Wrapping up the ballast

As of tonight I have all the ballasting done from Ruston to Winnfield.  There's just a little left near the yard entrance and it will probably stay that way until I get the track and area around Union Scrap finalized.

A- Mainline heading South through the backdrop to Haskell.

B- Mainline heading North through Winnfield.

C- Is a cutoff I installed to bypass the yard, which I may remove from the crossing to the backdrop?

D- is the spur for Union Scrap

I think the Brown paint turned out nice and now with the ballast applied, it still shows up nicely.  

If you look closely you can see where I applied the black and gray Tamiya Panel liner to the look of sunbleached and fresh ties in this area.

It took very little work to clean the track after the ballasting was complete this time. I took care not to flood the track with glue and then I used a small square of #600 sandpaper and lightly wiped the top and inner head of the rails, then I came back with the Woodland Scenics track cleaner and polished it good.

The loco ran pretty good with the exception of a few spots and two of the points which I used the #600 paper again and inserted it between the point rail and stock rail and moved the paper back and forth a few times.

After wiping down the railheads, I quickly applied a couple swipes of my graphite stick and viola! the loco ran smooth as butter. The more I use graphite the more I like it.

Ballasting the points

I stepped away from the tree painting for a bit.  I need to figure out where I need to paint them and until I get some scenery added in the area, I don't want to paint them and then cover them up with other aspects.

So I decided to start working on the ballast from Ruston to Winnfield.  Last night I started with the points of the turnouts in this area.

I wanted the ICG to have a different color of ballast, so I play around and decided to use just the plain gray, but later I added a bit of Light Gray and a pinch of Black just for a slightly speckled appearance.  Just like the color I chose for The Rocks mainline, I do not like ballast that is a solid color, for The Rocks main line I chose to mix WS Light Gray, Gray, Gray Mix and some Buff. 

I tried using some Gamblin Raw Umber powder pigment to dress up the tracks a bit and give some age to them.  I found this idea after watching some of Boomer's videos: 

 https://youtu.be/w3u39QM4t0M?si=60_qElJMh5PZgLA1

You sure don't need much or it becomes over powering on lighter ballast.  I applied this to each side of just the rails with a small stiff brush, then sprayed it with water to set it in place.  

Background hills

I decided to add some background hills like I have in the past, but this time I only used the darker green for what I called the "nearest hills" before.  I did this so when I paint the tree line I can leave gaps in it and you'll be able to see short patches of the hills in the distance.

Dubach

Ruston

Winnfield

After getting the hills painted, I went back with a medium fan brush this time and added a jagged edge across the top.  I did this for a little texture and to enforce the look of a tree line rather than just a straight line.

Once, and if I'm successful at getting the foreground trees painted on, I'll come back to the exposed gaps in the tree line  and add color and texture to the hills as I've done before with acrylics so it looks more like this.

The next process will be what is called "Blocking" in the trees.  This is done with acrylics and will be very roughly painted patches of the close colors.  In this case, greens and browns for the rough shape and color of the trees.

This is the basic idea of "Blocking".

Southern clouds

It's been a fairly productive Labor Day '23 in the basement this year.

I got the rails painted, got the backdrop prepped and got the clouds painted behind Dubach, Ruston and Winnfield. 

Dubach

Ruston

Winnfield

Virtually driving around these areas on Google Maps, I've decided to do something a little different on the backdrop.  On the north end of the layout (also the North side of it) we're in Arkansas so I painted some distant hills.  In Louisiana, I have noticed that it is much more flat instead of having hills, it seems like there are a lot of trees that make up the horizon.

So I'm gonna try my hand and painting a tree line after finding some nice videos on YouTube showing a simple three step process.  We'll see if I can bring out my inner Bob Ross for this?

 

Backdrop prep and Track painting

With a couple of sessions in the books and the new ICG track working like I want, I felt it was time to move onto the next phase of the area:  Painting the backdrop and track.

I did to the backdrop what I have done with it elsewhere before painting it, I first had to remove the Panhead screws that I used to secure it with originally and replace them with Flathead screws after countersinking them.  Once done I used lightweight Spackling to fill in the holes and the seams.

I also filled all the seams between the ceiling tiles with more lightweight spackling and painted the surface with my generic brown latex paint after the spackling had dried overnight.

