Basement Layout: Roadwork

I still don't have all of the track I need to finish my main line run yet, so I've been working on some smaller projects for the layout lately. One of those is figuring out how I want to do the roads and grade crossings. In my last post I showed some work I started with foamcore poster board. Now I've had some more time to play with it and I think I will be using this for sure on the layout.

I've cut a few more test pieces and started experimenting with striping using acrylic paint. I took some frog tape and used two pieces to create a straight line along the center of the road. Then it was as simple as brushing on some yellow in the opening. For a first shot at this, the results are pretty good. I missed on the centering a bit, but this was just a test piece so that's ok.  I'll just have to measure before I put the tape down next time.

Experimenting with road striping.

The straight sections are the easiest so it took a little more effort to get any curved lines to work. To do this, I cut some thin strips of frog tape with my xacto knife and placed them gradually along the bend. The hard part about that was keeping a consistent gap between pieces of tape. I got as close as I could for another test piece and threw down some paint. This one also came out pretty nice.

Painting curved road markings with painters tape.

So far I like what I see with the painting method, so I might just do this for the entire layout. Beyond that, I still need to figure out exactly what I want to do for the grade crossings. The picture above kind of shows what I'm thinking so far. I have both the road and sidewalk coming to the exact same elevation just before meeting the ties. This will leave space for a pre-made crossing to be inserted.

Basement Layout: Making Progress

While I'm not exactly as far along as I would have liked by now, I'm still enjoying working on the layout. I've been busy lately with making track plan changes and starting to lay some track and cork down. Now I just need to get out and buy enough track and turnouts to complete the mainline loop. That is my primary goal right now. Once I'm at that point, I can at least have some trains running again and then decided what to do next from there.

One thing I'd like to show here is what I am doing with the cork to differentiate between the main line and the sidings/yard area. Rather than using standard HO scale cork for everything, I've decided to go with N scale cork for the sidings/spurs and in the yard areas. This should give me a bit more of a prototypical look with the main line sitting just a bit higher than everything else.  

After I bought a few pieces of cork to get started, I realized that to make a 3 foot long section in N scale thickness, I can just take a third strip of N scale cork and put them all together. This turned out to be almost exactly the same width as the regular HO size, so I think I will go with this, at least for the lower sections of track that aren't grouped close together. For those areas, primarily the yard, I will probably have to go with sheet cork. 

Here is a look at how the three pieces of standard N scale cork line up with HO scale.

Comparison of three pieces of N scale cork and two pieces of HO scale cork.

I've also been working on some other small projects, one of which is figuring out what to do for the roads I need on my layout. I want something that looks good, but can be made from readily available materials. That led me to doing a quick YouTube search and I came across a great video from Gknos modeltrains. This video shows how roads can be made from simple foamcore poster board. I've been trying it out and have to say I like the results so far.

Messing around with some foamcore poster board to create roads and sidewalks.

For the main road section in the center, it is just a 3" wide strip of foamcore board with the paper removed from both sides and painted with some grey acrylic paint. The sidewalks are the same, only they are sitting up on a piece of thin foam sheet. This did a nice job of simulating the sidewalk being at curb height. The seams in the sidewalk were done by cutting slightly into the top surface with my xacto knife. Now it just needs some striping and weathering.

Office Shelf Layout Update

Progress has been relatively slow on this project, but with the way my schedule is right now I can only work on it late at night on the weekends, so I get maybe 4-6 hours a weekend to work on modeling projects. I'm not as far as I would like to be, but that's ok as long as I'm always moving at least a little bit forward.

Since my last update, I've gone ahead and glued the cork layer to the baseboard, finished painting the rear track, and almost completed the layout of the paved areas. What I've been doing for this is cutting layers of cardboard, from old cereal boxes, and stacking them up to be level with the top of the rails. There are six layers of cardboard and one layer of poster board, which is red because I happened to have that laying around in the basement. All it needs is a couple of coats of acrylic paint then it will look just like concrete.  

Layout of cardboard and poster board for the paved areas of the layout.

This layering technique for doing paved areas is not the most efficient, but it works for me and that's all that matters. To keep the layers together, I am just using an Elmer's glue stick. I haven't decided how to glue them to the cork just yet, maybe white glue will work. That won't happen for a while though so I can make sure I have the layout of the paved areas just right. I still need to add a location between the tracks on the left side for a loading dock and then another section crossing the tracks for forklift access to the dock.

