illinois Central Chicago District - Monee Rebuild

[Zephyrus52246]

Beautiful work on the diorama. 


Jeff

[GPdemayo]

Looks great Vince.....

[cuse]

The more I look at this build, the more impressive and well-executed it is...this could be the final exam for the "Sellios Master Modeler Class". I think every type of roofing, every type of siding, and every type of weathering is present and all look great together. Excellent.


My favorite here (of many) might be the heavily weathered shingled siding and the simple peeled paint on the fence. Great job.


John

[Jerry]

Vince excellent work on this diorama!!


Jerry

[vinceg]

My apologies to all for taking so long to get back to this. Thanks so much to Tom L, Karl, Craig, Tommy B, John, Jeff, GP, and Jerry for the nice comments. I'll post some pics now along with a few comments and lessons learned from building this kit.

Vince

[vinceg]

First, let me say that I am finding it more and more difficult to call a diorama "done" each time I build a new one. At least part of it is because I keep seeing all sorts of fantastic modeling -- especially here but also on YouTube (Jason Jensen, for example) and want to incorporate each technique into everything I do. I love looking at the results and want to have it all in my basement as well. Great goal but REALLY unrealistic and time-consuming. Pulling me in the other direction are the words from Jerry Beach over a year ago in this forum where he said that he was a "...layout modeler, not a contest modeler." So, I'm trying to find the right balance -- modeling that is fun to look at but not forgetting about the fact that there are some trains in the room as well. If I ever want to be finished -- or at least far enough along to warrant inviting people over to see something interesting -- I need to be a little more rational.

I would be interested in hearing thoughts from others who have wrestled with this themselves.

Of course, it would help...a lot...to be retired. More on that later.

OK. Here is a frontal view of the "finished" dio. Some comments to follow:



Some notes in no particular order:

• 
  This is the first diorama I built on top of Gatorboard. I can't say enough about how much I like this stuff. It is very strong and lightweight and the dimensional stability is excellent. I started this construction in January (I think) and it's now August. I painted it, glued buildings down on it, and soaked it with watery glue for ground cover multiple times. No warping despite great humidity changes across seasons. The diorama is about 20" wide and I can hold it on one end without it bending. And, all of this with 1/2" thick material. It's expensive -- a little over a hundred bucks for a 4x8 sheet and the shipping is outrageous -- but I don't want to use anything else now. Really good stuff.
  
• 
  This was a difficult kit for me. Especially challenging were the Campbell's shingles used as siding. Examples include the top part of the building in the middle as well as the shed abutting the loading dock on the right. I just have a difficult time getting them straight. Once I get them wet with glue (I don't count on the adhesive that comes on the shingles), they want to "smile" and bend away from the kerfs -- like those "Happy Birthday" signs people hang up. Always a struggle for me to get them to lie flat. In contrast, I tried some other shingles for the roof of the lower story for the building to the far left. More on that in a little while.
  
• 
  I used Berkshire Junction stretchy string for the power lines. George gives you brown thread for this purpose with the kit but the color pictures he supplies with the kit use that thread and it look so kinky that I found it to be very unrealistic. On the plus side you get the "sag" of real wires but the sag isn't natural. Seemed better to me to have a smooth straight line instead. By the way, this stuff is super stretchy. You can get it to look taut and still have it give very little resistance when you depress it with a finger. Seems like it may save snapping off a telephone pole or two somewhere along the line in the future when I'm careless.
  
• 
  George gives you nice templates for the scratch-built picket fence and the old-fashioned ladders. I like the look so I scanned the cards and I am keeping a folder on my computer with all of these goodies so that I can reuse the same elements in the future on other kits if I want. I am hoping that keeping things in a single folder will make sure I can find things in the future. I can't count the number of times I have known I have something "somewhere" that is lost in the recesses of the basement. Very frustrating.
  
• 
  I did not scenic all the way to the end of the diorama. Once I install this on the layout I will blend it in with whatever is adjacent.
  
• 
  The concrete road is ArtMinds Cocoon paint that I mentioned earlier painted directly on top of the Gatorfoam. Expansion cracks scribed directly into the foam (which has a paper-like covering) using a T-pin. Everything else done with chalks. Cracks done with a sharp #2 pencil. Everything looks a little too uniform to me. But, I'm committed to moving on to some new things so I will try not to obsess over it. George gives you a manhole cover with the kit. Love the detail.
  
