Green & Grey

[gavino200]

It looks good. Are you planning to light it?

 

[Sheffie]

2 hours ago, gavino200 said:

It looks good. Are you planning to light it?

 

 

Hmmm. It would not look good with internal lighting, I think. The interior is completely un-detailed, with the exception of the double-track doorway half way along, that shouldn't really be there at all. Worse, there are obvious spots where the material flowed away into the mould. Then there are the interiors of the windows and doors, that look very rough. The interior of the "office" lean-to is just the same. Interior lighting would really only work if the windows could be frosted.

 

The sort of lighting that would work with this model, I think, would be one or maybe two "floodlights" mounted on the top corners of the building, casting light onto the work-yard and maybe the tracks. That's actually something I was planning to do around the coal depot, if I could find some suitable truss (framework) to mount such lights on. And some suitable LEDs of course.

 

 

Edited January 31, 2020 by Sheffie

[cteno4]

In defense of green max building kits, the old un colored ones are the most basic of kits. It’s old school clean, tweak and paint. They do make quite nice buildings with some work. They are also useful for kitbashing and several buildings, like this one, have some neat options that’s not found elsewhere much. Most all the Kato, Tomix and Tomytec buildings have no interior details so for that you need to do your own any

 

jeff

[katoftw]

You get what you pay for. But being 4x cheaper than Tomix or Kato. Quality is in the eye of the beholder.

 

[Cat]

11 hours ago, cteno4 said:

They are also useful for kitbashing

 

Yuppers,  I just got the Green Max 5-Storey Station specifically for kitbashing fodder.  It will be lovely to work with; but then, I grew up with an XActo knife in my hand.
: 3

[cteno4]

Yep it can go higher easily. They also did the modular high rise system which was quite nice but could get expensive to go big!

 

as Kato noted they are very inexpensive, so you have to put the labor into making them nice.

 

jeff

[Sheffie]

Work on the repair plant is slow, as I’m waiting for glue to dry before turning the buildings over or around. 

 

So for a bit bit of a break, I opened up the Kato yard building kit and put together one of those. 

 

 

This is 11 pieces of plastic held together with 2 screws, and I think that the quality and detail are fantastic. The biggest criticism isn’t the price, at $25 for 4 buildings, but the fact that each building has a couple of pillars running up the middle, where the screws go. A dedicated modeller could cut those out and glue the pieces together, of course. Overall: very happy. 

[Sheffie]

Work In Progress

 

(apologies for the poor focus)

This is the front end of the train repair plant. It’s sitting on its side while the glue dries on the ventilation duct. Luckily, my purchase of a basic acrylic paint set last week included a silver, so the ducting looks pretty good. 

Edited February 1, 2020 by Sheffie

[Sheffie]

WIP

The last piece of ducting has been glued in place. This pic shows off the silver paint a little better. 

 

Also: the crew shed has gained a few signs. Thanks to Google Translate and a smart-phone, I no longer feel excluded from the activity of attaching stickers to my model kits. Previously I felt like I didn’t want to run the risk of putting the wrong words in the wrong place, like a celebrity getting a tattoo with the character for soup or whatever. But now I’m confident that all these signs are various exhortations on the subject of workplace safety. 

Edited February 2, 2020 by Sheffie

[Sheffie]

Here’s how Kato’s yard building kits fit together. 

Each wall consists of a dark brown "wooden" panel and a clear "glass" panel with white details around the window frames. These snap together and sit on top of the base plate, underneath the white panel that represents, I think, plasterwork. The tiled roof goes on top and two screws hold everything together. Two detents in the base plate must align with notches in the long walls, ensuring that the doorsteps in the base plate align with the doorways.

 

On this building you can see that one of the ends has no windows, so there's no "glass" panel there. Note that the end pieces have drainpipes moulded in at each side. These extend upward and will eventually sit in holes in the roof piece. They're rather delicate, but in an obvious way, and I haven't broken any yet.

 

What I have broken are two of the window frames. When cutting the "wooden" panels out from the moulding sheet, you're basically out of luck if you need to make a cut on an exposed window frame -- look at how thin the brown plastic is in the end panel in the middle of this picture. Fortunately there is a remedy for this, because of the design philosophy. Simply attach the "wooden" and "glass" panels to one another, and superglue the broken frame pieces into place against the "glass" backing. That's what I've done on each of the long walls in this model, although the photo isn't good enough to see where the breaks are.

