The Importance of Layout Lighting Ok, that track paint's been bugging me all day. So I took the track outside and gave it a look under non-florescent (workshop) light, though the picture was taken in the shade. Here the "brown" I used looks much nicer. It's still towards a greenish tint. Now, this is what it looks like on the layout, just laying on some cork (with unpainted track for comparison). With the poor layout lighting I have, it's actually pretty dark looking. But, this is what want it to like it look - providing for the fact that I'm modeling in n-scale: (linked from business.financialpost.com) I don't think I'm even close. So, what base colour paint do I use? After, what weathering colours should I try to get relatively close? For weathering there's obvious some burnt sienna, dark greys and light greys. I'm also not very happy with the rail colour (Vallejo Rust). I find it too 'red'. I've seen suggestions on the web that for n-scale, it's best to try and keep it dark (i.e. not as bright as in the reference photo). Driving past some local rails, I did notice that they were less reddish/orange, and more towards brown. In any case, I have some Vallejo US Field Drab paint in the mail, and will paint a small test scrap of rail to compare. So that leads me to the biggest problem, and one I've been avoiding for a long time now. Layout lighting. Here's a crappy picture showing the ceiling. I have two spot lights one the right side of the layout (one is hiding behind the air conduit box). I really dislike this! The left side is in really harsh light, and anything in the front half of the layout is "backlit". For example, trying to take any pictures of rolling stock in the yard is a pain, as the front of the boxcars tend to be in shadow. Then there's the right side. The air conduit hides the light, causing a hard shadow across the table, not at all helpful to photos, even as I tried angling other ceiling close-by pot lights towards the layout. I've been joking that since the mine and chemical plant will be on on that level, that the lack of "sun" is due to smog Problem is, I don't want to hang any lights from the ceiling (I do not have permission from the crown ), but I'm not sure how to improve the lighting. I thought of trying to find brackets that would arch over the layout, attached to the back, and from that hang a couple of narrow 3-4 foot lightweight LED panels (or strings of LEDs) for nice diffuse light, but I'm worried about needing some really heavy duty brackets to prevent them from swinging all over the place. For reference, the table is three and a half feet wide. Any suggestions? Paint colours, lighting?
I've been trying to weather rail just right. My first tests were awful, and I ended up stripping the paint off the rails and starting over. These are two out of three test rails today that look promising. Both are weathered in the same way, except one has a grey base coat, the other brown. I did my best to take a picture, but it's difficult to get colours right. I didn't glue down the ballast, I just sprinkled some and took the picture. It's weird how the burnt sienna rust colour is so visible in the second picture. I guess when I brushed it onto the test track, I only brushed in one direction (it's barely visible from the other side!). So, which one would you choose? neither?
I like both, you might consider doing your track like the near one in the second photo and weather it a bit more using your technique for the back one. A kind of compromise between the two. That's just my thoughts, keep up the great work. I enjoy seeing your progress, look forward to your next post. Joe
I can't find it locally. I did see rustoleum camouflage earth brown, but can't find krylon camouflage brown on any local store websites.
Aha, I did find Krylon Camouflage Brown in a store nearby. Gave me an excuse to bicycle all the way there and back - I needed the exercise! I think this will be it. Spraying the track with Krylon is easy, and I follow up with brushing some diluted black on random ties. Finished with Vallejo Rust brushed on the rails. Done! On to better things and enough painting of bits of track. The only thing I'll add is that after ballasting on the layout, I'll go back and as Joe suggests, add a bit of PanPastel weathering to finish it off. Thank you both Joe and Bremner!
Very little update, just to say I've finished the bridges. Only got to work on them a few minutes each evening. I also setup a cheap light box for taking some pictures, but my kids only had some faded construction paper for a background Oh well, here's what it looks like now... bridge and rails are painted! The skewed bridge I 3D printed, and the first one I weathered with PanPastels. Then came the Kato Plate Girder bridge. I accidentally destroyed the rails, so I replaced them with flex track. Works just as well! I really like the fact that I 3D printed the bridge up above, the inner wall detail is sooo much nicer! Then came the Atlas Bridge. Poor little thing, that one was stripped of paint at least once and has more than one coat of paint. But it turned out not that bad! Notice I learned how to add some panpastel details to the inside walls despite having only a perfectly flat canvas to work with (maybe I should go back and try the same to the Kato bridge?) Another view of the inside, note that I will ballast between the ties, on the outside and inside the rails! (so ignore the base colour of the deck) And finally, the Kato Truss bridge. This one I definitely wanted to be less weathered. I wish it was more black instead of dirty grey, but not bad. I also want to add a black wash to the decking between the rails. I find it too uniform right now. Right now, this is under bright lights and dark background, on the layout, the colours are more subdued, and the bridges appear somewhat darker. What do you think? Too weathered? Just right? I will have a mostly industrial theme to my layout, so I think it will work.
