Modelrailroader.ca

A reader left a very pointed comment that asked a very good question ‘ ‘how does Pete unload the pumpkins?’ I went hunting to see if I could find some 1/32 tractors etc. But they were rather costly ‘ at least for this project’s budget. I decided that Pete, being a frugal farmer, would have likely rigged some sort of ‘block-n-tackle-hoist-thing’ from junk lying around the barnyard, so I decided to do the same. Using a pencil, a bamboo skewer, old n scale wheels and some scrap styrene, I ‘imagineered’ a yard hoist. The boom on the hoist actually swings, and the line will pull through the pulley. It’s not the front-end loader that I envisioned the farm having, but it will do the job!

With the backdrop in place and the basic colours of the layout defined, it was now time to start adding some trees and shrubs.

I built the shrubs using some unnamed dried floral product I purchased at Walmart a few years ago. I snipped bush-sized stems from the main stalk and glued the sprigs together using hot-glue; rolling the sprigs between my fingers as the glue began to cool. Working in batches of 10, I systematically spray-painted the sprigs flat brown, dipped them into diluted white glue, and then sprinkled on various colours of ground foam. I finished by spritzing each bush with a generous amount of hair spray, and then stuck each bush into holes in a cardboard box to dry.

While waiting for the bushes to dry, I began construction on the large tree that would grow beside the barn. A few weeks ago I noticed that the dying lilies in our garden left long woody stems with forked ends that could work as a basic tree armature. I gathered up as many stalks as I could find and began hot-gluing them together until I had created a basic tree armature. I then created branches by combing a few sprigs of the dried weeds in the same fashion that I made the bushes, and then attached each of these sprigs to the basic armature of the tree using hot-glue ‘ working my way from the center of the tree outward. Once I was happy with the general shape of the tree, I again applied a coat of flat brown spray paint and allowed the tree to dry. Once dry, I applied successive coats of hairspray and ground foam until I had built up the branches to resemble leafy bows. I then misted the entire tree with a few blasts of red oxide primer to add some colour variety.

Once everything was dry, I punched holes in the scenery using an awl, and planted the shrubs with a dab of white glue. For the tree, I drilled a larger hole near the barn, filled it with hot glue and pressed in the tree until the glue had set.

The first test application of the backdrop revealed a few issues I wanted to resolve. Firstly, as the image I was using was small it didn’t scale well when printed large ‘ the image quality degraded too much. Secondly, the colour of the backdrop wasn’t quite right.

I purchased a small copy of this image from istockphoto.com for $1.00. I colour-corrected the image such that it lost its ‘peach’ hues, and then I re-coloured the fields so that their colours more closely matched the ground cover I had applied. Finally, I scaled the image to the appropriate size and subtly applied paint daubs filter ‘ just enough to correct the graininess of the image. I cut the image to fit, and attached it too the hardboard using rubber cement.

The first test application of the backdrop revealed a few issues I wanted to resolve. Firstly, as the image I was using was small it didn’t scale well when printed large ‘ the image quality degraded too much. Secondly, the colour of the backdrop wasn’t quite right.

I purchased a small copy of this image from istockphoto.com for $1.00. I colour-corrected the image such that it lost its ‘peach’ hues, and then I re-coloured the fields so that their colours more closely matched the ground cover I had applied. Finally, I scaled the image to the appropriate size and subtly applied paint daubs filter ‘ just enough to correct the graininess of the image. I cut the image to fit, and attached it too the hardboard using rubber cement.

With the groundcover in place it was obvious that before I could precede any further I would need to install the backdrop ‘ as I couldn’t add scrub brush and trees without it. I had every intention of painting the backdrop, but as I was surfing the web for reference images it dawned on me that I might be able to print a suitable backdrop ‘ which would save me a great deal of time and effort!

I found a very nice image of rolling farm fields with a smattering of autumn trees that looked like a good fit for Pete’s Pumpkins; however the image was far too small to create a decent print. Rather then search for a higher resolution image, I elected to apply a few Photoshop filers to the image to give it a more ‘painterly’ look. The end result wasn’t sharp, but suggested the scene very suitably. After trimming the printout and eyeing the results, I decided that while the backdrop helped the model immensely ‘the colour wasn’t right. I discarded the print, resolving to correct the colours to more closely match the foreground scenery.

