Yet another Woodland Scenics Scenic Ridge layout… ^_^;;

[qwertyaardvark]

Update: Ballasting completed

 

Out of sheer boredom (and deliberate delay of building plastic kits) all track under the tunnel has been ballasted and a lot of lessons learned from this ballast practice that lasted most of the weekend. Pictures of the fruit of my labor are attached. The first picture showing the soon-to-be tunneled left side of the layout, and the second picture showing the soon-to-be tunneled back side of the layout.

 

Any parts not covered by ballast was painted black in anticipation of tunnel walls being put up and making the task all the more difficult. Patterns for the profile boards have been cut out and profile board have also been assembled. Still eagerly awaiting my tunnel entrances from Japan...  

 

Next week will hopefully bring about better weather than this weekend (which was cold, damp and rainy) so that I can actually go about painting my plastic structure kits. Temperatures still seem to range only in the upper 40's at warmest and I hope that the paint will dry at such temperatures. This is a big concern since I have to paint outside, but if necessary, I am considering painting outside and then bringing the pieces in to dry in room temperature settings.

[Mudkip Orange]

Ballast looks GOOD. What brand did you end up using?

[qwertyaardvark]

Thanks~ ^_^ Ballast is the WS Dark Gray Fine Ballast. I chose to stick with WS as its fairly well stocked at my LHS and much everywhere else so that I can get it in a pinch. Looks like for this project the included ballast in the kit (WS Light Gray Fine Ballast) was woefully undersized even for the original plans, plus i didn't like the color (I wanted the concrete ties to stand out a bit). At the rate I'm going I'll need to buy another 32 oz bottle...

[Bernard]

Welcome to the "Wonderful World of Ballasting"  :confused3:

Qwerty - it looks great. Now if you have to do other work in the track areas, make sure you cover what you've already did with masking tape on top of the rail heads.

[serenityFan]

Yes, the ballast looks super ... really brings out the concrete ties. Nicely done ...

[qwertyaardvark]

Update: Airbrush + No Skills = DISASTER

 

Having tried out my new airbrush and airbrushing for the first time, I am now officially deftly afraid of airbrushes. It was one of those dumb, "how hard could this be?" moments, and after only spraying on cardboard for a few minutes as practice, I went on straight to my Kato girder bridge... talk about bad ideas! The paint finish went on about as thick as if i had painted with a spray can. *much sadface* So i must add a Kato bridge to the casualty list and buy a new one. Thank god i went for my Kato bridge first... I'd be kicking myself all night if i had ruined a station or platform kit!

 

I'm gonna talk to my LHS to see if there are airbrushing lessons I can get from the store employees or elsewhere. I did try looking on the internet and youtube for airbrush lessons, but i guess im old fashioned by learning with a teacher/mentor that will give me feedback that a video or website simply cannot offer. I figure a lesson session or two ought to do the trick for large coats and killing the shine off the plastic kits. I suspect I'll need to do such lessons again when i move onto double action brushes and more elaborate paint schemes. In the far flung future, I do plan on taking junk shinkansen sets and painting them in custom or UP, NS, CHSR, etc colors... ^_^

[qwertyaardvark]

Update: Tunnel Walls and Wiring Completed

 

This weekend was very light in productivity since I was helping another friend with his hobby, brewing beer, and I am his bought-with-and-paid-for-with-beer engineering consultant. ^_^ (For those curious, we worked on a Belgium Double Ale)

 

Progress on the layout included the placement of the tunnel walls, painting of the tunnel walls, adding any additional ballast to the flanks of the rails near the tunnel entrances, and wiring. Wiring was fun since I finally got to truly run a train on the layout (instead of pushing it along) to check the wiring and clearances; my EF65-53 (attached with OHANE 25-100) was the lucky locomotive to finally grace the rails of the recently named Ougakemachi (桜崖町), which literally translates into Sakura (cherry blossom) Cliff Town. In preparation for the next step of finally covering the tunnels and getting on with the landscaping of the layout, tunnel ceilings have been painted black and side profile pieces glued together and painted black in appropriate ares.

 

In store for me is finally cementing my building, road, farmland, and geographic plans as I place the last of the foam sheets and add crumpled newspapers next weekend and then plaster the layout to hell and back.