A closeup look at the layered cardboard method I'm using for my paved areas.

I'm at the point now where I need to order a few things so I can keep going. I need the loading dock for between the tracks at a minimum and I'd like to get some other detail parts to combine shipping and have a few more options to play with for this layout. Below is a picture showing a couple of cars parked on the two tracks in front of the commissary building. The hammer is in there to help keep the corner of the cork down while the glue dried.

A quick mockup of two cars parked on the two tracks.

I'm hoping to get some more time in on the layout this weekend and maybe get the rest of the cardboard cut and glued together for the paved areas under the loading dock. Other than that I really need to think about gluing the track down so things don't move on me. The contour cut of the cardboard follows the track so I don't want that getting messed up.

Scratch Building Some Road Signs

Lately I've been thinking of ways I could scratch build some simple items for my office shelf layout and one of the easier things I came up with was to make some road signs. I will need at least two cross buck signs and maybe some other warning signs for the layout, so rather than pay to get a large pack of pre-made ones, I decided to try it for myself.

Some examples of the signs I wanted to try to make.

The first step was doing some research on how big these signs are in real life. After a bit of searching around, I found some good resources and decided to go with 36" diameter for the round yellow sign, 36" x 36" for the stop sign and approximately 50" x 50" for the cross buck. 

Once the sizes were determined, I found some good drawings of each sign online and copied them into my vector graphics program, Inkscape, and resized them to scale. Then it was as simple as creating a few copies of each then printing them on my home printer. I tried printing them on regular copy paper as well as some thicker fancy paper. The latter ended up being the better choice just for the rigidity of the end result. The copy paper just seemed to be too flimsy. Here is a look at one of the printouts.

A look at the printout with some signs already cut out.

One they were printed I just needed to cut out the shapes. The first one I tried was one of the round yellow signs with an xacto knife. That didn't work so well on the round shape so I did the other two with scissors and that seemed to work better. The stop signs were pretty easy, although I kind of messed up the first one and did not include the white trim. The cross buck proved to be difficult just because of the interior corners, but came out looking ok.

Once the sings were cut, I needed something to stick them to. For this I chose to use some 0.010" square brass rod from Hobby Lobby. The only thing I did was cut it to size and paint it silver using a metallic silver paint marker. I then glued the signs to the posts using an Elmer's glue stick. This seemed to work pretty well.

Then to address the issue of the backs being white from the paper, I first tried coloring them in with a silver colored pencil. This worked ok, but was not perfect. I then tired the same idea with the metallic paint marked and that came out much better. In the bottom picture the first two on the left are just the white paper, the two in the center are the colored pencil, and the two on the right are the metallic paint marker.

A look at the front of the first batch of signs.

A look at the back of the first batch of signs.

These turned out much better than I thought they would. There are some things I would like to improve for future attempts, but nothing too major. I think the best thing would be to find a way to cut the circle shapes in one cut with some kind of punch. That would get rid of the rough look to the overall shape.

Office Shelf Layout Update

Its been a while since my last update on this project as I haven't had much modeling time the last few weeks. I did manage to make some good progress in the last two weekends though. I now have the track almost completely painted and I've started building the foundation for the paved ares of the layout. Here is a look at the progress.

A look at the start of my paved areas on the layout.

A closeup look at my freshly painted track.

The front track is completely painted and now I just need to finish the rear track. It may be a lot of extra work, but I really like the look of the separately painted tie plates and rails. I used Rust-Oleum camouflage spray paint for the ties then went over the rails, spike heads and tie plates with Americana acrylic burnt umber. It may not be perfect, but it looks good enough for me. I've still got a lot to do, but things are slowly coming together now.

Track and Scenery Mock-Up for the Office Shelf Layout

Mock-ups are something that has become pretty common with my office shelf layout project. I've already done three for various structures and now I have one more to add to the list. This time I decided to mock up a section of track that would allow me to practice some techniques for a few things to be included on the layout.

