The Little Rock Line

Those aren't railings....they're for using if you want to install the tanks upside down.

:teeth:

 

Thanks Rowan!

 

Really? :startled:

Maybe I should use them as terrorist barricades? LOL

 

Finally got some GREEN down!!!
Along with some grout for the parking lots.





More on the blog.
Next comes Static Grass...

 

Well, not really but it certainly looks like they're up to the task.

 

I got a chance to play with some scenery again this weekend.

Installed some grade crossings...




And planted some weeds...



Spring has sprung, more on the blog

 

Yes it does!
I still want to play around with some static grass and try putting it right over the top of the ground foam and rails!
I've seen this done and know to be careful so it doesn't get into the wheels and gears.

But it looks so cool!

 

Well I've been real busy on the layout since the last post.
This time I decided to work on the lake near Malvern and get it done before I finished the grass, but I can't remember why?

The last thing I did was to get the ground foam base down and get the sidings to look like they were overgrown with weeds. Next I planned to start in with the static grass........Ah that's why I jumped to the lake because I was waiting for the order of static grass to arrive, duh!

So back to the lake.
This wasn't going to be a very big lake, not much more than just a short amount of shoreline really. I had planned to put one here from the beginning but just wasn't sure what I wanted to do with it. My thoughts were to cover the shoreline with trees that would hang into the water, but it turned out to not be enough space between the tracks and the shoreline as the bank wound up a little steeper than I had envisioned.

I was reading through some posts on another forum when I came across one where the poster used Kudzu! Perfect!
This wouldn't take up much room and I would be left with enough space between the bank and the first set of tracks! Kudzu is something that I've always wanted to do on this layout from back when I first decided to model this portion of The Rock. Besides how can one NOT model the south and NOT have Kudzu somewhere on the layout?

I had made a small diorama several years ago to have a place to shoot photos on and I also made it a test bed for the Kudzu. I used stretched out, Woodland Scenics Poly Fiber and glued it in place over a base of green ground foam. But I used several shades of fine ground foam back then. It looked OK and I had planned to run with it. What the poster used differently instead of ground foam was a product from Scenic Express called Super Leaves, which from what I can tell is nothing more than finely shredded plastic, but it did the trick!

I also had planned to use Gloss Medium to represent the water like I had done on one of my modules years ago, but decided to try something different this time. I thought I would be brave and try to "pour" the lake.

So I started with this:




And wound up with this



Instead of rambling more, I'll give you the link to the four part series I posted on the blog. At the bottom of each post, there is a link to the following post.

Here's the first one:
Evolution of lake, part 1

 

Oh yeah, it did!
I covered the worst of it with Matte Medium, but I still have more places to cover yet.
The Quick Water worked and poured real good. But I found too late a few drawbacks to it.
One it really wicked and two, it does not dried solid like most epoxies do. Plus it left a real sticky surface that made flypaper feel slick.

 

Most definitely!
I was a little bit excited to get to this point and didn't give a lot of thought.
I did however think about putting down just the first few courses of larger rocks, then pour. This way the smaller rocks would have covered up the creep!
But how well would have it looked since the smaller rocks would not have settled into the areas around the larger rocks, would there have been gaps?
I also wasn't sure how much water to mix and how much would go how far? So I just said screw it! I figured that I could hide most of it with a dab of Matte Medium, so be it. Beside this is the way it would have been done on the prototype. I get the feeling that one can think yourself into never doing anything by trying to think of a good way through it. The worst of the creep is around the deadfall, there isn't much you can do for that.

 

With the lake scene behind me, it was time to move to the next project.
This one is one that I've been waiting to play with for what seems like years now.

STATIC GRASS

The W&OV essentially runs on a branch line. Although in my world it does a lot a business.
But I still wanted to portray low maintained tracks that are overgrown with grass and weeds.

I started out with this several weeks ago. Here I painted the ballast with a heavy wash of brown acrylic paint to darken it a bit, then I added a mix of ground foam colors ranging from dark brown to light green to give a nice weedy look. I did this with the intent to add static grass for taller weeds. This is the siding for the chip loading at Crushmoore.





The other night I dug out the Static grass applicator. I also had acquired several different types of static grass, the first was the Woodland Scenics grass, then a friend and I collaborated on an order that landed us some Noch Blended grass, blended color and blended lengths 2.5 mm to 6 mm. A short while later I picked up some Silflor static grass, this was 4 mm & 6 mm.
The Noch was some nice stuff, but it has almost too much yellow in it. The Silflor was all green, the 4 mm was summer grass, the 6 mm was late summer [lighter] grass.

My original thought was to mix the 4 mm and the 6 mm together in a 2 to 1 ratio with the bulk being made up of 4 mm
After putting some of it down, it was REALLY green! so I grabbed a pinch of the Noch grass so as to add a bit of yellow to the mix.

This is what I came up with






I gave the same treatment to the siding for Heavy Metal.





Now I've been told to be careful so that the grass will not get pulled up into the gears of the locomotives. I can see this happening so I will probably go back in and snip and trim the height bit between the rails. But I did get things to run through the tall grass! But only after some heavy cleaning

Here's the proof...

[video=youtube;FIVSfYtiRsE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIVSfYtiRsE[/video]

As always, there's more on the blog.

 

Thanks BC.
Yeah, if anything comes loose or gets snagged by the gears..... it could happen?
But it's not like a major job to tear the loco apart to clear it out.
The overall effect is what I've been shooting for in my head since I started this project, so I'm pretty happy.

 

Allen, that grass looks good! Thanks for posting this as I've wondered if it was possible to do in N Scale. I'm building a new diorama and want to try this out.

Craig

 

Not a problem Craig!
I'm assuming this will be for more of your great weathered cars!

 

The scenery looks real good!! I really like the blend between the parking lot and the grass. Looks awesome as does the texture of the parking lot.

Wyt

 

Thanks Wyatt.
The gravel lots are made from Grout. I want to see if I can add some smaller weeds out from the taller weeds using ground foam.