Wordless Wednesday #519 - Recent Acquisition at East Berlin

 

Wordless Wednesday #489 - Switching East Berlin

 

Wordless Wednesday #444: 3016 at East Berlin

 

Wordless Wednesday #301 - Pics by Seth Gartner

(a couple of amazing photos taken by Seth Gartner during the ops session. Thanks Seth!)

Friday Fun: East Berlin Done (kinda)

They say no model railroad is ever finished, and now that I've reached a level of "done-ness" in East Berlin, I can attest to the fact that you can Always Add More.

So yes, I have a lot more I want to do here - including adding trees, people, details, more scenery texture, a new concrete loading dock - but I think for now it's time to move on and try and get the rest of the layout up to at least this level.

Cuz it's certainly nicer to watch a train go through even rudimentary scenery rather than over plywood and foam.

Before I leave East Berlin though, I thought it'd be fun to pause and take stock of how far it's come since I started the scenery last August.

Enjoy!

(PS: if you're at Springfield tomorrow and happen to see me, please be sure to stop me and say "hi!")

Wordless Wednesday 300(!) - First Train Over the Mattabesset River

East Berlin Scene: Ripples & Roads

Nothing like imminent visits by folks to come see the layout to keep me motivated! So I'm really trying to get this scene finished before Thursday and the Big Springfield weekend.

If visits are motivating, having to try something new can be very DEmotivating. Thankfully, one of the things I'm learning during this process is that experimenting helps you get over the hump of starting - and with little to no risk.

Case in point here is ripples on the water. I mentioned last week that I'd made a little "practice pond" to test out different ripple/wave effects. Well, the experimenting continues . . .

Ripples on the left made with the end of a craft stick. The ones on the right made with a 1/2" brush.

Here's how it dried - looks shiny since I bounced the light off of it so you could see the effect better.

And the brush one

Neither effect is really capturing what I think looks right. Part of the problem though is that I'm not sure quite what exactly looks "right." The craft stick waves/ripples look more natural, while the brush ripples look - well - like brush strokes.

So, more research needed, but considering my New Years' Resolution, I figured I'd just try experimenting on the part of the river which will be behind and under the bridge. That way, if it's a fail, it won't be that noticeable. And being on the actual river, I'll at least get some "real world" practice.

Here's how things started.

I squeezed out a little of the Woodland Scenics Water Effects . . .

. . . then used a craft stick to move it around a bit, trying to create something that looks convincing.

Did the same on the other side of the river . . .

. . .  and must've had beginner's luck since I think the first attempt looks a bit better.

I'm not sure how this is going to work out - especially since the "still" water looks so nice and reflective. And I fear that the edges of the ripples are too uniform - too much "in line" parallel with the banks. But at least the bridge will cover it :^)

While that was drying, I decided to try and finish up my road. I briefly mentioned at the end of my backdrop post that I made the road out of 3/16" thick foamcore board. That thickness matches up perfectly with Micro-Engineering Code 70 track. Just glue it to the same base that the track is glued to and trim it to match the ends of the ties. A quick coat of paint will getcha most of the way to "finished" but if you really want it to look good, you have to do a little more (but, surprisingly, not much more). 

The first thing you'll want to do is peel off the top paper layer, revealing the white foam underneath. Luckily, the texture is very close to looking like concrete (to my eye at least) and, being foam, it's super easy to work with. I used a straightedge and made some "expansion joints" with an X-Acto knife - one down the center, then one crosswise every twenty-five feet. While I was at it, I also gouged in some cracks and potholes.

Next, I painted it with a gray craft paint which was a good match for the color of the road in the backdrop photo. But what really made things pop was when I took some brown and black weathering powders and matched the tire tracks & oil stains in the backdrop photo - "pulling" those colors from the backdrop and onto the foreground.

I really like how it turned out. My only regret - and I still am not quite sure how I managed it - is that the road isn't matched up and the expansion joints don't line up either. Somehow, the foreground section of road ended up narrower than the back section, and the centerline joint is off too as a result.

But would you have noticed it if I hadn't mentioned it? (hmmm.... maybe don't answer that :^)

I'm certainly no Tom Johnson (click here for more of his work), but I think it came out pretty great.

Next, I'm gonna have to figure out what to do about a grade crossing. But all in due time - at least I'm making progress!

East Berlin Scenery Update: Mattabesset River

I have a confession to make - since I started the Valley Local group over on Facebook, the blog has lagged behind my progress a bit. In some cases, really far.