Edited February 2, 2020 by Sheffie

[Sheffie]

Now I’m trying to figure out where the lean-to workshop is going to go. I’m using its roof as a placeholder in these pics. I need to know where it goes because I need to trim some plastic off of something to make it fit snugly against the wall. 

It could go here, on the fourth section, and that allows space for a truck to easily drive around the end of the building, to get to the crane, on the fifth section/door... but I might need to shorten the tracks going through the engine maintenance shed on the left. Or of course I can put it on the sixth section. 

Edited February 2, 2020 by Sheffie

[gavino200]

10 hours ago, Sheffie said:

Now I’m trying to figure out where the lean-to workshop is going to go. I’m using its roof as a placeholder in these pics. I need to know where it goes because I need to trim some plastic off of something to make it fit snugly against the wall. 

It could go here, on the fourth section, and that allows space for a truck to easily drive around the end of the building, to get to the crane, on the fifth section/door... but I might need to shorten the tracks going through the engine maintenance shed on the left. Or of course I can put it on the sixth section. 

 

 

Those look really good. After seeing the models, I think you actually could make them look good with lighting. You'd have to light proof them and partition them. I get it you have bigger fish to fry right now. I do hope you put them together with a medium strength glue so you can remodel them in future if you ever feel like it. I put my earliest buildings together with superglue and regret it now. 

 

Your layout is starting to look great!!!

[Sheffie]

1 hour ago, gavino200 said:

 

 

Those look really good. After seeing the models, I think you actually could make them look good with lighting. You'd have to light proof them and partition them. I get it you have bigger fish to fry right now. I do hope you put them together with a medium strength glue so you can remodel them in future if you ever feel like it. I put my earliest buildings together with superglue and regret it now. 

 

Your layout is starting to look great!!!

 

The various cracks and gaps could be sealed up, certainly, and the windows can easily be frosted (from experience, clear glue will do this)—but I wouldn’t want to put in any kind of internal partition. I still plan on driving trains in there. 

 

As for future modifications... the structural joins were done with superglue. For windows and roof-mounted ventilation it wasn’t necessary, but it just didn’t seem practical to hold the walls together while waiting for regular glue to dry. 

 

The kit is cheap enough that I would consider getting another one if I wanted to make significant changes or improvements. Certainly I would take a different approach to the painting. 

[gavino200]

9 minutes ago, Sheffie said:

 

The various cracks and gaps could be sealed up, certainly, and the windows can easily be frosted (from experience, clear glue will do this)—but I wouldn’t want to put in any kind of internal partition. I still plan on driving trains in there. 

 

As for future modifications... the structural joins were done with superglue. For windows and roof-mounted ventilation it wasn’t necessary, but it just didn’t seem practical to hold the walls together while waiting for regular glue to dry. 

 

The kit is cheap enough that I would consider getting another one if I wanted to make significant changes or improvements. Certainly I would take a different approach to the painting. 

 

 

Seems like a good plan, Sheffie. For holding parts together while waiting for glue to dry, clamps are your friend. Micro Mark has some fancy expensive ones. But I've found lots of useful clamps at Harbor Freight and Home Despot. 

 

I'm really enjoying watching your progress. It's going great. 

[Sheffie]

Working to finish the crane (which will probably never look straight, unfortunately) and the lean-to workshop for the train repair plant (which has a stove-pipe chimney still to be added). Today we learn that Tomix rust pens are without subtlety. 
 

Also in this picture: some barrels painted a deep red, which may be rusted over when they’re dry.
 

Oh, and a touch of the black Gundam marker on the crane mechanism. I was expecting it to be thinner and flow into cracks more. I think I’ve been misled by YouTube videos. 

Edited February 4, 2020 by disturbman
line break issue :)

[gavino200]

It's really hard to paint things yellow. Try painted the surface white first and then apply multiple thin layers of yellow. If you try to make it yellow in one go, it sometimes ends up being too thick and goopy. 

[Martijn Meerts]

Gundam markers are just regular paint in a pen, they're not a wash or anything, so they don't flow much. Even using them for what they're meant for (panel lines on Gundam kits), they don't always work well. For small panel lines they're great, but once the lines get a bit wider, or you have indentations to completely fill, they're not great. The markers also aren't very subtle, which is great if you're trying to get your Gundam kit look like the anime with the sharp lines, but if you're going for something more realistic, the traditional wash / pin wash is a better option.

