Background Update

I had put off painting the background for so long because I felt I lacked the artistic talent to make it realistic. Bruce encourage me that I could do it and and sketched in the outline of the hills. Nicholas and Adam helped me get the right shades of green for the painted trees to blend in with the 3 dimensional ones. I started with the hills around the fake tunnel portal at the end of the trestle bridge, figuring it was so hidden, few would see it and if I did not like how it turned out, Bruce and I could paint over it.

Background started with the fake tunnel protal

I was very happy with how it turned out, so I continued. I painted from the tunnel, which is just west (left) of East McKeesport into the corner and it appeared to me as though it kept getting better. I doubt this was due to an improvement in my technique but more because as the background grew, it blended more. Bruce stopped over when I had reached the corner and thought it looked pretty good.

The stage of the painting Bruce was able to review

Now, I could not stop! Every time I stepped into the train room, I painted a little more. I finished the right side of the layout from the trestle bridge to the tunnel in Herminie. I was really excited with how realistic I felt it was becoming - not terribly artistic, but like the rest of my work, illustrative enough to get the idea across.

Completed background on the right side of the layout

The final background was really in two parts. The scenery divide between Uniontown and the tracks running along the back needed some background hills from the Uniontown tunnel to the end and these had to blend with the hills along the back wall and around the corner behind the barn. 

The complete background on either side of the peninsula

I really like how the project turned out, and when you first walk into the train room, it really comes to life! Now I need to invite my friends over and run trains while I add figures and more details to the scenes.

All aboard! 

Theme and tributes

Early on, I knew I wanted to add businesses and industries that placed my layout in the Pittsburgh area. Heinz, Pittsburgh Plate Glass, Isley's, Westinghouse, and Westmoreland Coal Company (I grew up in Westmoreland County) are all on the layout. West Penn Power was on the last layout on Restway Ct but, unfortunately there was no room on the current version. Alleghenies Cold Storage, Stetson (my grandfather) Convention Service and May Stern Furniture all have homes on the current layout.

Westmoreland Coal Company Mine No. 4

But I also wanted to pay some tributes to my family and friends. Appropriate ones that reflect who they are. Early ideas include LAS Fabrics for my wife, Lisa, who is an avid sewer, and GGS Cabinets who got me started in model railroading and "plays" with wood, building furniture and even his log home. My sister, in her early teens used to say "I'm so confused!" So my parents and I called her confused Cathy Lynn. And while she probably does not appreciate my tribute, C. C. L. Lumber is on the layout with both a business and a dedicated cover hopper for sawdust.
Two awesome co-workers, and good friends, got a shout out on the last layout and I incorporated their "businesses" on the current one. Vic lives on Cape Cod and loves fishing so, Vic's Bait and Tackle was an easy fit. Paul got a pun on his last name with Dailey's Fuel and Coal Service. The business motto being, "we want your business daily!"

Vic's Bait & Tackle

Dailey's Coal & Fuel

Others are on the layout or in the process. Camp Bruce is a scout camp in tribute to my railroad buddy and will have Troop 25o from Penns Woods PA where I earned my Eagle, Troop 329 which I belong to now and Troop 442 from Brazil OH which is the malcontent boys. If one of the 329 boys get in trouble, we tell them to say they are from 442. Adam and Nicholas have a machine shop, a bookstore for my mom, Angie and Joey have offices - public relations and investment, respectively. My cousin Dinah has a dance studio which is over my favorite local watering hole, Clancy's Tavern.
Some dedications are hard, really hard. One of my best friends at IBM was Bhupendra Mehta. An amazing portal architect, funny guy, and party animal. How do I do a tribute to a man from India in 1950s rural-ish suburb of Pittsburgh. It finally came to me and soon there will be Bhup's Hookah Bar, first of its kind in Pittsburgh and quite possibly the United States.
I had one more I needed to fit in. Bruce's son, Zach. I never met Zach, a talented swimmer when he was in high school, but it was important to me to give him a shout out. Along East McKeesport, you will see posters announcing tryouts for the Norwin High School (my alma mater) swim team. Interested? Call Coach Zach.

Posters on a building in East McKeesport shout outs to Bhups & Zach

So every time I got out to the train room, I don't just "run trains". I spend some time with my family and friends.
What better hobby could you ask for?

