Still have not started layout yet due to health problems and helping granddaughter but I decided I would not build any large scenery that is not easy to take off if I should take the layout down. I built a corner mountain/hill to see how it would look and this is what I came up with. The bottom is flat so attaching it with a few spots of hot glue will be no problem. The backside is a 90 degree just like the plywood would be and the front is a semicircle. Under brush along the edges will hide the cardboard. Same construction as before, cardboard, dryer sheets, hot glue, some plaster molds, plaster and washes.
Well, I am at it again. Nothing to do today so I decided to try to make coal for some loads. I have a can of the stuff mechanics use to soak up oil on their floors. I put some lightly watered down black paint in a cup, dumped some of the material in the cup, stirred it up, than dumped some more & stirred etc. and dyed the material black. It is drying now. When completely dried I will attempt to make a coal load using different techniques.
That's some pretty good-looking coal! I like the idea of the oil-spill soaker stuff. The great thing is it will soak up paint, too - any color, for that matter. Pink granite. Salt. Anything. Keep those cool ideas coming!
I use cheap cat litter to soak up oil spills. It does look similar, it's clay basically. I'll try that if necessary.
Took one of my hopper cars and cut a board to fit. I then put glue on it and spread the home made coal onto the board. While that is drying, I moved on to another technique. I used a two bay hopper car and I took some paper towels, tore into pieces. I stuffed them into the hopper and wet them down and pressed them in. I keep doing this until I achieved the height I wanted. That is drying also.
I decided to redo the "coal load" in my yellow Union Pacific Hopper for two reasons. First, I had already added weight to the hopper to bring it us to standards and adding the load on a slab of wood made it a little to heavy. Second, looking at the way the coal load ended up in the Reading Hopper look more realistic because there was no gap between the load and the wall of the hopper. That being said, here is the process adding the new load. Watered down paper towel is now drying.
Well folks, nothing to do again today so I decided to try and make a tarp load for a flat car. First, I wrapped the car with saran wrap so I would not mess up the car. Then I hot glued some pieces of foam together. Next, I soaked a paper towel with watered down glue and light colored paint. I then pressed the wet paper towel around the "load" and also pressed it into the crevices and tucked it around the bottom of the load. Tomorrow when that is dry, I will trim around the edges of the flat car and use black thread as a tie down. I hope this comes out looking good.
Looks good! It even has the folds and wrinkles like it was covered in a real canvas tarp. The effect on the leftmost "load" in the last photo looks like there was a Humvee underneath!
@thetramp The easy to make roads is to use Woodland Scenics HO scale foam roadbed . Very easy to form curves with it .
I used 400 grit black sandpaper and misted it with grey primer. Then I rubbed the sheets together to smooth out the grey. White paint marker to to the lines and voilà!
Almost finished the gondola load. When the paint dries, I will put it in the gondola and picture the flat car load and gondola load together. Need to get the tie down string.
Here it is a big Wednesday, hot and nothing to do, soooooo I will make a tree. I had an old a/c filter and I cut a piece out, cut it into squares and kind of rounded off the corners. I stained a old skew stick, put glue on it and slid the filter pieces on to it. When that dries, I will reshape the filter pieces and add foliage. Stay tuned.