 

Photo 271 - Placing the Foam Tunnel Portals

Photo 275 - Tunnel walls added and painted black

Photo 276 - Close-up of tunnel entrances on left side (viewed from the back)

Photo 277 - Close-up of tunnel entrances on center and and right side (also viewed from the back)

Photo 279 - The EF66-53 and OHANE 25-100 being used to test wiring (since i didnt have a voltmeter... ^^;;) and test clearances

Photo 280 - View of some yet-to-be-permanently-placed wiring. All said and done, this layout will need two controllers/power packs to run the two independent "loops" on the layout.

Photo 283 - Placing of final inside-tunnel ballast up to the tunnel entrances (left entrance, viewed from back)

Photo 284 - ditto above (right entrance, viewed from back)

[Bernard]

Looks great!

What is you plan for access to the trains inside the tunnel? Also what method did you use to attach the wires to the rails?

Airbrushing is just a lot of practice. (and I still don't have it ) One of the members here, Stickboy is excellent airbrush artist.

[Mudkip Orange]

What's the ascending grade on that outer loop?

[qwertyaardvark]

@Bernard: The Scenic Ridge layout instructions say to make a few access panels in the edge profile boards (which I did) in case any trains get derailed or otherwise stranded so that ought to take care of that. As for the wires, I took the lazy route and purchased Atlas rail joiners to attach wires to the rails. It was perfect: joiner attaches to the rails, wire of sufficient length pre-soldered to the rail joiner; assembly included, just attach. I figure I'll have rail joiners sprinkled around my layout where the flex track ends, so might as well make a few of them powered :) The outer loop has two feeders, while the inner folded dog-bone loop has three feeders. Each loop is connected to its own Kato extension cord which will then connect to the two separate controllers.

 

@Mudkip: All grades in this layout used WS 4% grade inclines (4.167% to be precise), which a lot of people seem to consider steep, especially on curves, but my locomotive seems to be able to handle it, so i'll go with it. besides, for this size layout, I couldnt imagine going with a lighter grade w/o my trains constantly changing altitude at every point. The smallest radius on graded curves is the Kato R282 (11.1"). For the future though, I'd like to work with 3% or lower grades when a large enough layout permits it.

 

@Everyone: speaking about tunnels and getting in them... Despite having access panels, I still won't be able to do much good in keeping the rails clean with my Bright Boy, so are there any cleaning cars that y'all recommend, preferably ones that are easily available on the American market? (though I am open to purchasing a Tomix cleaning car, and while im at it, a rolling stock cleaner track piece) And what liquid cleaning fluid do y'all use in cleaning track/rolling stock? Ive heard a lot of different cleaning agents being used, from more normal things like Goo Gone, to weirder things like automatic transmission fluid, and everything in between.

[KenS]

I'll second what others have said: those tunnels look good.

 

While I haven't tried it yet, and it's a bit pricey, I've been looking at the CMX Clean Machine as a way to get a non-abrasive cleaner I can use on my less-accessible track.

[CaptOblivious]

qwerty, while your question about cleaning is a good one, it would be better if we could avoid starting another cleaning thread; here are some good ones to contribute to or read for the curious.

 

http://www.jnsforum.com/index.php/topic,1750.0.html

http://www.jnsforum.com/index.php/topic,198.0.html

http://www.jnsforum.com/index.php/topic,1905.0.html

http://www.jnsforum.com/index.php/topic,1512.0.html

 

FWIW, I've found that a full 10-car Tomix 209-0 cannot quite climb the WS 4% risers, nor can my Kato 11-car E231. Other shorter trains have no issues. seven cars (plus a loco) seems to be the max for long 4% inclines in my experience. Not that this will be too much of an issue for you.

[CaptOblivious]

Qwerty: I wonder if these would be useful. Curved platforms

http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10108790

Outer platform for 317mm (12.?") curve, inner for 280mm (11") curve

[Mudkip Orange]

Qwerty: I wonder if these would be useful. Curved platforms

http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10108790

Outer platform for 317mm (12.?") curve, inner for 280mm (11") curve

 

WOW! And this would work just as well with Kato, since 282/315 would nestle in (With just a bit more gap between the train and the platform). Depending on how my layout/living situation goes in the next year, I can definitely forsee owning one of these.

