Beverly's and Chris's Slab Door Layout

Beverly, it's looking really good with some color!

Here are some suggestions. I'm not sure how your "special mix" (Celluclay + spackle) responds to washes, but I've found washes are a little more interesting (not as uniform) if the surface is first wetted thoroughly. I've also found an alcohol/water mix as the wetting agent adds more interest; it tends to help draw the washes into the crevices to add more depth.

You don't mention how you apply the washes. I've found it's good to start by brushing on a lighter "base" color (greys/tans), and then dribbling on the accent color washes (blacks/rusts) with an eyedropper. You may also need to keep re-applying water or alcohol to keep the surface wet while you're adding washes.



Things may tend to look waaaay dark while you're working, but things will dry much lighter.

Disaster recovery: the easiest way to recover from a bad coloring job is to simply paint the surface with cheap white latex paint, thinned a little with water. When it's dry, just have at it again. Sometimes tints and dyes will bleed through the latex paint, but this tends to look fine.

Jim,

I think there are many paths to get similar results I have a background in fine arts, such as painting with oils on canvas and sculpting clay, and these are the skills I draw upon to work in Z.


David,

Thanks for the tip about wetting the surface before applying the washes. I noticed the colour flowed onto the mountain better after the first wash, so this tip will come in handy

I have an arsenal of paint brushes on hand for everything in Z that requires colour. The best wash brushes are old ones that are a bit worn so there are no defined lines anywhere on the mountain that might occur with a new brush. Pretty much I use only two or three brushes for washes, at least so far.

Because I will eventually paint the layout's large background with artist's acrylic paint, I thought I'd better get the hang of using the paint on my test mountains. Having the same basic colours and quality of paint to mix for both foreground and background will hopefully lend more authenticity to the entire project.



The washes dried in less than four hours. They dried to much muddier colours than when the paint was wet. This photo was taken in different light than the photo above.
While the photo does not accurately record the brown tone of the mountain (from the burnt umber), it does record the dullness of the colours. More washes and colour testing will come later after I decide how to proceed.

Beverly, I wasn't talking about your washes. Check out the spelling of the first word and find the real meaning of my post. Cheers, Jim CCRR:)

Yeah, Jim, I think that hay wagon's been on the wrong path for quite awhile now

Our curved background canvas arrived last night The canvas took longer to make than expected, but when it was delivered last night, I was overjoyed! The photo below shows the canvas on the bare layout base. You will notice a lot of holes drilled into the top of the base which are there to accommodate the electrical things that will eventually be installed. You will also notice the hole in the bottom of the canvas which will allow us access to the track behind and under mountains.

Now that we have the canvas, I can cut the insulation boards to fit the curve in the corner and glue the boards down - for starters This seems like the first day of the rest of my life - well at least the next several months

That curved canvas is a great idea. Expensive? Cheers, Jim CCRR:)

Jim,

The canvas price was reasonable, imo. Size of it is 32" high by 78" long by 26" deep. The guy who made it for us usually makes very large canvases. I saw one in his shop that was about 6' by 10'. But he'd never made anything that was L-shaped, and that had a curve in the corner with a hole cut out of it The frame of the canvas is a work of art in itself. It's well braced to prevent warping and any other kind of movement caused by the stretched canvas cloth. Including delivery, it set us back only $220. We were lucky to have found him to do the work

Chris and I have both been sick over the past few days. Coordinating work on the inclines and track has been impossible. However, we did manage to remove the background canvas from the layout last night so I could test for colour and scale for the sky portion of the background. Colours used are Cerulean Blue and Titanium White. The background will probably stay the way it is until we get quite a bit further along building the foreground. ...



One thing I learned about artist's acrylic paint is that it dries a bit darker than it appears wet, similar to latex paint. Unlike latex paint, it has wonderful body when mixed with the right amount of water, and has a slightly longer working time especially if the room is cool and damp.

This is such a huge area to work in. It will take several days to complete the sky alone, once I get a picture in mind of what I want it to look like. Having clouds and sky in scale as well as in the right shades of blue and white and will be challenges in themselves. But I'm not at that point yet, and have plenty of time to figure out the intermediate and final stages much later in the layout build.

Beverly, Looks really good to me. Hope others like it. Sorry you guys are ill. Come to Santee it is 84 degrees today. Perfect for late winter cold cures. Cheers, Jim CCRR:)

Chris & Bev,

Jim just loves to have visitors so he cam put them to work, LOL.

Glad you are feeling better, I really like the sky backdrop. I'm still working on my BUSCH layout and have had thought about a background. Since I model Swiss, I've been looking for mountains with rocky peaks.

Robert

Jim,

Thanks for the compliment and the invitation I'm going to pass on the 84 F. I always feel sicker when it's hot than when it's cool


Robert,

Do you have photos of your Busch layout? How's it coming? I Googled "Swiss Alps photos" and found this bunch of photos for you Looks like a beautiful place to model - or vacation - or BOTH

Beverly, that's a wonderful sky! Nice and subtle, not overpowering, and quite realistic. Hope you're feeling better, both in terms of illness and about the backdrop. See, it's nothing to be terrified about--but instead something to feel proud about.

David,

Thank you for the compliment

We placed the canvas back behind the layout last night. The Cerulean Blue is overpowering, even though I toned it down with a LOT of Titanium White. I'd like to mix the sky's blue so it looks more like the blue in Robert's avatar. As it stands, the blue is closer in hue to Jim's avatar. Both are great avatars with great blues, by the way Robert's avatar's blue will be closer to the other hues in both the room the layout will be in as well as the earthier colours of the layout.

