Bernhards Random Ramblings BACKUP

[ Emsingen posts ] I spent a couple hours this evening to add grass, bushes, shrubs, sand and gravel to the Emsingen station segment. This got rid of most of the remaining bare plywood. Here's an overhead shot.

[ Emsingen posts ] Several years ago I built the platforms for track 1 and track 2 in Emsingen from styrofoam topped with a thin layer of plaster and fine sand. That was my first excursion into building platforms and it worked out kind of ok. Since the Emsingen station area will need to remain removable for the unavoidable occasional track maintenance underneath, and the interface between movable and stationary parts needs to be tight I settled on using styrofoam again, despite the mess working with it. I carefully marked and cut the station building shape from the styrofoam. Since my platforms are a little bit lower than the one provided with the kit, the naked foundation is visible. Strips from a Plastruct cinder block wall sheet fixed that problem. The styrofoam base is topped with a 0.080" styrene sheet and a 1/2" squares sheet to level up with the existing platform and provide some structure to the front of the station. My wife observed that these tiles are quite big. ...

[ Emsingen posts ] Time to paint the walls and roads. I moved the segment back into the train room, so that I can try and get a close match to the existing colors. This is complicated by the wet-in-wet painting technique I use, made worse by using weathering powder on the road. I.e. no consistency and if I'd get anywhere near a match, I'll be lucky. The segments line up nicely. I first painted the walls, which was as frustrating as expected, and then banged out the street in a hurry so that I'll get to the pickup at school in time. Finally, once everything was dry, I hit the road with weathering powder. The sidewalks are a bit dark. I'l try to lighten them up tomorrow. I got somewhat close to the colors on the city segment, but the ground color on the maintenance segment is very different. I will accentuate this difference with fence and gate separating the restricted maintenance area from the passenger station, and call it a day. While things dried in Emsingen, I fixe...

[ Emsingen posts ] I wanted to accomplish a couple things with the roadside area of the Emsingen station: An access road to the station (obviously, duh!), the access for the maintenance facility, as well as passenger infrastructure such as a bus stop, parking spaces, and a drop off space. If possible, I was dreaming of a traffic island with street lights, a road crossing, and flower pots. That's a lot to ask from the rather awkward space I have available. Nevertheless, a little while later I had a reasonable outline of the road arrangement penciled on the baseboard. I tested the arrangement with a couple cars and a bus, made corrections, and transferred the shapes of the sidewalks to a sheet of paper. Finally, the sidewalks were cut from a 0.080" styrene sheet. The shadows from the afternoon sun nicely accentuates the sidewalks. When I scratchbuilt the freight shed three years ago , I put the ramp for combustible goods ("Feuerrampe") on the station side of the shed....

[ Emsingen posts ] I applied my usual mix of plaster and vermiculite over the pink foam to have a smooth, yet slightly flexible surface to work with. I took the segment to the layout room a couple times to test the fit with the city segment. The path from the city to the station is taking shape, too, but the step at the end is too high for the stairs I intended to use, so I build additional steps from strip styrene and used the block of stairs as template. I added the retaining wall and worked over the whole scene with Scuptamold. When everything is dry tomorrow, I can paint the hill and add basic ground cover. I do need a resupply of 3x8 wood strips which I like to use to simulate cut stone along the top row of the wall. I also prepped the road surfaces already and will try to match the color of the wall on the city segment. This might be a challenge since the wall was painted with various shades of acrylic paints using a "wet in wet" technique.

Coffee, danish, and a good read. What else do you need on a Sunday afternoon?

[ Emsingen posts ] I glued the pink foam sheets yesterday . When I came back from DCC Lunch today, I hit them with rasp and knife in the side yard starting to form a hill. First test fitting. Not quite there there yet, but the contour is starting to look the way I want. After another round of cutting and rasping it's getting very close. I need to cut back the outcropping at the top near the road a bit more. Next I'll use a small batch of my ground goop to even out gaps and imperfections and fill in that step on the right hand side to match the shape of the hill on the city segment. There will be a crosswalk next to the house on the corner and a paved path with some stairs leading down to the station area. The access road needs to be leveled up next. Once these segment connections are in place, I can take the segment to the work bench, then scenic and wire it in a more comfortable setting.