[qwertyaardvark]

@KenS and Capt: Thanks for the rail cleaner advice~ I'll try better next time to research around the forum a bit more before asking questions... ^^;;

 

Looks like I'll go ahead and try the Tomix car cleaner. I'm gonna go with 6442 that includes the wheel cleaning track, track cleaning car *and* cleaning liquid, since it seems there is a lack of consensus of rail cleaner on the threads I looked at. For now, I'll go with the "official" stuff. The threads seemed to boil down to basically no off-the-Autozone-shelf conductive oils, some that use the official Tomix cleaning liquid and a divided camp on isopropyl alcohol.

 

If i ever go with any liquid-based method, especially oils (like my LHS suggested), I will definitely have a car or separate run to mop up the liquids. I would eventually like to go with isopropyl alcohol since its cheap, at least in America, and it will happily evaporate off the track letting me not have a mop car/run but it seems i have to be really careful to make sure it doesn't contact paint on any rolling stock. Definitely devoting a pipette to my cleaning car tool kit.

 

@Capt: ZOMG those would have been nice to know about during the design phase~! Unfortunately the curvature of my turns into the station are 315/348. >_< Definitely would have reduced the turning radii to design those in. Despite it not having Kato spacing, I'll go Mudkip's route of overlooking that for the ability to have curved platforms in my next layout! I wonder if Kato has something similar in the pipeline. Would definitely be interested to see it made to different radii (but i know full well that would be too expensive manufacturing side... but I can still dream)

[inobu]

Good work! Its nice to see the progress.

 

On the airbrush, keep trying it is the only way to create seamless renderings. Most of us travel down the same path when we start off. The LHS sells the simple AB items but our expectations in what we want to achieve can only be delivered with the higher end AB units. The problem is most LHS sell the general type of AB. Its funny how the natural occurrence of business cause all of us to repeat the cycle all over the country. Your next stop will be at an AB shop and all question will be answered.

Instead of hijacking this I'm going to create an Airbrush thread and give a little insight to what I learned.

 

But for now,

 

Remember we are painting in N-Scale. This means that each coat has to be really thin (in the micron's). The brush that you need must have a super small or fine needle/valve, the paint needs to be thinned down not to clog the spray head (needle/valve) and your compressor must be able to generate enough air to smoothly drive the air through the brush.  

 

Inobu  

[qwertyaardvark]

UPDATE: Just one area shy of finishing forming the terrain with foam

 

Thanks inobu for the airbrush thread~  Looks like I'll be working on saving some money for decent airbrush and compressor for the next few months. For now, all i need is a bridge completed, but for the rest of the structures on the layout, those will wait for the new airbrush and compressor to come around.

 

Finally got about putting on the tops of the tunnel and the sides of the layout. Also added an additional power feeder for the inner loop, bringing total power to two feeders for the outside track and four feeders for the inner track (matching the roughly 2:1 track length of inner to outer loop). No train will travel more than about 6 feet between feeder to feeder. Beyond that, flat foam areas for the town, station, farm, and shrine have been put into place. Additional foam lining the edges of the risers for the double track have also been added to aid providing an actual place to connect soon-to-be-placed plaster cloth to the risers. The only flat foam area left to work on is the namesake of the town: the cliff that overlooks the town where I'll be putting a path and sakura trees.

 

If it looks like I havent done much, truth be told, I don't think so either; putting down and securing foam is hardly time consuming (compared to say everyone's *favorite* pastime of ballasting...). For starters, since plaster is about to be placed, I really needed to finalize my plans for where the stairs/paths, inclines, bridges, etc were to be placed so I spent a good chunk of my time just staring at my layout and thinking about how to place and orient important features on the layout. Unfortunately, I'm still in this process. After putting in the last foam foundation and placing poster board for where stairs/paths will be, I figure I'll spend the next weekend just placing and replacing crumpled up newspapers trying to get a general mountain shape that looks at least somewhat real and natural looking.

