When the cuttin' was done the only part that wasn't foamy ...

 ... were the soles of the small man's feet.

Well, they were a bit foamy too if the trail of foam bits going up the basement stairs and into the house are anything to go by.

After I vacuum the carpeting I'm going to switch gears and alternate between making and installing rock castings and shaping the foam structure. I was thinking this would be a better approach as the final shape will develop more iteratively, which I think will result in a more interesting mountain.

Let's start the weekend with a little vacuuming music:

Ain't No Mountain Lowe Enough

Result of wart trimming with knives and saws

I thought I'd try using a hot wire foam cutter to trim and shape all the Great Stuff warts. Things didn't work out.

I went to my local hobby shop and bought a brand new hot wire cutter (made by that scenery company whose initials are WS), but no matter what I did, no matter how I fiddled and adjusted and reassembled it, the wire would not heat up. It was stone cold. After a long while I gave up and pulled out the knives and saws and sanding blocks and went at trimming and shaping the mountain old school style. I'm only about 1/3 of the way through, but things aren't looking too bad even though it's taking much more work than I had planned on.

I don't want to end on a low(e) note, so I'll leave you with the legendary Tammi Terrell and Marvin Gaye*:

*As well as a great song sung by great performers there's an added train bonus in this video. The song was released in 1967 and it looks like the video was shot at Expo '67 somewhere near the Ontario pavilion. At the 2:43 mark you can clearly see the Minirail passing by as well as making a brief appearance earlier in the video.

Mountain o' Warts

Foam warts cover the mountain after spraying the gaps with Great Stuff

I took the layout outside to fill all the gaps in the mountain with Great Stuff spray foam. I wanted to use it to make the mountain as rigid as possible before applying rock castings, and to begin the process of creating rock-like surfaces.

The first step was the cover all the track with masking tape. It's extremely difficult to get solidified Great Stuff off track, especially switches which can be destroyed, so all the track has to be covered.

Believe it or not I was quite sparing as I squirted foam into the gaps and did a little filling. Even the low expansion type I used expanded quite a bit. I haven't used Great Stuff in a long time and I'm out of practice. 

In the next exciting instalment I discover my brand new, never used before, hot wire foam cutter refuses to work forcing the deployment of knives and saws to trim and shape the warty foam. All that and more next time on Adventures on Foam Mountain!

Coming Attractions: Artz Lumber Co.

I've been wanting to build Art Curren's project Artz Lumber Co. for a long time and decided this winter is the winter of Artz.

The project needs three Atlas #750 lumberyard kits and an AHM #15303 farmhouse kit for the office. I just want to build the lumber shed so I don't need a farmhouse kit. Artz is going to be a part of a diorama along with Cal's Lumberyard, which has an office on the side. The diorama will be a project for next year. If you're going to follow along, Curren's article appeared in Model Railroader's Dec '86 issue and was reprinted in his 1988 book Kitbashing HO Model Railroad Structures. I won't be copying out the steps in my posts, just muddling along as usual. I'm curious to see how a Curren build goes as I've never done one before even though I've written a few posts about his writings.

In March I was lucky to find an old Atlas kit from the 1960s at the local model railroad swap meet - it's the kit at the top of the triangle in the photo. I'm not sure when this particular instance was manufactured, but the kit was first released in 1962. I did a little looking in Model Railroader and Railroad Model Craftsman to see when ads for it first appeared. The earliest ad in MR appears in the Oct '62 issue, and is followed up by ones in Nov '62 (includes a small picture) and Jan '63 (includes a big picture). After that it appears with some regularity. I couldn't find any ads in RMC for either '62 or '63.

New kits are still being sold today. I acquired those two new ones in the bottom row of the photo just this week, although there was a lengthy search to find a pair at a reasonable price.

Well, I've got the kits. I'm just waiting for the snow to fly!

Mountain o' Foam

I spent some time roughing in all the mountain shapes with odds-and-ends of foam sheeting. I wanted to have all the basic shapes established and adequate support in place before I started casting rock surfaces from the molds.

All the supporting foam is in place except for the pieces that will make up the Granite Gate. I'm still thinking about how to make that shape.

Those little black boxes that have been inset in the styrofoam walls shown in the above photo house the on-off power switches for the nearby track switches. They were built up from scrap pieces of 0.080" thick styrene.

This 'back' part will look rather foreboding once it has been detailed. I'm playing with ideas to visually bridge the two lobes to lessen that feeling. 

The next step will be to squirt some spray foam into any gaps between the foam pieces so the structure is as rigid as I can get.