Weekend Update: Painted

Finished the undercoat, patched a few spots, and laid down the road. Now, another round of sanding before another basecoat on the newly patched areas! The road will be a more sandy color of brown than the undercoat, and will get its own ground cover.

Weekend Update - Plastered

Quite a big update from the last post: I've added a layer of patching compound to the hills, and primed the baseboard. The plaster layer went on fairly easily, I just massaged it into the cloth. I did have to cover the track with masking tape before I started though.

Note to future self: prime the boards before cutting them, and then do touch-ups later!

Next comes some small patches around the bases of bridges, and putting a coat of brown base paint (which as you can see I've tested on the small hill) over everything.

Plaster Test

Tried out some patching plaster on the small hill, and it seems to have worked very well. The texture is nice and rough and it went on very easily. I mixed it a little wetter than the package instructions and smoothed it out using a latex gloved hand.

Tunnelling through the Hills

There's just no easy way to conceal an access panel on the top of a layout. You have to disguise a rectangular panel with a natural-looking landscape, and I just couldn't figure out out to do it convincingly. So out comes the drill and the saw, and there's a hole behind the tunnel and in the side wall for access. I put plaster cloth over it all, and I think it looks much better than trying to have access from the top.

I didn't leave much room to the side of the curve that runs alongside this hill; I'll have to be very careful when surfacing it not to run out of side clearance.



Here's a shot of the entire layout. All the hills are covered in plaster cloth, next comes spreading a thin layer of material to seal it, fill in gaps here and there, and give it the right texture.