PZ's EVRR
These are some photos of Paul Zimmerman's beautiful N-scale take on E. L. Moore's Elizabeth Valley Railroad. I understand it's about 2.5' x 3' in size, and was built in the 1990s over a 4 week period.
This is a view looking down the main incoming road towards the Elizabethton depot.
I like this view through the bridges. Nice track work too.
Looks like Ma's got her wash out on the line. Love the Jack-o-Lantern on the porch.
Maybe she's feeding the horses. Excellent work on this layout and I'm glad Paul generously shared these photos with me.
I took all these pix with my iPod Touch. I should've dusted the rooftops first, but they were really test shots. I'd eventually like to use Helicon Focus, if I could get a similar app into my iPod. That would sharpen the foregrounds. Lighting-wise, I should've taken the pix outdoors. Instead, I evened out the lighting using a Bright Brush in Photoscape across my poorly lit backgrounds. They came out far better than I anticipated.
ReplyDeleteEven so, the photos are great and do an excellent job of communicating the overall spirit of the layout.
DeleteYou complimented my trackwork near the bridges; let me explain it. Flextrack and switches on the layout are Atlas products. The guard rails were simply fine cut strips of styrene glued into place, of a smaller size than the rails, thus making their non-rail shape unnoticeable. I spray-painted all the trackwork brown before ballasting and cleaning the railtops. The guard rails were then handpainted on top with silver paint to match the Atlas rails; today I might've used a silver paint Sharpie.
ReplyDeleteEven though those methods were simple, they were highly effective. I'll probably steal them when I get to that stage on this layout :-)
DeleteI built the bridges in the same simple formula that ELM described in his "Bridges and Buildings for Model Railroads" article. The flextrack was laid over solid balsa pieces that had been painted black on the top and bottom. The bridges curve, so I used trapezoid shaped pieces. The trestle bents are glued under them. I added extra pieces of stripwood at the edges of the flextrack to make it appear the bridge ties are longer, even though they're not closer spaced, as they should be on a bridge. Then there's the diagonal cross pieces and balsa-block "concrete" footings. I didn't add nut-bolt-washer castings, but I did add thin vertical wire "galvanized steel rods".
ReplyDeleteOh, and you'll love this one. For texture on the dirt roads, I used a garish lime-green colored ground foam I hated. After gluing it down, I rubbed it halfway smooth and painted over it all with tan colored acrylic paint from the craft store. That's one way to use up badly colored ground foam.
ReplyDeleteThe pumpkins are pins cut short and put into shallow holes. Painted orange and a black Sharpie face added with a green root on top. All the buildings' signs were hand painted.
ReplyDeleteThat horse sticking his head out of the stable is a cardboard silhouette! The thickness of the cardboard along with a proper painted stripe down his nose and everything looks correct.
ReplyDeleteThanks for all these tips. They're excellent! I'm going to steal from them with abandon when the time comes :-)
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