Eastern Tn logging on the DG CC & W RR 1928

SML Falls, fetting there.jpg SML Tom's bend .jpg SML upstream in Tom's Bend.jpg
steamhead said:
So...this acrylic compound dries hard..?? I often find myself rushing to get the plaster in place before it starts to harden, and then have little chance of sculpting it. Sounds as if this stuff would be good to lay over the plaster and fiddle with it to get the effect I want. Thx. for the heads up...:thumb:
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That is correct, it dries hard, and can be carved. With the problem you described with plaster, the best solution is a type of hydrocal called dental stone, that I used to get from U S Gypsum. It may be possible to get it through a dental supply outfit.

It is forgiving about the water mix, and will dry hard no mater what; you can make it soupy, and it still dries hard the coolest thing about it is most plaster, once it is set, if you get it wet again, it will soften and never return to it;s full hardness. The dental stone, however will return to full harness; so if it sets up on you, you can dose it with a spray bottle to soften it up enough to work (the stuff is hard!), and when it dries out, it returns to full hardness.

another real advantage is when you work it when it is damp, it thinks it is rock, and if you break off a chip, it breaks off looking like rock, a real advantage.

a disadvantage of the dental stone is it weighs a ton! not for portables!


I just got done using the acrylic modeling compound it fill in some of the cracks in the foam and between the foam and the plaster. while I was at it I used it to add some texture to some of the plainer foam rock strata. very useful stuff

Bill Nelson

enclosed are photo's showing the sander's Gorge waterfall, and Tom's bend that just got it's maintenance dose of acrylic gloss medium
 
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SML Fl wx.jpg sml lgpnd.jpg Furture floor wax

Ok this is weird, on the Yahoo Hon3 list there was a bunch of discussion on modeling water, with most folks being wedded to the epoxy method. Some folks have been doing acrylic water with Future floor wax.

Now in my big river and in my big log pond I was getting a little too much texture with the gloss medium, it was showing brush strokes, so I tried some Future floor wax. I need some more coats, but it shines up well, and seems to be more self leveling than the gloss compounds. here are two pictures. I want to add some more layers to continue to smooth out these bodies of water.


Bill Nelson out
 
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Bill Nelson said:
Ok this is weird, on the Yahoo Hon3 list there was a bunch of discussion on modeling water, with most folks being wedded to the epoxy method. Some folks have been doing acrylic water with Future floor wax.

Now in my big river and in my big log pond I was getting a little too much texture with the gloss medium, it was showing brush strokes, so I tried some Future floor wax. I need some more coats, but it shines up well, and seems to be more self leveling than the gloss compounds. here are two pictures. I want to add some more layers to continue to smooth out these bodies of water.


Bill Nelson out
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Hi Bill,

I had read about the Future Floor wax before. Good to see it in use. Looks good so far. I would be interested in a f/u picture after a few more coats. We can consider this "new" technique for the large log pond at the Patterson sawmill on the club layout.

Tom:wave:
 
The ripples are remains of the brushmarks from the gloss medium. I am hoping that the floor finnish stuff has a harder surface to it and my steamboat won't stick to it, time will tell


Bill
 
Nice job on the water Bill. I have used floor finish before with great results. Did you tint yours or just paint the bottom effects on the bottom before pouring as I do. The one problem I had with floor finish is because I build on 2-4" foam panels sometimes as small modulars & then place them on the layout & build around them the water area cannot flex at all or it will crack.:eek: This can be prevented by making the water area more stable with plywood instead of pouring on top of foam as I did. Have you guys put any logs in the water yet. I cut slivers off the top length of the logs,glue them to the bottom & pour slightly around them. That gives good results.That's the only method I have tried, would like to see your method.
:thumb:
 
I started with a masonite surface, and painted it green, I then coated it with five or six coats of gloss medium. Then I left the steamboat in the same place for a couple weeks, and it stuck when I finally moved it. It came off, but left white paint stuck on the surface of the river, so I had to paint out the white paint, and add more layers of gloss medium.

