CN Yellowhead Division

[Bob]

I've got to try this: mix color in the plaster, and then remove the mold before the plaster is really hard so it can carved.  My first attempt at doing rocks had two issues: I tried carving around the edges after the plaster had cured and it just did not work well - you could easily see my tool marks.  Second, when I put washes on the plaster the color was just too light.  Guess I need to pain instead.

[Scottl]

@Bob adding paint to plaster of Paris slows the curing quite a bit, as does adding a little extra water.  It makes carving much easier.

For my rocks, I added black and a bit of raw umber paint to simulate the gray limestone.  I still need to drybrush brown highlights and maybe a black wash for crevasses.

[Myracan]

Curious. Have you made the jump to DCC-EX yet?

[Scottl]

It is ready to go.  Maybe when I get the trains out.

[Myracan]

Still curious. Did you build your own or buy a CSB1. I built 3 of them before the CSB1 came out, one with the 8874 motor shield to get the 5 amps which i use for my CS another in my mancave with a programming track and the third to operate turnouts on the upper half of my layout. Love the flexability. Have a full loco roster plus full automated turnout control and now experimenting with train automation. Sorry for the rant but did I mention I love the system. Also i really enjoyed your layout build journey. You have done a spectacular job!!

[Scottl]

Thanks.  I built it with components but had to replace the wifi card for compatibility.   I just plan to use it for train control.  My turnouts are Arduino controlled and on a separate power circuit from the DCC.  I am inching towards a comprehensive sound integration with Arduino and spatial layout speakers, to support full train-location sounds. 

But in the meantime, I have a lot of trees to make. 

[Scottl]

With the backdrop done, I've been putting down vegetation to fill in the new scenes.  It is a lot of tedious work to make the trees but it is kind of relaxing. 

The Windy Point scene turns out to be difficult to photograph but it has potential.  One challenge is the prominent change in sky brightness due to room lighting on the convex backdrop.  I think I might have a solution by screening the pot light a bit. We'll see.


Henry House turns out better than I expected.  Lots of potential here. 


I needed to fire up the 3D printer for my wife so I tried out a quick idea to efficiently make very small spruce trees.   Making anything smaller than 10 scale feet is difficult with the bottle brush approach,  so I found a basic tree shape on Tinkercad and made a selection by varying the dimensions.   The result is a build plate that I can paint and flock easily and the trees look ok.  Most of these are 4-12' scale feet.  By comparison, the background trees  are about 1.25" or 16-20' scale.  This test is a good proof of concept so I'll tweak it and make a larger plate full of little trees.  They are ubiquitous and will be very useful on the layout.

[NorthWestGN]

The trees look great Scott.

How durable is the printed tree, flexible or brittle? Have you tried to scale them larger?

[Scottl]

Thanks Brent.   The printed trees are basically solid resin so they are very strong.   They lack any branch detail but they are very small and it is hardly noticeable.

[Tad_T]

I’m thinking that might be a very good way to make Loblolly Pines.

If the basic trunk and shape of the branches were right that would work well.

I see that whole 3D printing thing looming in my future when I get to the detailing part.

[Scottl]

I agree, a lot of potential.  I am looking forward to trying it for structures next.

[Scottl]

Made and planted about 1000 trees, along with lots of bushes and static grass.  Things are starting to get close to finished so I took the afternoon to railfan a bit.  Windy Point is a great spot to catch eastbounds like this manifest.

[Tad_T]

You do nice work, sir!

[Scottl]

One of the challenges of having a peninsula on the layout is the absence of a backdrop.  When I printed my main backdrop, I had some spare space on the print so I added some small scenes to use as portable fills for photography.

I tried it out today to deal with getting good scenes for westbound trains at Windy Point.

Here is the crude setup:


It works surprisingly well but is clearly too small.  Version 2 needs to be probably 2x the size. But it does help generate some nice scenes.  This mountain is Roche Miette, a distinctive peak on the south side of the valley so the geography is mostly not compromised 







In certain situations,  the fixed layout backdrop serves reasonably well:

[Scottl]

This is the one I meant to post.