01-22-2009, 10:42 AM
As long as your buildings aren't wood and are relatively dust-free, the wet water won't hurt them. In any of my pictures, if there's a building in the photo and the scenery around it has ballast or ground cover in place, the building was in place when that scenic material was applied. That's the best way to make your structures look as if they're built into the ground, rather than on top of it. It also serves to hold the structure in place - still removeable with some effort, but not knocked out of position every time you happen to touch it.
For wood structures, a temporary "mask" of waxed paper or plastic food wrap would probably suffice to shield it from the worst of the spray. You could apply the "wet" water with a dropper around such structures, but there's a chance that the sudden influx of so much water at one time could cause the scenic material (ground foam or ballast) to "ball" around the water - even with the reduced surface tension afforded by the detergent, this will really disrupt the appearance, and trying to smooth it while wet is a recipe for further disaster.
If there's dust on your structures, the water can cause out-of-scale streaks, especially on roofs - take dusty structures out of the layout room, then use a soft brush to clean them before putting them back in place.
In all of the scenes below, the structures were in place while the nearby ground cover and ballast was applied - water was literally dripping from the eaves:
In this photo, the ballast has not yet been applied on the upper tracks, as I need to lift out both Languay's and the station in order to add some detail to the backdrop. Once that's done, the buildings will be positioned, then the ballast and ground cover will be applied.
This view is along the same tracks as shown in the previous photo. The parts of National Grocers on both sides of the tracks are still removeable, for the same reason as Languay's and the station. I'll need to remove all of the stuff that's stored on the shelf under the layout, too, when I ballast, as there's nothing but open benchwork under all of these large structures. Some of the glue is bound to run under the "foundations" and drip onto the shelf:
Coffield Washer, at left, and Wilkinson-Kompass, centre, are both held in place by ballast and ground cover, applied while they were in place, while the lower part of National Grocers, at right, has an un-ballasted siding, and is still removeable:
Things that should be removed before ballasting or applying ground cover are trains, vehicles, LPBs, and small details such as piles of junk, details on loading docks, and anything else that you may wish to move around from time to time. It's fine to show different trains passing by the same structure again and again, but if the same car or person is always in the same spot on every photo, eventually someone will notice. I'm guilty of this last one :oops: : even though almost all of my details remain "loose", I often forget to move some of them occasionally. This poor guy has been trying to get into his car for ages - I've change the car several times, but he doesn't seem to notice.
Wayne
For wood structures, a temporary "mask" of waxed paper or plastic food wrap would probably suffice to shield it from the worst of the spray. You could apply the "wet" water with a dropper around such structures, but there's a chance that the sudden influx of so much water at one time could cause the scenic material (ground foam or ballast) to "ball" around the water - even with the reduced surface tension afforded by the detergent, this will really disrupt the appearance, and trying to smooth it while wet is a recipe for further disaster.
If there's dust on your structures, the water can cause out-of-scale streaks, especially on roofs - take dusty structures out of the layout room, then use a soft brush to clean them before putting them back in place.
In all of the scenes below, the structures were in place while the nearby ground cover and ballast was applied - water was literally dripping from the eaves:
In this photo, the ballast has not yet been applied on the upper tracks, as I need to lift out both Languay's and the station in order to add some detail to the backdrop. Once that's done, the buildings will be positioned, then the ballast and ground cover will be applied.
This view is along the same tracks as shown in the previous photo. The parts of National Grocers on both sides of the tracks are still removeable, for the same reason as Languay's and the station. I'll need to remove all of the stuff that's stored on the shelf under the layout, too, when I ballast, as there's nothing but open benchwork under all of these large structures. Some of the glue is bound to run under the "foundations" and drip onto the shelf:
Coffield Washer, at left, and Wilkinson-Kompass, centre, are both held in place by ballast and ground cover, applied while they were in place, while the lower part of National Grocers, at right, has an un-ballasted siding, and is still removeable:
Things that should be removed before ballasting or applying ground cover are trains, vehicles, LPBs, and small details such as piles of junk, details on loading docks, and anything else that you may wish to move around from time to time. It's fine to show different trains passing by the same structure again and again, but if the same car or person is always in the same spot on every photo, eventually someone will notice. I'm guilty of this last one :oops: : even though almost all of my details remain "loose", I often forget to move some of them occasionally. This poor guy has been trying to get into his car for ages - I've change the car several times, but he doesn't seem to notice.
Wayne