Bar Mills Queen City Coal

[vinceg]

Time for some land forming. I added a little terrain around the edges using some 20-year-old Sculptamold (still works). At this point, the main office (stucco building) is the only thing glued down. This also gives you a view of the "scale."

Here are the pics:







More shortly.

[vinceg]

Unfortunately, those are the only "construction" pics that I took. All I have now is the end result. I'll present them below with some discussion along with the pics.

First, the entrance to the facility:



Some notes:

1. The kit includes material for the chain link fence. Posts are brass rods that needs to be soldered and then the usual tulle fabric.
2. First coat over the Sculptamold is a tan wash using paints I got from the reject bin at Home Depot. Fifty cents a can for the sample sizes. Quite a good deal and the colors they had almost exactly match my dirt/clay.
3. Once the Sculptamold was painted, all ground covered with dirt sifted through a nylon screen.
4. Then, applied two types of static grass. This was my first static grass experience. I really love it. Pretty simple. Some random ground foam and ground leaves (a la Luke Towan) after that.

By the way, notice that the buildings now include the lamp shades. Painted red to provide a few accents.

More shortly.

[vinceg]

A view from the north. Not much going on here other than the basic terrain and the conveyor.



More shortly.

[vinceg]

A close-up of the scale. Pretty simple. I think this part of the scene needs some more blending -- more dirt, a few weeds, etc. But, given how far this diorama is from the aisle, I don't know that it is worth the time. As I said earlier, gotta call it a day at some point.



More shortly.

[vinceg]

Here's a bit more of an overhead view and a closeup of the bunker.



A few notes:

1. The trees are recycled from some work my daughter and I did 20 years ago (or more). The armatures are Sedum plants. Then, just some green polyfill fiber and some ground foam hair sprayed on. They're not super high fidelity but, again, ....pretty far away from the viewer.
2. The coal truck has a molded insert that represents the coal load. Not very convincing. I might actually fix that -- that is, glue in some loose Woodland Scenics coal on top of it.
3. To the left of the truck, you can see another conveyor. These are all included with the kit.

More shortly.

[vinceg]

Here's a close-up of the back.



Notes:

1. Good closeup of the tank. It doesn't come out well with this picture but I rubbed some powdered graphite on top of the tank to create some sheen so that it looks little more like metal. Actually looks decent but, again, didn't come out here.
2. Those rocks are left over from the rock face in the old Monee that I demolished.
3. The little piles of brown material is the dried leaves ground up in a food processor. I think they're way too big. And I ran the food processor a long time to get them to that size. They seem to work better for Luke.  Next time I'll try some sifting. Maybe need a different processor as well.

More shortly.

[vinceg]

Similar shot to the last one but a little further back. This shot lets you see the junk pile on the side of the main office building:



You can see that I tried experimenting with weeds "coming up through the cracks" in the concrete. I think I like the effect. Needs some more.

Also, I didn't mention it last time, but along the concrete wall that supports the bunker riser (Bunker Hill?) there are some tall weed tufts. Those are made of regular twine that is dyed green with Rit dye. I have some of this left over from building my very first FSM kit (Barongould Tannery) some zillion years ago. George's techniques still standing the test of time.

More shortly.

[vinceg]

Here's a view from the back. I have to confess that I sort of phoned this one in because it is completely hidden from view. I wanted a track back there because that's how the coal would come in. But, there should be a pit in the tracks where coal dumps out of the bottom of the hopper and hits an underground chute and/or conveyor that carries it to the elevator in the bunker. Probably should be some coal scattered around the area. But, I kept it simple. Mostly an experiment in terrain scenery.

By the way, this track is inaccessible from the layout. It goes from backdrop to backdrop. Scenery only.

Here's the pic:



More shortly.

[vinceg]

Another back view:

[vinceg]

A view from the "other" back. Remember, this diorama is in a corner. Now we're looking at it from behind the other, 90-degree backdrop. You can see lots of cruft on the ground. I need to do a little tidying up.



More shortly.

[vinceg]

Last picture of the diorama while it's on the workbench.



More shortly.

[Janbouli]

What a beautiful scene Vince , great modeling.

[vinceg]

When I started this thread, I mentioned that I was anxious to build this diorama because it would be my "first square foot" of scenery of the railroad. The intent was to build a diorama to get a foothold on which I could then begin adding. So, [too many] months later, I think I'm there. Here are a few pics of the diorama in place:







A few final notes:

1. The conveyor by the crane fell over -- vehicles aren't glued down.
2. I still have to think a bit about what sort of horizon scene, if any, I need behind the diorama. The structures and terrain hide quite a bit but I think I at least need a tree and/or some shrubs on the side of the diorama near the gantry crane (on the left).
3. I need to remember to do some clouds on the sky before I glue down this dio.
4. I am a little concerned about how difficult it will be to bring the surrounding terrain up to this edge of this diorama without getting sculptamold all over the chain link fencing. We'll see if I can be careful enough.

My hat is off again to the crew at Bar Mills. This was my first Bar Mills super kit and it was a lot of fun to build. The layout was perfect to get me started - the buildings seemed to fit nicely with my need to have an inside corner scene.

Thanks also to all who gave encouragement and pointers along the build. It's always very helpful.

At this point, I will drop back to the Monee build thread and work on integrating this and other buildings together on the railroad.

Cheers,

Vince

[vinceg]

What a beautiful scene Vince , great modeling.

Thanks for the kind words, Jan.

Vince

[pbltrains]

Vince,

I think you did a MARVELOUS job on this kit.  It will fit right in on your layout.

Seth P.
Minnesota