Adding Rock Castings to the South Branch of the Arkansas River Model 9FEB14

Cutting Mountains in Minutes Castings

Mountains in Minutes castings are still available in some places, like Gilbert's Hobbies in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. They are getting a little hard to come by, but an internet search turned up the Flexi-Rock castings that used to be made by I.S.L.E. Laboratories are now offered by Scenic Express. I like these castings. They are good generic rocks that can be cut apart or used in big pieces to create mountain details. The "Royal Gorge" casting is excellent for use on Colorado model railroads.

Coping with Cutting

I usually use a coping saw to cut out the sections that I would like to use. A coping saw allows me to do an accurate cut without too much effort. It is a flexible and inexpensive tool.

With a long cutting surface the blade can be turned in different directions to cut out the pieces. There is very little waste and the Mountains in Minutes castings are roughed out. The castings still need to be trimmed for an exact fit.

Making Room for the Castings

An X-Acto #5 knife is a good tool for cutting and shaping the styrofoam, especially with a chisel blade. The large handle of the #5 knife allows the pressure necessary to affect the cuts.

When fitting the Mountains in Minutes castings, some sanding will probably need to be done, especially if you are lining the edges of a mountain stream. I use 3-M sanding blocks for a lot of this kind of work. They come in different grits and it is good to have several on hand for model railroad projects. I hold the sanding block with one on the table and rub the bottom of the casting across the block. This will give a level bottom. It does not have to be perfect. The bank will be filled in with Arizona Rock and Mineral sand and gravel material, so the edges just need to be somewhat level. 

Checking How the Castings Go Together

I check the size as I go to ensure that the castings will fit well and not obstruct the train movement.

I interlocked the pieces and test fit them. I played with placing some of the extra castings on the outside of the curved roadbed to see what the river course would look like. Notice that - as on real streams- the watercourse broadens as it leaves the confines of the canyon. In this case, this add to the apparent length of the stream with the converging lines of forced perspective.

The Renaissance Tool of Perspective

Imagine a vanishing point about a foot past where stream turns to come out of the canyon. This is where the converging lines of the river bank would meet. This is a tool of the artist who paints on canvas to give the appearance of depth to a scene. Since a modeler can work with three dimensions in space, using forced perspective creates an additional illusion of a deeper scene. 

This overhead shot shows the process of putting together the elements of the canyon and the railroad so that they will work together to draw the viewer into the illusion. Next steps including adding a grade to the stream up the canyon and working with various materials to smooth the bottom and edges of the stream.

Painting a Model Railroad Stream Bed Part 2 8FEB14

Paint Washes Over a Model Stream Bed for Realism

If you have been following previous blog posts, the next step in creating a realistic stream bed is to put a wash over the stream bottom that matches the source soils and rocks of the sediment. Think of what is about a quarter mile or several miles upstream. What is eroding and falling into the stream? On a very gentle stream in farm country, it might be top soil or cow manure. In an industrialized area it might be colorful oils and chemicals. In steeply falling mountain streams, rocks and gravel are tumbling in or grinding down to sand in a quartz area.

The South Branch of the Arkansas River has a lot of grays. I covered the gray part of the coloring process in the blog posting, Painting a Model Railroad Stream Bed Part 1 7FEB14.

Now, I would like to add some colors that you see in Chaffee County, Colorado. I wanted to mix a custom color that simulates the sunlight hitting some of those rocks.

The Color of Light

Here is where light enters into the model picture. Why is it when you see something in real life that it seems different than the color photographs taken of the area? The human eye perceives things differently than film - or digital. The reflected light coming off an object is subject to interpretation by the biology of the eye. There are filters in the human eye that make the world seem different to us. Even our brains are trained to perceive the world in a predetermined manner. This is what gave birth to Impressionist Painting.

The time of day can make a huge difference, too. You might have heard of the "Black Canyon of the Gunnison" on the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. The rocks were not black. The sun beamed down into the canyon only from certain angles or during particular times of the day. So things seemed like a dark gray. 

Check Your References

When you look at the pictures in a publication by Morning Sun Books, like Rio Grande Narrow Gauge in Color, 1947-1959 Empire Contraction and Railfan Discovery, the original slides - usually Ektachrome or Kodakchrome - are over 50 years old and have a color bias. Bob Yanosey and his staff do a great job of color correction, but the variances of color - particularly in the scenery - are noticeable. The time of day, season and even the storage conditions of the slide collections can affect the final color on the printed page.

Videos can offer a view of scenery, even if you catch this scenery in passing. I have watched the Colorado Narrow Gauge in the 1950s by Pentrex a gazillion times. This color video story of railroading on the Marshall and Monarch Passes has some wonderful detail shots of the scenery I am modeling. There is even a fleeting stream bed shot from the steam locomotive when it goes over a trestle.

 Mixing the Color

After really studying Chaffee County, Colorado, I realized I needed to layer on a color that I mixed by eye using Yellow Ochre and Raw Sienna. For this I used Windsor Newton Acrylics. You can get these colors in the Art Department of Gilbert's Hobbies in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

After mixing the colors, I picked up a glob on my paint brush and stirred it into some distilled water that I put into a recycled tuna fish can. We keep distilled water for a lot of things around the house, but tap water will do, too. The distilled water ensure consistency. You never know what is flowing out of a public water supply.

I squeezed out just a tiny bit of Mars Black tube acrylic onto the table immediately behind the stream bed I had painted so far. Then, I tested the wash over the edge and it seemed to be about right.

