Not quite a complete redo: 4-6-17 update

Amazing train room and work.Keep the up dates coming.Nick

Trying to recover from sinus issues so plaster cloth work is still incomplete.  I still am not satisfied with retaining wall design elements and experiments and may resort to ready made rock walls.  A little expensive but I am saving a little $ by scratch building a girder bridge to replace a wood trestle experiment.  It is 22 inches long and based on a design I found on the web and inspired by a poster on the forum who made one with quarter inch Masonite.  I will have to find longer ties to insert in between the atlas ties to make it a better representation.  Here is pic of the bridge so far.

Yesterday I made a little more progress on the plaster cloth application.  There remains an area near the engine facility that might take a significant amount of time in part because the final design element is not quite firm.  But it is nothing that would prevent trains from running.  My next phase is applying a plaster coat to the plaster cloth areas.  I plan to start in the city/warehouse area and the new mountains therein.  I still have to decide on the retaining walls in that section as well.

Last night I disassembled the MTH PRR Zoo tower so I could paint it.  I removed the windows which were Irish green, the doors and stairs.  The Lower level of the structure was a pale yellow, while the upper level wood was brown.  I sprayed the lower level flat white.  I painted the upper level a softer flat brown and the window frames red.  I sprayed the roof flat black with a light gray over spray.  I dulled the red window frames with black chalk and did a little to the white.  The colors appear brighter in my photo than they will on the layout.  I did not over weather it.  It probably could use another dusting.  Inch by inch I move a little closer to doing some colorful scenery, (I hope). 

The last few days I have been focusing on finishing some things up so I can begin applying plaster to the plaster cloth areas.  Its a white snowy scene now in the basement as well as outside here.

I measured, cut and painted 1/8 inch Masonite panels for the rest of my roads. I don't have many on my layout. Yesterday I started plastering. I have not done too much plastering before this so I have a learning curve on the amount and consistency to mix atone time.  But I am getting the hang of it.  I have covered a mountain and a corner area so far.  Lots yet to do and gotta get back to it now!  

This morning I decided to mask off 4 bridge abutments to get ready for some rattle can paint of rock faces.  Here are pics of the city/warehouse district that I have plastered awaiting some paint for the next level of ground cover.  I apologize for a couple of fuzzy pics.

I found the color of the tile I selected for the retaining walls was fighting with the overall color tones I wanted, so I experimented with an earth tone on the shorter wall and I am going with it.  The color differences are quite apparent.  I will spray the taller walls pieces when I get more paint.  I prayed some base coat colors on the mountain pieces and rock wall areas.  I plan to build a dilapidated and abandoned structure at the end of the trestle for interest.   A few pics of progress.

I had an MTH rust colored arch bridge extending along the area of the long retaining wall.  It's a nice bridge but needed some weathering.  After disassembling it and some thought, I decided to spray the hand railing and flooring flat black and then went over the flooring with earth brown.  I over sprayed the rust colored parts with earth brown as well to dull down the rust color and give it a dirt and soot look.  Pics later after the paint dries and it is reassembled.

Edit:  This morning after the paint and a spray of dull coat had dried I reassembled the bridge.  I like the darker rust color and may come back with some chalks to detail later.

Great progress. Cant wait for the layout operation videos

Going from a white out to a brown out.  The flat brown I bought is going down rather quickly but the paint could be flatter.  I will be covering it with sand, gravel, grass and foliage.

Today I decided to take a break from the city-warehouse area and put some cinders in the engine yard.  I painted an area about 12 X 12 inches at a time with flat dark brown latex and sprinkled it with WS black/cinders.  In the area around the coal chute I used some black sand I found at the dollar tree that had a little sparkle to it.  I applied it liberally and lightly patted it.  I let it set for a couple of hours and came back to vacuum up the loose stuff, so I could forge ahead on the next areas of the yard. My ancient dust buster did pretty well but it is battery powered and it recharges so slow I decided to look at buying a more powerful one.  My research took me to a couple of sites and a video of a contraption to attach to a canister vacuum that collects the ballast in a jar.  (BTW, gunnerjohn showed up in my research.) So, I spent more than a little bit of time rummaging in my junk drawers and made one.  Its simple.  One long tube extending almost from the bottom, through the lid of a peanut butter jar that connects to a piece of garden hose.  Another tube pokes through the jar near the top horizontally and has a bit of very thin cloth over the end of the tube to keep the lighter retrieved material from getting sucked into the vacuum cleaner.  I drilled 5 or 6 1/8 inch holes in the top of the lid so I could vary the suction.  Here are some pics of my rendition and the beginnings of some scenery.  

Nicely done!  

Peter

Your yard area looks good.  Interesting tool to save extra ballast, cinders.

