March 12th, 2014: Aaaaaand...A Swamp!

Of of the things we had seen in train show layouts that we knew we wanted to incorporate into our layout was a swamp.  This one is loosely based on the many little pocket swamps we have here in the Hudson Valley, that feature grass, cattails, dead trees and willows.

This photo showcases the trestle that was built about a year ago, since covered with a hand-carved and painted foam overlay to show bricks.  There is the beginning of a pond but it's not really visible in this shot as it needs more "water" (acrylic lacquer) put over it.  Along the left edge of this pond are purple loostrife, cattails, grass and a willow tree.

This shot details the small pool of water on the top of the cliffs in a depression, the drainage of which down the cliff forms the swamp below.  This area started out as an experiment using polyurethane spray foam which didn't work out so well, it was covered by spackle, which cracked so I removed it and then covered it with hydrocal and then eventually gypsum, which has been our rock medium of choice,.  Vegetation has been added.

Work continues on the road from the factory down to the town over the track portals.  The next stage is finishing carving the cliffs and painting with gypsum and then painting the whole thing in Woodland Scenics acrylics, putting down the road, painting that and then putting the portal facade up (which has already been carved and painted).  This has been a particularly challenging area, requiring serious engineering.  On top of the cliffs is our trusty battery-powered vacuum cleaner, which has worked out quite well in keeping loose particulates down.

And THIS is the swamp. Putting the tracks and levels and cliffs in around this area was one of our greatest challenges, requiring quite a bit of imagination to get just right.  Finishing this area is a huge milestone in the progress of our layout.  

So, where do we go from here?  Well, as the weather warms up, I will finally be able to take our buildings outside and spray them with clear acrylic primer and start painting them, which will take a long time.  We have the town's main street roughed out and that will be a project for this summer.  In addition, we have to rough out the main mountain on the northwest side of the layout and build some bridges to cross our stream.  We've also been having circuit issues, with a few of our wires breaking free of the spatula connectors to the junction boxes and an odd short-circuit in the system that involves the bleed-through of the current from Tracks 1 and 2 to the rest of the layout, which wasn't happening before.  We have also had some rough spots in Track 1 where the train becomes derailed, one of them on the south side of the layout by a double switch.  We have a lot of work ahead of us but it's really fantastic to just step back and look at the layout as a whole and see how much we have already accomplished.

It may be snowing outside but it's always summer in Mina County!

So today I'm off from school because Mother Nature decided to throw a Snowpocalypse at us.  Gave me a chance to spend three hours with my dad in his basement.  He has done a lot of work lately, rearranging a few of the tracks and redoing the topography in those areas.  We also started work on a swamp between our two stone trestles.  So here are some photos from today's labors!

First, here is the swamp area.  Foam cutouts were placed for higher terrain where dead trees and clumped grass might be found.  We put a few cattails (bottom) and grass (top).  The grass is too high, I will trim it when the glue dries to hold it in place.  The foam is beveled using an Xacto knife.

 Area around some of the revised track.  Notice the small building and the complexity of the terrain?  A combination of foam and Fusion Fiber make the terrain what it is.

 A ridgeline dividing two sets of tracks.

 Here my dad applies glue to the substrate to put in the texturing material.

Another small vignette of an area we've been working on slowly but surely.

A fresh blob of Fusion Fiber (colored with equal parts yellow, green and brown acrylic paint) sets the slope for this little bit of scenery.

My father applying glue to this area:

 Applying the texturing:

Building the texturing up layer by layer:

 That's it for today until it dries.  Shrubs, trees and more to follow. 

Another new section between the tracks!

Finally, here's an area I've been working on...I'm not satisfied with the paint job and will be going back over it with diluted black to give it some character.  I use all Woodland Scenics pigments to color my cliffs. The cliff itself is carved from pink insulation foam with a Hot Wire Foam Factory hot knife and then painted with gypsum, then colored.  None of this is molded, it's all hand-carved.  Same goes over the tunnel entrance.

Build Update: January 11th, 2014

Work is progressing nicely on the layout.  We are creating a swamp and we tore out the switchback area coming off the mountain and turned it into a straight road, widening it by 3/4".  Took a bit of engineering to do it but it looks good.  More work is being done on the industrial area and it is really taking shape!

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.