Slow, Slow Progress

While half the railfans in the state seemed to be out chasing after some UP Heritage unit, I kept my priorities straight and headed for the basement on a beautiful fall day. Wait, maybe the paint fumes are getting to me?

Anyhow, today was a modeling day for little old me. The interminable trip around the layout working on scenery continues. The decision to create a little town near my grain elevator and fertilizer plant was inspired by Mrs. L4T, and it was a good idea. However, it seems like towns take a lot longer than a comparable area of country side. Scenery goes fast when you can blast it out with the grassinator.

Here's a photo that shows how far I have progressed. This shows the partially painted shell of a small-town convenience store, set where it will probably end up along the tracks. The parking lot will have a couple of modern looking gas pumps and a canopy, and there's already a sign under construction for the corner. The foundation for the post office can be seen on the left side of the photo.


A lot of the time has been spent trying to create some kind of semi-plausible public works infrastructure. This includes streets that approximate the width of the real thing, curb and gutter in some areas, and gradual rises up to the grade crossings. Darn near need a civil engineer to visualize how it should look when done. To celebrate getting as far as I have I decided to play with a train a bit.

Here's a coal empty sailing through my little village. Quick camera work caught the leader and cab of the second unit at the grade crossing. Still have lots of scenery work to do on the back side of the tracks, and blending in the fertilizer plant to the left side of town.


So besides programming the accel and decel on a couple of decoders, grilling burgers, mulching about half a gondola full of leaves, and taking a well-earned nap, that's all I got done today. Oh, there was this post too. That's it for today!

Graining on It

While trying to find a permanent home for the fertilizer plant I recently have been working on, it became clear that a person needs to work from the back of the layout to the front if you want to keep from destroying any detail items toward the front edge of the layout. In other words, do the backdrop and any scenery work that is close before turning your attention to the nearer items.

And so, after getting a backdrop in place and blue, scenery and structures behind the track in this corner were the next order of business. I turned my attention to a first attempt at a road on Saturday. (One shoulder has now been installed, but no photos exist at this time.)


It gave me a chance to break out the static grass applicator and again it impressed with its performance. It's obvious I need some more variety in grass than 2 mm though, not many road ditches and highway right of ways are so well manicured. But, the machine is doing its part, now its up to the modeler to use it properly.

The two tracks visible in the photo are the main and the siding for a grain elevator. This is a curved siding, with a radius greater than 30", but it's the place where a grain elevator will fit. Over the last few weeks I've fooled with a building and this weekend worked up the enthusiasm to paint the main structure. Here's a look at what I came up with, so far.


Pay no attention to the PVC pipe next to the elevator, hopefully someday it will be the first of a number of silos that will serve as additional storage for West Central Minnesota Grain.

I did have one problem, though. How did the grain get delivered from the farm, and where did the office staff sit while they counted the kernels, wrote the checks, and bitched to the railroad about the availability of grain cars? Hopefully the latest addition provides a plausible answer to all these questions. Today I shoddily painted the unloading shed and office, built a foundation, and placed it all on the layout for an in-progress photo.


The more that gets done, the more there is to do, it seems. Next up are driveways and parking areas, painting the foundation a more realistic concrete color, installing the really cool HO steps I made for the office, building and finding a place for a grain dryer, and some type of spout from the elevator for loading covered hoppers. Oh, and the extra silos and associated conveyers and augers.

All this just to get to the point where I can install a spur for the fertilizer plant. This modeling is a never ending task!

ZAP!

Said the grassinator.

My weekend project (actually, this was a couple weekends ago but I haven't had the time to post or the material to test it so the post has been gathering dust in edit status) has been to assemble the bits and pieces gathered over a few days to build a static grass applicator.

I can't remember how long ago I first saw a Noch Gras-Master in one of the hobby magazines, but I do remember thinking it was as cool an idea as I had ever seen. Of course that was before I considered DCC. But the concept of being able to model grass in HO scale somehow caught my fancy. Not $200 worth of fancy though. As a result, the idea was filed in the ever growing "things I'll buy after Mrs. L4T wins the lottery" file.