• 
  That VW Beetle is a little shiny for my taste. I would like to lightly weather it and tone it down. I have never done anything like that before, tho. Maybe hand-paint some matte finish on the non-window surfaces? I would appreciate if anyone has a link to some good tips for vehicle weathering.
  
• 
  As I'm looking at the picture now, I am realizing that I didn't put more pigeons on the roof. I'll add some before doing the final installation of the diorama. (...don't obsess....don't obsess...)
  

More shortly.

[deemery]

The Beetle does look like it's new.  Hand brushing a matte finish sounds to me like the best idea to tone it down.  OR, do a figure with a bucket and sponge cleaning the Beetle :-)


Everything looks great!  The one thought that occurs to me would be a little bit of (brown) grass/weeds growing in the joints of the concrete. 


dave

[vinceg]

Dave - yes! weeds in the cracks and expansion joints. Will do. (so much for "done" eh?)

Thanks.

[vinceg]

I'll just post a few views now with a some comments along the way. Here is a shot from a drone on the north end of town:



The power pole in the foreground looks like it's in the middle of the road but that won't be the case. This will be eventually be unpaved area that extends down to the tracks. We're at the edge of the Monee Cut here. That will be a little easier to see in some later pics.

You can also see the roof of the covered stairway here. I did some nail holes in the tar paper for the first time. I again used a T-pin to puncture the paper. They're oversized but I do like the effect. This also gives you a better look at the shed that does not use Campbell shingles. More on that shortly....

[vinceg]

Here's a close-up view of the shed roof for Walker's Paint:



These shingles are from South River Model Works. Funny how you don't see things in person as easily. Looking at the pic now I can see the shingles don't quite overlap enough.

The shingles are laser-cut brown paper. Weathering done with earth tone colored pencils and markers while the shingles are still on the sheet. Then, install them and do the usual prying, chalking, and dry brushing. Much easier to install (for me) as they don't warp "up" when wet.

[vinceg]

Another shot of Walker's from the north - this time a little lower:



Here again I used Campbell shingles on the covered stairway. Junk under the stairs includes some of George's cardboard boxes. Nice little detail but tough little buggers to build. I am finally doing a better job of keeping leftover wood pieces. They all make good details that you can put about anywhere.

Quick story about the car you see in the shed. I went to my local hobby shop and asked my friend if he had any really super-cheap vehicles I could buy. I was going to "rust the crap out of them" and didn't want to pay much. Coincidentally, a lady had come into the store earlier that day and brought in some old stuff she was trying to get appraised. The stuff was not worth anything -- dollar store sorts of things -- so she just gave it to my friend (the store owner) and he tossed them in the trash. When I showed up later that day it triggered this discussion and we went dumpster diving to get the junk. This car is from that "collection" and he gave the bag to me. The car's detail is terrible and it is out of scale -- oversized -- but I thought it would be good enough. Given its position in the background, I think it works OK.

I went old school here with the foliage....George's old technique of dyed twine instead of static grass. It will get a bit more attention when I install the diorama onto the layout. I expect to put a tree here when I install it.

[vinceg]

Here's a look behind the small fence on the north end of Jacob Tire:

[vinceg]

Another view:



This brings up a question for me. I have two power poles here. Each has a service transformer. The poles have the high voltage lines running from one to the other and the service transformer taps those to bring them to the levels the business needs for its electrical needs. George's diagram calls for tying not only the high voltage lines together (the "tees" on top of the pole) but also tying the outputs of the transformers together. In other words, three more lines connecting those blocks on the sides of the poles together. I'm a small signal guy (audio, digital circuits) not a power grid guy so I don't know much about this but in general outputs don't get tied together. Does anyone know if that's a real thing and why you would do that? I did not do it on the model because it seemed incorrect. I thought it might just be the case that George was going for a more "busy" look (which this would certainly do) but I don't really know what would be electrically correct. Any grid engineers out there? Would love to learning something here.

Some may notice that I also did not run a set of wires to the Jacob Tire garage (small stucco building). Again, I didn't want more clutter in case I wanted to do any more work on the diorama.

[vinceg]

Here's a close-up of the Jacob Tire annex:



I wanted to have some gravel in the scene and tried some Woodland Scenics ballast. I think the stones look a little big. Will try some sand next next time around

[vinceg]

Here's a view from the south end:



A discovered a new thing here (for me). In George's pictures I saw that he dry-brushed the fire hydrant with silver rather than white. Creates a nice effect for metal items. I did the same thing here for the green canister for gas. Small thing but seems to make a nice difference.