Glazing has been added to Donohue's warehouse. The product itself is made by a German company specialized in metric model supplies. Material is called Vivak.



First, I cut the material to the right window size. My idea was that a tight fitting would prevent the use of glue and minimize to make a big mess out of clear material.



The glazing was then sprayed with a good layer of dullcote to reproduce the effect of fogged corrugated translucent plastic. When dry, I used a few drops of oil colors including burnt umber, raw sienna, white and black. Everything was wiped out gently with a large brush full of mineral spirit. I tried to reproduce the streaking effect found on the prototype. I feel it turned out quite right.



When dry, I only add to insert he glazing inside the opening. Pastel chalks were used to weather the concrete foundation a little bit more. This time, I wasn't afraid of using colors such as olive green to reproduce the growing vegetation effect often found on concrete foundations. It helps to blend the building in its future surroundings. Also, always using dirt colors isn't realistic. After a while, you feel like everything just came out of the factory.



Enjoy!

Matt

Nicely done Matt!

That's really nice. What do you use for your roof?

Rscott417 Wrote:That's really nice. What do you use for your roof?

I used Walthers flat modular roofs spliced together. The texture is done with 3 spray paint colors sprayed from a good distance to get a rugged surface.

A few pictures taken on the layout yesterday.









Matt

Excellent Matt

Great rendition of the building and very nice realistic weathering amongst other things.

Always a pleasure to see/read

Syl

MLW Wrote:Excellent Matt

Great rendition of the building and very nice realistic weathering amongst other things.

Always a pleasure to see/read

Syl

Thanks Syl. It's really fun when things start to look like they should. Your Drummondville scene is very nice, looks like the real thing!

Back to the layout:

This is Villeneuve back in 1966, taken from a local historical society brochure:

http://i603.photobucket.com/albums/tt111...c76199.jpg

Well, having laid all track at Donohue's plant, given trackage between Donohue and Montmorency is now operable (thought Clermont siding and team track aren't built), it was tiem to start laying track in Villeneuve. The goal is to reach Limoilou by Christmas and start having real full operation sessions.



From a "project manager" standpoint, this is an exciting new step to reach and shows us how much our efforts since the radical turning point are starting to pay off. It wasn't an easy decision back then, it could have impacted seriously our troop's moral, but I don't regret any of it. The layout is now something far better than a toyish reconstruction of a lost golden age, it is a real operating railroad - albeit in miniature.



Some liberties were taken while locating turnouts yesterday. The original plan called for all turnouts installed in the layout room for easy access. However, it quickly became apparent to Jérôme and me the right choice was to pull them back further in the furnace room. That would give us more lenghty sidings to handle heavy traffic at the cement plant and more freedom to organize the structure. They will be operated with manual control from Fast Track which are quite reliable. I'm not into motorized turnouts on rural branchline, they are out of place and kills a part of the operation fun.



We took extra care to get smooth curved transition in the furnace room to have the most reliable operation possible. From experience, I know tight radius curves are the most annoying feature on a layout. If you can have 30" curves do it, if you can have 48" curves do it and if you have 72" curves go for it!! I'm slightly exaggerating, but the larger the better... and looks more realistic!



Villeneuve yard trackage was partially installed to. Roadbed is made out of cork tiles sold at the home improvement store. Really saves a lot of work instead of regular cork roadbed for large surface. I glued them down with white glue and nailed them after to make sure everything was level.



Sous-Bois street was also built in the same manner. I didn't care about bevelling the cork. I'll do that with "universal mud", easier and more realistic. We kept an old batch in a paint container a few weeks ago to see if you can preserve it for later use. The short answer is yes. The long answer is that after about a month, it start to solidify. In fact, the texture changed a little bit and it looked like drying dog crap.



Finally, we installed the cement plant mock up back in place to see how things worked together. Particularly impressive I must say. Those who knows Villeneuve will recognize the place without efforts! And this new GMD1 in orange and black scheme is stunning! Those engine are really something. I Feel bad to weather them but I'll have too. I hope they will do the zebra stripes version. BTW, I wish Rapido will understand that the next REAL canadian locomotive to produce is none other than M420.



Enjoy!

