Well lets see, its been about a year since I started this thing, maybe I should try to finish this stupid thing BEFORE this years BTS



I work better under pressure anyways...

I started building up the blue foam "hills" last week, getting near the top now, be ready to start carving the foam into rocks pretty quick here, lets see...

...I got 47 days to go!

link to original building log

http://archive.mylargescale.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=47038&SearchTerms=portable,layout,log

Progress pics:


Starting with the foam

backside view

foam topped off

Now gotta wait for the glue to dry, then I can start shaping.

One evenings carving, not bad, starting to look like southwestern sandstone




Still need to sand some of the rough spots down and carve the back side a bit but this was very very fast!

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 I like it ! Great little project you have going there. What are you using for the glue?

Its Just standard carpenters glue, most things I've read say use "Liquid Nails" because it dries faster, but I have a big thing of the carpenters glue. I just glue it down the night before and its ready to go the next evening. But cold weather can effect its drying time. If time or weather are issues, use the Liquid nails route.

PS I watched this series of vids on Youtube, it was very helpfull.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=D1D4KBB_...re=related

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Yes, cold weather is ALWAYS an issue up here, so liquid nails it is. Thanks for the advice.

Progress:

the buildings on top are just there for ideas, I'm still deciding what I want to do there. The Piko buildings may be OK but the HofB hotel looms a little large, I really want to build a series of very narrow buildngs winding there way up the hill, so these would only be temporary anyway. Even the station would eventually be replaced. But I only have a little over one month to get this ready.

Small test area for scenery, Woodland Scenics stuff, guess it works for large scale, no ballast yet, gotta get some stuff without the blue "ore" in it.

Photo came out to bright, it doesnt look this washed out in person

It's looking good Vic!! Nice little module!

A tad more progress

Now that is cool. Nice job!

Thanks, I added highlight colors to the bluffs on the layout as shown above. Going to go with 3 facades at the top with the watertank as shown, and the "house of relief" next to the water tank (eeewww!)

Got a bag of "Ballast" in the pet aisle of the local Theftway.... dam stuff has pink "scent control crystals" in it, another had blue ones, geez well at least pink looks more southwesterny than blue.

I think if I had one full day I could finish this, fat chance I'll have that kind of free time

I have a friend building an giant HO scale railroad in his attack. Something like you might see at a train show. Only problem is he's been working on it for years and he still doesn't even have a single working loop to run the trains. I keep telling him to get one section going so I can see some of the hundreds of trains actually running. The mountains have been evolving for about two years now but still need landscaping. He did finally manage to finish a large stockyard, so I got to see some very nice locos move back and forth about 20 feet. Now its filled with a couple hundred boxcars. I'm pretty sure he's ADHD. ;-)

Once you put your mind to it, you came a long way in a very short time. The mountains turned out very nice. I hope you post some pics when you figure out how to work the structures in. Good work!

Paul

Yikes! First thing I did on my indoor layout was track wiring and controls, gotta get them running otherwise its just a great big paperwight. Even if it takes me a couple years to finish it, I can still run trains anytime I want, and thats whats most important for me.

Put down a small section of my ballast as a test, Yuck!

The white kitty litter looks like crap! After vacuuming that disaster off, thought I was gonna dye!

Literally! I dyed the litter, using some rust brown paint mixed with water, and dipped the litter with a stainer into it and set it out to dry. Color looks alot better now. We'll see how dry it is tonight, might need to bake it in the oven to get it nice and crispy. If this works I'm going to use it on the indoor layout, beats paying $10 a paltry bag for the Woodland Scenics stuff, much as I like it, on a layout my size, it would cost a small fortune to ballast that way.

Well a hard push this weekend squeezing time in between yardwork and chores, yields results, I give you

Tincan Junction

Overall view


Station looking up the hill


Looking up the hill from the crossing


View of Brien's Pinnacle


Tincan itself, a one horse town and they had to borrow the horse.

Still lots of little detail stuff to add, I thought this would take another month to do but it went surprisingly fast, I'm ready for the BTS.

BTW this is a full dress rehersal for the big indoor layout.

I see from the first photo of your last post (above this one) that you've included an large wind turbine to provide power to the layout. Very environmentally friendly.

Vic,

That is looking outstanding. Looking forward to seeing it in person (Like in about 1 month).

Tommy
Rio Gracie

Love the layout, what is the diameter of that turn?

(Deleted duplicate reply, SteveC mod.)

Thanks guys
Bill its a 36" diameter, bent down from 5' brass rails and spiked to basswood ties, the link in the first post will take you to the 1st part of the building log that explains most of the early trackwork to get the stage of the first post above here.

(edit) OOPS! FYI to GlacierBill, its a 36 x 36 base, with a 32" dia center to center track.

Update, a friend took some video of the layout at the BTS last weekend

http://youtube.com/watch?v=yxrimi_8...ature=user

Sorry for the dark picture, the light inside that place always plays havoc with all sorts of cameras

BTS display 2008:

Very nice work!!!!

Excellent Vic! After some procrastination - you really got it done in a hurry!

Need a break from all these "hom'impruvm'nt" projects, so....

Began construction last night on building the permanant structure I had wanted to do for the BTS this year, but ran out of time for, the 3 "town" buildings were only "temps" for the show, I need them for the big layout. I had always planned for a mining structure on the top of the hill, so after some quick sketching I drew this up on the com'fuser:



Its a large facade that will go along the back in the same place the 3 "town" buildings were located. Construction is basswood on a foamcore backing, one nice thing about being indoors is that I can use much lighter, and much easier, construction technics, its going faster than I thought since I discovered I could cleanly cut the basswood siding with a large scissors


Pics when I can

That is some seriously nice craftsmenship. I wish I could do that well!

I finished the Mine, its basswood and balsa stripwood on a backing piece of 1/2" foamcore, and am painting it now, My wife left our camera at a family members house, and now its gone AWOL , so no pics for now, I'm considering just getting another one, a cheap backup camera, for just such a situation.