Rainbows in the Lehigh Valley Gorge

[ngauger]

Great work!! 

Sign making guidelines to think about:
-- The size of the sign matters as far as the cost to make it.  Signs are normally "only as large as they need to be"
-- The sign must be made and mounted to withstand rain, downpours, snow and wind
-- The supports must be able to hold the sign against heavy winds, hurricanes?

This is why the "painted walls" signs were made.  It was way easer and cheaper to paint bricks, than custom creating a sign.
Based on the size of the sign, the supports you have are a decent size for wind protection.

Now, with all that said; 2 options:
1 -- paint the supports in gloss black. They will look like (hollow) square steel tubing.
2 -- sand them thinner, by rubbing them on a flat piece of 200 or 300 grit paper to look like thinner square steel tubing.

[TMo]

Great work!! 

Sign making guidelines to think about:
-- The size of the sign matters as far as the cost to make it.  Signs are normally "only as large as they need to be"
-- The sign must be made and mounted to withstand rain, downpours, snow and wind
-- The supports must be able to hold the sign against heavy winds, hurricanes?

This is why the "painted walls" signs were made.  It was way easer and cheaper to paint bricks, than custom creating a sign.
Based on the size of the sign, the supports you have are a decent size for wind protection.

Now, with all that said; 2 options:
1 -- paint the supports in gloss black. They will look like (hollow) square steel tubing.
2 -- sand them thinner, by rubbing them on a flat piece of 200 or 300 grit paper to look like thinner square steel tubing.

Great guidelines, Mikey.  In light of those, my sign's too big - which is something to think about.  I wanted some extra vertical elements, hence the sign, but it's gotta fit in with the other scenic elements.  Although the massive timbers might protect against a gale, the trees they each came out of would have had to be very large and wouldn't justify the expense to erect them. 

Regarding the two options, the "paint it black" is viable, the sanding of paper beams?  Not so much....

Sometimes you think you have something that works until you put it in place, and say....  Nope, we'll have to do something different.  It's OK for now, and I'll have to add it to the list of "redo" projects.

[ngauger]

Sometimes you think you have something that works until you put it in place, and say....  Nope, we'll have to do something different.  It's OK for now, and I'll have to add it to the list of "redo" projects.

And.... that's where the guidelines came from; Experience!!!      
Can't wait to see what you come up with   

[TMo]

And experience tells me that it'll be a while until the new sign appears!

[TMo]

I think I alluded to the fact that the workspace on my desk has dwindled to little more than elbow room over the past few months due to accumulated clutter and a multitude of projects.  While I was waiting for the foam glue to dry (and avoiding trying to rescale my sign...), I remembered somewhere in the clutter was an old Athearn blue box kit of Chessie tractors.  Bought these during a trip my wife and I made to Chesapeake City, MD.  Quaint little town right on the C&D canal that's about 45 minutes from my house - lot of bed and breakfasts, shops, restaurants.  They just so happened to have a hobby shop - apparently the owner inherited/bought a bunch of toys and hobby material and has been trying to sell the stuff there - most of the railroading stuff he has left was 70's era Tyco/Life Like/AHM/etc.  My wife was desperate for me to find something to bring back, and I did find this kit - two Chessie White Freightliner tractors that I thought might be useful on my layout.  I'd forgotten how well done a lot of the blue box stuff was for the era, and spent about a half hour putting these together and then dulling them up and weathering them with PanPastels and getting them ready for the industrial areas around Hazleton.

       

[tompm]

I too am curious to see how the sign solution pans out. But then again I found examples of many of my mistakes in the real world. Who knows maybe the owner was in a one upmanship contest with another business for who has the biggest sign in Hazelton. Weirder stuff has happened.

I like the trucks. They came very well.

[ngauger]

The older Athern kits are great! Nice work on the truck detailing and painting.
I'm about an hour North of Chesapeake City. Been there 3 times over the years. Beautiful town!!!

[TMo]

Thanks Tom and Mikey - the thing about photos (especially tight ones) is that they certainly show where you missed.  Adjusted the dingyness of the wheels and tires on the tandem axle unit after looking at the photo, now looks more like the single axle unit. 

I have a golf tournament this morning, but got up a little early to do some prep work on the Hazleton addition - put up wax paper against the backdrop to prevent bleed from the moisture that will inevitably be part of upcoming plaster cloth and Sculptamold work.  I also added a little more foliage to the drop-in module in the back corner and used the last of my foam glue to get the front corner of that secured to the foam base (via dumbell appying some gravity) so my upcoming terrain stays in place.  Hope to lay plaster cloth when I get back from the tournament.


       

[TMo]

Put plaster cloth down on Monday night, repositioned my structures and drew around their bases last night.  Tonight was spent working out where the roadways will travel through this area.  I think I'll do a little roadway work tonight before calling it quits - I'll be putting down some double-sided tape on the edges of the roadways and then applying Smooth-It for the road surfaces.  This is an industrial area of town, so no sidewalks.

You may notice the black material wedged between the backdrop and the foam/plaster cloth.  I'd remembered that I had those plastic squares in my workshop, and they'll make excellent buffers to prevent the water in the Smooth-It and Sculptamold from migrating into the paper of the backdrop.  Once the plaster hardens, I'll run a razor blade against each piece of plastic to separate them and I should be able to pull them free without too many touch ups.

Since this is an industrial area, I need to think about parking vehicles - parking lots or gravel areas will have to be included and I'll work on that after establishing the roads.

   

[TMo]

Smooth-It was laid two nights ago, so after some sanding, I applied the base (black) layer to the pavement.  No glamor or glory here, but necessary activity.  The roadways will get a good weathering coat of gray - only fresh asphalt is black - with some detailing, potholing, patching, etc. after the black dries.  Once the roadways are finished, it'll be time to add the base layer of Sculptamold on the areas that won't be covered by structures and then a covering of brown paint over everything but the roads.  At that point I'll remove the plastic barriers  that are shielding the paper backdrop.

   

[TMo]

Sculptamold is setting up and drying today - I might get a chance to paint it with some "Road Pizza" brown late tomorrow.  While watching football yesterday afternoon I decided to paint up a water tank that I'd lopped off another one of my childhood kits - one of those classic sand and water facilities.  Might have been a Tyco kit, but can't remember exactly.  Walthers has it in their current catalog like this one:  https://www.trainz.com/products/walthers...fd=0&_sc=1.  I wanted to add some water storage for the roof of either one of the two warehouses in the Hazleton module.  As usual, the plastic water tank looks like a plastic water tank until I got out some paints.  First hit absolutely every surface with a medium gray and while it was drying, hit it with some ivory and black highlights until I was happy.  After drying, I hit the bands with a barn red and the support timbers with a medium brown.

   

[TMo]

The road pizza painting commenced tonight - a blah brown to serve as a base for the scenery.  I overpainted road edges to make sure I didn't have any more white showing through.  I'll have to retouch the roadways at some point.

   


Things will slow down now as I work from the back to the front adding scenery details and structures.

[TMo]

To get a better idea of the scenic elements I want to employ, I stuck the structures on the dry paint.  

   

I'm going to start in the extreme right corner and work my way to the back left before I work forward with scenery and details.  I'm also taking a page from the Charlie book - he inspired me to buy my own static grass applicator and a variety of grass colors that arrived today in the mailbox.  I'm sure I'll work some of that into the scenery, and I think I'll be employing a lot of it in my foregrounds after seeing Bruce's shots over the last couple of years.