Rainbows in the Lehigh Valley Gorge

[TMo]

Yep!  It's a great way to give depth to any scene, even if there's very little room between backdrop and track.  It's another way to trick the eye - textures between backdrops and the viewer get my thumbs up.

While I'm waiting for some scenic details to dry, I thought I'd weather my Euclid dump truck that I picked up on ebay for about $10.  Walthers has a Terex off-road dump truck out there, but I was having a hard time pulling the trigger on that small an item going for almost $30 with shipping.  Still holding hope that'll I'll find one cheap, but this metal truck made in Hong Kong is going to suffice for now.  However, the gleaming factory yellow paint wouldn't be realistic working out of a strip mine operation.

   

I got the brushes and acrylic paints out and dirty-ed it up... 

   

I then hit it with a good coat of Testor's dullcote before getting the PanPastels out to further abuse it, followed by another spray of Dullcote to seal the thing up. Sufficiently dirty!

Next I wanted to add some windows - at least the windshield.  Opened up some finished plastic kits and found some unused clear plastic, cut to size and carefully glued each piece in.

Then I decided I needed an operator - found a seated plastic guy and painted him up.

Here's the finished product on the descent after ridding himself of a load of coal.

   

A guy at work had given me some anthracite which I started crushing up to scatter around the breaker premises, and I thought it would also make an excellent load for this Euclid....  A good short project, and I can get back to scenery...