The main goal for this mini project is to mock up the interface between the track and the paved areas. I've been tinkering with a few ideas and I think I've settled on leaving the track at a lower level and raising the paved areas to meet the top of the rails. I plan on modeling the paved areas with sheet styrene, so all I needed to do was find a proper material to raise the styrene off the surface just enough. That turned out to be N-scale cork. The other goal for this mini project is to try out some scenery techniques like applying fine turf in place of a grass sheet, track painting, and more ballasting. Below is a look at what I mocked up to get the height of the paved areas, loading dock, and track all correct relative to one another.

Mocking up the elevation of paved areas for the layout

Once I had that determined the next step was finding a small scrap piece of wood to use as a base for the mockup. That was pretty easy since I have a bunch of scrap boards laying around in the basement right now. I then took a couple of pieces of snap track that I already had painted and laid them in place. 

Starting to lay the track down.

Rather than waste perfectly good pieces of cork and styrene, I turned to old cereal boxes again and mocked up both by gluing layers together until reaching the proper thicknesses. I ended up gluing together five layers of cardboard to match the total combined thickness. 

Mocked up paved areas using old cereal boxes.

The next thing I did was attempt to lay down some fine turf in front of the tracks. I tried this with some Loctite spray adhesive and it seemed to work ok. I'll probably still have to seal it all in with a final spray of scenic cement just to be safe though. It just feels like some of the turf might come off easily right now. 

Starting to apply fine turf in the grassy areas.

After doing some more towards where the road would be, I decided I needed to get the cardboard pieces down and glued in place. Before that though, I went ahead and hit them with a coat of my Rust-Oleum grey primer to make it look more like actual concrete. Not perfect, but close enough.

A look at the painted cardboard piece just before being glued in place.

One other thing I wanted to do was blend the roadway into the surrounding ground level. To do that, I took some Drydex spackle I had laying around and applied some to each side of the roadway. I used the side of a piece of cardboard to level it off and blend everything out.

Applying spackle to blend the road into the surrounding area.

Once the spackle was dry, I went ahead and painted it the same brown color as the rest of the cork. This is the same color that I used in previous track and ballast mockups. Once that was done, I went ahead and repainted the paved areas with Model Master concrete color. It definitely came out looking better than the grey primer.

A look at the mockup with some more paint added. 

The next step after the concrete color paint dried was ballasting. I did this they same way I used on the other pieces of track I mocked up recently. I used the medium grey blend ballast and I think it looks pretty good.

A look at the ballast added to the mockup.

One other thing I did at this point was paint the rails with Model Master railroad tie brown. It was the closest I could find at the hobby shop to what I wanted so I just went with it. It doesn't look too bad, but definitely could use a little more rust color. I'll have to find something new for the actual layout or try to mix it with a rust color to get it just right.

A closeup look at the painted track with ballast added. 

Now all I need to do is add some earth color along the edge of the road that crosses the tracks then glue everything in place. I definitely like how this is turning out and plan to do the same for the actual layout. 

Structure Build: Walthers Commissary Building Part 3

In my last post I left off with all the parts painted with a coat of primer. Since then I've separated out the brick pieces and hit them with a coat of Rust-Oleum "claret wine" spray paint. It came out a bit darker than I was thinking it would, but I'm more than happy with it right now. I did run into one small issue with too much paint getting on a couple of sections and filling in the mortar lines. To fix that I had to wash off the wet paint and try it one more time. That seemed to work and I had all of the brick pieces ready for the next step.

A look at all of the brick parts after initial painting.

A close up look at the brick texture after painting.

The next step was figuring out the best way to paint the mortar lines white. In the video from Southern8099 he used a 50/50 mix of acrylic paint and alcohol and just brushed away the excess. I tried that and am still not sure I really like the results. The biggest problem came when I was trying to wipe away some of the excess with a magic eraser and it actually began bringing up the red paint making the mortar turn pink. I think I will try a 50/50 mix with water and some dish soap to help the mixture flow into the cracks. 

I say I'm not sure if I like the results because one of the smaller pieces I tried actually came out looking perfect. This piece can take the place of one of the rolling doors on the loading dock. I'm not even sure if I am going to use it, so it made for a good test piece. It looks great and doesn't really have much of the pink effect from the red paint mixing in. 

An example of a piece that looks great with the mortar lines painted white.