 

Secondly, I will admit I am kinda beating around the bush getting to the plastering step. The scant instructions WS gives, and the taste of the plaster process I got on flat risers and small inclines, sends alarms going off in my mind for the shaping of a mountain. WS also recommends layering the plaster sheets 50% over each other, which already sounds difficult on a bumpy, inclined surface, and then leaves to the user to figure out how to deal with the sheet when it hits up against a tunnel entrance or riser. By now, I've figured that this skill is one I'm just gonna have to acquire through trial by fire; something learned as an art, not a science, which leaves me with bumbling feet. The only thing encouraging me to get through the plastering step is finally being able to lay down the rest of my track so that I can at last run my trains once again~

 

298 - View through access hatch B

300 - "" hatch A

301 - "" hatch C

304 - Layout rotated to work on front wall and tunnel roofs

305 - Hole cut into front and center of layout for power cords going to Kato power pack

306 - Left side of tunnel roof being added

307 - Right side ""

311 - Front view of layout with all side walls placed and tunnel roofing completed

[qwertyaardvark]

315 - Another view through access hatch C

316 - First foam foundation made, town will go here

317 - Road added; at the top of the ramp will be a grade crossing and road to "outside world"

320 - Front view of the layout with all side walls and foam foundations in. Elevated foam piece next to shrine (top left) not yet carved

322 - Support foam for the foam foundations

325 - Close up of 16% road incline

331 - Foam strips added to the sides of double track risers to aid in getting single plaster layers on riser, and butting up double layer plaster next to riser/trackbed

[KenS]

As someone who can spend an entire evening I'd planned to use carving foam staring at the layout and adjusting track placement, I know what you mean about feeling like you're not making much progress. On the other hand, I'd say you've accomplished quite a bit.

 

And I like the way you've raised the flat foam leaving a gap underneath for wiring. Are you going to glue the foam in place, or leave it removable for maintenance access to the wires?

[Mudkip Orange]

I like the idea of doubling up (or quadrupling as the case may be) WS inclines to get smooth road profiles.

[CaptOblivious]

Having used something akin to the official WS process, I can tell you that the plaster cloth step is actually a lot of fun. But rather than overlapping each sheet by 50%, let me recommend just doing two layers of non-overlapped sheets. The reason is that once the first layer is down, the second layer will give it the extra rigidity that that 50% overlap method gives, but it is waaaaay easier to get the second layer in place. You'll see. The other piece of advice is to be sure to smooth each piece down as you place it, spreading the wet plaster evenly over the surface of the sheet.

[qwertyaardvark]

@KenS: The foam will be staying in place, but I plan to make access panels underneath the layout to access the wires. The wood board is currently only a foundation for the foam to rest on and the foam moves freely. I may regret saying this, but I have confidence that the wires I've placed shouldn't cause a problem for a long while. If or when the need to repair arises, then I will make the access panels in the appropriate places. Worst case scenario, I'd have to rip up track underneath the tunnel which by then the layout would need to be "destroyed" to fix only an electrical component. My hope is that it never reaches that state. In such a case, I'd rather burrow as much as I can underground before even touching the upper surface.

 

@Mudkip: That idea belongs to WS. I noticed on the side of the packaging the inclines came in had a diagram showing different combinations of 2, 3, and 4% inclines to get 1, 5, and 6% inclines as well. I wanted my roads to look as good as my rails so I just took the idea further and stuck 4, 4%inclines together.

 

@Capt: I presume that when putting the 2nd layer, I should then overlap the first layer but with a 50% "shift" in the area covered, aka doing my best to cover the gaps of the first layer? Just in general, this method sounds A LOT easier than what the manual describes. Thanks for the advice~ :)

[qwertyaardvark]

Update: FINALLY~! A functional layout! \(^o^)/

 

Too excited to sleep, here I am typing up this update report for y'all. :)

 

