Control Panels

The main line and coal tipple area turnout control panels are complete and installed.  Much more fun to operate trains now that I don't have to reach in and throw the switches manually!

Each turnout (a model railroad term - means a track switch - turnout is generally used to differentiate these from electrical switches) is controlled from one of these panels.  These join the original panel, seen in the August 2011 post "Continuing Fascia Work", which was redone to match these, and serves the lower staging area.  There will be (2) more panels - one each for the locomotive servicing area, and the brewery complex area.  There's no track in these areas yet!

The panels are made from a base of 1/8" Masonite and  1/16" clear Lexan, with a printed track schematic diagram sandwiched in between, and mount vertically behind the blue fascia board.  Each can be removed and laid down horizontally (as shown in the 2nd photo below) for servicing.

To change a turnout position, you move the appropriate toggle switch to the desired position, then press the button beneath the toggle.  This delivers a brief burst of power to the turnout solenoid to position it.

A Short Video

Thought I'd post a little video - watch it full screen HD at YouTube.

It's amazing what can go wrong when you try to stage a video!  This is take 4 of 5 that I shot last night, and despite it's flaws, is the best of the lot.  The WM freight that's moving away from the camera decides to stop briefly at about 23 seconds, and I got a little shock when I flipped the toggle switch to change the signal from green to red (the signals will eventually be automated - I wired them up for the video with a 12VDC transformer, a bunch of jumper wires, and a toggle switch - so basically, I had a bunch of bare live wire in one hand).  Anyway, this is a little look at some main line running past the coal mine area.

Coal Mining Area - Complete???

Well, it's complete enough for now - I'm going to move on to the next area (viaduct, river).  Lots of details added, as you can see below.  Still a bit to add and do, which I'll pick at while building the next area:
- complete the control panel wiring for this area
- weather the locomotives & rolling stock
- add more layers of detail, such as grade crossing signs, switch stands
- wire the track signal controllers

Some current counts:
- trees- 248
- people- 35
- animals- 8
- cars and trucks- 4

I'm able to catch some things in pictures, that I didn't notice before - such as:
- photo 2 - the person with the broom appears to be a woman!  Didn't notice this before...
- photo 9 - bent wood stove stack on the darker grey building
- photo 11 - my Jeffreys mine motor is off the track!
- photo 12 - let's assume the boy in the foreground is imitating the girl in from of him - but
                that doesn't explain her odd stance with her arms out!

I've tried to get some good "in the scene" shots - hope you enjoy them - click each for larger.

 

Company Town

I've installed the grouping of buildings that make up the "Company Town", just adjacent to the still unfinished coal tipple.

I'll let the photos show some of the steps in building these wood models:

Trees

Trees and vegetation really begin to bring things to life!

Tree making 101: I start with Super Trees from Scenery Express.  What you get in the "Value Cases" is a big "bush" of natural plant material that, when separated out, looks amazingly like scale trees.  They claim it's from Denmark - what do I know about plants?  I've read some people say it's a plant called Sedum, and you can grow your own in the back yard.  Well, that's not happening.  Anyway, they look good, except they tend to have a natural curve I need to get rid of.

I work in the kitchen for the first steps - another advantage of being single... here's a batch separated from the bush into individual trees - all shapes and sizes.

Then they go into a huge pot of water to boil for a minimum of 20 minutes.  It smells kind of like kale when it's cooking...

Then outside, I've rigged up a clothesline under the deck to hang them upside down, with extra clothespins for weight.  The boiling and hanging straightens the trees out.

When dry, I spray paint the lower stems with cheap light grey primer.

When the paint is dry, I dip the lower painted part into a mixture of alcohol and black India ink.  I think the combination of the grey primer and the ink dip gives the "trunks" the right grey color, highlighted in a darker tone.

Here they're laid out for the ink to dry.

Next, holding the trunk in a gloved hand to mask it, I spray on 3M Super 77 hi-tack adhesive.  It is ready to work with in seconds.

Now it gets fun.  I use Noch Professional Leaf Flake in a variety of shades for the foliage.  Some flake is poured into the Turbo Tree canister.  Actually, I modified mine by transferring all the guts into a little larger container of Utz Pretzels.  The Tubo Tree is a little pricey, and it looked like something I could probably make myself - but as someone in the manufacturing field, I appreciate the cost of innovation and engineering, so I bought one.  It worked great, except I found a little larger container worked better, so now I have about a 2-year supply of pretzels.

