You bet Pete, I’ll be there to put it all together. My work table isn’t super flat, and the sections weren’t very well pushed together for that shot. But each module has leveling feet, and will be connected with screws.
Of course, there’ll be a line at the joints still, and for that I’ll do a little sprinkling of whatever to hide it some. Won’t last long, but it’ll be there for initial photos!
Speaking of sprinkling stuff, I’m setting up for scenic and was surveying the supplies. Between a big Woodlands Scenic order in February, and items picked up at NELSTS (some from Al Pomeroy), I kinda overbought…
I’ll expense only the percentage of what’s used (maybe 5 or 10%?), with the intention of having a decent stockpile for the next project.
A bunch of priming and painting needs to happen before these are applied, still figgering it out.
Omgram …get a HOBBY already Cliff!
Did the initial trestle painting today, also track pre-painting and laying.
Tomorrow I hope to do masking and other prep for the terrain base coat paint, which will be hand painted in various shades of acrylic.
Cheers,
Cliff
PS the track is painted dark brown to help the ties stand out (maybe). Hopefully the scenic powder will go between the ties and look like waste material from the tunnel. At least that’s the theory.
That Dude needs to be green 
This is going to be incredible Cliff. Can’t wait to see the next progress pics.
Cheers
N
I keep asking myself, what do I need to do before base coat painting and ground cover? And a long list of little things has come up. For example, I thought it might be a good idea to test-fit the buildings. And wow, yeah, a bunch of (minor) terrain knifing and filling ensued.
Also did thicker building footprints, once I realized my cricuted stickers would be tough to find under the groundcover.
The last one (so far) was, crap, I need to mark out where the roads were. Hadn’t thought about it! So between aerial pics and old maps, I’ve been penciling in roads and major paths. And changing my mind…
The maps suggest one thing, but the terrain (based on recent topo data) seems to suggest slight adjustments to my eyeballing. A sort of back and forth thing.
All this has led to terrain tweaks to accommodate said roads… which is still in process. A lot of erosion has taken place over the last 100+ years, so I’m taking the liberty of overriding the topo data where washouts were probable (in my opinion). Filling, sanding, repeat…
Kinda fun actually!
Cliff
Wow, what attention to detail! I am VERY impressed. It looks great but remember people will accept dang near anything that looks halfway correct; so don’t worry too much!
Cliff:
This is so fun to watch. Partly because it looks like a LOT of work and it’s always more fun to watch somebody else work than to do it yourself.
But mostly because you are a master craftsman committed to doing a fantastic job on this impressively complex and large project.
Two stupid questions (I mean really, these are stupid):
Oh, and one semi-serious question: are those gravel roads, and will be they be sceniced using your extensive collection of landscaping materials? Or are they asphalt or equivalent? Did they have asphalt during the period you are modeling?
Great job!
I’m running out of popcorn…
Thanks Bruce and Jim, very kind of you!!
Bruce, yeah, good advice. 
Jim, good question, the tunnel was 2 tracks wide but at some point (probably after all the construction work, with trains going in and coming out) they tore out the right side one.
Those are the first light tapes, though a few of them got knocked off while road building, haha!
The roads were all dirt and maybe gravel in some areas… Hard to say exactly. Yeah, I’ll paint them a gray first, then apply different dirty / gravelly scenic stuff on them.
Thank you much, and thanks for asking!
You really need to kick the habit Cliff!
I think you’re going to need to include a stealthy qr code in the display somewhere to link to this thread so people can really see the back story…
It would be kinda fun to put a qr code on the maintenance panel area or something like that.
Great idea, Craig. I’m vaguely planning on a QR-based self-guided walk on the site (with little posts & labels with the codes) to explain more about the features once there, and that could easily tie in.
Yesterday and today I’ve painted the undercoats for the scenic materials.
Tomorrow and Tuesday, hopefully I’ll put down a good percentage of those materials. Probably won’t finish that, because each area needs to be carefully painted with glue before applying. Only after the glue is dry, and excess removed, can the next material have its glue painted.
But I can’t complain, it’s fun work! 
Cheers,
Cliff
Its interesting to compare your model to current satellite photos.
For sure. I used Google Earth a lot in the initial design investigation a year ago:
That hockey stick to the right is around two houses wide… kinda demonstrates how much material they removed.
Yesterday I got as far as getting the base texture layers on…
Not super thrilled, but gotta move on to the next step, which is ground foliage. Though I might tweak the roads more later on.
Nope!
I think the next step is to try and reuse what you have from your “mock up” so far. It “IS” a hell of a mock up but I think you are ready to build the real display for the museum now!
