Thanks for the tips. This is what I managed to get done today. Welcome the scrap pile mountain of foam. I could not decide how I'm going to go about it, so I just went at it and started cutting and gluing foam and hoped that something would turn out. Thank goodness for skulptimold to cover that up. I also decided to go for the removable mountain. The idea of an access port in the isnt going to fly, cleaning track through that is going to just be a pain. The top piece of foam and the rest that goes on top is going to be the section the can be removed. Now I need to figure out how to do that and make it look decent. Maybe tomorrow I'll see about gluing more foam on top for the mountain. We'll see what takes shape.
Since you are cutting your own portals, take your highest and longest cars (swing out) and test they don't hit the sides or tops. Better to find out now than later!
Well got the mountain made of sorts, and its removable! I'm having an oh crap moment now. I'm not how I'm going to sculpt it to make it look ok. It's steeper than I was anticipating. I'm wanting more of a shallower mountain with trees and some rock features, very much like whats in the Appalachian mountains where I live. I need to hide that step stair look. I'm having such a brain fart as to how to tie things together. Give me some pointers.
Hide the stair look with some scrap foam pieces but leave some vertical sections for rock upthrusts and outcroppings. areas of the Appalachians have those I have have encountered quite a few in my wandering through those mountains. The scrap pieces will help the support the plaster cloth or paper towels soaked in wet plaster and a lot of that vertical will go away.
Congrats on the progress. On the mountain for the look you are after maybe loose the top couple pieces so it rounds off a little up there. Also maybe extend the fourth one and those below it out a ways so it looks like an arm of the mountain that extends out a little and gives more reason for a tunnel to be there. Main thing is to make it like you like it not what we like Sumner
You can eliminate what's in red X and possibly even the yellow X and reduce the height of the mountain. Then you have a plateau'ish for your trees and big boulders.
You can use a file to carve the foam into a mountain instead of a stair stepped hill. This will also reduce the size of the foam pieces as everything gets all curvy and flowing. Plaster cloth works too but I dont tend to use it on stacked foam. Also expanding foam works well for helping make the proper shapes you are looking for. Once it dries it carves just like the pink does.
If your brain is in a jam, just stop. Step back. Sleep on it. And try again tomorrow. Let your brain figure it out. Have fun.
I have found that the thin rod type hot foam cutter works well in carving and shaping and there is no mess of foam bits since it melts its way through the foam. Most craft stores carry them. Another thing that I have done is to study color photos of the terrain you get the shapes, type of trees, and the color of rock outcroppings.
I'm letting my mountain alone till the weekend, maybe by then I'll have an idea of what I want to do. Rock faces and boulders are what I want. I odered the woodland scenics rock molds and some hydrocal. This evening while organizing I found duct sealant and though why not give this stuff a try. Its not messy, though it's sticky. The one down side is that it takes quite a while to fully cure. I'll use it in the tunnel to see how it'll do. If it works well I may use it elsewhere, Plus the stuff is cheap. I was surprised at the rocky look I was able to make. When I sealed duct work it cured firm but not super hard. I should be able to carve it and its paintable. Has anyone else used stuff like this?
Interesting! I've never heard of it. Should be easy clean up too since it's water based. I'll have to check it out next time I'm at HD.
I take it you ran trains thru those tunnel portals to make sure locos and rolling stock clear the portal entrance ok.
1:1 tunnels are seldom drilled where the ceiling is not significantly thicker than the span (side-side width) of the tunnel. The reason is two-fold. First, ceilings thinner than that, in naturally occurring rock layers, would seldom survive the blasting of the tunnel anyway, and for more modern tunnels that are literally drilled, and huge earth-moving equipment is available, it is often faster and cheaper to blast & bulldoze out a trench that deep, than drill a tunnel. This idea comes into play especially at tunnel entrances, to figure out where a trench should end, and the tunnel begin. Partly for that reason, I would leave the additional height previously identified for suggested removal. But also, in real life, trees don't need horizontal space to take root. And boulders are seldom perched on top of flat topped mountains (except in arid/desert areas). Boulder-like rock faces, still embedded in the mountain, are commonly exposed by erosion, and if the area is exposed more than a few short years, trees will take root and start to cover it, unless it is arid/desert terrain. Leaving a sloped surface at the edge of the layout also promotes a grander illusion that this mountain keeps climbing higher. I would also consider extending that mountain as a ridge, further into the interior of the layout, so as to help avoid the mental question "why did they go to the trouble of building a tunnel, rather than go around the end of the mountain?" Balancing these ideas with realities of scale in a small layout is always a challenge, but you are doing a fine job so far!
