Building a bridge

Next up was building the bridge across the river. I thought that the most successful part of my previous layout was the river scene, so I wanted to duplicate something of that here. The river bed had been lined with lightweight hydrocal and painted, and the surrounding area had been given a little scenic treatment. The rail itself runs across the piece of thin mdf that was used to make the roadbed, and this would also act as part of the bridge structure. The prototype for the bridge was based (very loosely) on a number of bridges I've scene around the South Island, and I worked off several pictures I discovered on the net.



I was going to build the bridge out of dowel and strip wood, so there was another trip to the local hobby shop, who were getting to know me pretty well at this point. First up, I used some blocks of wood to make some concrete abutments for the ends of the span to sit on. This was then painted a vaguely concrete colour and weathered.

I then cut some rectangular strip wood into the parts of the bridge that would attach the pilings to the bridge span. (Obviously I know next to nothing about bridges, these bits probably have proper names!) Having glued these in place, I cut the dowel to the appropriate lengths, and more super glue was used to fix these to the structure, leaving me with the following:





Realistically, I think the dowel I used could have been a size thinner to give the bridge a more scale appearance.

I then cut up some sections of rail from the Peco track I had left over, and used these as diagonal braces for the bridge piers, which were also glued in place. Next, the whole thing was airbrushed a dark brown, which was probably the wrong colour on reflection; I think a sort of silvery brown/grey would have been more representative of aged wood. Let's just pretend that someone decided to paint this particular bridge!

As this stage the river bed was also painted a greenish grey. Once this was dry, I applied a liberal amount of PVA to the river banks, and sprinkled over this some course grade Woodland Scenics grey talus, which I think gives a nice impression of the rocks that can be seen in any number of South Island rivers. Around this I sprinkled pretty much an entire packet of finer grade talus, and then soaked this with scenic cement to fix it all in place. This was then left to dry, which took about a day.

Being a nice sunny Boxing Day when I was building this (accompanied by one or two festive beers) I took the whole module outside for some pictures.







I'm pretty happy with what I achieved with the bridge. All that remained at this point was to pour the water and add in some shrubbery and detail to the river bed, which I will cover in a future post.

Next time: experimenting with grass.

Scenery, part 2

Back to the build updates! In my last build post, I got to the stage where the modules had been plastered. The next stage of the build was to seal this with a coat of paint. I chose a light brown colour, because, basically, I had a can of this left over form the last layout. It could have been darker, but for what I had planned it would do the job, as very little if any of the paint would eventually be seen.





This was also an opportune time to test the track again, and make some adjustments, so I got to have a little play with a locomotive. the modules were still running fine!



With my trusty airbrush, I next painted all of the trackwork a dark brown colour. Some layout I've seen go for rust coloured rails, but though this might be suitable for some areas, in general the rails around here appear a dull dark brown colour. (I've looked!) I didn't bother to mask the points at all, as it did not seem necessary.

Once this was dry, I decided to make the rock cutting for the river module. After masking the track to keep it clean, I mixed up some light weight hydrocal in a bowl, and applied this liberally to both sides of the cutting. Previously I have tried using Woodland Scenics Foam Putty for making rock faces, but I think that hydrocal does the job just as well. It's also a little more robust than the foam putty, which tends to soften when you paint it.



Leaving this to dry for a couple of days, I took to it with a craft knife to carve out the rock surface. I still need a lot of practice at this, but I'm fairly happy with the result. I'm sure I'll get more practice at this on the next modules I have planned.

Next, this was painted with some very diluted water based paints. I used a light brown, ochre, and finally a black stain in patches to give it a varied and natural look.

By this stage it was time to start thinking about grass and ground cover for the modules. Previously I had just used Woodland Scenic scatter of various shades, but this time I was keen to try out static grass, as I had recently seen a method of building an applicator on YouTube involving an electric fly swat. However, I decided to give the modules a base of scatter, and to apply the static grass over this to allow for a little variation in the appearance of the grass. So using three shades of Woodland Scenic ground foam, and plenty of PVA, I began to apply the grass, starting on the river module, leaving me with this:



It's amazing how the layout begins to spring to life when you get to this stage! Exciting!

Next time: building the bridge.

Scenery, part 1

In my last full update I detailed how I had laid the track, and noted that I was happy to be done with it. Largely this was because I got to move on to my favourite aspect of modelling: the scenery.

Mostly, I think I model because I like the art and craft aspect of the modelling, especially of landscapes. I just really like how models look for some basic psychological reason. Railways provide a subject matter, and of course they have their own intrinsic interest, with the ability to build a model that actually functions and has some operational (play) interest. But I'm not really train nerd. This probably also explains my lack of ability to get motivated to build rolling stock in a way that I can get motivated to build scenery.

Anyway, onto the scenery for the modules. In my past layouts I've adopted a preferred method of scenery building, which is to build the frame out of timber, and lay over this a skin of chicken wire to which I then apply plaster gauze. This isn't either the lightest method nor the cheapest, but it gives a very solid base to the scenery, and it's desirable in a number of other ways that I will mention.

So the first step is to build the framework for the hills and so on. On the current modules the hills are fairly minimal, so this didn't take long at all. The scenery formers were cut out of the timber that was left over form building the framework, and then screwed and glued to the modules.





This whole process tends to add more strength to the modules (that that they really needed it) and so everything is nice and rigid (and heavier) now.



After I was happy with this, I sanded the scenery formers, and then cut the chicken wire to fit. This was then stapled down, and trimmed along the edges, taking care to remove any sharp and prominent bits of wire so as to avoid later annoyance.





For little lumps and bumps where the method described above would be overkill, I crumple up newspaper and tape this down with masking tape so that it forms small hills and undulations.

Next is the messy (and fun) bit: applying the plaster gauze. I'm using the Woodland Scenics gauze. As you might have noticed, I use a fair bit of their range. I generally like the look of Woodland Scenics range, plus my local hobby shop stocks most of it, so it is convenient. Again though, it's not the cheapest, and I'm sure more frugal modelers could find ways to cut down on costs.

I cut the plaster gauze up into manageable sections, quickly soak kit in a bowl of water, and then apply it, using at least two layers and smoothing it out as it dries. After this, I mix up a bowl of lightweight hydrocal, which is a type of plaster that is useful for making rock molds and also for surfacing the scenery. Using a medium size house paint brush I brush on the hydrocal, which has the consistency of watery pancake batter, but which quickly hardens.

After all this dries for a day, I'm left with this:





That's all for now. In the next post I'll describe how I add grass to the surface, and how I built the rock cutting on the river module.

Back on track...

Okay, so I can use lame puns too. Here is the most recent work I've done on the layout. I added some more trees and shrubbery. It took all of ten minutes. As previously, the trees are from the Woodland Scenics range. They're expensive, but I like the look. I'll be making my own trees soon though.