A side by side comparison of my first attempt at painting the mortar lines white.

So for now my next step will be trying to fix the pieces I don't like. I will also try the 50/50 mix with water on the other pieces that I haven't started yet. Hopefully something will work and I can move forward with this project and get to some assembly soon. In the mean time, I've been doing some brainstorming and think I have some tweaks coming to the layout for this project. Nothing major, but some things that will affect the overall look of it.

Structure Build: Walthers Commissary Building Part 2

My last post showed what came included with my Walthers commissary building kit and I left off where I had everything cut away from the sprues and sanded. Well, I made some good progress over the weekend and really like what I have going so far. Even though this is a pretty simple kit, there is a fair amount of work involved, but that's good because it gives me something to focus on for now. 

Before I could think about painting anything, I took all of the parts and cleaned them with dish soap and water to make sure there were no oils or dust left on them. Then I laid them out to dry on some paper towel with a small fan to speed along the drying process. Once that was done I need to find something to hold all of the small pieces. 

What I ended up doing was taking a couple of scrap boards from my basement and putting strips of blue painters tape inside out. This gave me a good amount of hold, but not so much that I risked damaging the finished paint. Here is what they looked like with all the parts attached to the tape.

My makeshift part holding boards with blue painters tape.

I learned from watching a few other modeler's videos that priming these types of parts is a good idea, so that was my next step. In order to do that though, I needed some spray paint so I went to Home Depot and picked up some grey primer as well as a nice dark red for the brick sections of the kit. 

The paints I chose for this project from Rust-Oleum.

Here is what the pieces look like after hitting them with the primer.

The first set of parts with primer on them.

The second set of parts with primer on them.

One thing I was kind of worried about at first was getting too much paint on the brick surfaces and losing some of the detail. Well, I have to say that will not be a problem. Even after a generous helping of primer on the brick pieces, they still look great. I'm not even worried about adding several coats of red to this. 

The brick pieces still look perfect even after spraying them with a primer coat.

Now I need to separate out all of the brick pieces and get them ready for the red paint. I think I may just stick with the primer grey for the loading dock since that needs to be concrete anyway. The window and door frames are still TBD for now, but I'm leaning toward a very dark grey or even black to help contrast the red brick. 

Using Google Maps to Help Develop a Prototypical Track Plan

Over the last few months, I've been working on a track plan for my shelf layout and even though its a very small space, it took some time and thinking to come up with something I liked. While it may not be 100% prototypical, it works within the space I've given myself and doesn't seem completely unrealistic. Before I settled on the current track plan, I actually spent some time panning across Michigan on Google Maps looking for examples of track and associated structures. 

While most things I find would have to be scaled to some extent on a model layout, there are still some pretty neat examples out there. Below are some of the locations I found around the state of Michigan. 

Example of an industrial spur in Sterling Heights, MI.

A look at tracks connected to the Ford assembly plant in Sterling Heights, MI.

Example of an industrial spur in Brighton, MI.

Another example of a spur in Brighton, MI.

An example of an industrial spur in Howell, MI.

A look at an industrial spur in Alpena, MI.

If there is one thing these pictures tell me about my shelf layout track plan, its that mine is definitely scaled down a bit more than I would like. I don't see many prototypical sidings as close to the main line as what I have. Oh well, that's what modeling is about though, right, taking something and creating a smaller scaled down version of it? Even if my plan is not perfectly prototypical, that's fine with me. As long as I like it, that's what matters.

Track Painting and Ballast Update

I was finally able to lay down the rest of the track for my second trial piece for ballasting and painting. All I had to do was make about a 1 inch long piece that would extend from the end of the switch. I did this by cutting off part of a curved piece of track. Here's what it looked like before that small piece was added. 

A look at my second trial piece of track before adding the last small piece.

After adding that small piece, I glued it down in place with some gorilla glue, which definitely gives you a good hold for something like this. The next step was to finish ballasting the track. I used a medium grey blend ballast from Woodland Scenics this time around and I have to say it looks much better than the mixture I tried last time. Here is what it looked like after I was finished applying the ballast and gluing it in place.

A look at the track with all the ballast in place.

