Articles from RPO V3 N1
The Colorful Scenery of the C&RM Railroad
text and photos by Randolph P. Meyer
Well, are you getting "snow blind" yet
from all those white rocks that you have made since my
article about rock casting? Don't you think it is about
time to add some color? Adding a little color will bring
the rock castings to life. The colors add shadows and
highlights that will give the rocks depth and detail. To
bring this out, we will need to use more than one color.
As Jim Wild and Dwane Esterling say in their clinics,
"Nature is not monotone."
When you look at a rock closely, you will see
different shades of the same color that make up that
rock. If we have a whole hillside of rock, think of how
many different colors, and shades of those colors, you
could see. If we only use one or two colors for our
scenery, we cannot hope to achieve a realistic mix of
colors to copy nature.
Several materials can be used to color rock castings.
We could use clothes dyes, artist oil paints, latex
house paint, artist water colors or artist acrylic
paints. All of these have advantages and disadvantages.
Of those I have tried myself, I like the artist acrylics
best. I prefer them as they can be cleaned and thinned
with water, come in a wide range of earth colors, are
non-toxic, and do not have an odor.
Artist acrylics do have a disadvantage of being
slightly more expensive than some of the other coloring
agents. However, I believe the advantages greatly
outweigh the minimal extra cost. Although I will explain
how to color rock castings with these acrylics, the
technique I use can be applied to any of the color
mediums, so feel free to experiment with any other type
of paint or stain with which you are comfortable.
Before we can start coloring our rock castings, we
first need to clean up the mess made by the casting
process. Pick and sweep up all of the loose chunks and
chips of plaster that you broke loose when you carved
and blended the rock castings together. Make sure to
save those broken pieces, as they will be used in the
ground cover part of the scenery process. Next, pull up
the tape covering the track. This will pop loose a lot
of the soft plaster that washing down onto the track
during casting. Vacuum up the remaining plaster dust
from the entire area. This plaster is discarded because
it is too soft to make good ground cover.
Southwestern Colorado scenery colors: raw sienna,
burnt umber, raw umber, burnt sienna, and yellow oxide.
The spray bottle of plain water washes excess color from
the scenery.
Make sure to check that you have enough clearance for
your equipment before you start coloring. I push my
largest engine over the track, constantly checking to
make sure it clears all the rockwork. Where it does not
clear, chip away the plaster until it does clear. Clean
the track, and run the engine through under its own
power several times just to make sure everything will
clear. Vacuum the area again, and then you are ready to
begin coloring the rock castings.
As most of you know, I model south-western Colorado.
For me this means the rocks are shades of brown, rust,
and yellow. Those of you who model other parts of the
country may wish to substitute other colors. For
example, modelers wanting gray rock would substitute
Mars black for the raw sienna. A small detail you could
add is a green shade to the rocks along a stream or
other wet area where moss would grow. This is done by
brushing a thin wash of a mossy green color over the
final rock color. Use your imagination to come up with
other color details you can add.
Before I begin coloring the rocks, I mix up a very
thin stain of each of the colors I will use. This thin
stain will be used as a guide for the final coloring
step later on. I dab these thin stains onto the scenery.
Working in an area of one or two square feet, I first
use the yellow oxide and burnt sienna. Because these two
colors are bright, I use them sparingly as highlight
colors on some of the protruding rocks.
Next add the shadow detail with the burnt umber
stain. This is brushed under rock overhangs, into deep
cracks, and any other piece that would be in shadow.
This gives depth to the scenery.
The remaining area of the rock is stained with thin
washes of raw umber, raw sienna, and a little more burnt
umber. Apply these in a random over-lapping manner. I
try to keep the colors from being distinct patches by
overlapping, blending, and shading from one color to
another.
Now that you have an idea of where you want the
colors to go, you are now ready to put the final color
on the rocks. Use a wet brush and the acrylic colors
straight from the tubes. The brush is first dipped into
the stain of the color you are using. Then squeeze the
tube of paint so that the paint barely just barely comes
out of the tube. Gently rub the wet brush over this
paint. Then, to dilute the paint on the brush a little
more, dip the brush back into the stain. Smear the
diluted paint over the same area that had received the
light stain earlier.