Its time for an update.  I am making slow progress on ground cover in the city-warehouse area but it is moving forward.  I had posted a pic of an arch bridge that I had darkened with a dark brown camo but I decided it was to red and disassembled it to darken it even more.  I finally got around to the new mountains and put a barn wood wash over them and they look pretty good so far.  I may do that for my other mountains now that I see how it darkens and adds a gray hue.  I have a walthers feed store building that was gray with rust red roof and tried painting a little darker gray with white windows.  It did not look good to me so I tried a different color scheme altogether.  Dark green camo, black roof.  I also disassembled an MTH water tower and painted the metal support legs flat black and detailed with an over spray of earth brown camo.  Here are a few photos of some of the work. 

Big rocks!  I always loved the big, big rocky features of the west, were I grew up.  Looks good!

Nice!

I like the gray tone on the mountains. What is "barn wood wash"?

Since the last update, I have applied a little more black ground cover in the yard areas; disassembled an Atlas passenger station, repainted and reassembled it and started work on a court yard area for brick walls, stair cases and a loading dock; reconfigured a Lionel coal building and located it on the layout; made some long ties to be located between the Atlas ties for the walkway on the girder bridge and started work on a water tank for the engine yard.  Here a few pics.

The most recent issue of "that other O-gauge magazine" arrived a few days ago.  It has a nice article that made me immediately think of this thread, on three layouts whose owners "rehabilitated" and updated them.  It's worth looking at if you are into anything like being covered here. 

Lee:

I might give that issue  look. 

Another update:  There is a 3 inch diameter support column located in the engine yard.  Coincidently I need a water tower for the steamers, so here is a mock up using a plastic gallon paint can, cut down to 4 inches high.  I might make a brick foundation building for the tank.  That would hide the lower extension of the pole as opposed to wood pole supports.     

Did some more work on a water tower built around a support column, ground cover on a station park area and today glued brick paper on the yard stick walls, and installed foam base for repositioning of a grain tower.  I have adjustments to make on pre-existing mountain hillsides to accommodate the tower and of course an endless list of detailing on this work and previous endeavors.  Just a few pics.  The station brickwork is printed paper and it needs weathering to tone down the bright colors. The roof on the water tower is just not right yet.  I also made and painted supports for a girder bridge and redid supports for a truss bridge but those I will redo again soon.     

Just found this thread, nice work, will be following the progress.

Today I installed the girder bridge and supports for that bridge and a truss bridge.  The supports are marginal design but they work for now.  I spray painted them with textured paint. I painted some track west of the girder bridge and applied some gray stone ground cover.  In the area where I am relocating a grain elevator I had to cut back the lower edge of the hills in the background.  I hope to apply plaster cloth to repair the area soon. I placed the train station after I made gravel parking lots for the station and a feed and seed building. I used a different color sand for the feed and seed building and will add trees and such on their border.  Here are a few pics.  Humble thanks for those who follow my progress.

The last few days I have had a little more enthusiasm for tackling tedious scenic fixes.  The first fix (pic 1) was to plaster a couple of hill reconstructions. There was a flat area near the underside of a bridge that was kind of boring.  I don't know if this berm in pic 2 is the fix, but it is a little more interesting and might provide more opportunity for interesting trees and under growth.

The next fix was refurbishing scenic foundation on the ends where I plan to install an Atlas truss bridge. I glued 2 layers of newspaper on the cardboard lattice in prep for plaster cloth.  After I get that painted and foliaged, I can install the last piece of a retaining wall, install the bridge, and eventually start bigger projects in the rural area of the layout. 

I have decided that I will never be confident about my "vegetation" scenery skills, and that is one reason I procrastinate about it.  Another reason is that it is very tedious and time consuming so I pick other layout projects to work on, ironically also time consuming but a little more fun for me.  That brings me to a big rock hill that is next to the town area.  It was and is now bordered on the east and west sides by tracks.  The west side was basically a flat rock wall without any character.  While I was applying the first newspaper covering many years ago I had already decided that it was not good but I did not have any other ideas.  A few months ago I remembered a scene with a narrow treed ravine when I was on a hike years ago.  So, I did some reconstructive surgery on this backside that takes me back.  It's not ideal, but it beats the flat wall in pic 5.  Pics 6 & 7 show lattice work ready for glue/newspaper and then plaster cloth.

The scenery redo is coming along nicely.  Yes, foliage does take a lot of effort and time.  I was never satisfied with my previous layouts, before we moved and they came down.  Hopefully, I will be able to build to a nice level of forests once I retire.