Now that I've tried out the grey blend ballast and have seen it used and recommended by a lot people on the internet, I think this will be what I end up using for my office shelf layout project. The next thing is finalizing what I want to do for painting the rails and ties. I think the rust color on the rails looks good, but may be a bit on the bright side, so I either need to play with darkening it up or going with a new paint altogether. If any one has suggestions or could share what they use I would really appreciate it. 

More Track Painting and Ballast Trials

I've been hard at work on these two sections of track for practice painting and ballasting for a couple of weeks now. It's a slow process because I find myself with very little time for modeling now that summer has arrived. When I do get time though, its full speed ahead with as many projects as I can handle. This one has been the primary lately and its actually been a lot of fun to work on. 

So far I have completed the straight section of track and have made good progress on the switch. At first I said I wouldn't post a picture of the ballast job on the first one, but now that I've been looking at it, I kind of like the color combination. To each their own, right? Here's what a 50/50 mix of Woodland Scenics medium dark brown and medium buff looks like. 

A look at my 50/50 mix of medium dark brown and medium buff ballast.

Here's another look with one of my boxcars just because.

While that one is not the best looking in the world, it definitely taught me a few things about track painting and ballasting that will help when it comes to building my office shelf layout. I think the most important thing I learned was just to take my time, especially when doing the painting. If you want something to look good, it requires patience and that's become pretty obvious through this process.

Now onto the switch. I took the same approach to painting this one and it took me a good couple of hours to complete the painting. I know that seems like a lot, but I want these to look just right, so I see it as time well spent.

A look at the painted switch track before starting the ballast work.

A look at the switch track after starting the ballast work.

I still have one more piece of track to create for this one so the upper left area runs out to the end of the board. I did this by custom cutting a couple of pieces of rail and manually placing some plastic ties I cut from remaining scrap track. It's a bit of tedious extra work, but make for much better looking track if you ask me. The only tricky part is figuring out what to do since I cannot place standard rail joiners in there anymore. 

I'll work on that problem when it comes to having a running train. The office shelf layout will be static, so I don't need to worry about the connectivity between rails just yet.

More Track Painting and Ballasting

I've made some more progress on the two sections of track I've been painting and ballasting for practice in preparation for building my office shelf layout. In my last post on the subject, I left off with the track painting nearly complete and some work started on the roadbed. This past weekend, I spent some of my free time working on on both and have a bit more to show for my efforts now. 

First I'll show the initial paint job on the track. It came out much better than I thought it would. There is a noticeable improvement over my last attempt at track painting. The difference maker is definitely the rust colored paint on the rails. It may have taken me an hour or two, but I made sure to include the tie plates when painting the rust color.

Fully painted rails, ties, and cork roadbed shown before cleaning the rail tops.

I thought about leaving the tops of the rails painted in the rust color, but decided against it in the end. Even though the shelf layout I'm building will not be powered, I don't want to get myself into a habit of doing something that would not work for a running layout. So I went ahead and cleaned off the tops of the rails to complete the look.

A look at my test section of track before applying ballast.

The next step was getting some ballast and applying it. I started with some Woodland Scenics medium buff ballast and that's what you see below. I thought it looked to uniform and bright to be very prototypical, so I decided to by some medium dark brown and mix them together. That didn't work so well and I won't even post any pics at this point because it just doesn't look that great. I think I really need to go with a grey blend and maybe mix in some of the buff or grey.

Starting to ballast the test section of track.

 While its back to the drawing board for my ballast work, I ran into another interesting problem with the switch that I am doing for the piece without the roadbed. I originally got this track dirt cheap and its pretty old and beat up, so I knew it might need some work. Well, in the spirit of making things look as real as possible, I found myself manually cutting and replacing the end ties and the two contact points for the wiring. It's a bit of tricky and delicate work, but completely worth it for the more prototypical look you can achieve by doing it. 

A look at my "Franken-track" with the end ties all replaced with ties from scrap track.

I've been calling this piece my "Franken-track" because its got pieces from two different manufactures, which is really only noticeable when you get in real close and look at the detail molded into the plastic ties themselves. From a distance, it looks great and will more than do for what I need. It's not shown in this picture, but I did go ahead and replace the two contact points with four new section of ties from a scrap piece of track. Now I just need to finish painting the ties and move onto painting the rails and tie plates.