So (again with the New Year's Resolutions), I resolve to do better in 2020 and try and keep the blog more up-to-date. After all, it's a (web)log of my layout's progress that I own and can keep without worrying that Mark Zuckerberg will someday take it away.

With that in mind, this post will bring you up-to-date with what's been going on in East Berlin (click here for the posts so far). Here's a grab pic of where we left off last time:

I'd painted the Mattabesset river bed and installed the backdrop. Things were looking so good I was afraid no matter what I did next that I'd somehow mess it up. But the only way forward (to your end goal) is through (your fears) so I continued by working more on the river banks.

The first thing I did was try to get away from the river looking too much like a road (as The Missus put it) by roughing up the edges of the banks with more blended brown & black paint.

I also added some trees and ground scrub toward the back of the scene, not only for texture, but to hide the bottom edge of the backdrop. I used a variety of materials here, including static grass, lichen, Woodland Scenics foliage net, and even some stuff I picked up from the dry flower section of my local craft store.

I added tufts of taller grasses by rolling some longer fibers between my fingers, cutting to a length that looked good, dipping the cut end into some glue, and "planting" in place along the banks.

Meanwile, I decided to make the edges of the banks even more irregular and created some "shallow" spots in the center of the river, all with brown and black paint.

Don't be afraid to go over even "done" scenery to add more texture/variety. Here I'm adding some patchy glue that will hold some more static grass (for a patchy grassy look).

Looks a mess when you first do it . . .

. . . but it improves when you vacuum it . . .

. . . and looks eve better when it starts to dry.

After getting some feedback, I decided to add some "deadfall" (twigs) - again, more variety and texture.

 After all this working and reworking, I ended up with this:

And that's where things ground to a halt while I worked on some other projects and ginned up the nerve to actually pour the resin "water."

But like with many things in this hobby, the fear proved to be unfounded. Doing the water effect ended up being easier than I thought.

I used Woodland Scenics' Deep Pour water product (which Bill used in Goff Brook) and followed the instructions to the letter: basically, warming the two parts of resin beforehand, mixing them in the proper proportion in the right amount (calculated using a handy water volume estimator app available from Woodland Scenics), and then pouring . . .

This is what it looked like immediately after I finished pouring. WOW! I really like how the riverbed looks. Looks really deep (it's actually only 1/8" deep here).

Warmth is important to this product, so Woodland Scenics recommends covering the pour with aluminum foil to keep the heat in (the curing process itself generates some heat) and to keep dust off the resin as it cures.

 Believe it or not (BION), this is what it looks like after it's all cured!

Just as "wet" looking as when it was poured.

 One thing I did notice was that the product does tend to creep up the sides a bit. . .

But I don't really see that as a problem since I think riverbanks would be wet along the edges anyway. And check out the depth!

Speaking of depth: Be sure to pour the right amount! The calculator proved extra handy when I realized (AFTER the pour, of course) that I hadn't created a dam at the edge of the layout!

Turned out, the resin filled just to the top of the fascia. Talk about beginner's luck! Whew!

And this is what the scene looks like as of today:

Compare this to the photo at the top of the post

So now you're all up-to-date on the Mattabesset River. Be sure to stay tuned for the rest of the East Berlin Scenery Update - I've been working on the road and a grade crossing as well. And I still need to decide how to do some ripples on the river. I love the beautiful reflection, but no river is that still...

Hope to get this scene to a level of "done-ness" by the Springfield show. Wish me luck!

Wordless Wednesday #299: Mattabesset River, East Berlin

East Berlin Backdrop

One of the easiest - and hardest - ways to add a LOT of depth and "scenery" to a scene is to install a photo backdrop. It's really hard (at least it is for me) to choose just the right photos for a particular area - and that's even more difficult when you're a committed prototype modeler and know how the area's supposed to look. Unfortunately, unless your modeling era is "the present" and you live close by where you can take photos of your chosen locale, it's hard to get the perfect photos. Heh - in 1948 everything is black and white, and very little looks the same nowadays anyway.

So, unless you want to wait to find photos that probably never existed, you have to be willing to compromise - to use photos which look as close to what you think the scene should look like as possible. In the case of East Berlin on my layout, I know that Berlin Street went up a slight hill and that there were (and are) homes up on that hill behind the station. And unfortunately, there's no way to get photos of any of that from a proper vantage point. Besides, did Berlin Street look in 1948 anything like it does today? I also have to try and blend in the right end of the Rt. 15 overpass, which on the prototype is MILES away - but has to be located here due to my space constraints.

