Rainbows in the Lehigh Valley Gorge

[Charlie B]

Todd, how is the fur baby doing ?  I know how hard it is keeping them down when they are supposed to be. 
Charlie

[TMo]

My last progress report on "Rainbows in the Gorge" was 2/15/25....  If you're expecting miracles, I have none on the model railroading front.  

Dog's free to roam about the house now and he's back to his old self, all of the interior painting's finished, all of my mulching and weeding in the yard has been accomplished.  Since I'm now back in step with the Joneses, I have been embarking on some model railroad tasks.  Been running my fleet quite a bit - which is fun - especially when locomotives and rolling stock are playing nice.

And it's back to scenery!  I'm still in need of some rock faces on the new (relatively) mountainous escarpment installed this winter.  Back in February I'd poured plaster into molds.  The completed castings sat until this afternoon.  Since a lot of this rock face work is going to be executed with me leaning over the mountain and probably using a mirror, any prework I can accomplish without blood rushing to my head is going to be a bonus.  In a lot of cases I've stuck the castings on, filled in the gaps with Sculptamold, pressed in some texture and let things dry before painting the rock faces - but this time I'm at least pre-painting the castings.

I'm not generally a "spray bomb" guy, but there are occasions when a simple shake can of black paint is definitely the way to go.  The plaster soaks up quite a bit of the paint do to it's porousness, so it quickly fades to a dark gray - which is a great place for me to start with these rocks.

   

After these dry, it'll be time to get the brushes and paints out - white, black, blue, brown and green should be enough to detail these.

[TMo]

Just decided to hit the rocks with a variety of grays for the time being.  I'll be getting the Sculptamold out tonight to secure them to the scenery.  I was hoping to be further along this week with my wife out of town, but other things piled up on my plate.

   

[ngauger]

Yup! They sure look like rocks!!

[TMo]

The ultimate compliment - thank you, Mikey!  Always good to nail something you're intending to model.  I did some installs before the bride had other ideas for my time last night.

   

[TMo]

It's slow progress (life is once again interfering with model railroading), but some is being made.  The biennial "fill in the asphalt cracks in my driveway" has been going on over the last few days at about 2-hour blocks.  

In the limited amount of time available, I made it through installing most of my available painted rocks, so more plaster went into the molds this evening.  Since canned spray paint went on the plaster so well for the plaster castings, I'm thinking of spray bombing the rock faces once I get all of the rock set to color the Sculptamold between rocks.

   

[ngauger]

Tmo

The rocks turned out great!!!!

[TMo]

Thanks, Mikey!  Had the rattle can out anyway, so I hit the white spaces and they look even better.  Still wet, it'll dry less glitzy...

   

[TMo]

Here's what I've been working toward in this section of the layout - an impression that you're inside the gorge, with feeling that civilization and the horizon is a long way away.  Obviously a lot more scenery to add, but I'm feeling better about walling out this section of the layout from the normal viewing angles.  As the coal train shows, it's going to become a great place for a photo op. 

   

[ngauger]

That looks a lot better

[tompm]

Looking good!

You seem to think like me. I want to be able to railfan my layout along with running it.

[TMo]

Rock and roll....  Put a big dent in my 1/2-gallon container of Plaster of Paris to make more rocks in my molds, but we're getting closer to the bridge.  This may look like rock overkill, and it is - there are going to be quite a few layers of scenery that go on top of this - a lot of brown and green, but until I get all of the rocks in place, we're going to table the other layers.

   

[ngauger]

Great progress!!!! You're doing a wonderful job!!!!

[TMo]

Thanks, Mikey!

Here's a shot from the bridge end of this section showing the approach of rocks - still several to mount before we move on to some other scenic details.  With the hot spell we're getting this week, I think I'll be down in the basement after work much more often than normal.


   

[TMo]

The slow progress toward the bridge continues with the rock face additions.  I'm ready for some detail painting now that all of the cast rocks are in place.  Most of the detail painting will have to be done via mirror from above, so I that should be fun...