Hedley Junction

[Rscott417]

Interesting looking crossing signal, nice work

[sailormatlac]

I completed a large chunk of terraforming yesterday which took 7 hours in a row. It made a huge mess of styrofoam and floral foam on the floor!

I'm quite satisfied with the result. The topography is much more realistic than it used to be. I hope to get my new curved turnouts by the end of March to continue working on the scenery. I'm actually thinking about adding a few inches to the river scene to make it more overwhelming. I'm starting to like when there's a lot of foreground in front of a track.



I thought about salvaging the old rock face that stood there, but starting from scractch was much easier.





The access road to the new propane dealer was a pain to carve with a rasp... I almost skinned my own finger doing it!



Remember the movie Duel from the 1970s?





The bare blue styrofoam will be hidden by trees. I don't intend to have a cliff there. I suppose branches, foliage and other scenic material will do the rock to hide it. The cliff is actually less than 2-3 inches wide!



Not bad, the new landforms make you believe the track is truly finding its way at the bottom of a meander.





This is probably my new favorite raifanning spot. The photo was shoot from atop the small hill.



And Bruce's Procor LPG car spotted at the propane dealer.



Matt

[faraway]

.... It made a huge mess of styrofoam and floral foam on the floor! I'm quite satisfied with the result. ...

Is Mrs. "Sailormatic" available for comments?

Looks good !

[sailormatlac]

.... It made a huge mess of styrofoam and floral foam on the floor! I'm quite satisfied with the result. ...

Is Mrs. "Sailormatic" available for comments?

Looks good !

Ahaha! I'm not in my home basement so I don't have to care about nagging! ;-)

Matt

[doctorwayne]

That's coming along really nicely, Matt. With the broad sweeping curve, the bridge and water, and a backdrop of trees, you'll have plenty of opportunities for good railfanning shots there.

Wayne

[GMO-Frisco]

Remember the movie Duel from the 1970s?

Hi,

oh yes, I have seen it a few days ago and at my Canada/USA Trip 2012 I had good feeling for that car driver

[sailormatlac]

Thanks guys!

Here a few more recent pictures. The landforms are now completely done and roads painted with latex paint (temporary). I also added a few poer line poles here and there. They will need more detailing and paint, but so far, it was easy to build them from bamboo skewers and bits of Atlas telegraph poles.

















Matt

[Twist]

Matt,

that new landscape is looking great and much more better than before. Very nice work. I love the way it all comes together. I´m still searching for bigger pieces of that floral foam. The blue foam is hard to work with, I use my hot wire for working the basic forms to the foam but the fine landscape is still a big mess...

Can´t wait to see more progress of your work. Thanks for sharing.

Regards,Chris

[sailormatlac]

Matt,

that new landscape is looking great and much more better than before. Very nice work. I love the way it all comes together. I´m still searching for bigger pieces of that floral foam. The blue foam is hard to work with, I use my hot wire for working the basic forms to the foam but the fine landscape is still a big mess...

Can´t wait to see more progress of your work. Thanks for sharing.

Regards,Chris

Thanks Chris!

Sorry for the late reply, I have no more time to work on my trains... At least, I'm planning a trip to Montreal next weekend to get suitable scenic supplies. I'm getting tired of plywood and foam... it's been 10 years!

The best place I found to get floral foam was from a large garden center. They sell in large boxes and pieces are about 4" x 6" x 12". I think each box has about 10 pieces of foam. It less expensive than the craft store, but I'm still searching for a wholesale distributor to cut on cost. I scarcely use it in heavily forested area.

Matt

[Twist]

Hi,
Matt,thanks for the info. I´ll take a look at our garden center.

I have a lot of work to do,too, so there´s not much time for my layout but I try to find some time every evening...maybe half an hour is progress.

Regards,Chris

[Tyson Rayles]

[Genetk44]

Matt,

that new landscape is looking great and much more better than before. Very nice work. I love the way it all comes together. I´m still searching for bigger pieces of that floral foam. The blue foam is hard to work with, I use my hot wire for working the basic forms to the foam but the fine landscape is still a big mess...

Can´t wait to see more progress of your work. Thanks for sharing.

Regards,Chris

Thanks Chris!

Sorry for the late reply, I have no more time to work on my trains... At least, I'm planning a trip to Montreal next weekend to get suitable scenic supplies. I'm getting tired of plywood and foam... it's been 10 years!

The best place I found to get floral foam was from a large garden center. They sell in large boxes and pieces are about 4" x 6" x 12". I think each box has about 10 pieces of foam. It less expensive than the craft store, but I'm still searching for a wholesale distributor to cut on cost. I scarcely use it in heavily forested area.

Matt

Matt...when do you expect to be in Montreal?

[sailormatlac]

It's done... I finally completed my more or less prototypical CN woodchip gondola today.

The weathering was a little bit experimental since I didn't have any oil paint at home at the moment. I decided to try Mike Confalone recipe by fading the paint with pastel. I used regular pastel, so the result is quite subtle. But that's OK because these gondolas were relatively in good shape back in the late 80s. Only by the mid-90s did they start to turn into rust buckets.

Several other shade of pastel were also used to give depth to both car ends: gray, tan and black. To be noted, to make sure the ribs would stand out, I took the pastel stick and directly rub it against them. It was quite garish, but once covered with the final dull finish, it would blend correctly I guess... And I was right.

I didn't want to use Dullcote on the model. I put several coat on it yesterday and it never really killed the shine on the model. So I decided to use Swanny's trick with Future. To get a very flat finish, you mix 3 part of Future and 1 part of Tamiya Flat Base. To be honest, the result is excellent. Not only the model got a very flat finish but it also slightly made the color to fade a little bit, which was the result I was looking for.

Unfortunately, I learned quickly that alcohol react nastily with the flat finish by whitening the finish. And unlike Dullcote, you can't make it disappear with a second coat of finish. So I had a lot of fun trying to hide my mistake. Lesson learned!

And now, the big question. Will I build 10 other cars? I don't know...











And some progress on the layout:

Some asphalt freshly applied at Donohue:



New ditches and a shopping center parking lot (final dimension TBD):



And some new signs here and there:





And a general view of Clermont "yard":



Matt

[Painkiller]

Hi guys, I am back! I love the progress on this thing, and I liked it enough to get me some GP40-2w.s in CN paint.

[sailormatlac]

Hi guys, I am back! I love the progress on this thing, and I liked it enough to get me some GP40-2w.s in CN paint.

Thanks! It is indeed starting to look like a real railroad instead of plywood central!

I started to scratchbuild a boarded up old station that will replace the pristine one in Montmorency... I had a lot of fun scribing the shingle texture on masking tape for 12 hours!









Matt