I tried to get a video of this thing in action, but failed miserably... but it works really well, distributing the leaf flake evenly onto the tree sprayed with hi-tack.  The trees are then placed upright into a scrap of foamboard with holes poked in it to allow the glue to dry.

Finally, I sprinkle on a random dusting of a fine highlight color - browns, yellows, reds - and give the trees a spray of cheap, unscented, super-duper hold hair spray to keep everything together.

Planting is easy into the foam scenery base - poke a hole with an awl, add a dab of hot glue, and plant.  Smaller pieces of Super Tree material, with leaf flake added, are used as underbrush to fill in the gaps.

I keep count of the trees as I plant them - the current count is 132 trees!

Sneak Peek

A quick update - been working on the ground vegetation - grasses, shrubs - and thought I'd throw up a little peek.  Very much not finished at this stage.  The hill in the second shot will be covered in trees - the gold color is the undergrowth of leaves and clutter.  The building is a switch control tower, located in the triangle of track seen in the second shot in the previous post, "Dirt".

Dirt

 

Dirt.  It's the base of the earth, at least the part we see everyday, right?  Dirt has finally arrived in the coal mining area. I've got approximately 20% of the railroad now covered with dirt, along with rock detail, and some of the track ballast. 

In the photos above, the area is still wet from the glue, and will take a few days to completely dry.


Some detail on how I do it - there are as many ways to create model scenery as there are models and modelers.  I chose to try, for the first time, a rigid foamboard base.  The material is expanded polystyrene (EPS) sheet - it's the stuff you see at HD or Lowes known as rigid insulation foam.  More often than not, you see it in a pink color from Owens Corning;  most of mine happens to be from Dow, and is light blue.  Same stuff.

What is not the same, but similar, is white beaded styrofoam, commonly used as packaging material for TVs and such.  This would work, but because it is made by compressing beads of expanded polystyrene together to create a form, is can be a real mess when you cut and shape it.  Plus, the flat sheets of EPS, which come in a variety of thicknesses, are better suited to cover large areas.

That's not to say, working with EPS is not messy!  It does cut, sand and shape very nicely, with a variety of tools, but the material cut away can hold a lot of static - it actually jumps up onto my arms and clothes as I sand it!  So, I try to do cuts with knives and hot wire tools in the basement (less mess), and most sanding in the garage.  A shop vac and compressed air are very necessary!  The foam sections are glued in place to the benchwork structure.





Some photos to show the foam being fitted into place:
Left, structures in the "company town" - some are just the floors at this point - are fitted where they will go, and a roadway is sanded in.
Below, the narrow gauge mine track is being laid out to go from mine to headhouse.
Bottom, the coal tipple foundation piers are located and glued in place.

 

Rock detail is cast in rubber molds from Hydrocal plaster.  See the new page on the sidebar to the right on rock finishing.

 With the foam in place, it (and any exposed plywood) is then covered with the "crust" - this is a cellulose and plaster-base material called Sculptamold.  Very nice stuff to work with, blends everything together.  Some small details and plaster rock castings are "glued" in with the Sculptamold at this time.  Above, you can also see some background hills on the wall.  The hills I'm building here will also be covered in trees.

The crust is then painted, and with the paint still wet, covered with a sprinkling of real, sifted dirt.  I actually took a sample of my main dirt color to Lowes, and matched the paint with that.  After the paint is dry, the dirt is further held down with first a spray with 70% isopropyl alcohol (as a wetting agent), then a dribbling of a 50-50 mix of white glue and water.  The white glue dries totally transparent, and rock hard. 

The final step for the scenery base, before moving on, is to ballast the track - you can see that best in the 2nd photo at the top of the page.  Very time consuming, but necessary.  I use Highball brand real crushed limestone (made for model railroading).  It is poured on, spread between the crossties, and shaped to a nice slope down the sides while dry , then is held down with a 50-50 mix of matte medium (an artist's material from Michael's) and water.  The matte medium also dries totally transparent, and holds the stone in place very well, but dries a bit softer than the white glue mix - this deadens the sound a bit better when running trains.

I need to finish building the structures in this area - the coal tipple and headhouse, some company housing for the mine workers, a company store, and a few railroad buildings - and blend them in with the dirt, before adding more layers of scenery - grasses, weeds, bushes, rocks, trees and undergrowth - as well as people, vehicles and man-made clutter.  So I'll be working on completing those buildings.

This is a good stopping point before completely finishing the scenery, to move on to covering the next area with foam and dirt, which will continue around the corner, under the TV, and include the river and viaduct scene.