Backwoods NE in Florida

[S&S RR]

John


The build is looking great - now for the details.

[Zephyrus52246]

Nice job on the structures. 


Jeff

[tom.boyd.125]

John,
Your build is looking great.
The castings will make it greater !
Tommy

[cuse]

Thanks for checking in guys. I do appreciate the interest.


Made some good progress on painting castings. Still have a few more but I do have enough to maybe plant some scenery and fasten down the structure to the homasote base. The whole mini scene will drop right back into the "hole in the world" that's been taunting me for quite a while now. You might notice I cut some HO scale firewood a while back...I didn't even bother trying to paint the Sierra West piles of wood (resin castings). The quality is really good but I can't imagine I'll be able to paint those to be as convincing as the easily found real thing...from out in the yard.


Some of the castings are still a little bright. I've been messing around with Brent's method of scraping off colored chalk and applying it with some alcohol (via brush). I've found it to be effective and I'll just dab a bit more on the bright spots to make them gross and rusty-the way I like my little world.

[Jerry]

Looks great John.


Jerry

[PRR Modeler]

Great job on the castings.

[cuse]

Gotta get the ground cover secured and the whole thing relocated to the layout before the cat finds it.

[GPdemayo]

Outstanding scene John.....well done. 

[cuse]

Thank you everyone who checked in. I got it "planted" on the layout and blended in with the scenery. I also did a little more weathering of the roof and decking with some chalks. Nothing like taking a few pics to show you the shiny shingles or other misses. (For those sharp-eyed viewers, I brushed the extra ground cover off of the workbench  ).

[cuse]

A couple more...

[PRR Modeler]

John you've done a beautiful job on this. I love the bits of wood and debris laying around. It looks very life like.

[cuse]

Thank you Curt...It better be accurate - I spent a lot of time splitting wood as a kid. My family owns a tree service in NY. I use to walk over to the yard after school and split wood for a few hours before dark to make a few bucks. I couldn't have been more than 12 and would Tom Sawyer a couple of my buddies to come along. We would drag the hydraulic log splitter out of the garage ourselves and roll wheels almost our own height onto the splitter deck. One of many examples of how miraculous it is that I have all of my limbs. There wasn't exactly a training program or any supervision. I sent a picture of the build to my brother and told him "This is what my kids think Manor Tree was like". He responded that our "Dad would never have allowed two men on a saw-what's wrong with those guys?". We grew up just North of the Bronx, but the three of us were farm labor. 


*sidenote: the yard and garages my father obtained for his trucks and supplies was a former coaling tower right alongside the (more recently) Metro North commuter line. At one point, when I was still very little, it was determined that the giant silos were a danger and had to come down. The demolition was an awesome sight and the garages (I guess former stalls for trucks to load or unload) were basically unscathed and that remains a bombproof garage of very thick concrete walls. Would have been a great place to train watch when steam still reigned. By the time I got there it was just electric powered commuter trains...not much to see but we spent a lot of time playing on those tracks and flinging ballast stones at whatever target we could find.

[jrmueller]

John - I guess it's safe to admit that my friends and I used to sneak over to your dad's place to play around and watch the trains. We would stop at the little store and get a soda and something to eat after school. Generally we were to chicken to cross the tacks due to the heavy traffic (early 1950s); go through the Pelhamdale tunnel.  We were probably chased off by the Manusos at some point. Merry Christmas. Jim

[Janbouli]

What a beautiful scene John and a beautiful story to go along with it .

[ReadingBob]

That came together wonderfully John!  Super job on the whole build.  The detail castings look terrific.  Thumbs up all the way around.