 

Also, as mentioned, yellow is a pain to paint (as is orange and other similar colours) due to them being rather translucent. Using a white primer, or something with some slight yellow pigment in it definitely helps. There's quite a few coloured primers out there these days, for example, Vallejo has a 'desert tan' primer, which is a darker yellow / beige type of colour. Primer is actually an important step for getting good results, not just for making the paint stick better, but it also affects colours. For example, grey primer gives a fairly neutral / realistic look, whereas white primer makes the colours brighter / more vivid. Black primer on the other hand tends to make colours look metallic.

 

Vallejo paints are also airbrush ready, so very thin. It should be possible to brush them on (in multiple light coats) without streaking.

 

 

[cteno4]

A flat primer also makes a better surface texture for most building things than trying to do flat paint right into a slick plastic surface.

 

jeff

[Sheffie]

Really I think I needed to sand the surfaces before painting. That mould left some terrible lines, sanding would have helped create a surface for the paint to sit on. 

And as has been said, it’s a mistake trying to put a lot of paint on in one coat. Blobs destroy both surface details and the outline of a model. 

[cteno4]

Only issue with sanding plastic is that even very fine grit will scratch it up a lot as a lot of times most of it is pretty smooth. That’s why the primer is a better way to start to give a bit of even texture. I usually try to do all the corrections I can with a new xacto blade and shaving to keep things smooth. At times I will use the edge at an angle to burnish as it will usually give less lines than sanding. Also a little deburring tool can help get some seam lines in odd places the best with out scratching the surfaces too much. Watchmakers screwdrivers are also good deburrers.

 

also wash the parts well in warm soapy water to get all the mould release off it as well.

 

yep more thin coats are the best. An airbrush is the best as you can apply really thin coats and control the spray.

 

many times in nicer weather times I just use can lacquer primer from the big box. A couple of light coats from a good distance (on a big piece of news paper for overspray) to make sure I don’t blob out. Not as fine of a spray as an airbrush but ok for larger pieces. I’m going to try to get into the acrylic primers so I can paint indoors anytime I want with the airbrush, tired of fumes... it’s a little more expensive and more work cleaning the airbrush, but with it to get better coats and no fumes.

 

painting with a brush can really blob out the details unless you are super careful and best only for details with a tiny brush and care to not get too much paint going. 
 

gobs of painting model videos on YouTube that are super helpful. Also just grabbing a few cheap kits at a show (sometimes missing some parts) and practicing can really help, it’s one of those experiential and practice things. Also let’s you experiment with thinning paints and different brushes to compare the finished product on a similar surface to find what works best for what you want. This is how I learned weathering by buying a pile of $1 cars at shows and just experimenting with different materials and techniques on similar cars to compare directly.

 

cheers,
 

jeff

 

 

[Sheffie]

Here is what is hopefully the last major integration task in the train repair plant: fitting the lean-to workshop. 

I had to cut away the skirting from the base of the factory wall, to get the gap down to an acceptable amount. I found myself wishing Sheffield made micro chisels, but I managed with the knife.

 

That still left the top edge—there was no way I was going to get a nice straight edge from a  corrugated surface. So I filled the gap with model putty and poked it into place. Not perfect but it looks like an attempt was made to seal the gap, and that’s exactly the effect I wanted. 

 

Bonus: the stovepipe is in place, once a deep red color but now mostly rusted away. 

Edited February 6, 2020 by Sheffie

[cteno4]

Looks good!

 

jeff

[Sheffie]

And here, in the interest of full disclosure, is the current state of the layout. 

 

Not nearly as glamorous as you may have thought. 

[gavino200]

Looks awesome to me! The only thing I'd suggest is to change the yard so you have 7 long branches by getting rid of the 4 tiny branches at the end. Being able to park and interchange different relatively long trains is just a lot of fun. 

 

Edited February 6, 2020 by gavino200

[Sheffie]

Ah, but you don’t know why I designed it that way 🙂

 

I have some particular trains that I need to find room for. 

 

And I very nearly had enough room to store them all. Just one siding worth of Kokis needs a home. That will be okay once I park my 787 series in the siding by the island platform. 

 

Luckily there is no shortage of space for locomotives. 

Edited February 6, 2020 by Sheffie