What I do know is that there were at least a few trees behind the station and in front of those houses. So I figured a "treeline" backdrop along with a road "going off in the distance" would suffice. Fortunately, I have a bunch of treeline photos I've taken during Septembers and Octobers past (I model early/mid Autumn) and I even made it a point to take a few "roads into the distance" photos during those same time periods.

Unfortunately, finding/taking suitable photos is only the first step (although it may be the most difficult). Next, you have to get them into backdrop form. That means not only stitching them together (relatively easy, if you have enough photos of the same long scene that you took in sequence), but also photo-shopping them as needed to blend together photos that weren't taken together (as in the case of my "road" photo which needed to be blended with my "trees" photos). Oh, and you need to remove any anachronistic details - especially power lines.

There's a reason some folks command good money to do this work. You're a lucky guy/gal if you have a friend that'll do it for free. I'm lucky to have a couple such friends, but I fear relying on them too heavily, so I decided to try to learn to fish a bit myself instead of always having to ask for a fish. The photo-shopping process is way beyond the scope of this post, but suffice it to say that it wasn't quite as difficult as I thought it would be.

I started with a total of 6 photos. The left-most four were all part of a sequence that I easily stitched together. The fifth one was the road photo (a version of which I'd been using in this spot for a while - see the photo at the top of this post). The sixth/last photo on the right was another "treeline" photo, chosen since it was close to the same look as the right side of the road photo.

I'm not sure how long it took to blend everything together since I did it off and on over a few weeks and didn't keep track of time. My biggest tip though is to Save Many Versions of your work along the way. That way, even if you screw up something and don't know how to fix it, you can go back to a previously saved version and pick up again from there.

The photo above shows the six photos, printed out on my home printer on regular sized paper, and taped together to check scaling and coverage.

Here's another tip (though maybe I'm just not doing it right....): I couldn't figure out how to get Photoshop Elements to print a "banner." It kept printing out just the center of the image I'd created. The only way I could get the pages printed out to tape together was to save the image as a PDF and then use Adobe Acrobat to print that PDF version of the image as a banner. Acrobat divided up the image into the regular-sized paper and I was able to get my test print for sizing/scaling.

Now here's where folks that have read this far get the payoff....

Once your test print is the size and scale you need, save it again as a PDF (maybe include the word "final" in the filename) and take it to your local Staples store (or equivalent) on a thumbdrive. They print banners all the time and, at least in the case of Staples, will give you at least two choices of vinyl - indoor or outdoor.  The outdoor is thicker, but the indoor actually looks clearer to me (less distortion from the texture/thickness of the paper itself). BONUS - the indoor is less expensive as well, especially if you choose the matte polypropylene (which is all you really need). Comes to about $3.50 per square foot and is done while you wait (you may be able to get it a little cheaper if you wait overnight).

In my case, a 40" long backdrop, 9 1/2" high came to under $10.

Once I confirmed all was well and fit as planned, I cut out all the sky - leaving a bit over the road for depth (my cut followed the top edge of a cloud).

I've used glue stick to adhere previous backdrops, but those were smaller - and it was still a bit messy. This time I decided to use vinyl wall adhesive typically used to secure wallpaper seams. I temporarily taped the backdrop to the wall and made some light pencil marks on the wall along the top edge. I then brushed the adhesive directly on to the wall, keeping short of those marks. Once I placed the backdrop onto the wall and smoothed it out, where ever I needed a bit more adhesive along the top edge, I just applied it to the back of the paper with a small brush.  Keep a damp cloth on-hand to clean up any adhesive that may squeeze out.

One challenge I had was that my backdrop didn't go low enough to meet my riverbank. And if I'd made the backdrop image that low, I'd be wasting lots of image hidden behind the scenery base. No worries - I just painted this blue area to match the surrounding scenery (which you'll see in a later photo).

Another challenge - figured out during the testing/fitting process - was to make sure the road on the backdrop matched the road on the layout. Some work and patience paid off here. By the way, my road is a piece of foamcore - and I just peeled off the paper revealing the foam (and its great "concrete" texture).

If I don't say so myself, you may want to be sure to click on this image to enlarge it since I think it came out pretty nice. I painted the foamcore with acrylic craft paints to match the color in the photo (I still need to to a bit of shading/weathering to match it perfectly), and as I mentioned earlier, I painted that strip of blue above the river to match the surrounding scenery. Covering this area with brambles and bushes will make that seam even harder to see.

As I said way back at the start of this post - adding a photo backdrop is the easiest way to add a lot of "scenery" and depth to a scene. Yes, it'll take some work - maybe a lot of work - but I daresay the result is always worth the effort.