Our basement layout

[scott]

MAJOR EARTHWORK REPORTED FROM RAILWAY LINES

Capital City, May 25 -- It was reported today that railway work crews have been at work creating emergency accessways through mountainsides for reaching stranded trains. Great masses of paperiferous rock have been removed by these projects. One of the four accessways created in the hills to the northwest included a double delving, through both walls of one tunnel to reach into an adjacent tunnel on a different line.

    A similar project in the Lost Village tunnel to the south resulted in a major geological discovery. Workers attempting to pierce the tunnel walls encountered an earlier layer of plastiferous rock deep under the current land surface. Scientists surmise that this may represent a much earlier land surface that has since been buried by more recent plastiferous formations.

    At this point, the chief geologist on the project was heard to utter a witticism referencing the exploration of "orogenous zones," which led the chief engineer to demand the geologist's immediate resignation.

    In related news, reports are filtering in to the capital city tonight of huge rifts appearing in hillsides along the railway, and even hints of entire hillsides expanding outward at their lower extremities. As yet, no-one has been able to verify these reports. However, a railway engineer (who requested anonymity) stated to this reporter that he hopes the reports on the expanding hillsides are true, because, he said, "whoever created this place had an inordinate fondness for cliffs and extremely steep slopes, and difficult, even implausible, landscapes have resulted."

    Also tonight, there have reports of multiple appearances at the tunnel workings of a mysterious man known only as "Bernard." As workers struggled to build accessways and find proper locations for tunnel portals, this "Bernard" has appeared on the scene, said "I told you so!", and disappeared into the night.

    Look for updated reports in upcoming editions.

[scott]

At last, another batch of homebrew tunnel portals:

[KenS]

Those look great.

[scott]

Thanks, Ken!

 

With any luck, they'll be on the layout soon.

[scott]

I put some trees on the layout over the weekend--it's amazing how quickly you can go through a boxful of trees, and how little area they cover.

 

This looks pretty rough so far, but I was making the middle of the woods first, with the single-trunk trees. The more detailed trees will go around these when it's all done.

 

[to2leo]

Hey Scott,

What you can do is to put the tree as a single border line along the forest you want to model.  Then just fill in the middle with the green sponge foliage that you used....I saw this in MR magazine somewhere.

[scott]

Thanks--yeah, that's sort of what I did on the first try, except that I did the middle first, which means that it's going to be interesting to hide the shallow foliage with the trees along the edge.

 

This time I wanted to avoid that problem, but didn't realize how many hundreds of stick-trees I was going to need. :-P And now I'm almost out of trees and desperately need to make a few hundred more.....

[scott]

We made a little progress today--no great leaps, but more woods done, and some better pictures.

 

For a while now I've been trying two methods of making the woods--first, just apply a "forest canopy" of lichen to the plaster terrain, with border trees to hide the trunkless trees to come later; and second, making trees with stick trunks and putting them into holes in the terrain. In some ways the stick trees are more convincing, but it's much slower than I expected. I can go through a long session's worth of assembled trees in just a few minutes, and not cover a very large area. So I think the former method may win out, at least most of the time. I don't feel the need to tear down anything we've put up so far, unless I make the stick trees sit lower in their holes.

 

Pictures:

 

 

The direct-attachment zone--we've put more trees on the hillside by the ptp-line tunnel and bridge. The trees are hard to stick to the steeper areas. I either need to come up with a better attachment method, or to rebuild some of the larger steep slopes into higher, flatter terrain. That may affect the course of one part of the ptp line. Smaller slopes can just get rock faces.

 

 

Up-valley view (left) and main line tunnel entrance at the 2nd station (right).

 

 

The valley again, with new trees on the ridge. This valley is where I may raise the terrain to lessen the slopes. That would mean closing the opening at the far end and shortening that siding/stub line/whatever it is.

 

 

The stick-tree zone, with the new Oito Line E127. What do you think--do these trees work?

[CaptOblivious]

Personally, on my layout, I just glue tufts of tree-material directly to the hills, and don't worry about it. I recall the hills of my hometown in Mississippi looked considerably taller than they were, for the tree canopy rising 20–40 feet above the actual crest line. So I don't worry that my "trees" don't rise above the actual ground level—it looks quite convincing nonetheless.

[marknewton]

 

The stick-tree zone, with the new Oito Line E127. What do you think--do these trees work?

 

I think they look rather good, Scott.

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

[KenS]

I agree, the stick trees look quite good. Being able to see the train through the trunks (which it looks like you could

do here) is a good reason to do the extra work for these. But if all you wanted was a hillside covered in trees, you probably only need these at the lower edge, and could use the directly-glued approach everywhere else to save effort.

[scott]

Thanks, guys--I appreciate the feedback. And Ken--I think what you're suggesting is what I'm going to do from here on out.

[Samurai_Chris]

Scott, can I ask what season you are going for.. With the different shades it looks like Aki (Autum) is starting to set in?

