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EMD GP38 C&O 3856, an Atlas model, and the result of my first attempt at custom decorating an undecorated locomotive.
My hill for the loop and the roadbed for the tracks going up and down the hill were all cut out of one large sheet of 8 millimetre plywood. After the scenicking of the whole layout around the central hill was "completed" (it's never really all done) and the now ballasted track had been extensively tested again, it became time to seriously do something about the plywood prairie flat top. By then it was being abused as a handy space to leave all kinds of junk like tools, ashtrays, coffee mugs, wine glasses and whatnot, and it was generally an mess and an eyesore. Sound familiar?
My real problem had been that I didn't quite know what to do to finish this top and it needed some thinking about, which was why it was left for last. Since part of the loop on top of the hill included a passing siding, there had to be some sort of infrastructure as well. And since there had to be at least a building or two, there would also have to be a way for people to get there other than by train or chopper, so a road was needed. But with the only available space being in the middle of a loop and no way that I could see to make a road off it, what with all the tracks and yards right around the hill on the lower level, it really had me stumped for a while. In the end I decided that the only practical way to get a road up there would have to be through a tunnel, and the easiest way to have a tunnel up there was to add a hill for it to disappear into. The other end of the tunnel would be easy to explain away - it's somewhere totally off the layout!
Day One. I started out by attaching blocks of styrofoam to the plywood prairie with wood glue and leaving it for a day to let the glue set.
Day Two. Once the styrofoam was glued firmly in place, I cut it roughly into a hill shape. The easiest and least messy way to cut styrofoam is with a bread knife, but it's still a good idea to have a vacuum cleaner on hand to suck up the pesky little styrofoam balls before they get into everything. They pick up a lot of static and will get into all those places where you least want them. I also dug a tunnel entrance into the hill and installed a tunnel portal. A double track portal turned out to be just the right size for a road tunnel.
Next I added some previously cast rock molds. They're cast in cretestone, and I used more cretestone paste to stick them to the styrofoam hill. Where needed, the bread knife was put to work again to make room for the rock molds to fit well.
And then the whole styrofoam hill got a cretestone coating. I dabbed the wet cretestone with a nailbrush (that green one in the picture) to give it a nice coarse texture and remove the finger marks that's left while smoothing the paste in place. It sets quite quickly, unless one goes overboard with the water while preparing the paste, and it's similar to plaster of paris to work with. As you can see, some red wine comes in handy while making hills.
I then added some crushed hardened cretestone, from previous projects that were broken up, to form a rockslide under the not quite originally intended rock overhang on the hillside.
Finally, while the cretestone was still damp, I sprinkled some brick powder over it to add some colour other than the sandy yellow. (Brick powder is made by hammer drilling holes in a brick.....) To make sure it stuck well, I sprayed the hill very lightly with a fine mist - too much water will cause run marks in the uncured cretestone. Here ended day two's work.
Day Three. I first applied black stain liberally to all the rock molds. The stain is made by mixing black paint stainer and a dash of water based wood glue in water, and it's applied with a paint brush.
Next, about half an hour later, I applied red stain to all the rock molds on top of the black.
Then I painted the hill wet with diluted wood glue (one part glue to three parts water - the same mix I use for ballasting) and sprinkled on a foam foliage and coffee grounds mix. And here ended day three's work, with the hill completed bar some bushes and trees, which incidentally still hasn't been added almost a year later now!
Days Four to Six. The next three days were taken up by creating a small town with a station and an ice house and ice platforms, and another Realroad tarmac road curving into the tunnel.
Day Seven. And the last day was spent doing final touches, which was mainly to cover all remaining bare plywood spots with cretestone powder and giving it a light spraying to wet it so it could set. Now I'm waiting for the little N scale people that moved into the flats and houses to do something about their bare gardens, but since nearly a year has passed already and those lazy bums have still not lifted a finger, it's beginning to look like I'll end up having to do it myself again if I want it done at all!
To the other Chessie pages:
To the rest of my website:
The following pages contain decoder installation guides for a few N scale diesel locomotives:
And the following pages contain guides to servicing or performance enhancement of some N Scale diesel locomotives:
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Created on 30 August 2003. Last updated on 2 October 2003.