Wow. I suck at painting. I'm just not sure how to get the results I want. Ok, so I started by dumping some black, yellow, burnt umber and white onto some wax paper, mixed it up here in there in various warm greys and brown-greys. Then used a sea sponge to try dabbing on the paint. Hmm, they made it look awesome on the youtube videos. But I was just getting a really rough texture. Yeah, that's not working, so I switched to a half-inch brush. I started with the abutments near the top of the picture. I just started brushing side to side, and adding spots of brown, or lighter tan, and still brushing from side to side. In the end that one turned out fairly well. It's not a uniform colour, and I'm letting it dry well before the next step, where I will try a very light black or raw umber wash. Or that's the plan, I'll have to see how that turns out (never really tried a wash yet, and my experience with the sponge didn't match expectations). Then will be rust stains and dirtying it up some more with PanPastels. However, the rest of the abutments now are just various shades of tan. I had a lot of trouble replicating the same thing on well defined bricks. Again, I'll let the current coat of paint dry before I continue with more. I can't believe I spent 2 hours for just this result, lol! On another note, two years on my mobile plan expired and upgraded to a new phone. This one takes much better pictures!
Nice ceiling. (And, Go! blue foam!) No ceiling mount goal? I'm sure others here can help out. I have a one foot by three foot module on my "vari-desk" with two four foot light fixtures with one red tone and one blue tone bulb in each so I don't think my set-up will be much help unless the two tone bulb idea is helpful.
Thanks gmorider! I'm open to any kind of suggestion on lighting. At this point I'm thinking to try and find the lightest possible LED panels. Maybe some light strings that I attach to a plastic shell or something. Just like four foot fluorescent fixtures but with led strings. Anyway, make it as light as possible, and arch some aluminum supports from the back of the layout. Anyway, I'm keeping an eye out for materials.
Whoa, a whole month has practically gone by, and no updates! Well, it's not that I haven't done anything, it's just that I've been doing the same thing over and over. Painting, stripping paint, repainting, etc. I learned quite a bit about techniques however, and in some cases, I came to what I wanted by accident and I wouldn't be sure I could replicate. But yeah, in the end, with summer and a new pool, and helping my daughter with a robot project, I also fell behind a bit. So, these are the final versions of the abutments and bridges... And in the past two days, I've spent a bit of time here and there installing the abutments into the scenery. Nothing glued down yet, mostly carving out foam to fit the bridges... First, the curved skewed bridge. The embankments will be tricky, the abutments are lower than I really expected, but doable. The passenger cars again to make sure the geometry is correct. The second stone bridge up above, this crosses the river to reach the mine's tracks. I only carved out the minimum amount of foam to fit the abutments, and cut up old business cards to to raise the abutments to the correct level (they are not visible under the abutments). I think I'm going to glue the abutments down as is, and then use a knife and dremel to chip away at the foam until the embankment looks right. After that, fill in with little blocks of foam before smoothing with sculptamold. These abutments were replaced. I ripped out the old ones (breaking one). But I reprinted the abutments, painted and reinstalled. I think painting away from the layout was easier than if I had tried it on the layout already installed. And the above is my favorite, massive concrete abutments. So yeah, not much progress, but life gets in the way (and it's difficult spending MORE time in the basement when I'm now working down here five days a week from 7am to 4pm and the sun is out in the backyard). Oh, and speaking of outdoors - across the street is a large empty field and small wooded area (owned by the electric company for powerlines). I explored the field and found lots of interesting stones which I brought back home (that and mosquito bites, lots of those!) I have some latex rubber, and will be making molds of some of these rock faces to make the cliffs on my layout. Should be an interesting experience! Anyway, enough for now, enjoy!
Very nice. The weathering is really nice along with the abutments themselves. I've been doing some painting and attempts at weathering but don't have the patience for more than a few minutes of it so a little embarrassed about it after seeing what you have accomplished, Sumner
After seeing what you have accomplished here, it looks like I need to invest in a 3d printer to help me complete some of my scenery! Wow the work you have done with it is amazing. One question for ya though... What do you do with uncured resin? Do you use a curing device or just wash it off?
