Rock City Railroad News!
February, 1999
Aloha here in winterland Hollywood. It's a little brisk out in the garage at night so I haven't got much done the past few months. I did catch up a little on the website though. What I did start on was the mountains. I saw a seminar at the Great Gats Train Show, where he made mountains with casting resin first, followed by a foam resin backing. It worked really good, because when you pull it out of the mold, it's still flexible and can be cut with a scissors. The sure beats trying to cut or bend plaster. It also dries hard and clean, whereas plaster is always crumbley and dusty, not to mention bulky and heavy.
The company that showed us how is Bragdon, and they sell the resin, but I called around and found the resin much cheaper from some industrial resin and plastic complanies here. Hastings Plastics in Santa Monica is where I'm going to get it.
I finished the mountains above the harbor using the styrofoam method, and painted it as they instructed. First I coated everything with GESSO, and then brushed in tempera black, and then various earth colors. It looks pretty good, except I didn't get the black all the way into all the cracks, and it shows. Now I've got to go back and touch up these spots. Maybe if I put a drop of soap in the water the paint would flow into all the cracks better.
In other news, our railroad gained another great castle recently. I traded it for my old scanner. It's made by Lenox, who also make a few other nice castles.
It's actually Z scale, but works well in the N scale region of the layout. It now looks over the harbor
I went to visit a couple layouts recently, courtesy of the Sn3 Symposium in Pasadena. First, in La Cresenta, the Meers Madness layout which is an HOn3 layout modeled after the silver mines in Durango, Colorado. Its was really nice, with the valleys and buildings modeled after the prototype. These guys make regular pilgrimages(?) to Durango to see the old original mining railroad stuff. The size of HOn3 is great, slightly smaller than HO in track, engines, and cars, but with the same scale everything else. I might ad a third rail to my inside HO loop to run HOnZ trains. The rail is slightly smaller than HO but slightly bigger than N.
The second was an HO layout in a basement, actually both were in basements. The low ceiling makes me appreciate my garage more.
Their roundhouse on the end of the yard gave me some good ideas about putting in my turntable, which I'm almost ready to do. I was waiting to get the turntable, but since our here, Mark Dawson, gave us an old Marklin turntable and roundhouse, along with a bunch of really cool engines and cars and other old Marklin goodies, I may install it for now.
I found a Z scale layout for sale in the recycler I'm trying to get, but it's a thousand dollars and my wife is having a fit and doesn't want me to get it. It's worth about four or five thousand though, and I really want it. Hope I can work it out.