Sources of inspiration

Inspiration in this hobby can come from many different places. Pictures seem to me to be used by most modelers. The perfect scale model of the Baldwin 2-8-0 that was completed on March 21st 1891 that was modeled completely down to the very last detail. From the correct number of rivets on the smokebox to the exact color and number of white polka dots on the fire mans handkerchief. Hey to some people that is inspiring and I can not fault anyone who considers this their way of doing this hobby. To me that is too much work I WANNA RUN SOME TRAINS!
But we must remember that if all you do is lay out a circle of track and send the wheels flying you are missing a real opportunity to get into a real fun hobby and that circle is going to get real boring real soon. Just like when you had that bicycle with training wheels you were already thinking of the two wheeler, unless you were like me... Screw the two wheeler I wanna motorcycle.
The sad part is that most people only get as far as dream phase, that next phase is damn scary especially if you like to read model railroading magazines or websites like burnsland.com or railroad-line.com (both full of excellent modeling) you see stuff in there that will blown the wind out of the sails for most of us.
So where do they get their inspiration? Where do I get mine? Hey it's YOUR railroad what do YOU like? For me the inspiration is feelings and emotions that I have got over the years. Disneyland was a lot of my inspiration for the feelings I get. It was my first experience with the smell and taste of the railroad. Notice I said Disneyland not just Disneyland Railroad. There have been many locations park wide that have left a feeling with me. Many of them long gone but remembered fondly. That is my inspiration for the scenes that I want to convey on the PG&YV, Oh and pictures do help. Also seeing as I work for the 1 foot equals 1 foot scale railroad I have managed to experience some exciting locations up close and personal like the Feather River canyon where I was stuck off track on a curve between two tunnels at least 300 feet above the river that looked like it belonged on a model, in 100 degree weather in direct sun for most of the day with no hope of rescue "Cause we Need to get this Curve laid Come Hell or High Water!" ok maybe that day wasn't the best then, BUT the emotion that I have attached to it are burned deep into the Grey Matter and I don't need any pictures at all to accurately model that location if I was so inclined to model it but that ain't happening this week.
So what inspires me may or may not inspire you. But what you like is all that matters, just get out there and build Something! You may just surprise yourself, I know I surprised myself.

Round Trip Tickets Now Advailable for Purchase

It has only taken a year and a half but I have finally laid the last of the track to complete the round trip on the layout. Now I'm not saying that the layout is complete but the main line is done! I can finally run a train nonstop. So there is still a few things to do like building the staging yard A LOT of scenery and some rolling stock modifications. After a small Golden Spike Ceremony it was time to get to work.
Man the CFO is a slave driver!

Don't Trains Need Water?

Yes Virginia they do. Well as you lucky readers have probley figured out by know that I kinda like Disney. At Disneyland they have a really neat Water Tank for the DRR and I have always wanted to build it. But one thing or another would come up and I've never got aroud to building it. But after a recent trip to the Happiest and Most expensive Place on Earth I decided to build the darn thing.

I took some of my lumber, whole bunch of pictures I took and copy of a blueprint I got on Burnsland.com and went to work. I had figured that the support legs would be the most dificult portion of the build and they did not disappoint. I used all kinds of colorful words as I cut each piece of oak. Did you know oak is MEGA pain to cut with a hand saw? Well it is! It likes to bind up the saw big time.

There are 12 support legs with diagonal cross bracing that seems to go every which way. As for the build I'll describe this in a diferent post right now I just going to show what can be accomplished in a night if you got some time to kill.

The Surveyors have Found Quicksand!

Well, thought this section was all figured out but leave it to the women folk to SNAFU that plan! The original plan was for the track to exit the tunnel and go straight across the front of the cabinets but my wife and her mother thought it would be more "interesting" to swing back into the wall but the problem was a stress bearing strut that couldn't be removed nor cut into. So the widest shelf would need to be placed here. But the biggest problem was that this wide shelf would be a lot of dead space that needed filling.

I had the problem of the tunnel that was coming out of the wall. I had to somehow transition this scenery that was seamless and made sense. So just sticking a building here was not going to work and my typical rock cliff was going to look funny making a sudden 90 degree turn. I decided that I would just have to make a large mountain but how do I make it interesting? Time to whip out the pen and paper! Hey where's my pen?

