Quiet earth (was: Exercise module for Plettenberg railroad in 1/22.5 scale)

[marc_reusser]

Hi Volker

In such discussions I haven't frequently stated my opinion, but here I can only support mad geralds words.
Ok, this is absolute not my line of business ... but I do remember very well my dirty fingers, when we had to fish my coin from the groove between the rails as I was a boy. (We used to put all sort of stuff on the street car rails to flatten them. :-)



Cheers, Peter

That is a great photo. Where was it taken?

[Hydrostat]

Marc, I don't know where it was taken. Perhaps Peter can answer your question.

To solve the riddle:
It is a 70 to. anvil block of a normal drop hammer, which once has been transported by the Plettenberg Railway. I needed something to temporarily fill the plant's yard.

The model is made from wood fiber hardboard, cardboard, wood and some putty.



I used 360 grit silicon carbide mixed with silver and transparent varnish Revell color. Then I coated the surface with slate dust, which was dissolved in PVA and water and sanded it after drying.



The rust stains are made with gouache and pigments. The wooden covers are too coarse and too much weathered for my opinion. The nails are made from blackened 0.5 mm copper wire. I used a pincer to shorten them and then nailed them in on a metal padding. Next time I'll sand them down to keep the rounded form.









Cheers,
Volker

[Ray Dunakin]

I like the texture on that anvil. Looks like a real casting.

[Hydrostat]

Thanks, Ray,

I had some difficulties with the coating. I first took a lot of thinner to get it so much "fluid" that the particles were able to scatter. Even with a brush it is able to get an homogenous surface without bad brush stains. Afterwards one can easily scratch away what you didn't intend. This looked like that:






I liked the surface, but it seemed a bit too coarse to me. The particles didn't adhere to well for the lots of thinner used. Lack of an airbrush I tried to apply Revell translucent varnish with a brush which destroyed the surface completely. I had to wash it all down again. Then I started as described in my last post. Next time I would invest in a spray can ... Maybe this would already mitigate the rawness.

As there are some constructive mistakes I'll make another one casually.

Cheers,
Volker

[Hydrostat]

I tried to improve the wooden covers to get the look of fresh raw cut wood, which has been out for a few weeks only:





What do you think?

Added two journals at the gatehouse's desk - and will do some new ones after I've seen the pics. I think there's room for improvement at the sides of the books, especially at the open one.






Cheers,
Volker

[Peter_T1958]

Hi Volker

After having read your thread I have half a mind to try a railroad diorama myself...
One question: How did you do the moss on the walls above?

@Marc: I do not want to hijack Volkers thread. Here a link to another pic of the same engine. The scene is situated barely 50 meters away from my home (thirty years ago, of course:-).

http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff181/Peter_T1958/www/GF20Werkbahn2013klein_zps9151953b.jpg


Regards, Peter

[Hydrostat]

Peter,

please feel free to show more pics of the Schaffhausen railway. It's very interesting for me as it seems to have served a similar purpose as the Plettenberger Kleinbahn did.

There are two kinds of moss:

For the green one I started with usual brown 'Streumaterial' from 25 years ago (this was colored sawdust), which I milled in an electric coffee grinder. Mix it with PVA, water and some detergent until it is some kind of paste which you can spread as you like. Afterwards I mixed some very fine green woodland scenic foam flocks with green acrylics, same PVA mixture and ashes of incense cones from Erzgebirge. Apply this on top of the brown coat. If it's dry (brightness and tone will change) you can color it again with dilute water color.

The yellowish sedum is made the same way; the material once was part of H0 scale buildings of Faller or Kibri or Vollmer as material for flower boxes. Sorry I can't give an exact description. I'm using scrap all the way.

Volker

[Hydrostat]

Hi all,

that's been the janitor's book before ...



... and that's what it looks like now:









Cheers,
Volker

[finescalerr]

That is a serious improvement. -- Russ

[marc_reusser]

Yes, that second version definitely looks much better and more realistic. What did you do?

[lab-dad]

On the fresh cut wood;
I dont like the missing "chunks", trying to represent grain?
I would use smooth wood then drag it over a disc sander (A Chuck Doan trick) to leave circular "cut" marks, like a circular saw would leave. I doubt wood for this would have been planed smooth.

-Marty

[Hydrostat]

Marty:

Thanks for your comment! I think you're right. I used veneer but obviously didn't sand it down enough. The missing chunks are the immersions I didn't reach. What looks nice from usual distance is pain on the photo ... I'll try again.

Marc:
I took a photo of a hand written spreadsheet, mounted it twice for the left side and added the missing spreadsheet lines on the right side in my graphics program. Then printed it on cigarette paper. The binding is printed on usual 80g/m² paper. For the inner part I took two different thick pieces of grey cardboard, glued them together at one edge and bended the protruding parts rectangular away from each other in a vice. Then drenched it with super glue, sanded away the part which had been in the vice (the saddle), glued the sides in with superglue, sanded all edges and whitened them a bit with opaque white. That's it.

Volker

[Ken Hamilton]

The colors and textures across this diorama are excellent..!

[Hydrostat]

The colors and textures across this diorama are excellent..!

Ken, thank you very much. Glad you like it.

Marty, here we go:

I made a simple constructon to sand down the wood evenly.



Instead of the veneer from the picture above I tried some birch wood from a french cheese box. I think this is much better now. Unfortunately I wasn't able to catch the mentioned "saw marks" with my camera too well. Left sanded, right raw.





This time I used 0.3 mm copper wire instead of 0.5 mm and I feel this is more realistic.







And all three steps at once:





Cheers,
Volker

[finescalerr]

Satisfactory. Thanks for the step-by-step! -- Russ