Large Scale Central

In-ko-pah RR: The Dos Manos Depot

Modeling
#141

There are times with a project this big, that it really starts to feel like it’s sitting on my head and crushing it. This is one of those times. :slight_smile: I had hoped to be a lot farther along on the depot by now, but there’s been too many other things going on and even when I do get to work on it, it just seems to take forever. But anyway, I finally started making some progress on painting the “stone” walls of the depot. I began by giving all the walls a coat of thinned, sandstone-colored house paint:

Next I brushed on a dark concrete color. Before it dried I wiped it off with a paper towel, being careful to leave as much paint as possible in the mortar lines. This has to be done one small area at a time, or else the paint will dry before you can wipe it off:

The walls are supposed to look like a very light sandstone, similar to this:

So I had to go over each stone with another coat of sandstone paint, using a fine brush. I mixed in a small amount of white to lighten it slightly, and varied the mix so that the stones aren’t all exactly the same shade:

Next I applied thin washes of various shades of rust and brown. To finish it off, I lightly dry-brushed the whole face of the wall with a mix of white and sandstone. I still need to go in with an extra fine brush to touch up some of the mortar lines, but I’ll do that later:

That’s one wall done, and only about 37 quintillion more stones to paint. Or so it seems. :slight_smile:

I did get started on the next portion:

#142

Marvelous! (http://largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-wink.gif)

#143

Beautiful job !

#144

See I mean who paints individual stones in multiple washes? Oh wait Ray does and that’s why he’s the master.

#145

Devon yes he is. I am still trying to paint my 3 flat cars.

#146

I don’t think there are words to describe the skills on display here. Great work, Ray.

#147

Ray Dunakin said:

BTW, if you guys would like to see some really insane interior detailing, check out this 1:22.5 scale engineering office. It has four operational drafting tables, with operational drafting arms (not sure the correct name for these), working desk lamps, etc etc:

http://www.finescalerr.com/smf/index.php?topic=1983.345

(Scroll down a bit to see the pics.)

Ray, this Volker dude from Germany I hadn’t seen before but that’s amazing work, and there’s some other fellows over there who build some unbelievably realistic models. Anders, who goes by the name Junior I think, Chuck Doan of course, who is in a world of his own, and several others. I’ve been a member there for a while…at least you can take part in that forum. Myself, I think my work when I put my mind to it is okay, but I would be scared of being laughed out of the room for showing the stuff I do for my railroad. I won’t even comment on anything there.

#148

Ray

How did you do the arches without a keystone? I know it may not be needed in certain applications but trying to understand the structure and perhaps it was sub contracted out like the cornice moulding was ?

BTW …I love it!!!

#149

Rooster, just because you live in “The Keystone State” doesn’t mean that everyone else has the same fixation with keystones as you do.

#150

On Saturday we had an open house for our club, the San Diego Garden Railroad Society. Although the depot wasn’t finished, I put it out anyway and got a few photos of it on the layout:

Then back to work… I needed to find a way to paint the stone walls faster. I decided to try dry brushing the base color to get most of the stones covered, then just touch up by hand as needed. I tested this out on a wall inside the covered waiting area, where it wouldn’t show too badly if it didn’t work out. Fortunately it worked pretty well and did speed things up a little. Here’s the wall after two coats of paint dry-brushed on, followed by touching up individual stones:

Next I added various shade of color to a few random stones, then finished it off by lightly dry-brushing the highlight color. It ended up a good match for the one wall I had previously painted the slower way:

With that settled, I continued on to the more prominent walls, taking up where I had left off. In this photo, on the left are the stones that were hand painted. On the right is an area where I’ve applied one coat of dry-brushed color:

Here’s the same wall after a second dry-brushed coat and touch up:

And here it is finished:

Another area done the same way:

And here are a couple shots of how it looks so far. Still have a lot to do but at least it’s progressing at a somewhat more tolerable rate:

That’s all for now. Enjoy!

#151

Not only do I like your work but you are very good at photographing it as well. I am just learning how to do model photography. Are you using any special lense?

#152

Thanks, Devon. I’m just using a pocket camera. It’s a Canon Powershot SD880 with a wide angle lens that has a macro setting for close ups.

#153

Well you set your POV shots up very well.

#154

Fantastic work as always.

#155

THAT is a work of art!!!

#156

I love the stonework. Just awesome!

#157

I think someone just has too much time on his hands.

That is just incredible work.

#158

Beautiful work, Ray.

#159

Well, after a lengthy hiatus to deal with family issues, I’m finally starting to get back into modeling and have made some more progress on the depot…

First off, I finished painting all of the tan-colored, random sandstone. I also painted the balconies to look like concrete, and painted the wooden beams, rafters, and eaves a dark brown. I painted the roofs too, and also put on a coat of base color on the large quarry stone blocks. Here are some pics of how it looks so far:

The sunlight really brings out the texture of the faux stone:

The structural frame of the bay window has been painted white, then slightly weathered:

The flat roof over the waiting area was given a “tar and gravel” treatment. I painted on a couple coats of flat black house paint. While the final coat was still wet, I sprinkled on some white, decorative stone grit from the craft store:

The Spanish tiles were painted a terra cotta color, with subtle variations are several random tiles:

I’m planning to give the quarry stone blocks a colorful, banded sandstone look, similar to the blocks on the Nevada Northern’s depot in Ely, NV:

However, I want to change the color a bit. I’d like to match the colors in this sandstone fragment I brought home from one of my Nevada trips a few years ago. Below is a test piece. The color is very close but not quite there yet:

That’s all for now. Enjoy!

#160

The depot has come together quite nicely, Ray. In several of the photos, it’s hard to tell it is a model. The stone work looks like a stone mason laid every stone. I certainly enjoy seeing your models. Thanks for sharing.