Great Model Railroading Channels on YouTube

One of the things that I love about getting back into this hobby now is the technology that was not around back in the early to mid 90's, specifically the internet and YouTube in this case. I've gone there for all kinds of topics and always seem to find what I am looking for, and then some. After seeing a nice post over at West Toronto Junction (click here to see it), I thought I would share a few of my favorite channels. We actually share a few favorites, so that's kind of cool.

1) jlwii2000

This is the first channel I began watching this past summer when I decided to get back into model railroading and has a ton of great videos. They are primarily review type videos, but there are some others as well including the one I posted above. This one is the first in a how to series on building a model railroad layout. The series was full of great information and would be great for anyone getting started in the hobby.

2) MonsterRailroad

MonsterRailroad is one of the channels mentioned over at West Toronto Junction and I definitely have to agree that Al conveys a strong sense of "you can do it too" in his videos. After watching several of his videos like this one dealing with track ballasting, I thought to myself it can't be that hard and went on to try out some of his methods.

3) FNGFASHA

This is a channel that I came across more recently and have really enjoyed. Fasha has some excellent videos on rolling stock and locomotive detailing and repainting. This pair of videos were a great watch for me when I was working on repainting one of my old boxcars. I love the attention to detail and the explanations of the methods in these videos.

4) ModelerManMike

ModelerManMike is my new favorite channel at the moment and has got me really wanting to go out and buy some structure kits. I will eventually need one or two of them for my office shelf layout project, so for now I've just been watching all of his videos gathering tips and information on how to build structure kits. While the videos are a bit on the long side, they are more than worth the time spent watching them. The one I posted above is a great example of his work. I've learned a ton from these videos and cannot wait to apply it to some structures of my own.

5) RidgelineDivision

Ridgeline Division has some excellent videos or 'build logs' as they call them on various types of locomotives. I found this video when I was looking for some ideas for rebuilding my SD40-2 and have to say I was impressed with the attention to detail and explanation of steps. This video in particular has some great details available for an SD40-2 and has me thinking about some of them for my project.

While this is only five, I have at least 10 more model railroading channels I am currently subscribed to. Maybe I will try to put together another post like this sometime down the road. Until then, I highly recommend all of these channels if your're into HO scale model railroading. The way I see it is the more information you can gather about doing something the better. Its also good to get multiple approaches and opinions on how to do things. 

More Track Painting and Ballast Trials

Now that I look back at the test track I painted and ballasted recently, I am not completely satisfied with the way it looks. I kind of took the easy path and just painted the ties and rails all the same color. It looks of from a distance, but when you get up close to it something is just a bit off. The other problem was going with the coarse ballast, it is just way too big to look anywhere near prototypical. All that being said, I've decided to go back and do a few more trial pieces with some new paint and smaller ballast.

I've actually started two more sample sections of track: one with cork roadbed and medium ballast, and one with no roadbed and medium ballast. I did this because I wanted to see the difference between the two so I know how to plan for building my office shelf layout. I plan on having an industrial siding of some kind, so I may need to go without roadbed if it looks good enough. Plus, practice makes perfect and these will help me improve my track skills.

Two new test tracks for painting and ballasting.

Along with trying out the smaller ballast, I went out and bought myself a bottle of rust colored paint from Testors for the rails. Last time around everything was all one color. This time I'm hoping the rust color will make the rails look more realistic. Below is a look at what I've done so far. I just need to remember to clean the tops of the rails now.

Trying out some rust colored paint on the rails.

One last thing I decided to do at the last minute was painting the cork roadbed with the same dark brown paint I've been using for the ties. I noticed  on the last test track piece that if the ballast is light in certain areas you can see some of the exposed cork. That is definitely not a prototypical looking material, so I figured painting it brown would make it more like earth underneath the ballast. This was just a quick experiment to see how it would look so I may have to find a better, more earthy looking paint to do more of this in the future.

Hopefully painting the roadbed will give it a more prototypical look when this one is complete.

I have some painting to finish up on both pieces of track then its time for ballasting. I'll try to get some updated pictures of the completed pieces once they are all set. I'm hoping this will help me make a decision on which method to go with for my office shelf layout. Not sure which will be better looking, so I'll have to wait and see.