Rock Staining

I knew that I had to try my hand at staining the rock castings. Bruce and I had done some work before on the hill between Uniontown and Herminie. I wanted to highlight the clay composition found in Pennsylvania soil, so I was going for more orange than brown. As you can see in the first photo, I got it a little too orange.

Rocks a little too orange on the Herminie hillside

Since then I read a few articles that implied it was both easy and only too a little experimenting to get museum quality rocks and hillsides. Yeah, I was not buying that...but I was OK with close enough. I bought the Woodland Scenics Earth Colors Kit C1215 a couple of months ago and the instructions were brief and made no sense to me. So naturally, I ignore them and tried it my way.
I put a couple of drops (why don't they make these in squeeze bottles?) of Burnt Umber, added a drop or two of Yellow Ocher and a few drops of water, stirred and slapped it on. Well, I brushed it, stippled it, dabbed...all kinds of techniques. I didn't like the color so I mixed some Stone Gray and Burnt Umber and it was OK but still not what I wanted. I tried three other color combinations, then ended up with my rubbing alcohol and black ink wash.
I stepped back and thought....well, that didn't work out as planned! I took a couple of pictures for the story today and looking closer, I sort of like what I see. I need to fix the ballast, add some ground cover, bushes and of course get the backdrop painted, but I think this might work.

Second attempt using Woodland Scenics Earth Colors Kit

Of course, I realized at this point that I did not measure any of the paint mixtures I created, am not really sure I know which paints (there are 8 in the kit) that I ended up mixing together and since I kept painting over the castings with different paints and techniques, I am not even sure if the final product is a single paint mixture or the result mixing the different paint samples.
Plan? We don't need no stinkin' plan!

Hills, Creek and Backdrops

What do these three have in common? A visit from Bruce! Our schedules have been hectic the last couple of months but he was able to stop over earlier this week and as usual, his perspective and suggestions inspired me to get cracking on some of the scenery that I have been putting off.

Hills outlined on the backdrop between Herminie and East McKeesport

We went through some ideas and then Bruce just started sketching. I think I spent more time looking for a piece of chalk than we actually spent on the broad brush sketch for the hills. Actually, Bruce's first attempt was nearly perfect and we just adjusted a couple of the hills to balance the scene a little better. After he left, I carved the river in front of the tracks and the next night I added some Sculptamold  - an excellent plaster material - and some left over rock castings I had. After this dries, I will paint the riverbed, add some details like talus, sand, tree limbs, etc. and pour the "water".

After adding rock castings and Sculptamold to the scene

Back to Bruce's visit, I was so pleased with how the sketch looked, I said we needed to do something similar in the other corner. Here I just wanted some grassy hillsides behind the barn and an eventual ranch house that masks the scenery divider that the outside mainline runs behind. I think Bruce captured it rather well.

Roughing in the backdrop to the farm

Obviously, Bruce's visit inspired me to continue on the scenery, doing the Sculptamold last night. I will wait for the next visit before we actually start painting the walls but in the meantime, I hope to have the rock castings stained and some of the surrounding scenery more complete, like the tunnel behind the trestle bridge. Also, I started thinking about some more permanent structures that I need - the ranch house and the industrial building that will mask the left end of the East McKeesport scenery block. Also, I have some ideas for making the whole Uniontown scene more complete. Maybe I will have some time to work on that this weekend?

Happy New Year

Well, the new year has started off well for me...the trains are running again! They were completely dead when we had the family over for Thanksgiving and it looked like there was a broken connection somewhere in the layout wiring. I run a single block with multiple feeders to the rails so I assumed either the connection from the Digitrax DB-150 to the layout was bad, or worse, the DV-150 was blown. Ouch. I did not want to trace the wiring (simple though it is) and put it off until last Sunday when I decided it was time to bite the bullet and fix the darn thing.
I tried a new set of jumper cables from the DB-150 directly to the train and no engine lights, nothing moved. I decided to dispatch all the locomotives then reaquire just one. It ran! Reconnecting to the wiring to the layout and it conitnued running! Sweet! I tested a couple more locomotives and everything worked fine. So what was the root problem? No idea, but reminded me that I tend to solve problems by starting with the most unlikely, difficult solution and work backwards to the easier ones.
Yeah, need to work on that.
With the cooler weather affecting the train room (unheated room off the garage, with a space heater to  take the chill off) I probably won't be tackling any major projects over the next 3 months. Still, it would be nice to finish the Irwin tower, wiring some of the interior lighting I have started in the tower and GGS Cabinets, finish sculpting the hillside between Herminie and East McKeesport, and finish some of the buildings in East McKeesport. The hand-painted backdrop behind the hillside is waiting for my creative aristist, Bruce, who convinced me we need to try that approach.
I'll need him onsite and a beer in hand before that happens!