As I was whipping out a quick sketch to figure out what I wanted to do, it quickly became apparent that not only would I need to make the mountain but I would need to place and carve the tunnel exit/entrance that would incorporate my scratch built rock shed. I finally finished my sketches and got a very tentative OK from the CFO. So armed with a armload of Styrofoam blocks a hot glue gun and my handy dandy foam cutter I ascended the ladder, OK I ascended a couple of times; I may be crazy but I'm not stupid! Safety First after all.

This is how to build the mountain... measure, cut, glue then repeat. Its pretty simple really if you ever stacked anything like wood blocks, cardboard boxes, rocks, or a cheer leading squad you can build a big white (or pink if your going that route) basic mountain. The real trick is the carving. I shall now reveal to you my semi loyal readers the trick to foam cutting that was given to me by this nut case at a train convention in Ontario California.
Number one, plug in the foam carver
Number two, turn on the foam cutter
Number three, start carving small pieces of foam off the mountain, don't go big at first. This is where the old carpenters mantra kicks in, it's easier to cut out more than put it back on.
Number four, take a step back every now and again and check your progress, if you have drawings and photos check them at this time to see how well it's looking
Number five, this is the most important part... DO NOT TOUCH THE HOT END!

Now as you carve your masterpiece of foam you will (notice I don't say probably) find places that the foam just did not come together and has left small and large voids. To get rid of these voids we employ woodland scenic foam putty, just filling the voids, the separations between foam sheets or those pesky little acne scars you've had since high school.

After the holes are filled now you have to let the putty dry THOURGHLY before we paint. So let's take a break and play a little Red Dead Redemption!

Time to answer some comments

1. Yes it will be a complete circle. Just got to rebuild the bloody kitchen
2. No heat is not an issue, we live in Arizona. The question should be "you live in Arizona why do you need a chimney?
3. No I am not interested in a years subscription to National Geographic.

Make the mountains. or should we call em cliffs?

Ok now I am standing here we've just hung the first shelves and everyone is looking at me like I even know what the heck I am going to do. Like I said earlier I had only ever attempted the old stand by of hard shell scenery. I had decided early on to use flex track and some foam but I had NEVER used them and on my previous oval of track I had used nothing but sectional track. So like a never fearing soldier I plunged right in and started building (cue the inspirational music) NOT!!!


I FLIPIN' PANICKED BIG TIME! What the heck had I got myself into? I can't build a layout. Maybe I should Just put up some track and nobody will notice that its JUST a circle of track, ya that's the ticket! Better yet I will go play some video games in my room and everyone will forget we were going to put track up there, hopefully they wont notice the bloody big hole in the chimney either.



So we have 2 ways of doing this 1st we could just start putting up foam and just start carving it with the hot wire tools or 2nd we could grab some paper and a pencil and draw out some ideas before carving the foam up. I am sortta leaning toward the paper idea. Now that I have settled on my way of doing it thats just what I did but of course I still needed to OK all drawings with the wife. After some drawings are done its time to lay foam right? Wrongo! Now we need to make some scale models and rough builds to make sure the dang thing look as good as the do on paper and will fit where I'm planning on putting it. Now when your in the design phase that is when you'll figure out the the best time to paint it. some pieces need to be done on the workbench others will need to be done in place. Now I am not saying that the design phase will make screw up stop, the wont! But it WILL minumize the possibility of a truely massive screw up.



Now its time to build the real thing. Hey if your lucky it might even be the design piece that you use. Carving is straight forward. Start by turning one the wire. (you don't know how many times I've screwed up step one!) Once its hot start gouging out pieces of foam. START WITH SMALL BITES! Its easier to take a little bit more out than try to put something back one that you stupidly cut off. While cutting have pictures of real rock that your trying to replicate dont worry that it doesn't look quite right when you start out the first few times you will get better and a hot wire tool is very easy to learn with.