While I’ve been working on the layout I’ve been trying to decide how to justify the existence of a narrow gauge railway on a pumpkin farm. I decided that the only reason a pumpkin farmer would need a railway would be because either he has a high volume of goods to transport, or the goods are quite heavy. It seemed unlikely that a farmer would use a railway to transport pumpkins when a tractor and wagon would suffice ‘ however ‘ it seemed reasonable to presume that if the pumpkins were large, too large to load onto a wagon, that a farmer might use a railway. Hence, I’ve decided that Pete of Pete’s Pumpkins specializes in growing competition-grade monster pumpkins.

With the industry of the model railway finally decided upon, I set to work in creating a flatcar and some pumpkins for Pete. I shortened the underside of an old N scale boxcar, and glued on a new deck I built using some bits of styrene. I gave the flatcar a quick coat of flat-black spray paint, as well as some red oxide and dark brown.

I next modeled some ‘monster’ pumpkins. Using the leftover Sculpy I managed to model four very large pumpkins. Monster pumpkins aren’t the typical pumpkin shape ‘ they look like they’ve collapsed under their own weight and have a pancake-like look. The models I created represent competition-grade pumpkins with an approximate weight of 350-500lbs each ‘ which now makes having a railway much more plausible!

A busy week has kept me from making any progress on the layout ‘ so when I did manage to steal away a few hours, I decided to maximize the time. I wanted to start scenicing the layout, so I decided to add the groundcover and ballast the track together to save time. I applied a coat of full-strength white glue to the hills, banks and roadbed sides before sifting on combinations of dirt, blended leaves, ground foam, twigs, rocks and ballast. When I was satisfied with the results, I misted the entire layout with water and applied diluted white glue. Hopefully everything will be dry by tomorrow!

I managed to finish rouging in the second tunnel portal, and contoured the surrounding landscape.

I stained the wood portals with a mixture of burnt-umber oil paint / varsol, and then lightly over-sprayed everything with black spray paint. (I made sure I stained the wood before I started gluing the surrounding scenery as the glue would resist the stain later.) I applied a thick coat of white glue around the portals an added some loosely wadded balls of paper towel to help flesh-out the hills, and then applied a smooth layer of paper towels and white glue to refine the contours.

Finally, I smoothed out some of the surrounding scenery with drywall mud. I have come to prefer drywall compound over regular plaster because of its working time. Granted, it shrinks and is not as hard as plaster but as I’m not relying on the mud for structural stability, I’m not too worried. It’s also easier to sand, and cleans up very easily.

Having given the track 24 hours to dry, I finished removing the ties in the areas damaged the previous evening without incident, and successfully ran a few test laps with Pete’s Speeder around the oval; all rail joins and turnouts were smooth.

I weathered the ties and rails by applying several light coats of different coloured spray paint, alternating light mists of black, tan and brown. I waited for the paint to dry before scrubbing the tops of the train rails with a fine emery paper, removing the excess paint.

With the track now complete, I focussed my attention to the tunnel. I ripped some scale 6″x6″ lumber on the table saw, and with glue gun in hand, began installing the tunnel portals. A great deal of time and effort was spent trying to create a minimally-intrusive tunnel configuration ‘ bearing in mind that both the upper and lower track levels needed adequate clearances, and the scenery would need to look moderately believable.

By evening’s end I managed to create one of the two portals. The configuration is absurd, as it would have been far more efficient to have simply created a bridge rather then a shallow tunnel, however I like the idea of the speeder disappearing into the ground, and hopefully appropriate scenery treatment will add some believability.

One of the distinct advantages of an all-foam baseboard is that it is fairy rigid, and extremely light. On the other hand, it does stand up very well to normal abuse ‘ dinting and chipping! As I had leftover Masonite from the baseboard, I elected to add fascia boards. I cut each of the boards to size, following the rough contour of the landscape, and then slathered them with white glue and ‘tacked’ them in place with hot glue, taping the corners with masking tape to keep the joints tight while the glue dried.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to add a backdrop, but as I considered my design it became apparent that I needed to frame my scene. I’ve seen layouts by Christopher Creighton and Brian Fayle at local exhibitions, and I’ve always enjoyed being able to view the layouts from all sides. However, the major difference between those layouts and mine is that their designs have a central subject, and track around the perimeter, whereas my focal points are located around the perimeter of the layout with the track. As such, it seemed that framing the scene with a backdrop would be a good idea, and at the very least would lessen the amount of detail I would need to add as now the audience wouldn’t be able to see everything.

(This is a plus as I still haven’t figured out how to deal with my poorly planned tunnel!)