 

If your layout is not Japanese, then let the question slide...

 

Chris

[scott]

Scott, can I ask what season you are going for.. With the different shades it looks like Aki (Autum) is starting to set in?

 

That may be an effect of taking color pictures in the basement, and of reflections of the yellow wall (eventually to be sky blue). It's a mix of three shades of green, so to me it looks like late spring.

 

If your layout is not Japanese, then let the question slide...

 

That's been an unanswered question for a while, since we have both European and Japanese stuff. Lately I've been leaning toward making this one European, and I have an idea for either a door-sized or modular Japanese layout that would accomodate locals, limited expresses, and a small scenic line.

[scott]

Finally, the first progress in months! I finally got the background wall painted sky blue (Valspar "Arctic Sky"), and put up a couple of shop lights to hold the full-spectrum fluorescent tubes that I've been saving for the layout. Getting rid of the yellow background makes a big difference. I'm not sure if it comes through in the pictures, but here you go:

 

I removed all the stick trees from this area, and am re-doing it with just clumps.

 

 

The little yellow areas at the bottom will be covered up with scenery, trees, etc., so I didn't bother to cover them up.

 

 

aerial view - pay no attention to the dangling wire

 

 

 

 

The next big project is to add a bunch of power  connections to the tracks so that trains will run better. And of course trees, buildings, etc., etc....

[keitaro]

wish houses in aus had a basement then i could make an epic project, looking good btw i love tunnels and yours has lots 

[disturbman]

Scott, it looks really good with the blue back drop. 

 

Maybe you are now going to make more progress and we will see more updates coming our way. ;)

[scott]

wish houses in aus had a basement then i could make an epic project, looking good btw i love tunnels and yours has lots 

 

Thanks--but since I need to rebuild about half of my tunnels, I'm starting to regret the sheer number of them. 

 

Maybe you are now going to make more progress and we will see more updates coming our way. ;)

 

I sure hope so....

[keitaro]

wish houses in aus had a basement then i could make an epic project, looking good btw i love tunnels and yours has lots 

 

Thanks--but since I need to rebuild about half of my tunnels, I'm starting to regret the sheer number of them. 

 

No way if planned right they are an awesome addition to the layout. 

 

they have to be planned very carefully though.

 

is there anyway you can have an opening beneath the table to get into the mountain? a man hole that a hand can get up into perhaps. As looking at the pics it does seem very hard to get access to them anywhere else

[scott]

I have some access holes in from the side of the layout.

 

The main problem now is that the I have to re-shape the hill slopes to meet the tunnel portals.

[keitaro]

Ahh ok pays to read properly...

 

Either way I like your layout.

 

my mountains are looking abit .... odd who knows they may turn out to be good 

[scott]

They definitely look odd--this is all a first-time learning process for me, so I'm not to trying to be a, erm, model modeller here. But most of that odd terrain will be covered with vegetation.

[keitaro]

thats the plan with my mountains too  :laugh: :laugh:

[scott]

Now that the Grand Location Waffle has come to an end, I think I'm settling on a region to model. I'm not going to try to exactly model anything, but I figure it's good to have a general area as the inspiration. Rather than going with northern Tohoku as I figured before, I'm now leaning toward a sort of Echigo-plus setting. I'm more interested in the mountains and the Japan Sea coast than the Pacific coast, so this seems like a good choice. I'll be sorry to lose out on some of the settings, lines and trains in Yamagata, Iwate, and Akita, but you can't have everything I guess.

 

This region fits well with the trains we already have, too. We have some Niigata-area trains (115s, E127) and trains that go through that area (583 Kitaguni, 165 Moonlight Echigo [!]). I figure we could also sneak in the Joetsu line and maybe even the Agatsuma line in Gunma as inspiration. And even if most JR West stuff doesn't go beyond Naoetsu, I could always sneak in a Hokuriku Line train for fun. The Oito Line E127 and "Green Liner" 455 might be a stretch, but maybe I can trade them off for something that fits better.

 

So anyway--that's the plan, fwiw.

[scott]

EXTRA

An update on our railway article of May 25th of last year--reports are coming in that the entire hill containing the Lost Village tunnel lifted off the earth and disappeared from sight. Some witnesses reported hearing a voice from the sky say "ah, that's better," but they were probably drunk.

 

Several landscape critics have lauded this event, stating that the previous hill, which had grown in stages in the last few years, was a clumsy overcompensation for a previous arrangement in which the hills appeared to have grown to accomodate the railway, a reversal of the common practice.

 

Scientists predict that there is a 50% chance of further geological changes tomorrow, including a significant reshaping of the terrain in the Lost Village area to create a more gradual slope and sufficient space for a rustic hot-spring village. Hopes are high that this will also mean that the village's train platform will not be hanging over a 100-foot drop, and that it will finally be visible from the giant head-shaped balloon hovering over the main station of our capital city.