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How to add rock castings to your model railroad |
The MR&T gets a quarry
by George Sebastian-Coleman
Winter Hill Quarry was made using only three molds, but it'd be hard to find the repetitions.
| | Winter Hill on Model Railroader's own club layout, the Milwaukee, Racine, & Troy, is supposed to be home to a rock quarry. During the initial push to get the benchwork covered with scenery, however, all it got was a steep grassy slope. Now the time had come to turn that grass slope into a rock wall.
There are many ways such a wall could be constructed, but the most popular method is casting plaster in latex rock molds.
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Painting and Finishing
I used artist’s acrylics to paint my finished wall. In addition to black, white, and the standard earth tones of burnt umber, raw umber, burnt sienna, and raw sienna, I used a yellow and a deep purple. The yellow was to give the proper color to my Lannon stone, and purple is yellow’s complement so it grays the yellow.
I brushed a yellow wash over the whole surface, followed by a thin wash of brown mixed from my earth tones. Thin washes of darker browns were added in a few places, especially under outcroppings. Next, I drybrushed some white in horizontal streaks to highlight a few areas. Finally, India ink diluted in alcohol was sprayed over the whole surface to deepen the crevices and tone down the whole effect.
The last step is to blend the rocks into the surrounding scenery. Sift dirt and loose rock (broken up pieces of castings make a fine talus slope) around the castings. A few bits of foliage, even trees, are usually found in natural crevices. Since this is an old wall of the quarry, For more ideas for rocks and finishing the scenery, I recommend Dave Frary’s How to Build Realistic Model Railroad Scenery, available from Kalmbach Publishing Co. and hobby shops.
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Some of the castings were broken apart and rearranged. Whole castings and pieces were attached to the hill with hot glue.
| | Placing molds and filling gaps
Once the plaster has set, peel off the mold and examine your casting. A few small bubbles are nothing to worry about. You can ignore them, fill them, or try scraping across them to blend them with the casting. If you have a large cavity, you need to be more careful when you pour. Don’t throw away the casting though. You can break it and use pieces, or even fill the hole.
You can set castings in place with plaster, white glue, or hot glue – hot glue sets quickly so is handy on steep slopes. Once your castings are in place, fill the gaps between them with more wet plaster using sticks, putty knives, brushes, fingers, anything that will get it where you want it. Before it sets hard, carve the fill material to blend with the castings
Don’t worry if some filler drips across your casting - you can readily chip it away with a putty knife. Use the putty knife or other tools to blend the joints and the castings.
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The above articles is the property of and is
the copyright of Kalmbach
Publishing Co. |
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