Website News Archive: January 2010

31 January 2010

With the addition of its roof, the farmhouse is done, bringing Landsend Farm nearly to completion. I celebrated by breaking out the SLR to get some decent shots, one of which has been added to the gallery (replacing the unimpressive one I'd posted previously). Here we see Henry Preiser interrupting Peter and his girlfriend—a German exchange student—who have been necking on the moonlit porch.

28 January 2010

I was debating how far to take the detailing of the farmhouse porch. A view of the porch is limited to a narrow, oblique angle between the barn and a tree—thus a super-detailing job would be a wasted effort. But it needed something to draw in the eye, and I struck upon the idea of installing a bug light in a wall fixture, carefully placed so that it was visible from the viewer's vantage point.

27 January 2010

As mentioned previously, the farmhouse has enjoyed a burst of progress. Here it's seen right after being painted, when the porch was assembled onto the house. At a glance the house may appear finished in this view, but it still needs a roof, which can only come after window glazing and installing interior lighting. Close inspection of the enlargement also reveals that the porch footings need some shims...

26 January 2010

Although insomnia isn't a healthy thing to have, it can occasionally be a benefit for one's modeling. Thus, a decent spurt of progress was made on the farmhouse, which is inching closer to completion. I also did a number on a tractor (right), which was a fun little exercise in making a silk purse from a sow's ear. Granted, the purse may not be in the best shape, either, but it's a far cry from how it started out.

24 January 2010

After a concerted, focused effort—and despite a number of real-life distractions, including a stray kitty showing up at our doorstep—I managed to finish the barn. But the really big news for today is that there's officially no longer any white Foamcore left to be found on the rural access panel, a milestone worthy of a champagne toast! But wait, there's more... I've finished my clinic on making dirt roads (be sure to refresh that page when you access it) and I've started a new links page for Ideas and Techniques.

23 January 2010

After being neglected for quite a long time, the barn is now in a sprint toward the finish line. All of the framing is complete, and it's been painted; it now awaits doors and the roof surface. Hopefully this spurt of progress will soon spread to the equally-neglected farmhouse. Then, additional new detail items have been added around the farm, including a doghouse for Bolt, the family dog. I also finished and installed the corn cribs. These presented a major painting challenge: how does one paint the interior of an enclosed yet see-through structure? I wound up taking something of a direct approach: I dipped them in a bottle of Doctor Ben's Weathered Rust, then dabbed the surface lightly with a paper towel to unplug all of the holes. Several very light coats of paint, plus some ground foam vines, finished them off.

21 January 2010

The tractor shed/workshop for the farm is done. This was a major accomplishment, as it's one of the three main structures. It's also accompanied by a growing collection of detail items, as well as some classic trees—one of which will soon acquire a swing. Meanwhile, I ran into a little conundrum after I'd finished the doghouse: I could have sworn that I had some Z scale dogs on hand, but I was mistaken—no one makes a set of dogs in Z. I was about to resort to using some small N scale dogs when I came across Preiser #88555, "couples with dog." The fluffy little white thing in the set is not the type of dog I'd imagine living on a farm, but at this point it's the only option available to me.

20 January 2010

Well, the long weekend was a total bust: one of our computers got hit with a seriously nasty Trojan, and I spent my holiday trying to breathe life back into it, to no avail. Since then, I've been working overtime in the evenings to try and catch up on the layout. Tonight I've added the farm's first human residents: while Edith Merten hangs laundry, her sister-in-law corrals the kids. As is usually the case, lawn care is a low priority on a working farm.

17 January 2010

Lest anyone think I've forsaken the James River Branch for my new Pine Creek Railroad project, rest assured that work on the JRB continues. I've begun building the tractor shed, assembled a pair of corn cribs, and continued finishing the house for Landsend Farm. The holiday weekend should allow me to make considerable additional headway. This spurt in progress on the farm structures allowed me to complete the terrain around them, as seen at right.

5 January 2010

Progress on the James River Branch will likely slow down a bit now that I've got a new modeling project lined up, and especially now that I've got a solid track plan. It's also slowing as a natural consequence of being "back to the grind." On the bright side, I've purchased the domain name for the new layout's website: pinecreekrailroad.net.

4 January 2010

Back to work! That's work as in earning a living. Which means back to the big bad commute. Tonight I had just enough spare time to build and install the foundation for the farmhouse. But though this bit of progress seems modest, it will allow me to finally add the scenery terrain for most of the farm. And that will open up opportunities for some substantial progress in the coming weeks.

In other news, I've settled on my next modeling project.

3 January 2010

Work continues apace on Tanna Hill, across from Landsend Farm. Today I installed a little culvert under Poor Farm Road near Frisch Falls, added a stone retaining wall along the road where it rounds the end of the hill, and finished the dirt road.

The culvert is a single piece of Evergreen styrene tubing inserted into a hole drilled under the road. This was done not to be a "modeling purist," but to prevent the water material from collecting in a big puddle beside the road when it's poured. After it was glued in place, the culvert was painted with Floquil Concrete.

The retaining wall became a little detailing project all its own. Once this was done, I was at last ready to make the dirt road.

2 January 2010

It's often said that necessity is the mother of invention; it can also be the mother of improvement. With a couple dozen trees in need of color correction, and having run out of one of the two transparent resin dyes I was using to tint them, I ventured off to Michaels only to find they didn't carry them. This actually turned out to be a good thing, because it forced me to switch to something else, and I chose water-based transparent glass stain. At $1.79 for a one-ounce bottle, it seemed like a steal compared to $7.00 for a half-ounce bottle of resin dye; together with a four-ounce sprayer for $1.29, it created a very economical alternative to the resin dyes, and also produced better results: "Leaf Green" glass stain (thinned with alcohol to make it sprayable) nailed the color in a single application, as opposed to multiple applications of two dye colors, and dried in a fraction of the time to boot! Now I'm ready to "forestate" Tanna Hill.

1 January 2010

Happy New Year! Without going into detail, I'm mighty glad to see 2009 come to a close at last. Unfortunately, the holiday break has shaped up to form a perfect exclamation mark at the end of a year I'd rather forget. About the only positive aspect of the last twelve months I can claim is that it was a good year for the layout; I accomplished quite a bit of modeling. Compare the layout as it appeared a year ago versus today:

During some unexpected extra downtime in between the two holidays, I piddled around on the layout, starting off with a pair of subtle aesthetic changes: first, I found a new home for the token telephone pole, which had to be moved owing to the return of the crossing shanty to the Canal Street crossing. The other change was moving the railfan down under the bridge, which I did for two reasons: one, based on some unfortunate experiences with poor old Jim Greene, I worried that he was at risk of damage or loss being so close to the edge of the layout; and two, I felt the area could use a tiny spot of contrasting color to draw in the eye and add a little spark of life to an otherwise fairly uninteresting area.

Then, I mixed up a big batch of Sculptamold and completed the terrain base for Tanna Hill (across from Landsend Farm) in one fell swoop. Since the area will be almost solid forest when it's done, there was no need to use any rock castings; I created some simple rocky textures by jabbing the mixing spatula into the wet Sculptamold. When the terrain was dry, I painted the rocky areas with thinned cheap white latex paint, followed by an India ink wash (third image at right).

In addition, I wrapped up two round tuits, one of them being very old and musty: the last remaining bridge abutment, at the right end of the plate girder through bridge (fourth image at right). The other tuit was the last tunnel portal, at the back under Front Street, which I made from Pre-Size N scale stone wall material. Meanwhile, I've also reorganized the construction page a bit to reflect changes made to the layout in preparation for its sale.

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