Gavino200s new layout

[Cat]

And if you want to colour the acrylic medium, you can mix in a tiny bit of RIT dye powder.  Stir it in lightly for an uneven colour that's a bit more natural looking if exposed.  I often mix a couple of colours to get a wider palette.  

[gavino200]

13 hours ago, cteno4 said:

Mostly I like matte medium on ballast as it dampens noise

 

Awesome. That was a big issue for me with PVA. I've read that a layout can be considerably noisier after ballasting with it. It makes no sense to add cork or foam for noise insulation and then harden it all up with PVA.

 

13 hours ago, cteno4 said:

 

and you can take a dental pick and pull bits off very easily when needed, especially around points and edges of rail, or if you need to dig an area out to do other scenery. PVA ballast you need a hammer and chisel to get it out or resoaking with water to loose it up which you don’t want to do around points usually. Diluted PVA definitely works as a scenery cement, it just has issues matte mod podge doesn’t, only better thing is you can find very cheap PVA glue (but then I would question it’s quality). In the scheme of things it’s not a big expense on the layout.

 

Great. I'm sold.

 

1 hour ago, Cat said:

And if you want to colour the acrylic medium, you can mix in a tiny bit of RIT dye powder.  Stir it in lightly for an uneven colour that's a bit more natural looking if

 

exposed.  I often mix a couple of colours to get a wider palette.  

 

Excellent idea. I'll have to experiment a good bit before adding ballast to the track. Getting it right seems to be a bit of a dark art.

[cteno4]

Powdered tempra paints also work for tinting (and a tad less staining on fingers tha rit) for things. Even bold cheapo craft paint can tint some in a pinch.

The tempra powered works well for a number off scenery uses

• Can also add them to things like gesso (thick, rough white acrylic base coat for artist’s canvases) to tint for a scenery base coat (or just use cheapo interior latex tinted paint). I like the gesso as it has such a rough visual texture it looks like scaled dirt texture. I get the cheaper gesso on sale at craft stores.
• Can add to plaster or sculptamold (my favorite) to tint it so that any dings in your scenery texture base coat doesn’t show white.
• Can also sprinkle it (mixed with powdered plaster) directly onto your scenery texture base material and then wet with water to get very nice mottled colorations of your scenery that are hard to get without very careful airbrushing. It’s called zip texturing. Get dirt texture and color all in one! Tons of demos out there. You can even use it to dirty up uniform ballasting without small spots and smudges here and there with rounds of micro applications.

 

useful stuff to have some tubs around (usually have to get it in 1lb tubs). I can send you a few small baggies of it to play with if you want.

 

https://www.dickblick.com/products/richeson-powdered-tempera-paint/

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[gavino200]

Good stuff.  I'll probably practice a bit with some second hand flexitrack before working on the layout.

 

For right now, I'm switching gears to think about how I'm going to break up my power districts. The only device I know so far is the Digitrax PM42. I really don't want to use Digitrax again, so I'll look for something else. I'll wire the buses so I can add and check feeders as I go. I don't want to fix the whole section of track in place only to have to tear it up for electrical reasons.

 

I'll also redraw my RailModeller using Peco track. Likely I'll do it using Peco Setrack and then just copy the radii with flexitrack.

 

 

[cteno4]

If you are using flex track the  much nicer to be able to make things fit gracefully and do some small easements to points and such. Fixed is good to start but then tweak it to smoother curves, will look a lot nicer and be more prototypical as curves are rarely fixed as the track is curved to get the best pat on the grade. That’s the joy of flex track!

 

jeff

[Wolf]

If it helps you, I just did start my very first TTrack module and used Mod Podge (Matte) diluted to fix ballast. Never did anything like it before, and it was very very easy to handle even for a utter newblette like me. Only piece of advice I probably would listen to next time is to remove surface static by spraying diluted soap or some alcohol on it first, static really was a bother (liquid moving a bit at the top before "sipping in", moving Ballast in the process or creating small impact "craters" - was easy fixable, just needed more work).

[cteno4]

Yep wetting with a very dilute soap or alcohol spray is essential to break down surface tension to let your fixing solution in.

 

jeff

[Cat]

20 hours ago, cteno4 said:

Powdered tempra paints also work for tinting (and a tad less staining on fingers tha rit) for things. Even bold cheapo craft paint can tint some in a pinch.

 Umm, whoops, yes, I forgot to mention that I always put on some disposable gloves while handling the dye.  The gloves last, and just live with the dye packets.  I forgot about the paint powder, I've long used the dye because of the much smaller quantity.

[cteno4]

Yeah I still have some rit colors, they are handy as a little bit goes a long way, I just made a mess of myself too many times! Some colors scrub out of skin well, but a few really stain. When I was young, there was a purple that took a few days to get off the skin but under my fingernails it was there for a couple of weeks. I had this odd goth looking arcs on the top edge of my fingernails. I don’t know what I was thinking at the time not grabbing kitchen gloves, we were making tie dyed shirts.

 

jeff