Throughout that process, it seemed the brush strokes just got mote and more pronounced. In the whitewater that helps build the illusion, but it was working the other way.

so in answer to your question the surface is painted, and I had mixed some washes in with the gloss medium to give the illusion of the underwater bank, and the future floor wax makes a smoother layer on top, and enhances the depth illusion, buy putting it deeper in the finish.
 
SML tngsnactn.jpg SML TwSP #1.jpg SML TwSP #2.jpg meanwhile back in Terrapin

I'ts here!

I need to modify the log trestle behind the loading landing, so that a string of log cars will rest under the Surry parker. It is not tied down yet, but miraculously there seems to be room for the lines.

Note : no one but me is allowed to try to re rail a log car in front of the Surry Parker! this is a serious tangle of cables!

Now I need to work on woodpiles barrels oil cans lunch boxes, and recruiting a crew for the Surry parker and the big donkey project. It is going to keep quite a number of guys busy feeding and caring fot these beasts!.


Bill Nelson
 
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That sure is a tangle of cables....!!! Can't believe how "real" that log hook looks going about its business....:thumb:

That holding pond looks deader than the Dead Sea...Good job...!!
 
Oh! and the riverboat sticks to the future floor wax too. I caught it in time I was able to repair the damage easily. now I'm trying polyurethane on the river . so far it doesn't look as good, but I really want to be able to move the riverboat around to suit my whims.
 
Great scene!!!

That's an amazing scene there Bill!!

Will have some little people for you to look over at Choo Choo club tomorrow. Maybe some can be put to work on your rigs.

Dr Tom:wave:
 
a scene that took two generations to produce

ytter_man said:
Simply awesome. Combining all that rigging must've been soooo worth it, as the pics show :thumb:[/quote

To quote Elvis "Thank you very much."


on one level, this whole scene is accidental. My railroad was planned with nothing in Terrapin but a passing siding. The passing siding was too small though and was a real pain in the *** as I tried to establish some operations. When I was redesigning the passing siding (the only one on the mountain) I decided to add six inches to that end of the layout and try to fit in a logging camp.


once I started down that path though, I felt a strong need to do it right. My dad was a life long train nut. as a student @ Yale graduate school of Forestry, he was exposed to field work at a steam logging operation down in Louisiana (where he met my mom). His whole professional life was all about forestry, and with his love for trains he collected every book he could find on rail logging operations. Dad was to busy for most of his life to do much with model trains, but when he went on business trips, he came home with model railroad magazines, and he put those in my hands before I could read.

When I thought John Allen's shays were interesting, Dad delivered a whole book case of logging railroad books , and my studies began. My dad wasn't much of a builder, but he knew the subject
from the standpoint of a man who had worked in the woods next to the log trains. My mom, and some of my sisters were artists, and made the connection that modeling was an art form, and they worked at teaching me what they knew, and how to look at pictures of my models, and comepare them with pictures of the real thing, and work to fix what looked different. Some art classes at the University of the South @ Sewanee Tn taught me more, and the enviorns of the Cumberland plateau provide the model for the geology of Iron Mountain.


That scene is a big anchor for the logging theme on my RR. It and the big trees up on Terapin Knob , as well as the reload off the narrow gauge make the big logs on the log trains look resonable. (I remember one time my Mom, comming down to my railroad, picking up a log from a log load, and then reaching out to the biggest tree on my RR, and ripping it out of the ground. She held the tree up to the log (the log was about three times the diamater of the trees; and she said "Where are you getting these logs?-- She then sat down and showed me how to make a wire armature model tree that was bigger than any comercially available, and look real good too.)

The machinery involed in this camp is some of my finest work so far, and it is odd, as that used to be a week suite for me, but they taught me to work on my deficits, and I'm learning lots of new stuff still. And it is still fun.


