All roads lead to Grants Pass

Having a large piece of thin styrene I cut it up to form the base for all the paved roads in Grants Pass.

Painted the roads a medium grey. Still need to stain the crossings and the shoulders need grass and dirt. May add white lines also but need to get a paint pen for that.

Good Smoked Hams

After building some hills around Grants Pass there was a nice spot to put a house with a laneway going up a small hill. Thanks to Gary I had a ham smoking scene that would really finish this scene off. Some fire wood, stumps, and trees will fill up the rest of the space.

Test fitting the structures. Don't know if the smoke shack should be in front or behind the house.

Behind the house makes more sense.

Some scenery has been added and the rock work has been painted. Mr. Good should have a good location to sell his hams as the gentle breezes carry the aroma down over the village.

Hill's at the entrance to Grants Pass.

There are too many unrealistic flat areas at the west end of Grants Pass, even putting a small house down didn't look right. Besides camouflaging the big curve on the N.P. mainline, a few hills with rocky outcrops suggest a logical reason for the layout of the tracks into Grants Pass.

 Oh, look what I came up with, the curve of the road leads the viewer's eyes throught the scene, back to the point of interest, the town. Almost like I planned it.

When the plaster dries I may dig out some valleys.

Background repainted

I had poked a hole in  my background and had to patch it. As I had no blue paint of the sky colour I painted a white cloud over patch. After touching up all the other clouds I decided to touch up the land forms. Painting green over the row of mountains I had painted Brown, made an improvement. Covering up the trees that had a blue green tone with a better colour of green also improved the scene. By painting a hill of trees on either side of the road going off into the background it made it look like the road goes over a hill and down into a valley. Not bad all in all.

Updated layout plan

The connection between the the N.P. and the Grants Pass Western was redesigned. Instead of joining direct into Grants Pass, which created a reversing loop, the N. P. Now loops around a new transfer yard to join into the Grants Pass Western, just before in enters Grants Pass. Now the exchange of rolling stock between the 2 railroads will be in the new transfer yard.

The GPW runs from staging to Pelican Bay, from Pelican Bay through O'Brien, Cave Junction, past Waldo, and on to Grants Pass.
The NP runs from Grants Pass to staging.

Dirt road experiment.

First off, I think most roads I have seen modeled, are too rocky. My go to is powered local clay. The trouble is to get it smooth and keep it that way while gluing it. In my previous project, ballasting the transfer yard in Grants Pass,  I needed a road to the maintenance shed. Sprinkling the powdered clay and wetting and gluing it caused it to puddle. Spreading the soupy clay with my finger left unnatural ridge lines, but what else could be done? I have had good success brushing soupy drywall compound for river bottoms, so why not soupy clay? As it happens there are lots of gravel roads to be done. So after wetting and adding my glue mixture to some clay I painted the road with it. I should have painted the plaster Brown first, as some of the white plaster showed through.

Well that seems to have worked so back to road to the maintenance shed. Although it had dried some, the brush did smooth it out, but left many little striations behind. We will see what they look like when they dry.

 Well that didn't work, should have known it would dry and crack.

The 'ruts' left by the brush look not bad.

Union Pacific Transfer Yard.

Today's project was to start ballasting the transfer yard in Grants Pass. I started with pouring out my ballast onto the tracks and spreading it out with a small paint brush. When I do an area that has a lot of turnouts I only do up to them, they will be done individually later. I then add my 50 50 white glue mixture, don't forget to add a couple of drops of dish soap to the glue mixture. Once all the ballast has been glued I apply a thin coat of blended turf along the edges of the ballast. The excess glue and water help pre-wet the turf holding it in place to spray it with water and applying glue. I always respray everywhere I have glued so no glue puddles on the ties or foliage. The yard looked good, but lacked a signature scene. A curved area between the yard and the mainline called out, "I'm flat and ugly." A little maintenance shed, a rack of old, rusty rails, a pickup and a couple of people and "voila". Hmm, a little triangle outside the curve is just sitting there, a great spot to add some elevation to the scene. A small rock casting set on top of the otherwise flat landscape filled the spot. There is very little flat land in nature so I jump at the chance to add hills or gullies where I can. More items are still to be added, it will be left to dry for now.

Note. I like to pose people like they are doing something like talking, as in this scene. Yellow grass patches. and small clumps of bushes also add interest.

The rock has been mudded into place, and is waiting to be painted when it dries. When adding molded rocks like this, I try to continue and extend the shapes out from the casting. This helps ground it into the scenery.