Base Earth Color, Roadbed, and Track

I'm going to post this update with things grouped together, but I seem to have developed a "random" style to completing things, and so it's not necessarily in the order that I've done them. The reason for this is because I start to do a task, the step I think I'm on, and then realize I need to do another part of the layout first before I can finish the task I'm doing. And of course when I start doing this other thing, I realize I need to do some other things. And so on. As long as everything is getting done, I'm not too worried about it.

You saw the plaster coat from last time. It is now painted my base desert earth color.

Here's a closeup looking around the bend in the lower right hand side of the layout. (Side note: I should give this a name perhaps). You can see that in addition to painting the plaster coat, I've also laid down cork roadbed for the track to be layed on.

The scenic location and look that I've picked for the railroad I've narrowed down to the northern part of Arizona. Here are some shots about what I have in mind for the terrain theme for this layout:

I've been asked if there will be cactus -- Yes, there will be a little cactus here and there, but not overwhelmingly so (as in a stereotypical way).

The cork roadbed extends all the way into what will become the tunnel.

And of course how could it be a model railroad layout without track? I've begun to lay this section of track.

The track and ties are held in place with one of my favorite materials -- blue painter's masking tape (the low-tack stuff). The rails are pre-bent before installation, but are still a touch springy. In these cases I've started using pins to help them keep their shape while I work on them.

Leilani recorded a short video of how exactly the track is made, for those of you who were wondering.

Here the subtly rusted tippers sit, waiting for a train to pick them up for the next ore haul...

I've begun to build the tunnel liners as well. These will be basically cardboard, that's painted black, which will serve as the walls of the tunnel. Here they're just raw cardboard, and I'm dry fitting them to make sure the train can pass through without banging into the walls.

For this particular tunnel, I'm planning on building a wooden tunnel entrance and wooden tunnel lining, like you'd expect from a mining railroad.

Lastly, I layed out some more roadbed, leading into the tunnel on the left, along with dry fitting some of the track.

Here's the overall progress of the layout up to this point...

Terrain Forming Has Officially Commenced

I'm getting asked two questions frequently:

• Why did you stick all those strips of cardboard on there?
  -AND-
• Why did you put the fascia on now. Doesn't that go on at the end?

Well my friends today your answer has arrived.

It's a matter of order of operations (though there's a high probability that I forgot something and will realize it later and wish I had done that first). I didn't want to permanently mount the track if I knew I was going to be plastering right next to it. It's possible, of course, but I didn't want to risk it if I had the choice. So instead I decided to do the outer terra-forming first, before mounting the track. Then I could lay down the track in confidence.

On a larger layout there would have been more of a shoulder on the wooden trackbed, but because this is a very small layout it made more sense, in my opinion, to terra-form first where possible.

Terra-forming can be done in different ways, but with wood I choose to go the cardboard strips + plaster gauze route. The first step is to establish a web of cardboard strips that give the basic shape of the earth:

It first starts with the vertical strips (or vertical-ish strips). The strips run from the wooden track bed down to the fascia! Tada -- there's the answer to the first two questions. In order to create the terra-form web, I needed to attach cardboard strips to the front fascia.

Once the vertical-ish strips are in place, horizontal-ish strips are woven into them.

I used my mom's old crafting hot glue gun to glue it all together. While the hot glue is drying, they're held together with clothes pins:

When all is said and done, the cardboard strip webbing should look like this, leaving about 1.5" squares of openness:

Once the cardboard strips are in place, plaster gauze is laid over them. The plaster gauze is a crafter's product that originated as cast-making material. Doctors offices could order gauze that had dried plaster attached to it. It enabled them to make a cast by simply wetting the plaster gauze and applying it to the patient.

Well some government organization that regulates things like this regulates that they are only allowed to be so old, and then the doctor's office must dispose of them. Those surplus, "expired" casting gauze started making it's way to crafters. Soon it became a hot item and craft supply stores began to offer non-sterilized versions.

I actually picked up 8 rolls off of ebay for $25 (that's about 5 cents a square foot). On a side note, it was being sold by a "baby memory" seller who was offering it to expecting mothers to make a plaster cast of their pregnant belly. Fortunately, when it came into work it wasn't marked as such and was in a plain'ol USPS box.

