Panoramic Mountains

Made some panorama pictures of the mountains the other day. What a great little camera feature.

Mountains painted.

The mountains have all been painted and some scenicking has already started. After staring at all that white for so long I just had to see what things would like like with a bit of green here and there. There are some nice scenes starting to develop. Here are some of the most recent pictures.

First wash of diluted black ink.

The mountains got their first was of colour today. What a difference it made! I did the whole thing at once and went through a whole bottle of ink. I mixed about 8 cc's of ink into 2 pints of water and filled it probably 12 times. I started with a spritz bottle but soon switched to a pump up style sprayer due to my hand feeling like it was going to fall off. Worked really well. Will let it dry overnight now before I start adding other various washes of colours like raw umber, burnt sienna and raw sienna. Here is a trip around the sprayed area.

Rock Molds & more Rock Molds!

It's been a long time since I have posted any updates but a lot progression has been made since May. Not much happened over the summer months but many molds were placed since September and a bridge or two has been built as well. I am letting it all dry for at least a week to make sure I get even absorbtion of the washes I will be spraying on. Those will soon be added and I will post pictures of my progress. I also prepared the area where the snow shed kit I bought will go. I used my hawkeye laser level to make sure everything was straight. Here are some pictures of the progress so far.

Mountain update

The last section of the peninsula has taken on landforms. This area will include a Coal Mine, 2 more bridges (like the one seen in front of the coal mine) and a snow shed. It's all still very white and there are no rock formation cast in this area yet but as you can see in the last pictures friends and family are hard at work making rock molds.

More mountain

Bridge is finished so it was time to create some landscape around it. It was a bit of a challenge to make the maountain only 9" wide at this point and still have it look reasonably natural but overall I think the effect was successful. Next area will be the end of the peninsula which will include the coal mine area.

Mountain making

I've since made some plaster bridge abutments and installed everything. The bridge has been weathered with some rust and the bridge track has been painted with rail brown. I also weathered the center of the track to simulate grime & oil. All I need to do is weather some rust streaks down the pier and abutments. Plan on some day making a walkway down the side with a handrail as well but that's a future project. Here are a couple of shots showing the weathering and final installation.

I've also been busy making some mountains in anticipation of another SLD Southern Contingent evening here in the Lyn Valley. A few of us plan on slapping a few rock molds onto the layout tomorrow night. It's going to be great getting help with that part of it. Nothing like mass production rock outcroppings. A friend is going to bring some extra molds with him as well so we have a large variety to choose from. Here are a few shots of the area we will be working on. It went surprisingly fast. It took me only two evenings. It was a narrow area to put a mountain in without using a backdrop but I think I pulled it off not too bad. The idea was to be able to see the backdrop across the isle on the other side of the peninsula at eye level to give the scene depth. The last picture shows the type of effect I was looking for.

Bridge work

Other things are also progressing on the Lyn Valley North Western. I've been building bridges lately. Here is the area I've been working on.

This is a shot of the area to be crossed from the other side. Total length of the bridge will be 310'.

I added 2 micro engineering 50' bridges and 2 - 30' bridges.

The rest of the CV bridge has been built in this shot as well. All have been painted with Polly Scale Grimey Black. I will go over it with some rust after all has been fit into place.

I originally had built another tower to go between the CV 150' and the 30' ME bridge but soon discovered it wouldn't match the width of the CV bridge. I then decided to try my hand at some plaster pillars. I made it a bit long but it fits the bill as far as width goes. I'll have to shorten it or bring the landscaping up to the side of it. I scratch built another bent to support the transition between the 30' & 50' ME bridges as well. Made it too long too. Will have to shorten it as well.

The bridge track has been curved to match the bridge in this shot. I'll be airbrushing it Rail Brown next before it's final mounting on top of the bridge.Hope to make some bridge abutments tonight. Once these are made I will be able to glue it all together into it's final resting place. Will post more pictures as things develop.

Serious switching!

Here is another update showing what's been happening on the Lyn Valley North Western. Have most of the track laid on the second peninsula now. All of my switch machines on the second peninsula are Tortoise machines...........................

Except One.

I hooked it up to a switch on the layout and you have to actually throw it manually like the real thing. The yellow handle is not really prototypical but I did it more to save knees as this is a high trafic area. Here are some pictures showing how I hooked it up. It was fairly easy. The biggest problem I had was getting it in the basement.

The small dowel holds the larger dowel in place so it doesn't slip down out of the half drilled hole in the bottom of the subroadbed plywood. It can also float back and forth to adjust for the change in distance from the dowel to the switch stand when the switch is thrown.

Here you can see how I hooked it up under the layout so it pushes the wire over that moves the points of the switch. All I have to do is add a relay to change frog polarity.