Green & Grey

[DanielMackay]

Treat yourself to an airbrush to achieve uniformity in painting large surfaces. My purchase has been a wonderful upgrade to my modeling capabilities.

 

I tend to favor an Iwata Neo right now; it has interchangeable paint cups of varying sizes, and I much appreciate the ability to switch out paint colors quickly in later stages of my 1:700 scale naval builds. I pair that with a quiet Iwata Smart Jet compressor .

[cteno4]

Even starting with an inexpensive airbrush and canned air (it can get expensive fast) can get you going with airbrushing. To do wild stuff it takes talent but for the usual modeling stuff it’s mainly just some experimenting and practice. Once you get hooked a small compressor and airbrush upgrade soon follow...

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Keith]

Looks great to me, the buildings are important to give context.

[Sheffie]

I finally worked out what the weird unused model was. It didn’t appear in the instructions because it’s a standalone item. It was very hard to recognize because there was so much flash to trim away—a scary proposition when you don’t know what you’re looking at. 

 

But after a few coats of paint, I’d say it’s finally clear what it’s meant to be. What do you think?

[katoftw]

Fire extingisher

[Tuga]

8 hours ago, katoftw said:

Fire extingisher

 

Nope.

 

It's a gas/oxygen cylinder with a regulator for blowtorches.

https://home.howstuffworks.com/blowtorch1.htm

 

Edited February 9, 2020 by tavora

[Sheffie]

It would be easier to tell if it was with items that gave a sense of scale. This is a gas cylinder.

Once again I was fortunate to have got the acrylic paint starter kit with 18 tiny tubes of paint! The cylinder is brilliant red, the brass work is “Old Gold” and the dial is one blob of metallic white paint, applied with a toothpick. I’m not sure I would have got any of those colors if I’d been buying them individually. 

Edited February 9, 2020 by Sheffie

[Sheffie]

Starting an incline—trying to make it as easy as possible on the trains. 

 

 

This is a 2% incline that rises to 1/2” above the base board. It’s pinned down to keep its curve matched to that of the track. Later on I’ll add some card above the polystyrene to prevent ballast falling down. The card will be painted a brown color so as to look like dirt at the edge of the ballast, though I’m not planning on leaving much dirt exposed. 

 

 

For the start of the slope, I’ve taken a razor saw and made 16 cuts on either side of my R249 curve, so that it can bend vertically. Then, I’ve used two 1.25” pins to hold down the middle of the section. This should give a gradual “ease in” to the incline. The pins are painted with a rust pen so as not to draw attention. 

[cteno4]

Good job, this really helps the transition and any kinking and issues.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Sheffie]

The down-slope is going to be considerably trickier. It doesn’t have the space to be a 2% gradient, so I’m putting two wedges together to make a 4% drop. This means that the start and end will need to be extra smooth. 

The bottom end will be fairly straightforward—an S248 with straights before and after. Since the track section is longer and the gradient is steeper I’m going to use four pins rather than two to hold the middle of the section down and create the vertical curvature. 

The top end is where it gets really tricky. The slope will start on an R481 curve immediately before a bridge. It’s simpler and safer, I think, for the bridge to slope down at 4% than to try to make it level. So I cut out almost 186mm from the ramps, leaving the slope to continue at the far end of the bridge. I still need to take the razor saw to the R481-15 curve—and because it will need to bend over the “top of the hill”, I will need to pin down each end of it, not the middle. 

 

(Since taking the photos I realized that the bridge supports should not be on top of the ramps.)

[cteno4]

Sheffie,

 

are you gluing the pins in that are holding track and grade blocks? I would worry with some time they will wiggle out some and ar least loosen up a bit with train movement/vibrations and the tweaking track will gst now and then working on things. Might look at long sewing pins (you can get them up to like 2” long and T pins for holding the grade blocs in place.

 

jeff

[Sheffie]

I haven’t glued anything yet. Most of the pins are there just to stop the track bed pieces from moving sideways, and vertical pins should be enough for that. Where I’m holding track pieces down at the top or bottom of slopes, I am using two pins at plus and minus 45° and I don’t think that they will come loose. 

 

Yes, it’s possible that the entire track bed could move upwards. I’ll think some more about that. 

Edited February 15, 2020 by Sheffie

[Sheffie]

Here’s the bottom of the 4% slope.

 

 

It isn’t very obvious in this picture where the end of the S248 is—it’s just up the slope—but the vertical curve is clearly at the base. 

[Sheffie]

Track engineering has proceeded about as far as it can without a new technological leap. The track will level off and curve around at an elevation of 1” before dropping back down. I am still unsure as to the best way of cutting the 1” extruded polystyrene board. Reading the thread on foam cutters in the tools forum, this sounds like a choose your nightmare situation. 

