Yeah I'll be there this Saturday. It will be a nice blank slate for scenery. I could use a static grass tutorial if you have access to a Grassinator? I'm doing the ballast right now and its going pretty quick being its only a few feet of track in the case. Unfortunately I wont be able to make it Sunday.
I hope to have my new module ready for some static grass too, just a bit here and there. Bringing it to the Cow Palace if I get the bridge abutments from Loren in time.
Can't wait to see this thing finished. It looks very good and very interesting for a such a small layout. Very well concieved and well planned!
I got all the track ballasted, and spent some time getting the Micro Trains turnouts hidden. The end result is a plastic roadbed switch that matches well to the flex track. I should be adding some greenery in the near future. I did get to take it up to the GTE show at the Cow Palace on Saturday, and it ran for most of the day on battery power without any stalling or derailing. This convened me that I did a good job on the track work. I didn't do any work on it this weekend as I have been printing wedding invitations, and they are all set to mail tomorrow. The date was set before MTL made the announcement, but I'll be getting married on May 1st of all days. I couldn't talk her into going to Medford OR for a honeymoon.
I like the way you cleverly blended the turnouts into the flex track. Fine job and with a little imaginative clumps of grass and bushes no one will know the better. Glad you got to meet the BAZ boys this weekend at the Cow Palace. You're in good company when you are with them. They are slightly crazy, which is why they are so much fun to be with. What a shame your wedding date falls on the date of the convention, but I think for the sake of a harmonious marriage you better not bring up the convention subject again. You don't want to start off your marriage on the wrong track.....pun intended. Keep up the great work on your layout. The fact that it ran most of the day with little or no derailment does testify to the fact you did your trackwork homework right. You're off to a great start.
Yeah, I noticed that.........very pretty. Hey, how did the show go? Did Robert get the bridge abutments in time? Haven't heard from him......maybe he's ticked at me?
The show went well on Saturday. There was a thread about it in the inspection pit. Rob was feeling under the weather and couldn't attend. I haven't heard anything about how Sunday went.
Very, very cool. This sort of thing makes me think of haiku. You know, putting some severe constraints on the design and seeing what sort of creativity pops out. How much clearance do you have in the case for trees and such? I assume you take the trains out and store them separately when transporting?
TwinDad, The short answer is 1.5 inches at the highest part of the layout, and 3 inches at the lowest point. Unfortunately you got me thinking. The clearance for trees brings up a important topic which is prototypical tree height. I think a common problem in our hobby is that we think that trains are much larger than they really are. As a result many people model relatively small trees. Its difficult to find photos of trains near or next to full grown trees, but even an average full grown oak tree is easily 2.5 to 3 times the height of a train, and some are equally as wide. Pine and other conifers tend to grow much taller. Here are a few examples I found in some photos of the Sierra Railroad of California. Train in front of some trees. Trees are far from the locomotive, but it is obvious that they are in the 2-3x the height of the train. http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevesloan/3404796016/in/set-72157616134861903/ Here is another where the tree is ~3x the height of the train. There are also some younger 1x trees. http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevesloan/3404795960/in/set-72157616134861903/ Here is a young (~15-20 year old) digger pine (sometimes called a bull or gray pine). Its at least twice as tall as the train. http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevesloan/3403983957/in/set-72157616134861903/ Last here is a picture of a bunch of trees. The ones growing above all the oak trees are full grown digger pines. ~4x the height of a train. http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevesloan/3403984215/in/set-72157616134861903/ The truth is few of us model trees that are of this size, not that theres anything wrong with that. More importantly I don't have the room to accurately model a full grown tree, but I'm pretty close to the size of oak trees. Problem is I wanted to model a conifer forest along the feather river route. I'm not sure I can get away with that with a bunch of 1.5" conifer trees. So how much room do I have? Here is a picture to illustrate. The toothpick represents the maximum height that I have. One tree is 2.5x the height of the train, and the other is 2x. I'm just going to need to make a few 1.5 inch conifers and see what it looks like. As far as the master of making alot out of something small, Torsja is the master. Read this thread to be amazed. He was able to grow so much out of a simple loop layout. http://www.trainboard.com/grapevine/showthread.php?t=94451
Zowie! Those trees are beautiful! This is going to be one fantastic suitcase layout. Keep the photos coming, please! Bill Mock
Tony, I went back and revisited Torsja's diorama and I have to publically confess I had forgotten just how great a modeler Torsja is. So here are two thumbs up for yet another fantastic modeler who deserves many kudos for his excellent attention to detail. Torsja doesn't post much so therefore his horn doesn't get honked very loudly, but his horn is worthy of being blown loud and clear. A master in my book.
Conifers Ok, I made a few conifers using Loren's method, with a slight modification. I used Woodland Scenics Field Grass (some sort of coarse animal fur) rather than the chenille bumps. I'm also testing a few types of ground cover. Nothing is glued down yet. There was a bit of a learning curve as I tried not using hair spray at first. The later tree used hair spray and turned out almost too perfect. Again the toothpick shows the maximum height allowed. The unfinished tree represents the height of a 80 foot normal pine. So I'll probably be making a whole lot of pine trees over the next few weeks. Even with my long winded rant about tree height, I don't have a problem with the size of conifers I can use in this case. I guess you gotta trim the trees to make the trains look taller. At least this is the cheap part of our hobby.
I don't suppose there's a way to make the trees flexible so they would bend down when the case is closed and then spring back up when opened? Maybe use some kind of spring wire for the armature? I suppose repeated heavy use would wear on the details, though...
There is a simple solution, if you're not planning to make a forest of grown trees. Make dependable dowel connection to your taller trees, so they're removable. Plant them between the permanently installed trees and bushes, so the pockets are not visible. You can even make full sections removable, store them in a separate case.
On the sub-topic of tree height, here's a shot I took that show a GP9 in comparison to some deciduous trees.
The trees are too tall! Plainly, somone needs to go out out and top those trees in the protypical world to match Curn's modeling constraints. ;-)
