12/15/13 Video!!!

Updated Photos!!!!

The cliffs are made from carved pink insulation foam, covered with gypsum and painted. I used a hot knife to carve the foam. The retaining wall is Woodland Scenics Concrete paint put directly onto foam. The vertical grooves in the retaining wall were made with pencil. My dad made all of the trees using premade trunks and branches and slowly adding the texturing over a period of several days. The ground cover is Fusion Fiber with Woodland Scenics ground texturing applied.

Retaining wall is made of 1/4" thick piece of foam that I carved grooves into with a pen and then painted, then my dad added the greenery. The cliffs are made from carved pink foam insulation and covered with gypsum and painted.

Built this graveyard over the course of the last week. My dad did all of the ground cover this week.

Houses from over a hill in the foreground.

Houses from over Jasper Rock.

This portal was made with 1/4" foam with each rock outline carved with a very sharp pencil and then painted...each rock in the portal is painted individually. We still have a lot of work to do in this area. 

Getting back to the track

Although I still can not put in the four to six hours a day I was doing, it's back to work.  During the last four weeks I have made 58 trees, including four new apricot trees for the orchard (to be planted in the spring).  Also completed: the west side retaining wall and cliffs now have vegetation and the tracks both above and below this area are ballasted with scenery and trees.

This week, Mark and I put in the cemetery and I am almost finished landscaping it, and the nearby pond.  The tombstones are tiny, but by adding dirt to highlight each, they can be seen.

Next week we'll add another batch of fusion fiber to smooth out the hills.  I find that doing the scenery while the fusion fiber is initially moist works far better than coming back afterwards.  It takes more time, but the results are worth it.

Slightly inactive.

During September, I was concentrating on making trees and shrubs, off the layout, for future use, as well as defining the ballast and scenery around the edges of the layout.  At this point I'd estimate the rough scenery away from the town is 25% complete.

Unfortunately, in early October a routine medical procedure turned critical and I landed in the hospital for a week, having a procedure I never expected to need.  Recovery time is estimated at eight weeks or longer, but hopefully I should be able to continue working on simple scenery projects by mid-November, and be back to full activity by early 2014.

Update: October 29th, 2013

Taking a break from the trains as we catch up on the other things that life throws at us.  Here is the layout as it stands right now.  We'll probably do some small work this winter but our time will be taken up with other things.  Don't worry, we'll be back to it soon enough!  :)

Mina County has a covered bridge!!!!!

Continuing work...coming along great.  Here are some photos that detail the highlights:

This is a bridge I've been working on, laser-cut wood, assembled with Elmer's all-purpose glue put on thin with a brush.  Two weeks of work and it's finally done but for the weathering.

A little pond at the bottom of rock outcroppings along the track.  Not entirely done yet.

A collapsed building between the tracks before Jasper Rock (what I've been calling that monolith in my mind).  I rebuilt Jasper Rock, coated it with gypsum, added hydrocal molded rocks and painted it.

My dad built this building out of paper!!!!  Looks pretty damned great!

The river, after a final coat of blue-tinted varnish. I still want to add some more rocks.

This was a couple of blocks of 2" pink foam.  I carved the strata using a hot wire carver, coated it in gypsum and painted it.  No rock molds were used to make this at all.

This stone retaining wall was made from a thin sheet of foam, cut with shallow cuts with a hot knife and painted with three different colors of acrylic only partially mixed together.  The cliffs here were done the same way the ones above were.

August 18th, 2013: Cliffs and Trees

So now I am carving the cliff faces directly into the foam and have made a large amount of hydrocal rock molds.  Father is continuing to lay out ground texture and building trees.  The whole thing is coming along nicely.  Enjoy the video!

Major Progress (July 24th, 2013)

I was away chasing storms and came back to find some areas of the layout transformed.  A new village, most of the trackage ballasted and some amazing terrain put in.  I finished working on the river, painting earth tones onto the upper layer and then pouring the top layer.  I thought I had sealed the ends of the river but it turned out not to be so.  Fortunately, Minwax Polyacrylic (which we are using for the river) is water-soluble, which is why I bought it to begin with.  New cliffs have been carved and covered with gypsum, new houses and trees have been constructed and even the roughing out of the road leading from the manufacturing area to the village with a set of switchbacks to the lower town has been constructed.  Things are coming along very nicely!

Amazing Progress!!!!

So, after a month of working we have made some serious changes.  Painting on cliffs, putting on Fusion Fiber and texturing...and today I painted the river!  Check it out in the video here:

Full Speed Ahead!!!!

GoDaddy finally got the release from my old provider and www.markrosengarten.com is back in business, baby!!!!!  I just got the links pages up for the topic-by-topic links to the relevant YouTube videos back.

Mark Rosengarten (dot com?)

Blogger.com is not seeing my YouTube videos for this account.  Until the problem is resolved, here is the link to the video:

Link to video

Building a mountain!

Saturday's build time had me making a mountain.  Tomorrow I paint it!  We've been having difficulties...Digitrax lied to us about a warranty return and exchange, so we're still without the booster and the trains we ordered that were supposed to come with DCC decoders didn't.  We are at a very frustrating point in the build but we'll hopefully be past it soon.

March 26th, 2013: Track is Done!!!

