bottom, and blend in the depths a little.

A coat of lightly filtered (real) sand went down over the bottom, and once dry, the river rock.

Now I need to find some tree debris, and hit the water channel with some gloss medium!

River

That is going to be one nice river, Scarpia. Doing one about the same size and with very similar materials myself right now, so your posts are very timely.

Looking forward to the next installment.

Roy

Gloss Medium

Scarp-

The river rocks and the sand look great. One suggestion- you might want to try the same setup (rocks, river sand, darker pools, etc.) on a scrap piece of wood and then apply the gloss medium. That way you'll find out how well the gloss medium will work for what you're trying to accomplish before you cover the river bed. In the photo below, you can see how the gloss medium worked on a stream bed on my layout.

I didn't quit get the look of depth that I was after, and probably should have blended the burnt umber a little better. That may have helped (the green looks better in person- the white balance was not adjusted on these photos). You may want to darken the areas that will be under water on the river just a bit to help increase the look of depth.

The photo below shows a mock-up that I did prior to using EnviroTex Lite for another stream bed.

The colors for the bottom weren't quite right, so I experimented with craft paints until I got the colors I wanted. The photo below shows the stream bed before the EnviroTex was poured.

My experience has been that gloss medium works best when you're covering a wide flat area without a lot of detail on the bottom and EnviroTex works best when you want to convey depth and detail on the stream/river bottom. Hope this helps, and I'm sure not trying to curb you're enthusiasm! 

Tom Patterson

Much better

The river looks a lot more promising now.  Since you've added all that rock, I doubt gloss medium alone will give the effect you're after.  A pour or two of epoxy resin, probably tinted with some dark greenish color like Pullman Green, would make a good base, then add the gloss medium over it.

Lookin' good

I agree: with a river of this size, and to get the depth you want, I'd pour a shallow layer of tinted epoxy or Magic Water (I like MW as it doesn't smell, it's easy to tint with Floquil, and you're not limited to the 1/8" epoxy pours: you can pour as much / little as you want).

Then I'd brush the gloss Modge Podge / gloss medium over it to simulate movement.

This is going to be a great scene!

Love...