Lighting - The Magic Happens

I finished up the preliminary lighting for the layout, and I'm really happy with the results. I've always find that the lights really add something to the layout and make it come alive. A preliminary plan was to light every house, add street lights, and one or two traffic lights. I chose a 4-way traffic light and added a traffic light controller. I couldn't believe how cool it worked. The controller runs a realistic lighting pattern through both sides of the traffic light, and you can sync multiple lights together.



The house lights and street lights were wired in series in pairs, and then each pair was connected in parallel. This dims the lights realistically, extending life but if one burns out I only have to check two bulbs instead of the entire layout.

Adding Ground Cover and Ballasting the Tracks

My three year old son and I made about 50 trees or so for the layout. The trees are made of two parts the branches, and clump folliage. You twist the tree shapes to make the branches the shape that you like, and then cover them with tacky glue. This tacky glue needs to dry for about 15 minutes before applying the ground foam. We had trees sticking to everything, and everyone, but it was a lot of fun. To make things easier, my son and I "planted" the trees into spare Styrofoam, and then sprinkled the foam over.

The next step was more fun, spreading ground foam around the layout. I used a series of different colors from lush grass, to a dead/dying grass color for around steep slopes. After this we planted the trees by drilling holes and gluing them in to place.

I then ballasted the track by spreading buff colored ballast down the rails, cleaning of the tops of the rails. Finally I sprayed the entire layout down with "wet water." Which is water with a few drops of liquid soap added to break surface tension. After wetting down the layout I went back through and sprayed a 50/50 mix of elmer's glue and water to hold everything in place. Here's what it looked like when I finished.

Plaster Cloth & Painting + A Little Fun

There be Mountains! The next step is to take plaster cloth dip it in water and lay it over the newspaper balls. The important thing is to make sure you have at least two layers of plaster over all of the newspaper for support. I like to lay one layer front to back, and then the other layer across the entire length.

It takes about 48 hours for the plaster to fully dry and harden. Now the real fun begins -- painting the mountain. This step was far easier than I thought. The paint you use is really diluted down and goes on like a water color. The trick is to brush it on and let it run down into the nooks and valleys. This way the crevices will collect darker colors and the tops of the mountains will be a little more bleached. When I finished, I couldn't believe how well everything turned out with so little effort.
I took this picture right after I had painted the mountains and laid down the track bed. A couple of buildings were placed to make sure everything is fitting well. I plugged in the DCC system and ran my first DCC train engine around the layout. I couldn't believe how well everything worked, and having an engine with sound completely changes the model railroading experience. I'm still getting used to DCC after having spent decades with DC trains. So far my feelings are mixed, the control and sound capabilities are amazing, but wrapping my head around all of the commands, specifications, and lingo can be a little daunting.