I agree. It's always a challenge to try to fit various thing and somehow try to blend it in. My wife want to put in a small farm scene my son said we have to have a mountain and tunnels, I wanted a yard to be able to do stuff with train instead of just watching them go around, so this is what I came up with, plus some space restraints. Its my first layout it wont be perfect but it'll get better as I gain more skills. I just need to get my brain working better. hehe
Did some carving on the mountain. I'm pretty much ready to move to put the filler in. I got the ingredients and mixed up ground goop, I'm sure I'll need a lot. I'm not sure about how the color turned out. It's a bit too brown for my liking. I added white color to it and it made it slightly better. Va dirt is very much of a reddish brown color so it's sorta close. I'll be putting real dirt on to of it. The last pic is my idea of the layout. The blue is a small stream and a spring fed branch from the mountain. The tan is a small road the leads to the yard area. I'm still deciding what buildings to put there. I'm just trying to figure out how to proceed, I went at this without much of a plan, and the plans and ideas kept changing. Thoughts and ideas from you pros are appreciated.
Layout is looking nice. I really like the Kato truss bridges. Kato really hit the nail on the head with Unitrack. If you carve your mountains closer to the finished contours and get rid of the "steps" you will use a lot less ground goop. A thinner coat will also dry much quicker and should be less prone to shrinkage and cracking deepending on your goop ingredients. Have you tested the goop at the thickness you are going to apply it at? The color may also lighten up when it dries. Just a suggestion, but have you thought about using some scrap foam pieces and making a small test mockup to try out rock casting, goop and other scenery techniques along with paint and wash colors?
Great looking layout! Like John said, beware of even, flat surfaces on the mountain. They can easily telegraph the layers unless you use too much ground goop to dry without cracking. Carve up the exposed tops of the layers. Note that most sedimentary rock structures have natural layers due to unequal susceptibility to erosion, but they are often sloped and gently folded somewhat, and the each layer will be different thickness. You might think about how the spring will emanate from the side of the mountain. It could come from a vertical fissure (crack) in the mountain, or cascade down from a fissure higher up, through a small canyon it has carved over eons, as the creek has slowly worn down the whole face of the mountain. The Ozark and Appalachian mountains' current shapes were formed by water eroding into an ancient sea bed as the sea subsided, rather than being thrust upward more recently by geological forces (e.g. the Rocky Mountains). Another trick to natural looking creeks is that, especially across flat terrain, they meander a lot, curving back and forth, rather than taking a long gentle sweeping curve. The outer edges of curves in the creek will tend to be steep banks, while the inner edges of curves will be gentle slopes from the plain to the river. This difference is caused by the centrifugal force of water as it travels through a curve. The water at the outer edge of the curve flows faster, and erodes faster & deeper, than the water at the inner edge of a curve. Is the farm going to be between the mountain and the creek, or between the creek and the road?
Really liking the progress Eugene! Call me crazy but this is making me miss the pink foam days of the JPT Sub
Eugene we are at about the same stage of construction on our layouts. I like your use of passing sidings and run around. It will be fun to operate. Jake has a good point. Looking at your marked up photos, I would consider extending the base of the mountain out further and making it a gentle curving hill that is at the base of the mountain and blend it into the flat area towards the left. Make it go past were you have the stream drawn so the stream curves around the hill. I would only go up like one thickness, maybe a little higher at a small spot. I'm not sure what you have in mind for your farm but it could straddle the stream. The mountain side of the stream could be pasture and the flatter side could be cultivated. Another area I would look at is where the road goes around the end of the yard tracks in the lower left. It looks there might not be enough clearance for a road unless it is just going to be a stone access road for railroad maintenance vehicles and railroad police. One nice thing about a foam scenery base is that it is very forgiving if you decide to make changes. I hope I'm not discouraging you. Your work so far looks really good I'm not real computer savvy. I'll try to mark up a drawing tomorrow.
Eugene you made this old ludite learn something techy today. This is the first time I ever marked up a drawing on my phone. Lower yard Shortened the yard tracks just a little. Moved a turnout from the end of the yard ladder to end of run around track. Added small engine shed or service track to this turnout. Mountain Extended base of mountain by using a rolling foothill. Ran stream around foot hill. Tried suggesting contour lines for foot hill. I hope this helped explain things a little better.