Painting this canvas is still scaring the heck out of me. While it looks pretty good in the photo, in person the clouds are very large and way out of scale. Painting in-scale clouds on an area of 78" wide by 32" high (not including the short side of the canvas) will take hours stretched over a few days. And then there will be the other background elements to be painted. I don't even know what they are yet, but they will also have to be in scale and have the right hues to indicate their perspectives. Your layouts and background skies tend to be significantly smaller than this monstrosity in our dining room. You bite off pieces that are easier to chew, you smart person

Slightly altered track plan - now carved in stone. It gives us more room on the left side for the castle and large mountain area...




A full size printout of the track plan has been utilized throughout the incline placement process. To enable the inclines to fit the track plan, we had to reduce the length of the inclines. The red arrows indicate where notches in the inside of the curves were removed to tighten up the curve. The green arrows indicate where the straight sections of inclines were cut then fastened back together with 1/16" thick double sided tape....




Here is a close up of the straight sections that had been cut then taped together with double sided tape....




The Woodland Scenics inclines have been both a blessing and a curse. The blessing comes in the form of being able to see the full size track plan between spaces in the inclines. The curse is that once the track is ready to be glued into place, those pesky spaces are still there. Below is the simple fix of using wood glue to glue 80 lb. artist's paper to a test incline then using AC to glue the track to the paper. It actually worked quite well, except for the slight grooves in the paper where the spaces were...




Below is the first test to see what could easily hide the grooves where the spaces in the inclines are. A quick coat of green paint overlaid with Woodland Scenics static grass seems to cover the grooves quite well. Note that the track has not been ballasted - that's a test for another day...





The pieces of track that required cutting were cut yesterday What a great day it was. Each track was powered up and three of our four locomotives with new 5 pole motors (thank you, Lajos!) were carefully broken in. We started by running each loco forward for one lap, then backward for one lap. Then each loco went around the track for 5 minutes forward, then 5 backward, for a total of 15 minutes each. Then came the 15 minute runs forward then backward, for a total of 1 hour and 45 minutes. They all run very well and both Chris and I just stood there watching them go around and around. To date, we've been working on the project for about two and a half months, not to mention the prep work that was done last summer. It was glorious to see our locos moving on the track

One set of inclines is now stuck down with double sided tape. The other set is waiting for me to be in a patient mood to score the insulation foam through the paper track plan. Once the foam is scored, the track plan can be removed and the incline set taped down. I both looking forward to getting the inclines all in place and dreading it. Dreading it because ballasting the track will be coming up soon. It was one thing to ballast the micro-layout. But ballasting all that track has me shaking in my socks Of course, I won't ballast the hidden track, but that's still a whole whack of track to tackle.

OMG, what have I gotten myself into

By cutting out portions and compressing the straight inclines to make them fit, you are effectively increasing the grade produced by the incline. I suppose that the increase isn't likely all that significant assuming that you didn't compress it too much.

As a matter of interest, what was the grade of the original incline and by how much did you shorten it?

Brad,

I'm aware that compressing the inclines increases the grade We used 2% inclines throughout as is typically recommended for Z scale. Normal length of an uncompressed 2% incline is 24". After compression, incline length is about 20". Not a big difference, certainly not enough to increase the grade to 3%. Maybe someone can do the math to figure out how much the grade is on the compressed inclines?

The outside single oval track, by contrast, has some inclines lengthened maybe by an inch or so.

The locomotives had no trouble navigating the inclines, though that will change when there are cars attached to them. Once the outside inclines have been taped down, I'll probably run the locos with cars to see how everything runs

Beverly,

I used plaster cloth to cover my inclines. With a single layer there was a very slight dip along the gaps. If I used a double layer of the cloth the dip was imperceptible. For the transition areas that I was concerned with I used Foam Putty to fill in the gaps, sanded smooth then applied the cloth. In hindsight to do again I would use the foam putty along more sections of the inclines.

Mike

Mike,

I've got a test going with the CelluClay and drywall compound to fill in the gaps, but it was a lot of trouble filling them all in. I'll probably only use the CelluClay mix to fill in the side gaps where I landscape. The Woodland scenics foam is too expensive to use on a large layout like mine. The 80 lb. paper looks pretty good, though, and I'll most likely use it when I get that far


Stony,

Thanks for the calculation






The inclines have all been stuck down with double sided tape. Now the fun begins! Below is a bird's eye view from the stairway of the beginning of building up the base for the mountain. 1" and 2" insulation foam is being used to form the base. The red arrows indicate the hidden track area. Note that here is a lot of room to reach in to service the track.




Another bird's eye view. This time, a couple of layers of foam hide the hidden track. More basic foam will be added to the scene over the next several days. Once we're satisfied with the placement of the foam, it will be glued together, though not glued to the layout base. Track will have to be glued and ballasted before final gluing of the mountain base foam. There are 13.6 meters of track to be glued, though only the track that is visible will be ballasted.

Looking good! I am jealous of the progress. On the gaps I did not fill in the side and the tops were not covered completely either. As long as I got the gap closed to 1-2 mm i found the plaster cloth to be stiff enough to span that distance without sagging. You probably will be able to achieve a similar effect with the heavy weight paper you are planning on using.

Mike