Gibbon, Cozad & Western - "The 100th Meridian Line"

[C855B]

Ballasting in earnest has commenced. I think I have a technique that's reasonably fast and pleasing to my eye, at least.



The apparent color shift is temporary. The center "section" is fully dry and the two adjacent bits are still moist. Humidity in the train room has been 65-70% all week, so it takes nearly a day to fully cure.

[nuno81291]

The dry section looks great. Do any sidings or industrial areas have different colors on the prototype in your memory or reference photos/materials? Just curious what treatment non mainline areas may get, unfamiliar with that territory in general. 

[C855B]

Thanks! Not fully decided yet what the industrials are going to get. There's opportunity to mix it up, however, so thank you for making me ponder this idea. I have a BIG selection of various colors and sizes by virtue of the "fire sale" lot of AR&M I picked up off of NSYS about five years ago. Two of the industries in the plan, 1:1 appears to be a mix of mainline and local quarry.

One thing, though, there is already some track down and more to come that is going to be "weedy dirt". Seen plenty of that, for sure.

[C855B]

@GaryHinshaw threw down the gauntlet provided the positive motivation for making headway on a vaguely similar scene on the GC&W:



This is the sand hills of Nebraska, a lot less severe than what he has facing him. My severe stuff comes later.

Gary (The Ballast King) - I noticed you hadn't yet ballasted around your recent carving work. I presume you will ballast before nailing down the geoforms, yes?

[GaryHinshaw]

Very nice, both the foam and ballast!  And yes, I'm just resting my foam in place until I have ballasted the track and run the last of the signal wiring. 

Good luck ever finishing this beast though.     
(I kid. Inside joke.)

[coldriver]

looks great Mike - so that is the UP/WP "bold gray"?

[DKS]

Humidity in the train room has been 65-70% all week, so it takes nearly a day to fully cure.

Place a small fan nearby that blows across the wet ballast. This will accelerate drying many-fold (the problem is the ballast dries by evaporation, and if you don't remove saturated air in the immediate area, evaporation slows significantly).

[Dave V]

Place a small fan nearby that blows across the wet ballast. This will accelerate drying many-fold (the problem is the ballast dries by evaporation, and if you don't remove saturated air in the immediate area, evaporation slows significantly).

That has been one of the chief things that has made my work here in Colorado so much faster than anywhere else I've lived...  The relative humidity here even during the "wet" season is lower than a dry winter day back East.  Fully saturated scenery and ballast will dry to the touch in hours rather than days.  Paint layers dry so quickly that I can paint as I glue...virtually no waiting time.  The only downside is when working with plaster and Sculptamold...working time is reduced, but thankfully not by too much.

[Chris333]

Word!

[C855B]

looks great Mike - so that is the UP/WP "bold gray"?

Yes! I tried to mix it with a little bit of AR&M's "regular" UP tan color to more accurately match the east lines coloration, but they would not evenly blend no matter how much I shook or stirred. There is apparently quite a difference in density.

Interesting is how dark it turns with the adhesive, either PVA or matte medium. Turns the same dark color when moist, either water or the 91% IPA water-wetter.

Place a small fan nearby that blows across the wet ballast. This will accelerate drying many-fold (the problem is the ballast dries by evaporation, and if you don't remove saturated air in the immediate area, evaporation slows significantly).

I might try that, have a desktop fan in a pile somewhere around the studio. Minor concern is all the bits o' stuff around the work area to overlook that might blow around. Another approach - I'm experimenting with a portable dehumidifier right next to the A/C intake, letting the A/C do the distribution. It seems to be working in keeping room RH ~50% now, but with other stuff to do haven't really timed whether it has affected the cure rate.

[C855B]

OK race fans, here is a PDF of a possible rebuttal article to the June Model Railroad Hobbyist op-ed. While I'm sure some of you may find points you disagree with, I'm primarily interested in avoiding major gaffes. One thing I'm sure of is that once Ken Patterson gets a hold of it, he will rake me over the coals with his (misinformed) opinions about pink foam.

The PDF is too large for TRW's attachment feature and reformatting to fit in a forum post or posts would take several hours, so you'll need to click to read:

http://www.everywherewest.com/Dreaming%20Big.pdf

FWIW, MSWord crashed during the final edit and took the article with it. Thank goodness for Time Machine!

[peteski]

FWIW, MSWord crashed during the final edit and took the article with it. Thank goodness for Time Machine!

Lucky!
Remember, <CTRL>S every few minutes is your friend when you are doing any document editing on your computer.  Well, that or whatever keyboard shortcut is used for saving a document to disk. I do as I preach (well, most of the time). 

[C855B]

Lucky!
Remember, <CTRL>S every few minutes is your friend when you are doing any document editing on your computer.  Well, that or whatever keyboard shortcut is used for saving a document to disk. I do as I preach (well, most of the time). 

Nope - <command>-S was part of the problem. The document structure was corrupted and it's likely the corruption was what crashed Word. Saving it evidently compounded the corruption. After that there was no opening it, at least not in Word. I've seen it before. No worries, however, that's one of many reasons Time Machine is part of the backup plan, so luck played no role in recovery.

[jereising]

Mike, looks great to me. 
Having done something in a similar vein (albeit a trifle smaller) with The Oakville Sub, I know exactly where you're going.  Good rebuttal, and FWIW IMO you're on the right track.

[learmoia]

Looks great..  I didnt realize we have about the same overall layout size.. (you have more square footage) but the overall end to end size is about the same.

~Ian