Thank you! Sumner: sometimes spending just a few minutes would be nice. I spent waaaay too much time on these! It would be even better if I knew for certain I could replicate what I though. Oh well! Massey: there are a few things that you might mean by "uncured" resin. See, after the print, the vat still filled with some amount of "uncured" resin. However, it's still good, I just leave it there for the next print. I've left it for weeks, just a good stir and it's fine - so long as the machine is kept in the dark. Mine is in a cabinet, so no worries there. Then there's the dripping resin from the part when I take off the build plate. That usually lands in an aluminum pan and paper towels. I just cure those in the UV chamber before throwing out the paper towel, or subject the pan to sunlight occasionally. Then there's the cleaning agents, two vats of isopropyl alcohol. I use the same vats for a long time, and eventually those baths get cloudy with resin. I usually transfer to an empty plastic pan, let evaporate, then cure the rest, and throw out. I do not let any uncured resin back into the environment or down the drain. It sounds tedious, but really, it's not. Quite easy in fact, and not messy if you keep a strict process (when I'm done, even my nitrile gloves are usually still clean, because I handle the wet parts with tweezers!). Enjoy!
Oh wow, sorry for the long time between updates! I've been around, lurking and reading posts here and there, but a few weeks ago I went through some surgery and couldn't get back to the layout for a while. Then started work again, and well, I didn't get much done. But, I'm on vacation now, so I'm back for a bit. I didn't get much done, but that doesn't mean I got nothing done. First things first, in the last week of my recovery, I did ask my girls to help me with some heavy lifting, and got to mold making - at least that was something I could do. So some long time ago I bought some Mold Builder latex from Michaels. It was a long process, but really, it's just about painting it on day after day. Eight layers in all. I had some gauze, but after I fought with it on one rock, I just gave up on that. Turns out it's not needed at all. Up above is what the completed molds look like. Two of them are whiter due to some baby powder I used so that they wouldn't stick together. To actually make the rocks, I used Woodland Scenics Lightweight Hydrocal. I think I mixed it with too much water, and the next picture shows what happened.... Only half the hydrocal solidified! half the top layer was just a weird chaulky mud! But happy accident, I think it made some really good thin rock faces... Some of the rocks have air bubbles unfortunately (bottom right one is pretty bad). But that's okay, I'll break it up and use the parts in some out of sight parts of the layout. I'm not even sure where I'll use these yet, but I have lots of cliffs everywhere. I need to make more rock molds, and maybe some some rocks with less "uniqueness" to them. Molds that are generic enough that I can reuse everywhere and not have it obvious I'm reusing the same few molds. I guess I have to find just the right rock!
And yes, more bridge work (will it ever end? ) I carved up the foam and glued the abutments in place with latex caulk. The bridges themselves are still removable, well, mostly. For the one above, I'm in a bit of a pickle trying to figure out how to make it removable. I mean I have to glue down the track to the cork AND the bridge itself. I can then use a Dremel cutoff wheel to cut the rails, but then how to clean up the ties underneath so that I can slip on some rail joiners?? It's quite the puzzle for this particular bridge. Maybe I just don't bother making it removable? Sorry for the terrible quality of the above picture, lighting above the layout is terrible. But two things to show here. First is that I installed the turnout right after the bridge, and by accident, I found I had just enough room to install my ground throw. That was a close one! Second is difficult to see, but to make the bridge removable, I had to shorten the rail joiners. Basically, without cutting out ties underneath the track, the rail joiners cannot slip all the way onto the bridge or rail side. So using a Dremel cutoff wheel, I made the rail joiners shorter. This way I can still remove the bridge once the track is glued down on both sides of the bridge! Finally, this last picture is the last thing I did on the layout. Up above my staging area, I stupidly planned two remote turnouts! So where was I going to route the wires down to underneath the table?? Well, this is my solution, I just cut out a channel and made a wire tunnel! In the square hole near the bridge I made a hole that goes to the bottom of the layout, and installed a straw to make it easier to route wires. I'm going to hide the wires with a 3D printed something. I figure I can made a square "concrete" platform that covers the hole, and on the platform make an electrical cabinet surrounded by a wire fence. Just some scenic something that will hide the hole and add interest. I have another remote turnout near the second bridge that needs the same kind of channel treatment - that's next on the list. Then I figure it's time to backfill those abutments and start laying track. See you soon!