Today I did plaster cloth work and prep for more of that.  Did a little paint and rock work. Scenery is fairly far along in the city/warehouse area.  Further detail work in that regard will slow down a lot the next few months.  If I have the time to do further work it will be in the rural and the engine house areas.  So, tonight after the ball game, (Royals over the A's), I cleaned the track in the city area, installed the two bridges there and checked out the remote switches.  Everything checked out so I placed my PRR Atlantic on the tracks and bells and whistles and chuffs, oh my, I ran a loco for the first time since Jan.1!  I only found one 12 inch piece of dirty track I missed.  Then I added an RPO and two coaches and ran a local in the city.  It felt good to watch and listen to that train chuff x 4 around the city especially in the area where I added mountains.  Here is a pic of the train.

Very nice train!  I'm picking up an MTH Premier PS2 B&O Atlantic next week that I purchased from a local Forum member.  I'm looking forward to it, and to meeting this Forum member face to face!

Mark: I think the Atlantic steamer is one of the best proportioned locos.  I got my Lionel version last fall and plan to keep it pulling a local commuter.  I pull my fast mail train with a K-line K4s. 

Rehab update: It rained today, so instead of out door activities I blew off house cleaning and plastered a reconstructed part of a mountain rock in the city area. Over sprayed plastered abutment areas for the Atlas truss bridge in the transition from the city to the rural area painted the reconstructed hill sides in the grain elevator area.  I finished spray painting my signal poles and ladders flat black. I may post pics tomorrow after I complete more work.  

I do like the Atlantic.  I think it is a great locomotive for a small layout.  Funny, I will be getting a PW Lionel Atlantic Wabash and a caboose this week as well.  I have a Florida East Coast BL-2 I received in a trade, and there is a fellow on a Yahoo group who loves FEC.  He refurbishes PW locos, and has been looking for one he thought would be a good trade.  Just completed the deal minutes ago.  In a few days, I'll have two Atlantics.

Today it was a little rainy but quite cool so yard work or better yet fishing was not favorable so it was back down to the train cave.  Yesterday I plastered a rock hill in the city area.  Here are before and after pics of that.

Here is a pic of the PRR signals I made over a year ago. PRR online reference drawing indicated an aluminum color for the standard and ladder, however color did not have enough contrast for my eye so I re-sprayed the ladder and standard flat black.  

While I listened to the Royals beat the A's this afternoon I skim coated a long stretch of trackside plaster cloth ground cover until I ran 3 feet short of plaster.  Went to HDepot and picked up some more and will finish that part up tomorrow.  A pic would just be more white scene scape so I will update photos after I paint dark brown flat base. Tomorrow I will work on the engine house area maybe. 

BTW, my water tower built around a support column in the engine yard looks quite a bit taller than the MTH water tower.  The spec drawings on a PRR resource states that the minimum distance between the top of the rail and the bottom of the tank is 22 feet. At 5 and a half inches it looks way too tall but the tower sits on a little elevated area, so I might trim off a quarter or more.

April 24 update. The past couple of days I have spent too much time in the train cave and not enough on chores but I can get to those later. So, I worked in the rural area painting the plaster ground dark brown and sprinkling some limestone dust along the edges with greenery to come later.  I fixed it with diluted glue after wet water. I had mountain scenery that I washed with diluted folkart barn wood acrylic to blend places that were too light. Not perfect but better than I expected. 

Further east:

I assembled an Atlas truss bridge and installed it after some adjustments to abutment areas.  I did a test run on the bridge and immediate approaches after cleaning the track.  All went well and the bridge and a loco looked better than I expected.

I rattle canned some color on a refurbished hill in the city.

Some views of other city areas.

The area with blue tape is prep for a little more trackside ground cover to be followed by greenery when I finally get around to that.  I also painted an MTH corner store for the town.  The engine house area and approach are next on the list of big areas but I have a lot little things that seem to take an inordinate amount of time compared to impact on the layout.

Not there yet, but getting closer to running trains on the whole layout.

Thanks for taking the time to photograph, describe what you're doing, and post the photos and info.

Suggestion:  take 30 seconds or so to edit the title of your thread to include the date of the update.  Easy to do:  just go to the top of the page and click the "Edit Topic" button.

Thanks, again, for bringing us along on your project.

Did it Carl! Thanks.

 Today I did more ground cover prep work, paint, limestone dust and granules, installed the last piece of retaining wall.  A mere sentence does not do justice to the time I spent however I was happy to get it done.  The more enjoyable project I did the last couple of days was repainting the corner building in the first pic below.  It was one of my first attempts to grout the brick and weather.  I was never satisfied with the result. So I painted the brick rust primer, the cornice dark gray primer, and windows flat Labrador brown. It turned out better than I expected.

Looks very nice

Ken M

I have been doing small installments of work the last couple of weeks and made more progress in the engine house area. Finally cleaned all the track and ran a local passenger train, mail, baggage and then a tank car train with 9 black tankers.    

Sounds good. It is always satisfying when you finally get to the stage where you can run trains.  Good luck, and pictures when you can?

What great progress you've been making. The photos are fantastic.

We continue to enjoy watching the progress that you are making. Thanks.