This paint stain mixture will produce a color that is
not too dark. However, if you get too much paint on the
brush, and the color on the scenery gets too dark,
lighten it a little by squirting it with clean water
from a spray bottle.
After covering all the spots of stain with the
thinned paint from the tube, use the raw sienna stain to
wash over the entire area. This tones down the brighter
colors and blends them all together. This area of
scenery is now colored, and you can move on to the next
section of uncolored scenery.
Squeeze the paint tube until paint just comes out.
Gently rub the brush over the paint. Dip the brush into
the stain of the same color and brush it onto the
scenery.
As you are working, keep two things in mind. First,
railroad room lights are not as bright as sunlight. An
second, keep in mind that much of the rock surface will
be covered with ground cover. Both of these things tend
to make the color you put on the rocks darker than it
actually is. Therefore, it is very important to darken
colors by adding more stain. It is much easier to darken
the colors than it is to lighten them. If everything
goes wrong, and you get the color too dark, spray a mist
of bleach on the dark area to lighten it. I have not
tried this myself, but I have read and heard that it
works.
This coloring process can also be used on flat
surfaces and rolling hills. The variation of color shows
through the ground cover added later. This gives the
ground a very natural appearance.
I hope this article will help you as you work towards
more realistic scenery.
by Bob Amsler
Last time I discussed freight operations and hinted
at passenger operations. This time I am writing about
the passenger operations.
Passenger trains operated on a regular schedule (as
opposed to steam runs which are popular today) can be of
three types. There are commuter trains, which run
between business districts and the suburbs where the
workers live; accommodations, which stop at each station
along the route; and limiteds, which have only specified
stops to make between the origination and destination
points.
Commuter trains have been around for some time. The
Missouri Pacific, at one time, ran a commuter train on
its line out of St. Louis through Kirkwood. Today,
Metrolink operates between Lindbergh Airport and
downtown St. Louis with expansion plans into Illinois,
South County and St. Charles. In Chicago, Boston,
Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles, to name a few cities,
trains are run on schedule and get the worker to his
job. Unlike Metrolink, some of these lines must compete
with freight trains. Such operations can be a source of
fun if modeled.
Accommodation trains are the locals of the passenger
trains. They stop at each station and allow a passenger
the ability to stop at an out of the way town where the
limiteds only breeze through. These trains have a lower
priority and do not run very quickly. Sometimes these
are mixed trains and the transportation might be in a
coach or a combine tacked on the end of a local, or even
a caboose. These add interesting operations problems
when trying to run a railroad.
Limiteds are the name trains we all think of when we
think of passenger trains. These are the trains with the
biggest power, newest equipment and best reputation on
the railroad. Management notices whenever the train is
late because this train is the pride of the company. It
might consist of some baggage cars, mail cars, a railway
post office car, some coaches, sleeping cars, a diner,
and an observation car.
In all trains, the "head end" cars
(baggage, mail and rpo) are usually on the front of the
train. The diner is usually in the middle to accommodate
the passengers so that no one has to walk the entire
length of the train to get to the food and drinks. The
sleepers are usually behind the diner but do not have to
be there. Sleepers are cars which may be added to a
consist or switched while in route. It is not unheard of
for a train to set out a sleeper at a station for it to
be placed in the consist of another train headed to a
different city. For example, a train headed from Chicago
to Washington could set out a sleeper in Pennsylvania to
connect with a train going to Florida. Amtrak at one
time (I am not sure if this still happens since the
recent cuts) had a car from the last Kansas City to St.
Louis daily train which was then run to Illinois where
it met with the City of New Orleans and ran into
Chicago.
The operational consequences are important. Which
train has right of way between the accommodation train
and the coal drag? Switching of sleepers or coaches
might have to be done between passenger trains. Modeling
these can create fun for the modeler who freelances. If
you model a specific railroad, get an old timetable
which lists the passenger trains and copy the operation.
Watch for connections with other trains.
Passenger trains are a good way of adding operational
interest to a layout. Look at how the railroads ran
theirs and either model that or use this information to
create an operation plan for your own freelance
railroad.
Until the next issue, I hope that all of the signals
you see are green over red.
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