And then, last year I caught wind of this: a static grass applicator you can make yourself for just a fraction of the cost of the factory built unit! I immediately started to think about maybe one day considering building one. It seemed to have all the traits of a great project-it was cheap, you got to use neat things like butter tubs as part of the hobby, it involved working with thousands of volts of electricity, (did I mention it was cheap), and all the reviews said it worked as well as or even better than the Noch. It doesn't get much better than to dream about combining model railroading with extreme high voltage electricty on a budget!

A few weeks ago I saw another mention of the "grassinator" and surfed on over to Goldmine Electronics to order not just one, but two, 120 volt negative ion generators. Heck, I figured maybe you connect them in series for even MORE power. And so it came about that a couple of weeks ago I found myself cobbling the unit together, with the screen from a 50 cent strainer grabbed at the Dollar Store in Sleepy Eye, a leftover switch, a sour cream container, some PVC pipe, and my precious ($4.95 each) ion generator.


I snapped a few photos of the finished unit before clamping it in a bench for a test. Flipping the switch on with a stick didn't blow any fuses, so I decided to move the ground up to the screen and was rewarded with a satisfying "sizzle" indicating voltage was indeed present.


Lacking static grass, I grabbed some "field" grass from Woodland Scenics and snipped it up into little pieces to test the machine. The results were thoroughly underwhelming. Turns out you really do need what they call static grass to get the stand-up look we're trying to achieve.


And so I ordered a couple of jugs of static grass, and yesterday when I got home it was waiting for me. A quick trip to the basement for a test of concept resulted in this:


Now that's more like it. That stand up, airy look is what I went to all this effort for. I was pretty excited that the machine seemed to work just like the internet had told me it would.

So tonight, I picked a small section of layout as the test site for my grassinator. Here's how it looked after about 10 minutes, including the time to prep the surface with a mix of white glue and water:


I'm pretty happy with it, especially so as this is really my first go-round with a static grass applicator.


The lesson: if you are interested in modeling realistic looking grass, by all means, consider building a static grass applicator. Model railroading is supposed to be fun, and this project was.

The Evergreen Sprouts Needles

Let's put some color on the tree armature we built in the last post.



The above video details the process I use to turn the tree armatures into something that more closely resembles an actual spruce tree. Matereials used are cheap brown spray paint, Woodland Scenics fine turf in a dark green color, and Aqua Net unscented hair spray. I find that the first application doesn't cover completely but after a coat of hair spray the turf really sticks.

Here's a shot of the finished product.


And that's all there is to that! They're not perfect, but they are quick and inexpensive, so they fit right into my model railroading wheelhouse. Hope you enjoyed the story.

Evergreen Modeling

Not this kind of Evergreen:

(Although I have messed around modeling such a thing, printing it out on cardstock and cutting, folding, and glueing the printout):

No, today I want to talk about something called bottle brush trees, or a type of evergreen that is easy for someone who is cheap and all thumbs like me to conjure up. Instructions for making trees like this are all over the model forums, but I've learned one or two things that seem to help me get acceptable results. First, let's take a look at what you need to have on hand to make a bottle brush evergreen.


Clockwise from top left-first is a bit of sisal rope. I've heard of people using other types, but I've only used sisal, so can't speak to anything other than that. Just to the right is plain old masking tape, cheapest you can find. Line up on the right are the three tools this step will use-wire cutters, scissors, and a comb? Yes, a comb. Continuing on across the bottom, we see the wire that will serve as the "trunk" of the tree, and some of the rope after it has been cut into usable lengths and boiled. I don't know why you boil it, but it works, and I've never tried without boiling it. Kind of makes it seem like there is some magic to the process so I keep doing it. Now that we've got the stuff on hand, let's make a deal tree.

