Clearwater Valley Railway Co.

[PRR Modeler]

Great start Ron. I look forward to seeing what you do.

[friscomike]

Howdy Ron,

Wow, that looks terrific, AI or not.  It's a great guide.

Have fun,
mike

[Larry C]

Ron your 2nd AI photo looks great! Hope you can pull this off it would look amazing. Have fun.

[Rick]

Ron, the AI rendering looks very good.
The added space for more scenery is a good idea.

[robert goslin]

Looks good Ron.  And the proper use of AI as a guiding tool to see how the scene will look.

[elwoodblues]

Thanks for the comments and encouragement Curt, Mike, Larry, Rick and Rob.

Rick, the added depth will make things a little easier.

Rob, I only use AI as a tool.

Time for another update, this one is called. . . . . 

Building Minecraft mountains.

Why call it Minecraft mountains?  Because I will be using foam blocks to piece it together.




First Attempt.  Figured I would start at the tunnel portal and work to the right. I wasn't happy with this as I found the mountain too steep at the tunnel portal.




Second Attempt.  I cut the height down and was happier with this approach.



After wasting more foam that I care to admit too, I decided to go full Minecraft mode.  First I added a tunnel liner,  This was glued in place using 5-minute epoxy.  Past experience has shown me that the 5-minute epoxy does not attack the foam and it sticks really, really well.




Taking various thickness of 1/2", 1" and 2" foam I cut it into various sizes and pinned them in place.  It was at this point that I decided to make a steeper mountain.  I am modeling the Rocky Mountains.    Do you see why I call this the Minecraft method?    I got this far using the chopped up pieces from my previous attempts.




The completed mountain using more blocks.  This ends stage 1 of my mountain building method.

Now comes the harder part blending this all together.  This involves carving the foam to make it a more realistic mountain by getting rid of the current blocky nature.

Thanks for looking in. 

[PRR Modeler]

Great start Ron.

[Larry C]

Ron nice start and that's quite the puzzle of foam. Good luck with the blending process.

[Rick]

Interesting technique.
I was going to ask if you were going to apply plaster cloth next and then I read your last sentence.
Reminds of how Dave Meek does mountains.

[Philip]

That porthole area looks difficult. Persist as Mike says!

Philip

[deemery]

A trick to see how the plaster would look:  Drape damp paper towels over the styrofoam.  

dave