NEW NIGHT TIME PHOTOS 8/5/17 - Easy to make Mountains and Hills with Spray foam and fabric Batting.... Finally installed on LAYOUT

Finally got this module put in place on the layout... amazing how many "one more thing to do's",  there were.... Decided to cut in two uncouplers on the spurs, add a bunch of LED lighting inside and outside the buildings, put in a concrete floor and pad at the power house  etc., etc.    

Anyway, here are some photos.... Just waiting for the last batch of puff ball trees to dry then the area to the left of the mine at the end of the tracks will be filled in...  Thanks for all the encouraging feedback, it helped keep the perseverance factor engaged over the past month I have working on this.   There are more photos in the attachments below.     

 Chris, that came out great. The rail color and ballast color give it a nice prototypical gritty look. The structures with the weathering look scratchbuilt. Not anything like they looked in the catalogs. Nice job.

I Agee this turned out great. The fact it blends in with the layout, you wouldn't even know that was a separate module. The buildings, track, balast, and the materials used in the build,  all show the attention to detail and the end result that the effort was well worth it. Thanks for bringing us along for the ride. So what's next? 

Dave,  

Thanks, there is a lot of different products I used to finally get the track ballast where I wanted it....   Used crushed granite that I sifted to the correct size then painted some with Rust Oleum Camo Brown, and also  some of it painted flat black.  I also used some Thrift Sorb (absorbent used for picking up oil spills etc) which I also painted flat black to simulate coal spills, and then I ended up using alot of real dirt that I sifted down to a fine powder...  Looked at a bunch of old coal mine loading tipples on Google images and realized it's a really dirty, gritty place, and in many photos the ties are practically buried in the buildup...   The B & O hopper in the photos is the one you helped me with changing out the wheels and axles to 3 rail...  I weathered it with Rust All and some Pan Pastels,  as always  thanks for you help. 

Doug,  thanks for the positive feedback...  Next is to start building more L girder benchwork ....   Needed to get this module done so that construction could continue.  Right now the RR ends to the right of these photographs.   The original plan was to add another 11 x 11  feet section with return loops for the upper and lower level main lines, but there's another room 13 x 16 feet that I may decide to annex and just keep going...  Thought I was going to add a BR or office in the basement but condo rules, and local town building codes make that more of a hassle and future tax liability than I want to assume.... So we'll just make it a semi finished train room with removable backdrops etc.  

Chris, by all means keep going.

This is gorgeous! It was so fun to watch the process.

Chris,

Thank you for the many photos and descriptions of what you used and how you used them.  The scene is absolutely great!  It is fun to somewhat finish a scene before building more layouts.  That is a bummer rules and codes made you change your plans, but all of us run into unknowns that cause us to revise plans.  Such is life.  Oh well, more layout instead of office space isn't a bad thing.

My son came home with his camera and shot these night photos for me....  His camera did a pretty good job of capturing the 32 foot LED light strip illuminating the back drop from behind the shallow relief mountains...  I am glad now that I took the time to mount the LED light strip as it definitely works for dusk and evening lighting and makes the sky glow....  He also managed to get some good shots of the individual LED's I mounted in the power house, and the coal loading tipple buildings.   If anyone is interested the link to the 600 light set with remote control that I purchased is below:  

https://www.amazon.com/gp/prod...00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Chris great pictures, but then again it is probably easy when your photographing a great looking layout!

Chris, that really came out great. Using the led strip to create the evening dusk effect was great and comes out in the photos pretty realistic.  What next, Sunrise effect? That would be really cool!

I agree, that looks amazing, very realistic! I also agree with Suzukovich, a predawn affect would look awesome, too!

Rusty

Doug and Mike G,  thanks for the comments.....   Yes I highly recommend the LED light strip, behind a shallow relief backdrop.... Honestly, while my son took about 3 x this many photos to get the exposures correct, and I really appreciate all the effort.... the lighting effect still looks better in person than on photos...    Best $31.00 I have spent in a long time on these lights.

I agree about night photos.  Many shots taken, then going thru them for the ones you want to keep.