August 5, 2010

OK. I spent a few days mucking around with the new scenery area. I painted the rock outcroppings, applied all kinds of ground foam, crushed tea leaves, india ink alcohol, and some more paint to get to this stage. I got it to look like the older scenery area on the other side of the track. These two photos show the results.

It is now time to start working on the creek. I believe in working from the back to the front, and from the bottom on up on model railroads. I completed the back-to-front scenery base, so now it is time to work from the bottom on up. I scraped the bottom of the creek's plywood clean (it had been my temporary workbench while building the track), and then applied two coats of black latex paint.

Of course, a solid black creek bottom isn't very realistic, because it represents a very deep creek. Since this is near the beginning of the creek, it can't be too deep. I then painted several colors on top of the black. I started with a very dark green across most of the middle of the creek. Along the edges I painted various earth-tones, such as raw umber, raw sienna, etc. Generally the flow of a creek will leave more sediment near the edge where the flow isn't strong. I tried to mimic that by painting those parts wider. When all the painting was done, it still didn't really look like a creek. It needed rocks, but I didn't think the ones I had used in the scenery above were appropriate for the creek. A few days later I was going through one of my drawers when I discovered a bag of small decorating rocks I had bought at Michael's craft store. They come in a mix of colors that seemed appropriate for a creek or river. I placed those along the edges of my creek. I had also started to do some work in our backyard and found a couple of pebbles. I grabbed those that somewhat matched the smaller rocks and placed a handful of them along the creek. You can see one of them in the middle of the creek in the next photo. Afterwards, I sprayed all the rocks down with a 50/50 mixture of white glue and water. The next day all the rocks were firmly planted and I was left with this white residue on the painted surface. I left it there thinking that it might help make the water look more convincing (the residue eventually disappeared, though).

To give the creek a lived-in look, I decided to also add some debris, weeds, and dead branches here and there. The following photos show some close-ups of what I came up with from my parts box. By the recently-added 3-inch track extension bridge I glued a dead branch stuck on the trestle's poles, a small barrel, another twig, and some debris. The debris is hard to see in the photo (directly above the twig on the left), but it was some left-over clippings from removing some of the parts from a white metal sprue. I didn't paint them; just dropped them in place. All parts were glued down with a drop of superglue.

Reflecting brightly in the camera's flash, a piece of "glass" from an N-scale structure was used to represent a piece of broken glass that somehow wound up near the bridge's abutment. I used a pair of wire cutters to snap off small pieces in the corner. The pieces were glued right next to the glass. The cutter created a realistic broken effect.

The center pile of rocks in the middle of the creek has a washed up twig and a small crate.

The other bridge's abutment has some more washed up debris, such as an old tire and a couple of pallets. In the upper left corner of the photo you can see another tire that got stuck under the bridge.

In addition to man-made debris, there are also some weeds and a dead tree along the creek's edge. You can spend days adding more details such as these. However, my objective with these details was to only place those that would appear submerged or poking out of the water. More creek edge details will be added in the future when the area will be covered in bushes and trees.

Finally, it was time for the creek to receive some water. I bought a 32oz-kit of Envirotex Lite at Hobby Lobby. It was just enough for this creek. One evening I mixed up about 8oz of the material and made a thin layer. The instructions with the kit call this the sealing layer. It allows for air bubbles to come out of the material upon which the Envirotex is poured. The final layer took about 16 ounces and is drying as I am typing this. The photos below are of the final layer right after I poured it. I have used Envirotex quite a bit, so I'm comfortable working with it. The key is to have a small butane torch handy to heat up the air bubbles that want to escape but can't quite yet. I bought a torch from MicroMark years ago. Below is a collection of photos. This is not the final surface, however,

August 21, 2010

Flat water is fine for small puddles, but not for a creek. I used "Mod Podge", Gloss, to create some subtle waves. The material goes on white like white glue, but after about 30 minutes it starts to become transparent. I used a flat, stiff-bristle brush to apply the material and pushed it up to create the waves.

Along the track I poured some Envirotex epoxy in areas that would be puddles. I am trying to simulate that it rained the night before and so the next day there are puddles in some low-lying areas. Here's a close-up of one of them. You can see some on the other side of the track as well.

November 7, 2011

After about a year and a half looking at the creek, I just didn't like the results. The problem I found with "Mod Podge" (described above) was that over time the surface becomes very dull. I thought it was just dust, but even after I thoroughly cleaned it, the surface remained dull. I won't be using that method again. I also wanted more of creek feel and, since this is near the source of the creek, I wanted to be able to see the bottom of the creek. The bottom, of course, needs to be littered with rocks and gravel. I just didn't know how to effectively model that. One day I was working with vermiculite when I realized that it actually looks like scaled-down gravel. I covered the previous layer of the creek with a layer of vermiculite. Down the center of the creek I carefully distributed some Arizona Rock & Minerals' N-scale PRR ballast which seemed to create a more well-worn path of finer gravel. Next, I strategically placed some colorful rocks (as mentioned above) in areas of the creek where water speed would be slower. You can see what it looked at this point in the photo below. The creek looks like a dry-river bed. If you're modeling a desert area, you'd be done!

The next step was to lightly spray some water followed by thinned white glue to firmly glue everything down. I also started putting down some more scenery materials around the creek. Most of that was also glued down in a similar manner, so it was better to do that now before proceeding with the creek.

I let the glue dry overnight. The next day I mixed about a half a gallon of Envirotex Lite and poured it on the creek. This gave me about 3/8" of "water".

In the shadow of the trees you can see the creek bottom. In person, the creek looks very real. I am a lot happier with version 2 of the creek. When hobby funds allow, I plan to buy another set of 32 ounces of Envirotex Lite and add another layer of "water". Some of the larger rocks stick out above the water, but my intent was to have them be below the surface. I also want to insert some swimmers embedded in the next layer.

In some of the hard-to-reach areas I didn't get enough glue down and so some of the vermiculite floated while the Envirotex was drying. However, as it turns out all of the places where this happened were near where "pond scum" would reside anyay. This is a close-up photo of one such area. If you don't want this effect, make sure that everything is glued down and also consider vacuuming the area (I didn't do that).