Seaboard Central 2.0

[Ed Kapuscinski]

As far as the fringe goes, here's what I do. After ballasting, I put down a tape line along the shoulder. Then I brush on black instances grout. This makes a nice straight edge, and a nice fine shoulder.

If you don't want to do cinders, you can always use dirt.

[davefoxx]

I plan to do static grass along the right-of-way, with some trash and scrub plants here and there.

While on the topic of scenery, I built my first batch of approximately eighteen Super Trees tonight.  They're drying as I write this.  I hope to get them planted as soon as they're dry, even if just temporarily, for some instant gratification.  Besides, I'm tired of looking at my "scalped" layout.

More at eleven.  Oh, wait... it is eleven.  Um, more at eleven tomorrow.   

DFF

[davefoxx]

As promised, here's my first batch of Super Trees.  I've just temporarily installed them, recognizing that I need to model the forest floor before permanently planting the trees.  I harvested a pile of leaves from the back porch this morning and are letting them dry near the dehumidifier in the basement.

Unfortunately, as we all know, a batch of trees doesn't go very far, and I estimate that I will need hundreds and hundreds of trees.  The good news is that I have a pile of scraps from this batch that will make great undergrowth.



While waiting for the trees to dry, I built an enginehouse for the Aberdeen & Rockfish Ry.  It's not painted yet, and I only put it together in subassemblies for ease of painting.  The doors will pop out, and the roof is removable.  I just need to figure out what color I want to paint it.  This is not prototypical for the A&R, which had a brick enginehouse with an expansion covered in metal corrugated siding.  Maybe someday, I'll try to model that, but, for now, I'm not too concerned about modeling Aberdeen exactly.  This is just a HCD layout, you know.



Have a great week,
DFF

[conrailthomas519]

looking Good there Dave!

[wm3798]

Good news and bad news on your engine house, Kimosabe.



You've got a lot of work to do to capture the "cool" factor of this building.



Note the curved roof on both section, and the awesome arched doorway on the brick part.
The collection of sand towers and oil tanks are pretty cool too.


Here's the side of the engine house that faces the tracks.


And there's one bad CF-7 for your viewing pleasure.

Oh, and if you're going to model downtown Aberdeen, you better not forget about this little gem...


Lee

[conrailthomas519]

LOL only Mr. Weldon would think of that......kewl pics tho...

[wm3798]

The good news is you can use two of the doors and rollers from the Pikestuff kit before you throw the rest off the layout...

Lee

[davefoxx]

Lee,

Well, like I wrote earlier, the enginehouse that I built is merely a temporary placeholder, until I get the layout much farther along.  I'm so slow at scenery that I would regret progress on the layout coming to a screeching halt while I spend a lot of time trying to model a specific building.  Besides, I am seriously out of practice on scratchbuilding, and I would want to do it right.  Let me sharpen my skills before I tackle such a signature structure like the A&R enginehouse.

Thanks,
DFF

[davefoxx]

Lee,

You asked where the A&R office building will go on the layout one day when I get around to building it.  It will reside on the far side of the second curved track (the A&R mainline) in that black styrene rectangular area to the left as you cross the tracks, not too unlike its prototype's location in relation to the A&R tracks:


In another view, it's where your commissary building is sitting in this picture.  The commissary makes a good substitute until such time as I build the office building:


DFF

[wm3798]

Kind of a tight squeeze for the SAL station there.  You could cut off the baggage room annex I suppose...

Lee

[davefoxx]

Kind of a tight squeeze for the SAL station there.  You could cut off the baggage room annex I suppose...

Lee

Yeah, trying to fit the elements of a real town into a plagiarized MR plan has been difficult.  This is why I'm not going to lose sleep on modeling Aberdeen with 100% accuracy.  This is also why I have made multiple starts at trying to plan Aberdeen with only moderate success and why the large sheet of styrene hasn't been cut down yet to represent the streets.  But, I've got some ideas that I'll try to sketch out at some point.   Thanks again for your pictures.  They will really help.

DFF

[Noah Lane]

Dave- what thickness is the styrene you're using for your road?  Are you using the DKS method as seen on his James River Branch tutorial?

[davefoxx]

Dave- what thickness is the styrene you're using for your road?  Are you using the DKS method as seen on his James River Branch tutorial?

Noah,

I am using a similar method to what DKS has described on his James River Branch blog.  He and Chris333 suggested using black styrene.  Per Chris' further recommendation, I ordered some 0.060" black styrene online through eBay (I think DKS used 0.030" thick styrene on his roads).  The black styrene comes in 24" x 24" sheets.  It has been easier to work with than I expected, too. That thickness also made it easy to transition to the railroad crossings with only a thin styrene shim to flush the surface to the top of the wood crossings.  The nice thing about the thicker styrene is that it is unlikely to warp and can even bridge small gaps.

Hope this helps,
DFF

[Noah Lane]

Dave- yeah, I've got the 0.030" per DKS' suggestion, but I realize he was working in Z-Scale with that tutorial.  My LHS sells sheets of black 0.060", and I have no qualms about purchasing the thicker stuff. It never hurts to have extra styrene around.  The Evergreen 0.060" sheets at my LHS are more like 10-12" x 24" (similar to the dimensions of the 0.030" I bought from MBK).

I did a test sheet piece using a Rusto granite spray paint that has a very subtle texture. That base color looks pretty close to the roads of David's JRB. I just couldn't nail the cracks the way he did. I don't have a sharp point for my dremel, and the closest bit I did have made more of a routing mark that was mostly filled in by the paint. Which might be as much a negative for using the slightly textured paint as it is using the wrong bit.

I was wondering, how do you make long, accurate cuts in the styrene?  Using a sharp razor blade it seems like the blade would run off the mark; a saw might be too haphazard. It seems tricky with the thinner 0.030", but it'd be even trickier with 0.060"

Thanks
Noah

[Philip H]

single edge razor blade and a steel ruler.  Mine has a cork back, and doesn't wander.