Anyways, the gauze isn't 100% covered in plaster, so after the strips are wet and laid down on the cardboard web, they look as this...

I'm not sure if you can tell, but there are small holes in it (holes like gauze would have holes).

However, if you rub your finger across it, you can smooth out the plaster. I did a 2nd coat of plaster gauze, as I was planning to do, and on the 2nd coat smoothed everything out, giving me the final terra-form base:

TA-DA #2! The first land form has taken shape.

I plan to go back with an x-acto knife and spackle and clean up where the fascia and plaster mountain meet, then paint it with a coat of my base desert earth beige color.

There's also something neat I'm building which shows up on the edge of a couple pictures which I'll post about later this week (probably a video along with it).

Oh yeah, and under the terra-form, it's very professional looking...

On a side note, I'm actually building this layout on an old bulletin board that my mom used to use to block her puppy dogs into a certain part of the house. It has dog scratches all over it, and at one place on the bottom they actually peed on it. Good thing that part is getting covered up...

Fascia

Alright, I'm done working on it for today. I drew, cut, and mounted the fascia (fā'shē-ə) for the front and back. Actually, only the front one is mounted. The back on is sitting on it's mount right now, so it's about 3" taller than it will be when it's finally mounted. The back open area (non-tunneled) will be the Applewood Canyon, as seen on the original layout plan.

The square hole in the bottom right is an access hole for the electronics. A panel will be mounted over that which has the power switch and plug for the throttle (controller).

Can you start to visualize it from the plan?

First Running Track

TADA! It's not an update about the benchwork.

I got tired of having pieces of wood and no trains so I started to put together some of the trackwork for the LANI railroad. I started on the section that will be mostly inside a tunnel for obvious reasons.

The track is made by soldering the metal rail to a PCB tie which is a wafer like material that has a coat of copper on the outside. The rail is soldered to the copper surface and held in place quite nicely. This is as opposed to using miniatures spikes and spiking the rail down with those (uh, I'd rather solder, thanks).

After a decent section of rail has been soldered down, gaps are cut in the copper surface of the ties to not short circuit the electrical connection. The gaps can either be cut with a small triangle hobby file or by tapping a cut-off wheel from a dremel on the surface (you can guess which I did).

When all is said and done, this section of track will actually be coming out of a tunnel right about... here. The area where the tweezers and tools are sitting right now will be a small town.

I put together a short video of the train (if you can call that black chassis without a shell a train) running on the track...

This handlaid track has been brought to you by....

The letter U...

The number 8....

And this soldering iron...

On a side note, I took a picture of my overall work area, and realized a number of things I have were given to me by friends and family...

Terrain Form Showing Up

In addition to the benchwork coming together, some terrain has started forming as well...



It won't be plastered over until all the benchwork and pylons are in place though. But I installed it now in case it's harder later. I'm planning on mounting a fascia of 1/8" MDF all the way around which the cardboard strips will be attached to to finish their form. Hence why they're going on now, since it'll probably be easier.

Only 1 to 2 more pylons are needed and the support for the upper deck will be complete!



Oh, what's this? A level bridge connection.... ?



A view I haven't shown before. The bottom left turn will be hidden in a tunnel which will pop out on the bottom right turn.

Again With the Benchwork

I troweled a layer of spackling over top of the wooden base and smoothed everything out. I also picked up a quart of sand-ish colored latex paint which will be my base earth color....

You can see some of my reference photos that I'm collecting too (thank you flickr!).

I had also picked up a new DC throttle off of ebay. Yeah, yeah, I know DCC is the rage, but it's expensive and this layout isn't exactly a multi-engine operating estate. DC is fine, and as long as it runs the engines reliably and slowly I'm happy.

The Varipulse 851 is supposed to do just that. It seems picky about how clean the track is and also how well the motor of the engine is in condition. I've gotten a better feel for it, and I get pretty decent results, though it can stutter or stall on a dirty spot of track.

More on the Benchwork

It's kinda starting to become visible what it might be like. There will be a bridge there, where the gap is (and the train is sitting)...



The train will snake down the backside of the layout.... part of this will be in a tunnel (hopefully)