I have been focused on completing some of the basic scenery lately. Minus coloring rock castings, it has been coming along nicely. The rock coloring has been a struggle. At last week’s Great Train Expo show in Denver I picked up Darryl Huffman’s DVD titled “Easy Rock Casting and Coloring”. I […]

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A week or so ago I designed a cart in an article called “Clearing the Clutter” to provide a home for all of the model building supplies that always seem to end up on top of my layout.
This weekend I finished the project and I am happy to report it worked out well. […]

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There are often times where one is left with gaps or odd elevation changes where trying to use cardboard strip and plaster cloth scenery would not work and it is too large of a gap to cover with Sculptamold. Here is an example:

A solution that I have found is to use foam in a […]

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For many this is going to be a no-brainer but since I struggled with it, I thought I would share and hopefully prevent someone else from wasting money on rail joiners. Use Micro Engineering Code 83 Joiners! They fit perfectly and are very small in size which will be nice for future picture […]

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I have never used Sculptamold as I could not understand what was so special about it based on descriptions from magazine articles. It was described as a paper-mache like product. The only thing I could remember about paper-mache is that it smells and sometimes molds due to its organic nature. I used […]

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After completing the plaster cloth scenery, it was time to make some cliff faces using latex molds and plaster.

Here are a few tips:

Mix the plaster in approximately a 2 to 1 ratio of plaster to water. It seems that I have more problems with air bubbles if the plaster is thicker rather than thinner. […]

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I think it was Tony Koester that provided a good description of a Model Railroad layout: “World’s Longest Shelf”. As I have began working on scenery, finding a flat spot to set down spray bottles, plaster bowls, cups, rock molds, paint, brushes has become increasing difficult.
Tonight, I came up with the plan. It […]

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My friend Tom, emailed me on Friday to let me know that there was a Train Show up in Estes Park this weekend. Estes Park is neat little mountain town right outside of Rocky Mountain National Park. With the weather expected to be nice, Erin and I made plans to head up on […]

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