Not a lot of progress on the layout at the moment. New track arrived tonight, along with a nice (second hand) set of Alco FA1/FB1 locos:
I’ve re-laid the track including a couple of bridge sections to I can fine tune the gradients and work out where the stream/river is going to go. You can see how the bridge sections line up in the photo below. The stream will run under those. I don’t really know where it will go after that though… maybe a small lake for cooling/processing water for the factory that I’ll stick on the ‘ground level’?
Next thing to do is lay out the yard (right about where the laptop is), then I think I’ll just wade into fixing the track down. I have a bit of a problem with the camber on the left hand uphill section. The hot wire I used has left that whole side sloping outwards a tiny bit. Might have a go at flattening it with the wire, and if that fails I’ll work out some way to prop up the trackbed to it is flat.
Shaping up nicely I think Ben, here’s yet another random tip – if you want to turn those cut polystyrene ‘cliffs’ into more natural looking rock faces, find some wood chips and spend some time pressing them into the polystyrene. If you angle the woodchips consistently while pressing you can get a nice sedimentary looking rock face. With a bit of careful painting you could end up with a representation of something like this. Alternately just say hang it all and actually bit your cliff face out of cut down woodchips.
hello coming on good what i came across with rock faces after using the hot wire effect was to mask off the area which isnt rock face, with tape and by using a can of clear laquer very lightly spray the rock surface and i mean lightly that will eat into the foamm jus enough to give it a more rugged effect, sray to heavy and you will melt a hole sraight through, try a piece of off cut first
That sounds like a good idea. The wire-cut faces are way too smooth. I was considering using some sort of filler or plaster, but your idea sounds much faster.