Missouri, Kansas, & Texas Railroad along the Missouri River by Cathead - 1/87 (HO) scale - model railroad with steamboat

[Rik Thistle]

Eric,

 

This is all quite fascinating and informative for me, especially since you have a backgound in how landscapes are actually formed. 

 

I look forward to each post (and Comments) on the bridge and tunnel scene taking shape.  Keep 'em coming, thanks.

 

Richard

[Cathead]

7 hours ago, Keith Black said:

Are you using any flame retardant chemicals in the mix?

Interesting question; absolutely not. (a) I don't want to personally work with anything like that, (b) they're all set with glue and not sitting around like a light flammable powder, (c) any broader fire risk comes from the extensive wooden benchwork, not a thin skim of glue-fixed natural material. 

 

2 hours ago, Rik Thistle said:

This is all quite fascinating and informative for me, especially since you have a backgound in how landscapes are actually formed. 

Thanks! It's definitely a challenge thinking through the real setting and trying to figure out how to translate it into a version that's simultaneously scaled down but also true to eye.

 

Having said that, I should have waited to post the results above. Shortly after I did, Mrs. Scenic Consultant came in from the garden and had a look. She agreed that the material was coarser than scale, but also had a very good idea how to adjust it. She suggested rubbing off some of the coarsest outer layer, which I tried, and it worked brilliantly. What happened was that the material that had truly embedded in the glue stayed, dulling the painted plaster surface and giving a sense of texture, but some of the material that was sticking up more and really looking coarse went away, making the grain/particle size less obvious. It's a bit hard to explain this change, but I tried a series of photos this morning to see if I could get the comparison across.

 

(1) Original painted plaster creek bank. Too smooth, uniform, and shiny, though the color and base shape are good:

 

(2) Sifted leaf and sand application. Improves the texture and complexity, kills the "shine", but a bit coarse (I started to realize that the flatter surfaces looked a bit like a power company wood chipper had been through). And the area along the creek bank is a bit too gravely for an area that in real life is mostly muddy rather than rocky:

(3) Same texture after the upper layer has been rubbed away. Now there's a more subtle blend of "powder" and coarser material dulling the surface, maintaining that complex natural non-plaster look, but less of the "wood-chipper and gravel" effect:

I thought (2) was fine until I saw what (3) accomplished, and that's now the new approach. The material that gets rubbed off can be collected and re-used elsewhere, so it's not a waste.

 

It's less fun if you're not learning!

 

[Keith Black]

21 minutes ago, Cathead said:

Interesting question; absolutely not. (a) I don't want to personally work with anything like that, (b) they're all set with glue and not sitting around like a light flammable powder, (c) any broader fire risk comes from the extensive wooden benchwork, not a thin skim of glue-fixed natural material.

I don't blame you a bit. Crazy factoid about cigarette tobacco is, of the 1,000 chemicals used in manufacturing cigarette tobacco, flame retardant is one the chemicals used. 

 

 The last two photos in the post above are very convincing. 👍

[NavyShooter]

I'm not a railroad guy, but damn....this is beautiful work.  Your subject matter is interesting, and the history that all of this ties together is amazing...from the tales of how grain elevators worked back in the day to your leaf grinding...wow!  Definitely following this thread going forward!  Great work!

NS
 

[kgstakes]

ground up leaves and small sticks make great looking scenery.  Ground foam (woodland scenics) and Scenic Express both have lots of scenery material to choose from.  You can make your own trees or you can also buy them.  I usually do a mix of scratch built trees and store bought trees.

 

Your scenery looks great!!  Keep up the good work, can't wait to see more.

[kgstakes]

Just some ideas for ground cover.  Most is woodland scenics some trees are scenic express and the pine trees are made by me and the big tree behind the building is made from a sagebrush branch and then ground foam for foliage.  Don't forget to add some branches or sticks as dead fall trees or dead standing trees.  Makes the scene more believable. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited 18 hours ago by kgstakes

[Cathead]

Thanks for sharing those great photos! You've done a nice job on your scenery. Do keep in mind that I'm modeling late fall / early winter, so a lot of the standard foliage products won't work for me. I also prefer to minimize the use of artificial stuff, though I'll certainly be using some. One of the reasons I'm focusing on this season is that it lets me use a much higher percentage of natural materials. But, for example, I intend to use some purchased static grass to help simulate the winter grasses so distinctive in this part of the world.

 

There will be plenty of fallen limbs/timber, especially along and in the creek. But on the other hand, keep in mind that this was the era when trees were at a minimum, so to speak, given the local demands for timber and firewood. Check out the historical photos posted earlier in the thread; the landscape was a lot more open than the lush regrowth people take for granted today. One of my interesting challenges will be balancing a historically accurate level of vegetation with an easily believed/accepted look, because modeling this truly accurately would make many modern viewers think it was farther west in, say, Montana, because they associate modern Missouri with lush (almost overwhelming) vegetation rather than the sparser "frontier" look it had around 1900.

[kgstakes]

very true years ago with steam locomotives and early settlements the landscape was totally different than it is today.

 

i lived in Colorado for many years and places in the mountains that are treed now were bare mountains back in the days of steam and mining.

 

i was just showing ideas and i forgot about the photos you were trying to create in miniature.  
 

you do nice work and look forward to the progress.