Once your done carving get some Gesso and cover the rock you just carved it will suck up a lot of gesso, but Gesso is cheaper than paint. The paint will cover way better with the Gesso than without you will think you've got good coverage but when it dries you will notice where the paint missed the nooks and cranies. After you paint your base cover now you need to make a wash of black paint and in my case water. Now repaint this wash over your whole surface the wash will fill in all the low spots on the cliff face. after that dries you get to dry brush the rock face to bring out the highlights. It sounds complicated but pretty soon you'll have it down pat. Now your ready for ground cover but thats a differant post.

Phules Gold Mining Co. Open for Business

I named the railroad the Phules Gold and Yensid Valley Railroad so I think that meant I needed a Gold Mine. So in a little tucked away corner I was already having problems deciding how I was going to land scape I decided to build my small mine operation.

First I took a piece of 2" foam and drew out the placement of the tracks then I went and cut it with my hot wire tool until it fit pretty dang close. I wanted a cliff that was really close to the track so multiple cuts and re-measures were needed to get this done. Once the first layer was complete I then stacked some more 2" foam on the first piece like a layer cake. One last check for clearances and it was time to glue the pieces together with a hot glue gun. A note about hot glue make sure its OK for foam my first glue gun was too hot and it just melted the foam.

After the glue had set it was time to shape the cliffs with the hot wire tool. Now if you want a horizontal entrance its best to shape it in BEFORE you glue the pieces together I mean the hot wire tool will cut a mine entrance but its going to be pretty ragged and a real pain to get to look good. Don't ask how I know this just remember "If at first you don't succeed just rip the damn thing out and try again, and again, and again.

The horizontal mine was going to need some painting to hide the bright white of the foam. So I grabbed some black paint and painted the inside of the hole. I then built a trestle and laid some code 83 rail on it for the mine carts and a mine entrance to kinda hide the black hole.

I then built a gallows frame for the vertical shaft that had pulleys that I strung with thread to look like the cables that run down into the mine shaft. Now it was time to paint the hill and place it.

Making Mountains out of Mole Hills or in this Case Foam

Making scenery can be the one of the most daunting aspects to building a model railroad. I read a whole libraries worth of books and magazines to figure out how they built these amazing models but to be honest they can be pretty confusing to say the least. Every author has a different view on how to make scenery. I had previously tried my hand at hard shell scenery but quickly grew discouraged with it because of the mess and I quite frankly hated the look of it. So I shelved the idea of a model railroad.
Skip forward 6 years and my wife had a porcelain Christmas village she wanted to set up under the tree. So we went to the store to look at some accessories for her village and they had a video on how to build department 56 villages with Styrofoam. We then built a mountain out of foam that my G scale train ran through. But again the same problem of mess was there. they said on the video to use knives to cut the foam but the bead foam just made a heck of a mess and it stuck to me, the carpet, the walls, heck even the ceiling. I got banished outside if I needed to cut anymore foam and December is a sucky month to be banished outdoors in Utah.
Last year we again put a village under the tree but we are now using On30 that scales properly with the village unlike the G scale which is like twice as big as the buildings. we had managed to acquire a hot wire tool from department 56 that we used to build some hills but to be honest I wasn't that impressed with it. It was hard to use and couldn't cut that thick of foam but it did not make near the mess that knives did.
Now we move to 2009 and I'm at The Big Train Show and my wife and I see this booth selling the Foam Factory hot wire cutter. they had this display set up that showed how easy it was to cut the foam in multiple thicknesses and densities. I was hooked but so was the CFO. She plunked down the plastic and we caught a flight home. Now it was time to play with some foam!
My Father in Law had built a test shelf to see how things would go together for the real layout and I started playing with different ideas on that shelf. I was excited at the possibilities my wife was excited and my Father in Law was excited. We now needed to lay a shelf. But hold on First we (that's my Father in Law and I with directions from my Wife and Mother in Law) needed to paint the room a different color.

The original color was brownish pink color highlighting the sun in all aspects to the arizona sky invoking the subtle color changes found here from sunrise to sunset the paint manufactures called it Desert Rose, My Mother in Law called it Butt Ugly (in so many words) and it had to go! She picked a more traditional Tan color and Lamont and I started painting but that desert Rose was not going to be covered up without a fight. 3 complete coats later we were ready to place the first shelves.