Cut yourself a piece of wire about twice as long as the tree you are making will be tall, plus just a bit. Next step is to tear off a hunk of masking tape the height of the tree and stick it to the wire, leaving a bit of wire past the end of the tape, kind of like so:


So far, so good. Now, get your comb and some of the boiled rope. Unbundle the rope as much as possible without tearing the strands apart. You will have a single "ply" of the rope, consisting of many individual sisal strands. What needs to happen is the strands have to be separated. Here's where the comb comes in. Comb the rope. From the middle out, first one way, then another. Nobody used conditioner on this rope, so some of it will be a bit tangled. Get after it! Separate those strands. Then stick them to the tape, distributed somewhat evenly. Start at one end of the tape, and continue on until the whole strip is covered. You'll end up with something like this:


Now, it's time to turn this into something resembling a tree. Bend the wire over so the bend is right at the end of the masking tape. Fold those wires together as closely as you can. Leave a loop at the bent end, and clamp the free ends to a 2 x 4 or something like that securely. You'll be pulling on this, so clamp 'er down tight. The time has arrived to use a power tool. In my case, it's a cordless drill with a carefully engineered bent finishing nail in the chuck. Rather than explain what happens, I'll try and show you.



Frankly, at this point, the product looks very little like a tree, and very much like some wire and rope twisted together. Time for the magic weapon-out comes the comb, again. Once more, it's easier to show than tell.



We're getting there. After combing out the "tree" it's obvious that it looks like someone spilled a gallon jug of growth accelerant somewhere in the area. Next step is to correct this problem. Bust out your scissors, and get to work. And don't be afraid to cut! My second secret hint is to be aggressive when you trim. Make that sucker look like an evergreen tree.



At this point, you've got something that looks like this:



We'll make it look more like a tree in the next post. Stay tuned.

Alchemy

n. A medieval chemical philosophy having as its asserted aims the transmutation of base metals into gold, the discovery of the panacea.

I want to be an alchemist model railroader. That means taking base metals (stuff I can obtain for little or no cost) and turning that "stuff" into model railroading gold (or at least maybe silver or bronze).

It's because I'm cheap.

Here's tonight's attempt at alchemy. Take varying parts of plain old foam rubber:


In an old blender, bought a few years ago at a yard sale for $5, grind that foam up, while adding acrylic paint, purchased on sale at a craft store for less than a buck a bottle (be sure to add some water as well, so the blender can really work on that foam):


After draining the remaining fluid (you can use it in the next batch!), spread the soaking wet ground foam out on newspaper to dry:


(This stuff is already dried out.)

Now, if you were an alchemist with vision, you gathered up a bunch of likely-looking weeds to use for tree armatures last fall. These were harvested real close to the old Highway 10 bridge across the Staples Sub near Lincoln:


Remove the seed heads and replace with a healthy dollop of this (snapped up for 25 cents at a yard sale):


And you will wind up with this:


Another view:


I estimate the trees end up costing me somewhere in the neighborhood of a dime. They sure aren't supertrees, but they are a lot cheaper too. And the best part is, I get to pretend like I have made "something from very little".

Railfanning in the Basement

I've been conspicuously absent from this blog the last few weeks. Part of it has been the weather, part the terrible light that this time of year brings to the Staples Sub, but the greatest part due to the heaviest workload I have seen in years.

I've been tinkering in modeling lately. It's a great way to relax after work and the light is always decent. There's also an endless variety of things to do, so no model railroader should ever get bored. If you have had your fill of building kits, you can switch to benchwork, or laying track, or scenery, or any of an almost endless variety of different activities.

Over the weekend I shifted into scenery mode for a couple of hours, and thought I should take a couple of pictures to record the results of my (very) amateur efforts. First up, an empty coal train behind a pair of MAC's pull onto the main from the siding.


The second shot catches a mixed consist led by an SD75 as an intermodal train on the main continues on its journey. The trailing unit is an extremely rare C44 in the "wedgie" paint scheme.


When the weather, work, and winter light conspire to interfere with railfanning, you can always retreat to the basement and make your own scenes. Hopefully as time passes, these photos will become more presentable. Thanks for looking.