Plaster and stuff

Modelling stuff continues, albeit slowly and I missed the weekly deadline of last night for an update but there you go. For the middle support for the rail bridge mentioned last week, I had long ago ordered two Chooch Bridge abutments with "steps" to nestle the truss bridge into. BUT, traditionally these appear on opposite ends of one bridge and merge into a hill or elevation at both ends.

For my application, the two abutments needed to face outwards and be a single support. An early trial with a layer of plaster sandwiched between the two abutments failed on many fronts, most importantly in alignment. Trial two, now on its way to being the real deal, involved a non plaster mounting to ensure proper alignment and the plaster would just be decoration. Out came the Tarzan's Grip and a small rectangle of 5-ply. So I now had a bridge support sandwich that needed plastering.

The batch of plaster I have has instructions that rely on weight measurements of plaster and water. The chief catering officer was not even approached about borrowing the kitchen scales, instead I used my usual kitchen technique of "Add stuff still it looks right" And so far it has worked for what I am doing. Excess plaster has been adding to the mountains and valley in the Christmas project, so that was handy too.

The bridge support sandwich then required matching texture and colour wise. Out with various files and knives to file and scrape mortar lines into the plaster to approximate the moulded stonework on the abutments. Acrylic paints work fine on plaster and are water cleaning which is always nice. See pictures below for bridge support so far. More work will be done to meld the abutments with the plaster visually, more photos will be taken when I am happy with the results.

Turntables and Bridges

In an attempt to make this a bit more regular, a Friday night offering. Current projects underway include the Walthers 120' manual turntable having been assembled and now being painted, assembling my road bridge for my N-scale shelf layout, and making up the rail truss bridge; also for my N-scale shelf layout. The turntable will be an extension to the current N-scale shelf layout. The extension will also provide a location for the multi track Cheyenne coaling tower/station (still in box) and so far a 3 stall Atlas round house (also still in box).

The bridges are designed to disguise the current ends of the N-scale shelf layout by obscuring the fact that the "world" ends and the track goes nowhere. Both are designed on an angle to draw the eye across the layout as the eye travels along the bridge: optical tricks to make the shelf appear wider than the 305mm it really is.

The rail bridge has the added complexity that I wanted it not to be a single span across the width of the shelf. To facilitate this the truss has been sliced in two at an angle so that the cut ends represent the edges of the world (front and back of the shelf). The two bridge entrances will face each other in close proximity on a bridge support that is made up mostly of two bridge abutments facing outwards and plaster to make an interface between the two abutments. As an additional optical trick, what will be the front section of truss is 2/3 of the bridge's original length and what will be the back section is the other third of the length.

While pictures would paint a thousand words, until the various projects are fully realised, those words might be along the lines of "what the?" so this entry has no photos, which helps with the more regular updates thing also!