Bill Nelson
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river experiments

I have been experimenting with polyurethane on the river in Harlow. so far it doesn't look as good as the acrylic techniques I have used elsewhere, but it is hard enough that the Riverboat doesn't stick to it. I had some problems with surface irregularities that kept getting bigger and bigger with each coat, but I have minimized that by lightly sanding the river between coats. I'm going to get some glossier polyurethane and see if that helps the look. It will be nice If I can put the riverboat on the river and leave it there, but also be able to move it around. if I can do that then perhaps I can make a barge for logs, and maybe one for coal as well.

Pictures when I get them. I keep studying Harlow, but I haven't figured out a good way to put a siding along the river yet, so it will probably not happen Harlow is already a mess and barely operable.

Bill Nelson
 
SML riverboat#1.jpg Sml rivrbt #2.jpg river looks good!

the polyurethane works ok. the gloss stuff is shinny enough. no where near as self leveling as the acrylic, but much harder . The riverboat doesn't stick woo Hoo!

I noticed while resizing the picture that the Southern Railway river bridge, which is removable for maintaining the track under it, has been bumped by a passerby (almost certainly me) and is not centered on the pilings. The locomotive is off the rails too, probably from the same impact, as it was straddling the rail joint between the bridge and the rest of the Southern mainline, which is purely for looks, is less than five feet long, and does not have any power hooked up.

I'm posting two pictures , one from near waterlevel, which shows reflections well, and one from up above, the usual angle for viewing this lower deck (level #2 of 5 ). look at the top of the smokestack on the Harlow Waterworks building (inspired by a similar building in Clarksville) there is a piece of all-thread hidden in the smoke stack that, along with another hidden in a tree on a cliff on the other side of that peninsula, support and stabalize the overhang of the Gizzard up above on level 4.




The riverboat can now be left on the water, so I can start thinking about docks, and maybe a coal barge and a log barge .


Bill Nelson
 
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SML trck W nw pnt jb.jpg SML unrestored truck.jpg SML prt ol lg.jpg SML PP monument.jpg truck restoration

Many long years ago, The Parrot oil Co. decided to try to expand northward from Gorre Co Tn. to Gravestone Co. Tn. I painted up a woodlands scenics tank truck in the bright colors of Parrot oil Co, and painted up an tank car similarly and shipped them over to Dr. Tom's railroad. An oil tank for a oil distributor, and some gas pumps, signs ext for a gas station were to follow.


However the tank truck, like most other vehicles on the other side of Sand Mountain, got excessively dirty very quickly. soon the parrot oil livery (green and yellow) were invisible, as was the signage, and the Parrot oil logo ; the Parrot Oil Co. abandoned it's plans to expand into a county where they couldn't keep the equipment up to company standards.

This Monday night I received a box of goodies from Dr Tom @ the train club meeting. In that box, was all the pieces of that Parrot oil truck, which had rusted into an unrecognizable truck, but was now back in Gorre county.

I decided that it would behoove me to restore this truck to original condition. I need to do some other Parrot Oil related work also, I have given away most of the parrot oil tank cars I have created. I have three new ones in the works, but they need the logo and lettering. There is a Parrot oil gastation in Harlow, and a distributor in Harlow and crooked creek. I need some more gas stations. maybee some parrot oil pumps out in front of the Berghausen Shoemaker Company store in Crooked creek.

so here is a photo of the rusty truck. the beginnings of the new paint job. and the parrot oil logo (some what chipped) on a mug. the motto "The Bird is Preferred" is chipped off. that is the second motto, the first was "The Beak is the Peak". Paul Bird, in whose honor all of this silliness took place , came to live with us just before Christmas in 1980, Moved to Houston to live with my Daughter last Thanksgiving, and passed away from advanced orneriness this spring.

There is a Paul Parrot monument up on Sander's Ridge at Jump-off.

Bill Nelson
 
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