A Tree

I seem to have become an armchair modeler, doing nothing but reading magazines and blogs, and visiting on-line forums.

But all of a sudden I got an urge to actually model something - a tree. I have recently seen a number of examples on people doing trees using twisted metal wires to form the tree armature, and I wanted to give that a try. You probably know what I mean.

Anyway, here is my attempt at a more or less bare tree, in late fall or early winter. What kind of tree? I don't know. A generic deciduous tree, I guess.

This is the tree when all the wires have been twisted.

Next step was to cover the stem and parts of some of the branches with spackel (lacking any other more suitable material such as modeling paste). It has also been painted with a gray primer out of a rattle-can. And it got a light dusting of black.

Last i added some dry leaves by first spraying the branches with hair spray and then sprinkle on some crushed real oak leaves. I am happy with the result.

Thanks for stopping by.

Building a warehouse, part 4

In this part of my little "Building a warehouse" series of posts we have arrived at the installation of the canopy. Before installing it above the loading dock, I spray painted it a light gray. Also before the canopy, I installed a number of down-spouts. I made those from styrene rod and small pieces of styrene strip bent around the rod. The latter simulating the hardware that keeps the down-spouts in place.

Here are some pictures of the warehouse with the canopy in place.

 

And here it is on the layout. Still lacking the roof, but that you cannot see from this angle.

Thanks for watching.

Building a warehouse, part 3

I have put together the canopy, i.e. the roof above the loading dock. Right now, before painting it looks like this:

Agree. It does not look very interesting. Just some Evergreen corrugated metal siding. A closer look shows that I have attached some .080" (2.0mm) channel along one of the long sides:

The channel represents the gutter, and it will be on the side facing the wall, meaning the whole canopy will be slightly tilted towards the wall. That's the way it was done on the prototype I'm using. Better to have the rain water accumulate along the wall instead of between the loading deck and the cars being worked, I guess.

If the top side of the roof is fairly dull, the underside is more interesting.

Here you can see the supporting structure, built up of I-beams. A closer look shows the details:

The beam along the wall (far side in the picture) is .125" (3.2mm) I-beam. The cross members are the same size. The beams along the front and the middle are 0.080" (2.0mm).

The next step is painting and mounting the canopy to the warehouse wall.

Thanks for watching.

Building a warehouse, part 2

The next thing I did on the warehouse was to make the platform and lower parts of the walls look more like as if they were built of concrete. I did that by brush painting them with various layers of Polly Scale Concrete, Gray and White colors. The out-of-the-bottle Concrete is a little too yellow for my taste. There might be aged concrete that actually has that color, but I wanted something a little more grayish and lighter. That's why I added in the gray and white as well.

I then also tried some weathering. I did that by applying streaks of grime and rust, in the form of washes of color. I'm not totally satisfied with the result. I think I'll come back and try to improve it later, when the whole structure itself is done.

 

I cut he visible wall siding from Plastruct Ribbed/corrugated Roof (91511). Before attaching the siding to the structure, I spray painted it with Polly Scale B&M Blue.

 

 

As you can see above, I also attached roll-up doors. These I made form Plastruct Corrugated Siding (91509), painted a gray color, and then simply glued to the inside of the wall, covering the opening. For variety and visual interest I let two of the doors be partly open. I also attached some styrene channel along the top of the walls, and pieces of angle at the corners.

 

Still left to do is the roof and canopy.

 

Thanks for watching.

 



Building a warehouse, part 1

Today I finally got around to building one of the warehouses. Well, at least I started the work that would eventually replace this mock up with the real thing.

The look I am after is something like this.

Not exactly that, but along those lines anyway. I started with the foundation and the platform, which I built by laminating a piece of 3.5 mm tempered hardboard on top of a piece of 10 mm MDF board. I cut both pieces from some leftover material I happened to have lying around. By laminating these two pieces I would arrive at a suitable platform height (about 4 ft, when the bottom of the structure is brought up to the sub road level). This would also mimic the layered concrete construction you see in the above picture. Here are two construction photos.

Next I marked the location of the front wall and the three doors. Using these locations I cut and glued wood braces in place. These will later hold the walls in place. It did not put any braces at the positions of the doors, since I wanted to be able to model one or several of the doors as being open.

I then cut three holes in the warehouse platform/foundation, inside the building. Two of them to accept wooden dowels fastened in the bench work. That way I can have the building removable, but when on the layout, it will still sit tightly exactly where it belongs. The third, larger, hole is for the wires of any possible future lighting.

Next picture shows a piece of cork attached to the foam in order to get he bottom of the warehouse foundation at the correct level. You can also see the two wooden dowels, which matches the two smaller holes in the foundation.

After that I turned my attention to the front and side walls. As you can see in my "inspirational" prototype picture above, the lower parts of the walls are of concrete. I decided to model those using 1mm (0.040") plain styrene sheet. Although mostly invisible, I made these concrete/styrene walls as high as the complete building, for additional strength. In real life the concrete walls are much lower, just being a foundation for some kind of structure that holds the visible sheet metal.

Here are the styrene walls in place. To avoid having to fuss with cutting door openings at this stage, I simply did not put any of these "inner" walls at the door locations.

Wrapping up this first part of the warehouse build I gave the whole thing a coating of gray (from a can). The idea being this would be a good start for the concrete platform and the warehouse floor. Now, the gray turned out to be too dark, so I have to come up with something better if I want it to look like concrete. Also, the paint raised some "burrs" in the wood which must be sanded down.

One more thing. I sprayed the inside black. This will make it harder to actually see that there is not much stuff inside (if I decide to leave a door open), and hopefully also stops light leaks (if I decide to put any lighting in). At a later stage I will also put in a back wall, which will also be painted black.

Thanks for watching.

Mock-ups

With yard ballasting finally done, I thought it was time to start planning for some structures. Of course, I have had a mental picture of what I would like to achieve, but now I was prepared to become more concrete.

In the far west end I have planned for some odd shaped buildings. Shapes that would justify the diamond I have already put in there. These building will probably be in a somewhat older style. Brick perhaps. I also plan to add a walkway that spans the mainline. This would make it possible to install a mirror where the track ends, possible extending the apparent line. Here is a picture of the mock-ups on that part of the layout.

Further to the east (right) I plan to build a contemporary warehouse. It will be quite a long structure. I split it into two sections, with an interconnecting piece with other dimensions in between, just to make things visually more interesting.

Keep on ballasting

I'm still in the middle of the "ballast the yard" project, meaning grout mixed with fine ballast, and weathering powders on top of that. Perhaps not very exiting, but here are some more shots.