There are a couple areas that did not get painted yet.  The area in Winnfield where Union Scrap is located at will get painted once the final location for the tracks have been decided upon and the area between the tracks and the fascia, which may get some excavation in time? 

Next up, painting of the track.

In the past I just used Rustoleum dark brown camo for the tracks, but afterwards I always had reservations about it in the fact that it was too dark for older, less maintained track?

So this time I did a little more soul searching and came up with a new idea.  After seeing what Greg did on his FreeMo-N sections and using his airbrush to paint groups of ties in different colors, I thought I'd try that?

Well I just don't have that kind of patience I guess?  So I did the next best thing.  I picked up a couple more rattle cans of lighter browns and thought I'd try painting everything with the three shades of brown.

The sample section I did, didn't turnout horrible, so I pressed on.  The first coat was with the Dark Camo, I covered the tracks with roughly a 75% coverage. I followed that with the Rustoleum Brown and misted it on patchy then followed that coat with the lighter Krylon Bark Corteza, misting it on with an even less coverage.  It may not be perfect, but it gave me a nice variation in color. 

Even though none of the ties are individually colored as of now, I plan to go back and use Tamiya Panel Liner to add some individual colors to the ties.

The sample track looked ok to me and considering that this is N scale, I don't think it will stand out like it might if it was HO or larger, but it does give me a subtle difference.  In the image below towards the center you can see where I used the gray and went back over it with the black to make some look like they are sun-bleached.

My next step is to repaint the backdrop to cover the screw holes then start painting the hills and tree line.

Op session Aug 19th, 2023

I'm a little late with this post, got busy with a few other things.

Aug 19th, Harvey, Tim and Ely came down from Omaha along with Willie & Ray.  Dave came up from Beatrice as well for another session.  Luther my old assistant manager decided to swing by as well to see what I've told him I do in my past time. Harvey and Tim couldn't make it for the previous session so we got together again.

Things went pretty good and all had a good time.

Harvey and Ely is getting train #776 underway as Luther watches the action.

 

Harvey and Ely are working Haskell, AR.

Tim and Willie ease train #775 into El Dorado as Ray waits for them on the main with the MKT coal drag.

With Ray out of the way, Tim and Willie are making the final moves at El Dorado.

Ray doesn't make it very far before he is required to dawn the "Asshat" after putting some cars on the ground at Winnfield.

Uh oh! Something's not right in Haskell, so Dave steps in to see what went wrong and offers a helping hand.

Before the session is over, Harvey gets his turn to wear the coveted "Asshat".

Thanks for stopping by guys!  Had a great time.

Looking forward to the next session...

Complete revamp of the ICG tracks at Ruston, LA

I had always planned to have the ICG tracks disappear between the backdrop and a tree line at Ruston.  The more I thought about it and talked with some friends, the more I thought about redoing the entire area.

I had always thought about putting a farm scene or Mobile home court between the ICG tracks and the Rock's mainline, but the trouble starting showing up when I wanted to install a small siding/run around on the ICG tracks to help improve operations.

With turnouts to throw and couplers that would need to be uncoupled, having a tree line that would semi conceal the tracks, I would have to reach over the tree line or scenery and have to reach to the backdrop, about 18", which wouldn't be bad.  But I could see a constant scenery repairs being needed.

A friend suggested that since I removed the short siding earlier on the Rock main near Tioga Jct. that I move the ICG track out away from the backdrop and "Hide it in plain sight" close to the Rock's trackage?  So I started doodling some plans and came up with this:

 

Once I found something I liked and thought could work I played around with some older turnouts that I had on hand.  When I decided it could work, I ordered some new turnouts and got after it.

Here's a quick video I made of how it'll work.

 

 

 

Re-alignment at Tioga Jct.

Since I reduced my Ops plan several years ago, the short siding at Tioga Jct. near Winnfield has no use any longer.

Back when I had two locals that worked North and South out of El Dorado, the South local would work Union Scrap in Winnfield, which it usually only needed a couple of gondolas.

Since there wasn't very much room there and only that short siding, the local would leave most of its cars sitting in Dubach and drag down only the few gons needed.  Once it worked Union Scrap, the power would run around the loaded gons and return to Dubach, grab the rest of its train and make its way back to El Dorado.

Now only the NB local works Union Scrap and it's a trailing point switch, so no run around is needed.  So the other night I called out the track gangs and I had them remove the siding and realign the tracks at the junction.

This is what I started with:

Here's a quick video of how I reworked it.