Weathered Highway

After getting the crossing stencils and STOP lines applied with an airbrush, it was time to add some weathering.

For the overall weathering I went back to my trusted weathering medium: Pan Pastels.  I used a light gray to help fade the stripping a bit.  For the tread paths I used a bit darker gray and mixed it with the light gray and worked them in with a soft brush to keep them from becoming too heavy.  

Along the outer edges of the highway I used a light brown pastel to give it a dusty look from the dirt shoulder.

The oil spots near the crossings were made with a Soil Wash from Rail Center by MIG.  I used a small stiff brush, loaded it with the wash and shook most of it off.  Then I took a dental pick to gently pull back the bristles and let them "Flick" some of the wash onto the surface.  The cracks/tar lines were made using a fine tipped calligrapher’s pin, dipped in black India ink.   

Then it all received a coat of  Dullcote to seal in everything place.  

Now I can continue with the base scenery. 

Railroad crossing stencil

I wanted to get a crossing stencil on the new highway and I asked around.  I found one of the brass S&S models from a friend on a forum that I frequent and also inquired about having one printed, which a friend from our forum did happily make for me.

Once I got them in my hand, the first thing I tried was to use by stipple painting with them.  However the results were less than stellar.  I wanted to try applying them by airbrush but was held back by the worry of not being able to the clean the over spray off the stencil since I like using solvent based paints, Tru-Color to be exact. I was worried that the cleaning solvent would melt the prints.

This afternoon I found a little time to give it a go and it worked like champ!  I was even able to remove the over spray from the printed stencil using lacquer thinner.  From what I could tell, it did not damage the print.  Double bonus.

After removing the stencil I used an ultra fine brush and touched up the lines from the stencil, I must say I'm happy with the way these turned out. 

I did not add the white lines in front of or behind the stencil.  After looking at a lot of the crossings on Google maps, I found quite a few different designs from crossings along the old line.  Now I know UP is running portions of this line and I figured they may have updated some of them to current standards.  

But I did notice that some had lines, some only one line, while others didn't even have stencils on the road at all.  One of them even had the two "R's" in front of the "X" stencil, which I had never seen before.  Depending on how ambitious I feel I may go back and paint them.  I will probably, at least,  paint a white line that's even with crossing gates next to the tracks when I get them installed.

  

Highway striping

I continue to bounce back and forth between projects.  I got the building flats and played with them as I continued painting the styrene highway.  I repainted the highway several times before I found a color to my liking.  Next up was to add the stripping to the highway.

I thought about using vinyl tape but thought they may wind up looking too fresh for what I wanted so I decided to paint them instead.  Recently someone on a forum used masking tape and "painted" the lines with Pan Pastels, which looked real good, but I know from experience that they can fade away pretty good when overshot with Dullcote to lock them in place.

I decided to use paint and stipple it on so it would be a solid line of yellow and white.  After doing a little research to figure out the proper widths of the lines, I used some Tamiya 1mm tape to separate the two middle yellow lines and 6mm to mask the outer edges of them.

For the outer white lines I used a strip 2mm to space them away from the pavement edges.  Then again I used a strip of 6mm for the inner edge.  I just eyeballed the widths.

I used some White and Yellow Tru-Color paint that looked close to the proper colors, I figured by the time I got around to weathering the highway they would blend nicely.

As for a "Crossing" stencil on the highway surface, I'm still playing around that.  I acquired an old S&S models brass stencil and a friend actually 3d printed me a stencil.

Unfortunately I'm having issues with using the stencils.  I have tried several times painting them with brushes and different viscosities of acrylic  paint, but so far the paint seems to either leak out from the stencil or if I happen to barely move it, it spreads the paint.   I even tried to tape it in place.

I let it dry once and when I pulled up the stencil, some of the paint came with it.  I may try spraying with my airbrush yet.  In the meantime I looked for some decals and came up empty handed, with the exception of some vinyl transfers.  So I ordered a set to see how they'll work.

The Yard backdrop

The one rule about my backdrop is that I don't want it more detailed than the layout, I don't want it to draw your eyes from the layout.

Right now the backdrop is same color blue as the rest of the layout and in time I'll paint it with trees and clouds to match the rest of the backdrop throughout the layout, but I plan to add some buildings to it.  I had always planned to make some 3D flats by cutting up some models, which I still may do?

