Rock City Railroad News!
April, 1999
Hello again. We've been working hard on the Railroad and completed the mountains on the California loop. They took forever to do, but worth it. They look quite real and colorful. I used a lot of rock castings and made them mostly in plaster. Hydrocal. I used plaster of paris and fix-all in a couple places but the paint takes differently, so I recomment sticking with one type of plaster: Hydrocal.
I will be using the foam casting method on future parts of the layout due to the lightness and removability of the castings. However, for very mountainous sections, I recommend plaster.
I painted them using the 5 basic brown colors, each in small sections like camouflage. At first I didn't blend the colors so as not to mix up the paint on the brush. Then, when all color spots were done. I used a watersprayer and brush to lightly blend all the colors together at their edges.
I then waited for it to dry completely (important) before continuing.
The next day I sprayed a diluted india ink wash over everything to give the cracks darkness, and let that dry as well.
A few hours later, when the rocks were again dry, I began the dry brushing with white. At first it didn't look right. The white made the edges look frosted, and the colors still looked like homemade camouflage. I then began experiementing. After drybrushing a small section with the almost dry white paintbrush. I sprayed a very small amount of water over the section and began very lightly (verry verry lightly) began smearing the white highlights. This worked great for a little while, making the white more pastel as it faded into the colored rock. It kinda put a dullness over everything and blended it all together in a very realistic manner.
However, after a few strokes, the brush became wet and muddy and the white became muddy brown. I found that I needed to clean the brush with a rag or paper towel every few strokes to prevent the muddyness. This lightly washing of the white puts a thin coat over the rocks' colors blending them all together and lightening them considerable. Too much water, too much brushing, or a dirty brush will ruin the effect.
Anyway, I put the grass down next, as per the books, and suddeny the layout looked great. California is almost done, and the pictures will be up soon.
Having finished that, I redid the front of downtown to make way for 2 longer tracks in the yard, and redid the front of Bigfoot lake to make room for the line that will eventully go under the layout into a helix to a hidden staging yard underneath the present yard.
I'm trying to sell the Z scale layout I bought last month, keeping most of the engines, cars and accessories. I'm now the proud owner of about 25 different Z scale engines, some of which are for sale.
Yesterday I did the grass on the bottom part of the St. Louis loop all the way to downtown New York, and it looks great. Pictures are coming. Stay tuned.