Wanting to run trains by the end of the weekend I decided to push through the last of the landscaping steps so that I could finally put down some roadbed and rail. Friday and Saturday were pretty much spent on the plastering process. Friday afternoon was spent on forming the landscape with the newspapers. I went through at least 20 of my college's newspapers making the many crumpled balls that were soon to become the "core" of my mountain. The landscaping plans essentially called for a mountain with it's top flattened for a shrine, a 45-degree-angle grade path for which I will later put on stairs to go up to the shrine, and, above a cliff, a flat path for the imaginary citizens of Ougakemachi to walk through the sakura blossoms overlooking the city. For the shrine and sakura path, simple flat pieces of foam were used, and for the stairs, thick cardboard sheets would make the profiles for the stair path clear when plastering. After all the newspapers, foam and cardboard were secured with masking tape, the side boards were cut down to shape of what would remotely look like a mountain. The mountain and stair path came out alright, but, admittedly, the cliff did seem a bit out of place, but as the namesake of the town, I kept it. I may do some rather extreme changes to the cliff wall when I get to placing the rock faces.

 

Next came the step I was dreading for so long... plastering. Friday night and all of Saturday were spent on plastering. The reason I don't like this step is that the plaster is so hard to handle once its wet; I would compare it to trying to handle static-laden Saran Wrap. I did fine on the 45 degree angle portions of the mountains, but as soon as I hit the large sections, things quickly headed south, but, deeply wanting to simply run trains, I muddled through. After the large vertical portions were finished, the risers, station area, town, and farm were a piece of cake. In the end, plastering wasn't too terrible, though I am dissatisfied with the number holes that are left over in the process. My one complaint about the plaster is that you can never get a completely hole-less surface unless that plaster is resting against something which came to haunt me in my mountain: the nooks and crannies between the crumpled newspapers left nothing for me to push the plaster against, leaving me with no choice but to attempt to rub completely limp plaster sheets with little success or leave the holes were they were. Perhaps when I get to mixing Hydrocal in large amounts, I will smother the mountain area with the stuff and fill in the holes.

 

Late Saturday night, I decided to get a head start on the roadbed, so I laid down what little supply I had down for the inner folded dog bone loop. Sunday morning, I headed out to the LHS and bought some more roadbed, came back, and proceeded to finish the road bed for the outer loop. While waiting for the outline roadbed glue to dry, I worked on placing the track in the inner line, and when I was done with that, went head and finished off laying the rest of the rail. Pretty straightforward, though I started to figure out how much I hate those little track joiners esp with flex track rails that kept extending/contracting and whatnot and the little buggers simply falling off or being undesirably crinkled/crimped/crushed or otherwise destroyed. (=_=#)

 

But know what? This whole weekend was worth it. When I finally got around to placing trains on a track and going around the layout, I couldn't help but grin for the first half hour! My roommates were also ecstatic to see trains running and congratulated me in my milestone. They know I've poured my heart and soul into this layout every weekend since this semester started, so it's nice to know they appreciate the work that goes into it! In a little over a month, I finally have trains running again, and was reminded what made this hobby great in the first place.

 

334 - Initial adding of newspapers to the layout. Top left piece of foam for shrine, Sakura Path is piece of foam below and to the right of shine area.

340 - Interesting slice shot of newspaper core and carved side walls being partially covered by the initial plaster layer

345 - Layout after plastering completed

347 - Along the top from center to right, closeup of the Shrine area, Stair profile, and Sakura path/cliff

348 - Long view of the layout after plastering

351 - Layout after trackbed and rail laid

354 - Maiden run of the EF6653 and Blue train Fuji on outer loop and Eurostar on inner loop, my apologies to the purists :P

357 - Long view of the layout after trackbed and rail laid

[KenS]

Very impressive.  And very good looking.

 

Looking back over this thread, you've put a lot of effort into this layout, but it's still something to think that you essentially started construction a month ago, and have come this far so quickly. I can understand why you're so excited. Congratulations.

 

Now you just have to do scenery, and buildings, and... 

 

But nearly-finished terrain and working track is a major milestone.

[CaptOblivious]

Hey, very nice, Congratulations! KenS is right, you've come quite a long way in such a short time.

 

Now, to make it not look like Hoth :D

 

I recommend going over the whole thing with a coat of cheap acrylic paint roughly the color of whatever you will be putting atop it (e.g., green for forested areas), which will help strengthen the plaster, and hide tiny gaps in your scenery. This painting is, I find, the most tedious part of all.