Matt

Hi,
Matt,that building is looking great,never heard about that German company.do you have a link to their site?Weathering and the look of that structure is fantastic and it catch the look of the prototype.Great work.
what size are those kork pieces you are using for your roadbed and also the roads?I use 5 mm and 3 mm thick kork.Would be nice to see how you build the streets...

Keep on with that great work,
Cheers,Chris

Twist Wrote:Hi,
Matt,that building is looking great,never heard about that German company.do you have a link to their site?Weathering and the look of that structure is fantastic and it catch the look of the prototype.Great work.
what size are those kork pieces you are using for your roadbed and also the roads?I use 5 mm and 3 mm thick kork.Would be nice to see how you build the streets...

Keep on with that great work,
Cheers,Chris

I use standard 5mm cork. Roadbed cork and 1 sq.ft.cork tiles are the same thickness. For road, I'll probably use painted and distressed cardstock à la Gordon Gravett. I've got nice results with it earlier this spring. You can see the results here:http://theendofsteel.blogspot.ca/

The german company is Schulcz. http://www.schulcz.de/international/web/za/home-za.html. The clear material doesn't come cheap. At less the sheet is quite huge (about 12" x 16").

The huge building is only a mock up. It is full of structural flaws that will prevent us to turn it into the final model. I still have to figure out how to build it in a way it is easy to handle. Dimensions are 14½" large x 42" long x 16" high. Weights a ton... That's the price to pay when you elect to not use selective compression!

Matt

Well, the project is moving forward. Villeneuve's sidings are mostly completed and only D'Estimauville and the staging need to be built before the layout is fully functional again. It's been almost a year since the last "real" train moved on the layout, except for local operation.

The cement plant trackage will probably be built during December. The goal is to hold our traditional session during Christmas vacation.

In red: built trackage, in white: unbuilt trackage.



Early 2015 projects will include replacing the peninsula code 100 track with code 83 and building the new sidings in Clermont which means serious benchwork modifications. That's also the only ballasted part of the layout, so I'm not in a hurry to replace the track there too soon.

I'm also working a lot on the cement plant car fleet. Lots of hoppers, about 30 and few more covered hoppers. A least, it's good practice to perfect my weathering skills. Unfortunately, no work done on the GP9s... But the GMD1s are doing a nice job in their stead.

Sorry, no pictures, I forgot my camera...

Matt

This is one of my favorite threads here. Looking forward to see the new Project to get along. And those Rapido GMD1 do look good. I guess if you think of the size on layouts, the perfect units too. Right now I am looking to buy one or two and like you looking forward to see the striped ones coming out one day! Keep it up
!

Painkiller Wrote:This is one of my favorite threads here. Looking forward to see the new Project to get along. And those Rapido GMD1 do look good. I guess if you think of the size on layouts, the perfect units too. Right now I am looking to buy one or two and like you looking forward to see the striped ones coming out one day! Keep it up
!

Thanks for your comment. If the layout was in was own basement, I think I would die from a burn out. Hope we will get a productive Saturday.

Yep, the GMD1 are very fine engine. Just need a Pointe Saint-Charles caboose to complete the set. BTW, I rebuilding my Sylvan scale caboose this morning. Not a masterpiece (I originally build it when I was 18 years old and messed up the parts badly) but should do the job. The pair of CN GP9 is also ready to operate. Weathering was completed this morning too. I'll post a few pictures as soon as I can.

Matt

I did some work on my gypsum hopper fleet. Gypsum is an ingredient to Portland cement. Ciment St-Laurent used to receive about 7 gypsum hoppers from Nova Scotia once per week. So, it means I need roughly 14 hoppers (I have 15 for this dedicated service).



The fleet use Accurail well done 40ft triple-bay hopper. This model is quite detailed for its price but sturdy enough to survive operation. The hard part was locating 12 hoppers in CN paint scheme since they are discontinued. Luckily, I was able to secure a batch of them but they all had the same road number. By the way, the roadnumbers were wrong for my era because they didn't represent the renumbering in the 32XXXX series. I contacted Accurail and was lucky enough to find out someone already requested renumbering decals in the 323XXX series.

