Now with less cake

Before | A few days later

Working with CelluClay is quite calming. It's easy to mix up a little whenever the urge to sculpt the layout hits, and I can almost instantly see the landforms emerge as the material is applied and worked. The terrain is now looking a lot less cake-like.

After the CelluClay was dry, everything was painted with Titanium White acrylic to create a surface with a uniform colour. That helps me judge what areas still need work, as well as providing a uniform base layer for scenic painting to come.

I haven't been going into much detail on the methods I've used to build the scenery as I'm trying my hand at using those described over at Boomer Dioramas. He's a master, and I'm just learning, so I recommend following his videos. I'd say his is the best series on layout construction I've seen out there.

I realized I haven't shown the business end of the layout yet. There's no wood frame as I wanted to make the layout as light as possible. The base is just 3 layers of 24" x 24" x 1" foam held together with 3M transfer tape and a little white glue. The bottom-most layer is made from foam strips arranged to create a hollow for wiring. Both pieces of the layout's flex track have power feeds so the track doesn't rely on rail joiners for power distribution.

The wires are soldered to a jack so that I can connect either my DC or DCC power pack to the layout.

That bit of edging in the photo to the left is cut from 0.040" sheet styrene.

I'm planning on having a panel for lighting on this side too, which will allow individual control of all lights.

That's it for the tour. Time to pack up the VW and get back to work!

That's not a winter wonderland, just a pure white undercoat.