Tunnel to nowhere

Either side of East McKeesport has a bridge for a view block. On the east side is Rt 30 and this scene is about 1/2 complete, ,meaning it is detailed enough to blend but there are still things I want to d- details., more tress, etc. On the west end is the B&O trestle bridge that crosses the Pennsy's tracks and disappear into a tunnel. Since the tunnel is on the wall to the backyard, I needed to do something special to create the illusion that the scene continues on.

Background sketched in and rock castings glued to the wall

I have been stalling on this project for months due to the artistic requirements but I finally told myself that good enough is truly good enough. Plus I would like to make some progress before Bruce visits again. I had already made several rock castings so I placed those where they fit best and glued them to the walls and foam in the corner. Next I experimented with the Woodland Scenics Earth Color Set and stained the castings. I was pleasantly surprised how well they turned out and pretty pleased with the result.

Rocks stained and basic ground colors applied.

I made a tunnel portal out of some cinder block paper but was disappointed. There is only 1" from the wall to the track running parallel and I could not possibly fit a 3D tunnel portal. Or could I? I found the perfect portal at R/C Hobbies and evenly sanded the back of the plaster casting to thin it down and then used the stone stain to color it. I mounted a piece of black paper for the actual tunnel and glued the portal on top. I used Scuptamold to shape the hillside around the tunnel portal and applied Woodland Scenics Earth Undercoat to make it look like dirt.

Adding a tunnel portal and surrounding hillside

Wow, I was very, very pleased with how all this was turning out. Despite the temperature in the train room hovering in the high 30s in the evenings (until I turned on the space heater), I was very motivated to continue work and the next step was super easy - glue clump tree foliage around the portal to made the hillside look wooded. Easy and I have done this scenery work before. After about 15 minutes I had almost 1/3 of the portal done! After 20 minutes, I had nothing.

Expected this to be the easy part but the trees would not stick

I posted my folly on Facebook and on one of the Model Raiload groups, someone suggested I use pins to hold the foliage while the glue dries. Brilliant! I mean I would have thought of that...eventually...probably before fall! I used almost an entire container of pins but once the glue dried and I removed the pins, It looked very much how I had envisioned it.

Using straight pins, I was able to keep the foliage on until the glue dried

I tried my hand at painting a little of the background wall around the portal - not great but passable until Bruce comes over and we tackle that project. I put the bridge back in place and purchased a new building to end the East McKeesport scene along with a background scene to finish it. 

Scene with the bridge, a backdrop and corner building

Of course, there are a lot of things I still need to do here, not the least of which is actually build the structure. But with just a little more work, this will be a very plausible scene and make the operating sessions this spring a little more fun!

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!

How do you determine the next project?

Asked no one....ever. But I am going to answer it anyway. It's my blog!
There are several triggers that can happen - I find something at a train show or hobby shop that fits an idea, I have a number of car kits or structures waiting to be built, or I get an idea from someone else in a magazine or one of the Facebook groups. Usually, I just have a pile growing on the desk and I decided its time to clear the desk. Here's what the desk looked like last weekend.

My work desk is usually cluttered.

In the photo, you can see I am adding pins to some figures for mounting on the layout and I recently added a light inside the Irwin Tower and am adding the wood trim on the outside. What you don't see is the other projects around the cutting board.

• Isaly's roof needing repairs
• 6 freight cars needing tune up (plus 4 more on the RIP track)
• fence for the barnyard
• additional parts for the barn
• additional parts for 4 structures
• jib crane for Irwin Yard
• 3 pick up kits needed paint and assembly
• papers and notes on waybill and car card (WB&CC) operations
• N scale building for the corning next to East McKeesport
• 6 terminal strips I pre-wired for structure lighting
• collection of scene details that need paint and some assembly - milk cartons, skids, sacks, and figures 

And these are just the ACTIVE projects! Almost all of the structures need additional details, interiors, and lights (some need replaced since they are cardboard mockups). Ballast needs touched up in areas, backgrounds need painted (as soon as Bruce is available!). There are trees to plant and the corner scene with hills and a stream are patiently waiting.

So....sometimes its easy to come to the train room and do a little work on a project. Sometimes, it can be daunting. I must be making progress, though, since my brother-in-law, Pat was over recently and walked through the train room saying, "Are you done building this now?"