Superior & Seattle Railroad Build (Volume 2) Started 2/25/17

[S&S RR]

Beautiful job. I especially like the rock slide under the trestle bridge. Are you going to add water to that scene?

Curt


The rock slide under the bridge will be dry - I have a prototype picture of this scene from a trip to British Columbia. A river will run along the base of the mountains here.  The North side of the river will be the town of VanGelder - I have a number of Bob's kits that will be planted there.  And the South Side of the River will be town of Sellios - the area is about 6 x 12 so there is room for a number of kits in this town. 

[S&S RR]

Beautiful job. I especially like the rock slide under the trestle bridge. Are you going to add water to that scene?

Curt


The rock slide under the bridge will be dry - I have a prototype picture of this scene from a trip to British Columbia.The idea is that this is where the RR dumped the rock debris when the blasted the route through the mountain.  A river will run along the base of the mountains here.  The North side of the river will be the town of VanGelder - I have a number of Bob's kits that will be planted there.  And the South Side of the River will be town of Sellios - the area is about 6 x 12 so there is room for a number of kits in this town.

[ACL1504]

John,

Your Aspen trees are beautiful. They really look fantastic up in the Rockies. Great job my friend.

Tom

[EricQuebec]

the final result is simply awesome

Eric QUebec city

[ak-milw]

Really like the color of the aspens with the dark rock behind them.

[S&S RR]

John,

Your Aspen trees are beautiful. They really look fantastic up in the Rockies. Great job my friend.

Tom

Thank you  Tom - Wayne Olson played a major roll in making and planting the Aspen forest. I think it is going to provide a wonderful backdrop to all those structures I have to build to complete the scene.

[S&S RR]

the final result is simply awesome

Eric QUebec city

Thank you for the kind words Eric.  We are just getting good and started on the forestation of this area. I hope to post a photograph in a few weeks which will  show why we started in this area.

[S&S RR]

Really like the color of the aspens with the dark rock behind them.

Andy


Thanks - it is amazing how the aspens make the rock work look better.

[S&S RR]

The next few posts will be documentation and followup to a thread the Tom "ACS1504" started about "super trees".  I decided to make the post below on Tom's thread and document the new Aspen tree process here on the S&S RR build thread. Here is the post I added on Tom's thread.
I just got off the phone with Wayne Olson and can now complete the story of the glycerin trees.  The bottom line is I have 1500 trees on the layout with the old - right out of the box trees. I will soon have about 300 with the glycerin trees.  The only way to tell them apart is to do a destructive test - for the engineers out there.  The glycerin trees are more durable on the layout. I have noticed for a long time that the trees where very brittle after they dried out. So - rather than post all the details in two places - I will post our new and improved process on my build thread so we will be able to find it easier in a month or two when us older modelers have forgotten where we put it.  Wayne made all the improvements while I was enjoy the sun out in AZ with Frank. Wayne gets a big thank you here - future purchases for the S&S RR will be the glycerin processed trees.

[S&S RR]

About 2 months ago I ordered a new case of super trees for Scenic Express. When Wayne Olson and I opened the box we noticed they were darker in color and very rubbery. After trying to get a few seed pods off we decided that Wayne would take them home and see if he could make them work.


I got a couple phone calls the next week which basically ended with - you need to send these trees back.  In the mean time life got in the way and Wayne didn't get over to work on my layout for a few weeks and then I left on a trip out West.  While I was gone Wayne figured out a solution to our rubbery tree problem and getting the seed pods removed. Yesterday, we flocked  214 trees which where both the old and new SE process - I didn't notice a difference in the trees flocking them or planting them on the layout once the matte medium was dry.


Here is a picture of those trees along with another batch of 141 trees that I flocked today.

[S&S RR]

While I was away,  Wayne found that by using a diagonal cutter rather than tweezers he could remove the seed pods without destroying the tree. "It works better for both with and without glycerine trees".


Second, because he got frustrated in between starting with the wet rubbery trees and finding a solution to removing the seed pods he let the trees sit in the open air for a couple weeks.  When he returned to the project, he found the trees were much stiffer.  I think Dave recommended this as a solution on the other thread.


Wayne was also concerned with the paint sticking to the rubbery trees but once they were dried for a couple weeks in his workshop he had no problem.


I told Wayne I thought the trees were much less brittle once they were on the layout and asked him if I should call SE and see if we could get the original process - right out of the box trees or the new glycerine process trees. Wayne said with his new process it didn't matter to him and that less brittle on the layout made a lot of sense. We have both reached for something and broken the original brittle trees.

[S&S RR]

I will be planting trees where I can test the over the coming months and will update this story - I want to know if the trees will get more brittle with time.

[S&S RR]

I took a few pictures of the flocking process today and will post them here so we have everything in one place.


Here is a few of the trees after Wayne has removed the seed pods, trimmed them, and painted both the off white trunk and black spots.

[S&S RR]

Yes - occasionally a seed pod gets through. I know that Wayne is going to accuse me of finding a tree with a seed pod for this picture.

[S&S RR]

The truth is,  that after careful examination two or three time by both of us, there are a few seed pods on the layout. I tell myself that they look like branches after the flock is on the trees.