2012-08-03 Update- Rock casting

Still working on connecting the upper and lower loops, and that means getting the bridges installed. Installing the bridges means getting some scenery below them in reasonable shape (not completely done, but basic stuff in place). And that means: rock castings. So without further delay, here we go: Rock castings (hydrocal, from 3 different molds) resting in place:

Yup, boring. Then I filled around them with Sculptamold. Why that product? 1) I'm lazy, and it's easy to work with; 2) I'm lazy, and with a little smoothing it looks like rocks.

Next, a black wash of el-cheapo acrylic paint. Rough guess on ratio is about 1:5 paint to water, maybe even thinner. At this point, the magic of color takes over. I'd been so used to working with plain white plaster that I forgot what it could look like. I was immediately impressed:

At this point, I was almost ready to say "good enough!". But the Rob Spangler Treatment involves more color, so off I went:

OK, that was worth it. It was looking so good to me that I had to work in some of my base color as well. All the tan ground sections will get dirt/foliage treatment of some kind.

I was pretty impressed with a couple of things: 1) how simple the method is; 2) how effective it is. I still have more color to add (some reddish tints- just a bit; and two shades of gray) but I'm really excited about how this is going so far.

2012-08-01 Update- portals, walls and abutments

Where does the time go? I can't believe it's been a month already since last posting, but at least I have progress to share. Bridges- my main goal for the month was to figure out my bridge situation. I was only half pleased with what I had for abutments. This time, MR saved me! A recent article by Pelle Soeberg talked about casting your own tunnel portals. That looked like fun, so I gave it a shot, with some surplus styrene sheet I had around. Instead of plaster, though, I used some cement from Home Depot (the stuff in the small box). I also added some fiberglass drywall tape as a sort of rebar (yes, at some point I am going to cast some with that in it and break it, so it looks like mangled cement wall- military diorama). That seemed to work ok:

While I was at it, I cast some retaining walls too. Then I thought: let's try this for my bridge piers as well. So I took my existing piers, which were a little oversize, flipped them, and made them into my molds. In went the cement, and out came some bridge piers:

I also knocked out some rock castings and put those in place. I'm ready to start coloring, a la Rob Spangler's great blog entries on MRH Magazine.