Washing the Wash

I painted a layer of wash over the entire stream bed, in the direction of the stream current. Before it dried, I quickly brushed it down stream with a paper towel.

Tinting the Top

I repeated the process several times, adding smidges of Polly Scale Engine Black shadows, and Polly Scale Undercoat LT Gray and Reefer White highlights. I freely mix tube acrylics with Polly Scale paints for scenery purposes. After a while, the painted stream bed started to look like it had a channel and dropped off in layers. 

Really, the stream is not as deep as it looks here. That is an optical illusion. I spread some wash tinted with Mars Black in the center channel.

Paint Out the Brush

I had some extra color left over, so I spread it around and colored the HOn3 Tru-Scale Roadbed from Trout Creek Engineering. Having been in the U.S. Navy, I was trained in the "if it doesn't move - paint it" philosophy. I even brushed the paint out of the brush before cleaning it. Having Irish heritage, I can't waste anything.

Painting a Model Railroad Stream Bed Part 1 7FEB14

CREATIVE VISUALIZATION

One of the most important steps in the process of creation is visualization. The Disney Studios used the term "imagineering" to design the wonderful world of Disney. In Anaheim, on the screen and around the world, people can enter a fantasy land that existed in the minds of creative geniuses.  This is because they create an image in their minds and translate that image into reality. 

As a project evolves, I like to continually compare scale size to whatever I am working on. On the Monarch Branch of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, I am working in HO scale with narrow gauge. That's HOn3. It is 1/87 scale size. So, one foot of model equals eight-seven feet in real life.

It can be hard to wrap the brain around this proportion. To overcome that mind boggler, I bring in something of a known size. In this case it is a Blackstone Models passenger car. I've ridden the prototypes of these cars. I know what they look like from the inside and the outside. In my mind I have established a sense of proportion - of what the size of the real passenger car is like.

Putting a 1/87th size model of a Jackson and Sharp narrow gauge passenger car on a tabletop tells me what size everything else should be. For me, this sometimes works out better than a scale ruler for figuring out how big a stream should be.

HOW BIG IS A STREAM?

As a "head-check" think of how many feet wide a stream is. Whatever measurement you came up with, you are probably correct. I've seen tiny and big streams. So, without going out to a stream and pulling a tape measure across it, you should be able to establish how big a stream should be by placing a known object near it.

To establish the stream, I sanded off the base paint I had put on the benchwork a while ago. The course of the stream became pretty clear. The next thing I did was mix up a color that was just a little lighter than black, but without looking gray. This would give the stream bed depth. Even though the first batch of this color was mixed by hand, I have since gotten a quart of a close match at Lowe's.  It is Olympic One Flat, D43-6, Black Elegance.

WORK UP FROM BLACK

I first learned the trick of starting with a black base coat on models while painting miniature figures for Le Petite Soldier shop in the French Quarter of New Orleans. It was my high-school job that the owner's son, Mike Weil had gotten me into. Mike - and his Dad, Don - taught me a lot about professional model building. I made a lot of mistakes back then and they both had the patience to help me fix them.

From the black base coat they taught me that it was easy to add colors that had shadows and depth. These are both necessary qualities for a stream bed that is often missing in the model format.

In order to get a fast start on the next layer, I used a hair dryer to speed up the process. After a couple of minutes of sweeping the hair dryer back and forth over the painted surface, I was ready to begin adding highlights.

In a typical Colorado stream, the water crosses submerged rock. Between the rock, sediment in the form of soils and gravel gathers. This is what creates the rippling water and white water of a typical mountain stream. The painting of this underlying rock is a critical step before adding rock material or water.

VISUALIZE THE STREAM BED

So imagine a base layer of big rock that has yet to be worn away by the action of the current. Then think of the rocks that tumble down and perhaps even stick up above the water level.  Small rocks, sand, soil and other detritus gather wherever there is an obstruction. If you have ever gone white water rafting, you know these details and how they influence navigation on the waters.

To represent the rock underneath the stream, I started with Polly Scale Undercoat LT Gray.  I thought of the direction of the current - which way does the water flow? As a stream makes a curve, what happens to the water? How would the rocks wear away through erosion? What is the center channel and what are the details of the edges? You can see some of my ideas, below.

Anxious to get on with the painting, I pulled out the hair dryer and sped up the drying process with the sweeping motion of the heat.  This dried the Undercoat LT Gray layer.

Then, I used some Polly Scale Gray Violet to give contrast to the rocks I had painted before. I painted the edges of the other rocks, almost like adding shadows. I went through this process fairly quickly.

THE SECRET OF LAYERS

Then, I did something shocking. While the gray violet paint was still wet, I got out a paper towel and brushed down the entire area of the stream - longitudinally - matching the downstream current of the water. This gives the bottom of the stream a feeling of flowing. There is implied movement when you look at the results. This also blends the gray violet over the Undercoat LT Gray rocks.

I went back and touched up some of the areas that had smudged too much. Not much touch up was required. The blending effect works well.

I should mention that I had sanded the center channel a little more than the banks. You can see the deepening in the center in this bottom photo. But, that depression is not as deep as it looks. I drew on the layers of the edge so that it would look like the shelves of water that would be cascading down. This is not quite a waterfall, but will look good in this location.

I will post my next step soon. I have another trick to show you that implies movement in the next blog. We're not done, yet. There are a lot of steps to go.