Sculpt-a-molding, Roads, and Fascia

A lot of progress was made this weekend, mostly on non-track related work. 

New Incline for "Red Line" (inside loop on lower level):
I originally had planned to have my new elevated section to be Unitrack up until the trestle (in foreground in below photo), but the limitations of the Unitrack radii forced me to resort to flex track for the incline.  The below photo is looking 'downhill' from the trestle with the flex track in place (the track underneath the bridge is the same line. This 'elevated section' is just an 'up and over', but should make the "red line" a lot more interesting than it used to be).

The advantage of flex track is that I can obviously have slightly curving runs.  The below shows the incline now looking 'uphill'.  As you can probably tell, I'm using Woodland Scenics risers for this purpose to get a nice smooth incline (albeit 3%):

The track is covered by standard cellophane tape while I apply Sculpt-A-Mold to the Styrofoam risers.  I add a bit of black and brown acyrilic paints to sculpt-a-mold while I'm mixing it to get a better 'ground color' (well, better than white), even though this will eventually be covered by foilage.

After the sculpt-a-mold dries, I'll come back and apply the ballast to this track section.

Roadway Extension:
One of my poorer choices when originally building this layout was running the track virtually up to the edge.  Not only does it create a lot of anxiety if there ever were to be a derailment in this area, but it looks so much nicer to have an area of scenery in the foreground of the trains.   This is a forgiveable sin, however, as the reason the tracks are so close to the edge is that I'm trying for the widest radius possible for my curves which, of course, look better!

On the long stretch of the layout where the freight yard will be, I've decided to add a roadway.  This was easily added to the layout by attaching a board underneath the layout.  I then added some Styrofoam for elevation, and have been using Plaster of Paris to create the initial road surface.

 I'm in the process of air-brushing a dark gray color to the Plaster of Paris to color and seal it up.  I'll have to reapply another coat of Plaster of Paris to fix a few areas, but its starting to finally look like a road now!

Why a road instead of natural areas?  This is a strategic decision to distract 'little hands'!  That does mean the road will have to withstand the 'play' of little tires on its surface though.  I think several coarts of paint and clear coat should do the job.

Fascia:
I've also added strips of 'fascia' around the perimeter of most of the layout.  I'm using 'sintra' (again), which is a great material for this purpose as its flexible, strong, and comes in a nice 'grey' color which is what I wanted.

With fascia in place, I've been using Sculpt-a-mold to fill in the gaps between the fascia and the layout, which should look really good when its all done.  The above photo shows another 'extension' as I mentioned above, this time its all natural!


"When its all done".  Well, that still seems a way off.  And truly, I have to admit that all of these photos show quite a mess in Quinntopia right now.   More mess is ahead as I need to finish off the track-laying, ballasting, then wiring.  Oh, and scenery.  Then I'll get to that cathedral and downtown....oh my.   I've really got a lot to do!