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. 

Office Shelf Layout: Trackwork Updates

It's been far too long since I made any progress on the actual layout itself, so it feels nice to be able to post this update. I had some free time late last night and decided to jump into working on the track for the layout. That meant cutting a few pieces down to size and working on assembling them. The key to this is that I am using traditional snap track from a bulk purchase I made at a train show a while back. 

I know I could go ahead and use flex track if I really wanted to, but this seemed like the way to go since I had the pieces already on hand and it would only require a few extra steps to get everything connected. Before I get into the details of that process, here is a look at the track plan I have decided to go with. 

A look at my rough track plan for the office shelf layout.

As far as aligning the pieces, I started on the right side with the turnout and worked my way to the left. The near track was simple as it is made of three pieces of straight snap track. The far track was a bit more tricky because I had to custom cut the curve to get the spacing between track I was looking for. I also had to cut off the ends of the two pieces on the far left, which has already been done in the picture. It was actually pretty simple to do with the hacksaw I have. 

Once the pieces were all cut to size and assembled, I realized there was some detailing work to be done so it would look a bit more prototypical. The first step was repairing the turnout by removing the two large standoffs for the electrical connections. These just look awkward and I thought they needed to go.

A look at the turnout section before modification.

To remedy this issue, I took my x-acto knife and cut off those two large pieces. Then I took a scrap piece of track and cut off the ends of four ties and glued them onto the turnout as shown in the next picture. It was slightly difficult working with such small pieces, but it made the turnout look much better and more prototypical.

A look at the turnout section after modification.

Once that was figured out I had one other cosmetic issue to work out and that was the interface between sections of snap track where the rail joiners go. In these areas the ties are molded with a rectangular ring section in between the rails and I have always thought it looked strange when the pieces are put together. 

To remedy this, I took my knife and cut off the last tie on each end to get rid of the inner rectangular ring. This leaves a long section of rail exposed. To fix that I cut pairs of ties off of the scrap piece of track and used those to join the various sections together. This results in a much more seamless appearance. And since this is not going to be a powered layout, I'm not too concerned with maintaining a perfect electrical connection between the sections of rail.

A look at the sections of track with my improvised joining sections.

Here is a look at the near section of track from the layout after this modification. It almost looks like a perfect continuous piece of track unlike the far track where you can clearly see the inner rectangular rings where the rail joiners would go. It's a little bit of extra and tedious work, but well worth it for results like this.

A look at the results of my slight modification to the ties on the near section of track.

Now all I have to do is finish the far section and then I can move onto painting and weathering the track. I also have an idea for making the tie spacing a bit more realistic looking, but that will have to wait for another post as I am still trying a few things out with that method.

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.

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.

Weathering Ballast

In my last post I mentioned how I thought the ballast I laid on my test piece of track was a bit too bright and unrealistic for my tastes. That was just a result of throwing down only one type of ballast, which was one of the brighter colors available. I also know that I should've gone with a smaller size, but there's not much to do about that now. For the coloring though, there is something I wanted to try: weathering. 

I did some searching around online and found that painting the ballast with a dark wash might give me what I was looking for. To do that I just needed to mix some black acrylic paint with water to dilute it. I read that a 10 to 1 ratio of water to paint would work best, so that's what I was shooting for. Once the mixture was ready, all I had to do was grab a small brush and start painting away.

Here is a picture of the ballast after I applied the dark wash:

Ballast and track after weathering and removing the paint from the top of the rails.

While there may not be a huge difference between the before and after, it's enough for me and looks pretty good. The only other thing I did was remove the brown paint from the top of the rails. There was just something a little off about having that, so I decided it had to go.

This is pretty much it for this thing for now. I may want to paint the wood base before using it as a display piece for my Santa Fe C44-9W as soon as I get all the pieces on it. I think that will look pretty good on my desk. Now I just need to find myself a Santa Fe boxcar to go along with it. 

Trying Out Some Ballast

One of things I wish I did was add ballast to my nursery wall layout project. I just left the track nailed down on top of the cork roadbed in the interest of saving time. It's not that it looks bad or anything, it's just not as realistic as I would've liked. That being said, I am going to make sure it is one of the things I include in my office shelf layout. Before jumping right into it for that project, I decided to make myself a quick section of track and roadbed mounted to piece of wood for some ballast practice. Plus it would work as a neat little display track for a locomotive and one piece of rolling stock, at least that's the plan for now. Here are some pictures of the ballasting process. 

Putting down the ballast proved to be pretty time consuming.

Here is a closer look at the ballast before gluing.

A look at the ballast soaked with my 50/50 mix of water and Elmer's glue.

The end result after the glue dried, not bad if you ask me.

A couple of things I've learned from this:

1) Coarse ballast is not the best choice for HO scale, it just looks a little too big if you ask me
2) I should've mixed in another color ballast, something darker, to make for a more prototypical look

There's really not much I can do about the fist thing, but I think I've found a solution for the second. Why not try to weather the ballast a bit and give it a more realistic look? I've been looking around online for techniques to do so and I think I will try using a dark wash to add some color. I'll try to do that here soon and get some more pics posted. 

Trying Out Some Track Painting

Ever since I decided to start building my office shelf layout, I've known that I would need to do more work with the track than I did with the nursery wall layout. For that all I did was nail it down on top of some cork roadbed and called it good. That was fine then, but for this project I want to make it look as realistic as possible, which means getting into ballasting and painting the track.

So the other night I was working on laying out some track for the office shelf layout and I decided to take a few extra pieces of straight track and make myself a quick and easy display piece for testing out ballasting and track painting. It was at that point I realized I didn't have an good tie or rail colored paints with my modeling stuff, so I went searching around the basement and found a gallon of paint that the former owners left when they moved out back in the summer. It was a nice looking darkish brown, so I figured why not try it out? Here's what I came up with.

A look at the before and after for the brown paint I found in the basement

A look at the finished paint job

In case anyone was wondering, the paint I used was actually a porch and patio floor paint from BEHR. The color is listed as dark walnut. It doesn't really look all that bad if you ask me.

A look at the lid of the BEHR paint I used to paint the track

Just based on the fact that I threw this idea together in like 10 minutes and I used leftover paint that someone else bought and left in my basement, it looks pretty good. It may not be 100% realistic, but it's close enough for me and looks much better than the black ties that these used to be.