Though the stock model is quite accurate from a CN perspective, I added the ACI labels and consolidated lube stencils on every model.



I started weathering the interior. Gypsum loads weather cars in a particular fashion so I decided to reproduce that. I sprayed in one session 3 colors: Krylon Camouflage Brown, Krylon White Primer and Krylon Brown Primer. The first step was to spray Camouflage Brown inside the car to get a dark rusted metal look. Then, I misted the car's bottom with White Primer. Finally, I misted the upper part of the car with Red Primer to represented freshly rusted iron.



The second step was done using Tamiya weathering powders. In fact, it isn't powder at all, but much more like make up. The dark gray looks like grimy dust. This color was applied on the car's top to illustrate wear. I also feathered this color into the previous Brown Primer coat.



The third step was done with pastel chalks. White chalk was used to ust the White Primer color and feather it with the Brown Primer. It really improved the looks. Finally, rust brown chalk was applied between White and Red Primer to mimick the fresh rust accumulating just on top of the gypsum load.



Exterior weathering was a standard mix of acrylic fading washes, oil paint washes, chalks and Tamiya weathering stuff to represent wear on the lower body. I gave a particular attention to the fading wash to make sure every car was done with a slightly different colors. The goal was to get a realistic color variation between cars. Except when freshly painted, most cars develop their own weathering. I also kept 2 pristine cars to represent repainted cars.



Gypsum loads are standard Accurail 40ft coal loads. I primed them in white, applied a generous coat of white glue and sprinkled real crushed plaster. Looks almost like the reala thing, however, crushed plaster doesn't stick well to glue and I'll have to think about a way to keep it in place.

Next step is to update my 3 others Accurail hoppers who are in their late 1950s paint scheme and road numbers.

Matt

In place of crushed plaster, would a sprinkle of Talcum Powder over the white primer work?

shortliner Wrote:In place of crushed plaster, would a sprinkle of Talcum Powder over the white primer work?

It would probably stick better. However, the look of big chunk of gypsum could be lost. Well, I say that, but the Accurail plastic load has enough relief to mimick that.

Worth a try! I think I'll experiment a little bit with your idea.

Matt

Serious rebuilding took part in Maizerets (D'Estimauville) yesterday. During the afternoon, I took some time to go to Maizerets Domain to take picture of vegetation, ditches and river there for scenery reference. I quickly found out the surrounding land was more than 5 to 7 feet lower than the roadbed.

So I did some jigsaw surgery!

Seriously, our original way to build benchwork really ?*$%*?$%@$#... Very little forgiving when doing landforms and not the best way to get a perfectly level benchwork. Never do that! IF I ever rebuild a benchwork, I'll do it like it should... Live and learn!



During the railfanning trip, I stumbled upon the old double track mainline hidden in grass. I knew it was there, but was sure it was pulled out during the recent track rebuilding. Looks like they didn't care to pull it up. So far, it is one of the rare remnant old QRL&PCo's electric traction golden days. The original 85 lbs rail was still there. So small, no wonder Murray Bay Sub was plagued with speed and weight restriction until they upgraded the track in the late 70s-early 80s.



Finally, I had a good surprised when I surveyed "La rivière aux taupins" - a small brook I once talked. The place was famous as a duck nesting area centuries ago and was known as La Canardière. Well, there was five Mallard ducks eating happily in all their glorious colors... Very nice birds, I could have spent the day watching them. I'm seriously thinking about adding ducks to this scene on the layout. Each time I go there, they are all over the railway bridge area.



This little railfan trip only made it apparent to me that Murray Bay Sub is now a thing from the past. The bogus touristic trains is just another gimmick that only killed the freight traffic when the clown took over the line. No offence intended, but touristic trains like Le Massif are the most boring thing you can watch. They are short, they run to fast too appreciate them, you can't feel the locomotive under real tractive efforts, they do no switching and you never see interchange cars. If it was a real suburban passenger train, that would be a different story, but as it is, it is pitiful. There's rumours that CN would handle freight traffic in the future. I remember there was such a provision when the line was sold to Le Massif, but I wouldn't bet my bread and butter on that. Only Donohue and a few lumber mills could still be customers and those industries are facing hard times.

Matt