Several years ago I ran across a seller on eBay called Trackside Flats.  This seller took images of actual buildings and cleaned them up to make them look like generic buildings, these are then glued to 1/4" foam board so you can attached them to your backdrops to create an urban scene.

I thought these, combined with painted trees, hills and clouds might be the answer I've been looking for?

So I ordered two of his flats from his website, one of the shortest and one of his tallest flats to see if they'd get me somewhat of what I was thinking of.

They may not be perfect, but they do add a lot of depth to an otherwise flat scene.  My thought is to not have them all side by side,  but have a group of 2-4 buildings sitting next to one another and then leave some space where you can see trees and hills between them.

Having a solid run of buildings across the entire 16' of backdrop would, I think, look to be too much?

Styrene Highway

Started on the actual styrene for the highway at Ruston over the weekend.

I used a styrene "No Parking" sign that I picked up at Menards a few years ago.  It's .020" thick so I doubled it up to make it .040" thick.

I cut it larger than I needed and then trimmed it to fit.  Right now it's about 2-1/8" wide which works out to about 28' wide.  So I think that would be two 10' lanes and a bit left over for outer stripes.

Once they're painted and glued down, I'll bevel the cork for a shoulder.

The crossing is by Blair Line.  After gluing them in place I stained them with Ammo Rail Center washes and sealed them with some Dullcote. 

They got shot with a primer for the gray base coat.

Tranquility base

This morning I went down and sucked up the last of the base ground cover.  This looks so much better than the flat, grey ceiling tile that I have looked at for the last 15 years.  I'm excited to start getting some static grass, trees, bushes, shrubs and Kudzu in place.

While it probably looks way too green at the moment, overtime it'll change as I add different shades of greens and a variety of ground coverings and trees.

I think the eroded hillside came out pretty good?  Now to get some static grass, trees and exposed roots in place.

I want to take my time and experiment with some different methods that I have read about over the years and see which will work and how to go about them.  In the meantime, there's another project that I've been wanting to work on as well, so I might get sidetracked a bit;  the backdrop for the yard.

Especially since getting the trees and clouds done behind Ruston and Winnfield, the yard backdrop looks too plain, but at least it's blue.  My original thought years ago was to paint it blue with clouds, then kitbash some 3D building flats from kits to set against the drop.  Over time I have founds several ideas that I want to explore.  One being printed paper building flats that are glued to foam core.

I found the guy on eBay several years ago and found out he has a webpage as well.  You can buy individual buildings that are pre mounted on foam that you can just stick on your layout.  Or you can buy two full sheets from him that you can cut out and mount them yourself.  You can leave them as they are printed, or cut them out and rearrange them to suit.

My thought is that these are mainly images of the backside of the buildings, which you would normally see from the rail yard.  The print quality seems to be pretty decent, but for a backdrop, I wouldn't want any high res prints that could distract your eyes from the layout.

I think I'm going to order the sheets and play around with them and see what I think?  In them meantime, I'll start noodling and adding some greenery on the base.   

 

A little more ground cover

I'm progressing a little bit with the groundcover trying to get the brown hills covered with some vegetation.

Using one of those cheap $0.99 chip brushes, I spread some thinned glue over the areas I want covered, then I just liberally sprinkle some green turf mix over it and pat it all down.  Once dried I'll go back using my Red Devil vacuum and suck up the majority of it. I'll rub my fingers over what's left to get any foam that is only partially glued down removed.

To get away from a solid field of green, I'll also come back and apply some of the earth colored grout to give some patches of dirt here and there.

Why do this?  Well this gives me a solid base to start applying static grass.  Ground foam is much cheaper than static grass and with the ground foam covering the majority of the surface I won't need as much static grass to get a decent looking effect.

Once I get the static grass down, the trees, shrubs and bushes will come next followed by Kudzu to cover the remaining areas.

New lights over Malvern

I was going through some pics of the layout tonight and found some images that I never got around to posting on the blog.  yes, they are some real exciting images, let me tell you...

Several years ago I switched out all my shitty fluorescent light fixtures with some cheaper LED shop lights.  It made a big difference.  Here's the post:    

https://thelittlerockline.blogspot.com/2018/09/a-bright-idea.html

Anyway, the lights over Malvern were also smaller fluorescent lights and they were always a bit on the yellow side, I finally got tired of it and picked up small cheap LED lights from Amazon. 

Malvern now looks much better.