Well, the train mountain platforms are laid, the foam is all cut and placed and the track is now all set.  We have to make modifications as we delve into DCC (a whole new adventure) but my job will shortly turn to placing the landscaping in.  I built a couple of model buildings today while father played with wiring.  Tomorrow we head to the shop in Marlboro for gear and advice.  Went to the train show in Kingston on Sunday and while it was small and a little disappointing we stocked up on all the Woodland Scenics stuff we're going to need, including casts for molding hydrocal.

Here's the video:

March 12th: The Build Continues

We have pretty much completed the east and south sides of the terrain and are working into the more complex areas leading up to the mountain on the north side!

Peb. 24th: Continuing the perimeter!

Today we worked on tying the east section together with the 4X3 industrial section on the northeast side.  We have to put in a gorge with a trestle but we didn't get to that this weekend.  We put in 9 hours of work on the layout between yesterday and today and my father put in more than that on his own building houses out of balsa wood and printed patterns on thick stock paper.  We had trouble with one area by a canyon cutout on the east side...the bottom was uneven and the glue didn't overcome the foam's natural tendency to warp.  It doesn't affect our tracks any.  Today I cut a lot of ramps.  It's my least favorite thing to do with the hot wire scroll table because it requires far more precision than my shaky hands can provide and thinking about it while doing it makes it that much worse.  We are getting really good at cutting out smaller pieces and fitting everything together just so but the next phase of the build is going to be the most challenging so far...several tracks crossing over each other at different heights.  This is going to look amazing when it's done, though!!!!  It's already far more complex than I could have hoped for and that's a good thing!!!

Check out this annotated video of our progress to this point:

Feb 17th: Laying foam!

We spent several hours today dabbling in the basement.  We are definitely getting better at doing the foam.  We did the edging of the terrain on the east side of the setup and glued the foam down there.  Then we moved on to the 4X3 area, laying foam and cutting ramps and eventually gluing all that down, too.  We used soup and tomato cans as weight to hold the foam as the glue dried.  We used 2:3's to hold down the ramp areas.  We also made an elevation adjustment to the mountain table.

The tracks are laid and so are our plans...

Last weekend we started laying down foam for the terrain.  It's been an interesting exercise in engineering and materials science.  We have actually gotten farther along than this but I want to wait until this weekend is over before posting the next video.  It's pretty startling what you can accomplish with a hot wire scroll table!  Next challenge...the mountain.  It's going to be interesting!

What this all looked like before...

...the massive train setup we have finished was conceived!

A swimming pool with a swimmer in it!!!  Does the paneling on the side look familiar?  It should!  We reused this for our build!

The paneling on this side was actually framed out with 2X4's and is now the control panel side of our build!

The pool table is still there.  There is plenty of room for playing even with the behemoth train table set up!

Finishing the Build

Took two hours today to get the second shelf in place and attach the stabilizing arm to both shelves.  The build is now complete.  Next step...trains!!!!!

Construction Nears Completion! (Video)

Today we spent nearly four hours putting finishing touches and troubleshooting solutions to problems we created unknowingly in the course of construction but were able to overcome.  I discovered that I am dyslexic...instead of cutting the wood paneling 43 inches, I cut it to 34 inches.  We were able to make a fix but it ate up a bunch of time.  I almost did it again today...telling myself "32 inches...32 inches..." and then measuring out 23 inches.  Whoops!  Here is a video that highlights what we've accomplished to this point!

January 16th, 2013: Homasote Update!

Well, we spent a few hours on Saturday putting the homasote onto the plywood!  The way we did it was to paint a strong wood glue down onto the plywood (working from opposite sides of the plywood sheets) and then maneuver the homasote into position, immediately drilling pilot holes and screwing the homasote down onto the plywood.  It didn't take that long but I broke two drill bits in the process.  In the afternoon, the paneling was put up along the front, tacked in place by a nail at the top and another at the bottom.  Since then, we have discussed methods for attaching a slide-out board for the transformers and flip-up panels for the switches and are watching YouTube videos on how to make mountains and tunnels.  This is a learn-as-you-go project.  I got the glue today for putting together the model buildings we got and ordered a hot wire sculpting tool so we can make our terrain from foam.


Upcoming this weekend will be photos of the paneling that has been put up along the front and sides of the table!

January 5th, 2013: The Table Is Completed

 Started just after 9 AM.  Put the platforms we built last time upside down and put on four legs on each side, bracing them against the cross-braces.  We tied them together with 1X3s on all sides to level everything out.  We did the construction on the tarp to mitigage damage to the brand new carpet underneath.





As we moved them into place, we put carpet fragments under the legs to mitigate damage to the carpet underneath. 



 



It was tough getting everything to line up but we got it done!  We made a trip to Home Depot to get more screws and wood and a new drill bit...I broke the 9/64th bit while we were playing with the second platform.   

 Here is the third platform, which we kept upside down until the fourth one was completed.

All four platforms are completed and put in position!  Note the 2X5 pieces of plywood connecting the two sets of platforms together, leaving a 2X6 opening in the middle so we can work.  

From another angle.

The work opening looks smaller than it is at this wide angle.

From the side.

From the bottom.  Everything is lined up, all systems go!  Next step is to glue and attach the homasote to the plywood, which we'll do next weekend!

We finished at about 5 PM.  8 hours!  Put in a solid work day!  :)