 

So like a butterfly my mind flits onto a different problem—something unrelated but which will need to be resolved before too much longer. 

 

I have single tunnel portals from Greenmax and double tunnels from Chooch Enterprises Inc. The former are ABS plastic, the latter some kind of plaster-of-Paris. 

 

 

So now I’m thinking about how to paint one or both sets of portals so that they don’t look so different. 

 

Note that the double portals will be on the main line, while the single track portals will lead from the station exit to the freight yard, and through the hill after the coal mine. So, it’s okay if they’re not a perfect match. But they can’t be too jarring. 

 

If I paint both fully, the obvious tactic is for the first coat to be a concrete or stone color, and the second a diluted paler color that will flow into the cracks and represent mortar. This will cover the smoke staining the double portals. 

 

Alternatively, I could paint just the single tunnels with a pale stone color, and use a darker mortar wash on both. 

 

[cteno4]

Sheffie,

 

grab a sheet of stone or brick textured styrene at the hobby shop and cut it up into small chunks and experiment some. Make sure to take notes on what you did on each panel. I usually find this is the best route to both find the best solution having chips to put in place and compare directly as well as avoid an oops on the work piece which I’ve done many a time forgetting a step or substituting an ingredient that didn’t quite work out... also let’s me practice on things I’ve not attempted before or haven't done for years. Chips and notes are great then a few years later when I come back to trying that again.

 

i sadly recently discovered I had lost a set of paint texture chips I had made with several different types of acrylic paints in the passive and 2 stage air brushes and brushed with some different thinners. It was great as there was a range of textures that came out! Found the notes but chips are gone!

 

jeff

[Sheffie]

I’m learning how to paint... by painting. 

It’s not really what you could call finished, but it is starting to look good. Certainly the two types of tunnel look a lot more similar now. Getting it uniform is the challenge. 

[cteno4]

Good work

 

Most of our hobby is how you get to Carnegie hall... practice, practice, practice...

 

jeff

[Sheffie]

Rail workers have completed works on the mine loop. 

 

The foam board was cut with a steak knife. Later, I will have to smooth it, but for now, it’s secure—thanks to seven 2” nails. 

 

 

This section will contain a coal mine, tunnel, passenger and freight platforms. It’s going to be mainly flat, excluding the mountainside. 

 

 

Also, a bit of early repairs. It seems that the Woodland Scenics quarter inch polystyrene board is a little bit on the thick side, so the long 2% incline had a bit of a step halfway up. A couple of shims and some pins to stop the track moving should do the trick. 

[Sheffie]

I’m very happy to have made the “investment” of $8 in a couple of decent brushes. 

Compared to my other brushes ($12.95 for a set of 12!) these inspire a lot more confidence. I’m painting the Greenmax station entrance kit and I’m using a far more ambitious scheme than I ever would with the older brushes. 

 

Fun fact: I mixed my own shade of red for the roof, from deep red, brilliant red, and deep yellow. I’m very happy with it. 

Edited February 29, 2020 by Sheffie

[katoftw]

Red looks great. Cos it is a little darker shade gives it a weathered look.

Edited February 29, 2020 by katoftw

[Sheffie]

The station entrance is done. 

In the end, I didn’t have to bash the kit very much, because I altered my layout a little, which means that there’s room for this at the West end of the platform. There is still a gap under the DX platform end, which I will have to think about.

 

 

The major differences are removal of a wall and roof over the platform steps. I skipped building the kiosk outside the front, and moved the telegraph poles away from the very edge of the layout. So some holes were drilled and others filled with putty. 

 

There will be other fencing along the trackside, later on, and a bus stop outside the entrance. 

 

Overall I am quite happy with the kit although the selection of stickers was s little odd. There were a lot of big advertisements and no obvious place to put them.  I’m still loving the rich red of the roof. 

[Cat]

The station is looking good!  Minor bashings are always fun just to give personal touches to kits.

[Martijn Meerts]

People tend to underestimate the importance of a good quality set of brushes 🙂

 

[Sheffie]

I’m experimenting with ways to weather the super-shiny Kato Rahmen catenary poles. Apologies for the poor quality of picture. My old iPhone is at its limit. 

The upright and the corner have been washed with a very dilute Ivory Black (mostly isopropyl alcohol). The horizontal beam is untreated for comparison. 

 

It hasn’t reduced the shininess, but I do really like the effect. 

 

And I put spots of white on the insulators, just to see how that looks. Good enough. 

[Kamome]

Looks great!  Perhaps a dull coat spray would do the trick to tone down the shininess. You could also add some brown wash in areas that would collect rain/dirt or stay damp to show some of the oxidisation of the bolts etc..

Edited March 5, 2020 by Kamome