Railroad model

[arbskynxnex]

1 month into the model and we finished the first tree finished today. Now there are ONLY 99 more to go. What do you guys think of it?

[dlb]

like all males, i have the strangest fascination with model trains. i have no idea why but i love them. your tree looks great, how many hours did you log?

[arbskynxnex]

I loved them as a kid, but it faded out as I realized that at 12 I couldn't afford to get the cool stuff. Somehow I got asked to build a model for a museum 2 years back and they paid for the supplies and now I got asked to build this one for the college.

I didn't keep track since 5 or 6 people worked on this tree, but I will guess, being this is tree number one it took 10 + hours to make. There was probably another 20 hours we put into it figuring out color, materials, test cutting foilage and what not. My head assistant and I seriously sweated this until we got the first layer of brown foam on and it started to look like a tree. He came in today and saw it finished and there were high fives all around.

Here's a link to the time lapse I'm keeping of it. It is already 7 minutes long and we haven't even got landscaping down. I'm the big guy with the beard.
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/K ... directlink

And some Oxen.

[Petros]

That is just great. A job where you get paid to make toys, what a life! I learned of another guy who is a "professional" Lego builder. He entered some lego contests, than got contracts to build Lego displays, he quit his well paid engineering job to do it full time. Was than hired by Hasbro to build Lego models full time.

I know of a guy that builds museum quality replicas of small wood boats, he started by building a skin-on-frame kayak in is apartment for fun. Now he has a 5 year back log of kayaks, native canoes, sail boats, etc.

Hey! do you think you could sneak in a mini-Tercel4wd model into the farm scenery? That would be a hoot.

[ARCHINSTL]

The tree appears to have tiny drops of moisture on it - true? How?
Pretty clever.
Sure beats the green sponge and green fibre brush trees of my Lionel youth.
Tom M.

[takza]

Now about that cow with the FLAME paint job? I know some cows are fast...but...come on.....

Most I had as a kid was the 3 rail type train set (nor the fine gauge stuff) ...spent a lot of time chasing marbles around the track.

At my age I have a hard time getting to the place where I can relate to models and so forth....though I am thinking of an radio controlled plane or heli to mess around with.

[dlb]

my dad was a shut-in nerd as a kid, just stayed in the attic building insane models. i used to go to my grandad's and marvel at the room. it was really weird to me and didn't look like much fun. kind of just like a workshop that smelled musty, really. he still loves models.

it's funny how males gravitate towards this kind of stuff. i wonder what the female equivalent is. horses?

[solarlord]

Yep its horses and shopping or both -the girls and mom go shopping smelling of horse sweat- and the jack russels smell of horse pee ,they seem to think that horse pee is doggie armani/kelvin kline- when i was kid i built every revel/monogram kit(mainly WW2 aircraft) I could get my hands on- the smell of glue and model paint still takes me back-DEC

[ARCHINSTL]

My first "job" was when I was 12, building display models for a local hobby shop - I was paid in Lionel rolling stock and was overjoyed! Still have all of my Lionel trains.
Mind, this was before plastic models - I built stick-and-tissue-paper airplanes. I had more patience than today's 12-year olds.
Over the years I bought various WWII plastic models (mostly airplanes), intending to build them when I retired. But - when I was selling the bike shop via eBay when it closed, I discovered how much "NIB" models were bringing and got MANY hundred of bucks for them. Some were the original versions of models still produced today, using the original molds of 40-50 years ago - which made my real "originals" even more valuable.
Tom M.

[arbskynxnex]

Hey! do you think you could sneak in a mini-Tercel4wd model into the farm scenery? That would be a hoot.

Ha! I'd love to except this is a logging railroad with ox teams hauling logs from the 1880's. I could sneak a DeLorean in though.

All that tree was made from was a dowel, furnace filter, paint and ground foam. That is the part I like most about building models making something that looks like a real, but miniature version of the full sized thing.

[Neu]

That time lapse is rad.

[dcn]

Awesome! I love trains, both scale and real. Looks HO scale to me, do you have any shots of the whole layout? Looks like you've got some track laid at least.

[arbskynxnex]

Thanks Neu. I can't wait until we start getting the terrain and landscape down, it should make the time lapse much cooler.

DCN It is HO, I don't have any good shots of the layout yet, most everything is set up for the time lapse, plus close ups of scenery. I'll try and remember to grab one next week. Its basically a modified oval since we were limited to a 4'x8' sheet of plywood because the college doesn't want us to take over the building. I'd said we needed at least 15' to model just the part on campus correctly and they about died. It has played hell with everything, I think most of our turns are about 11" - 12" radius (yay flex track) to accommodate the wye and we have yet to build our locomotive to be able to get a good test of how well everything will stay on the tracks.

[CathodeRayTube]

Before i got into cars and computers...my obsession was trains...when i was 12, i started a very elaborate 8' x 8' HO train layout...in a nutshell, i lost interest and never finished it...and 10 years later, there it sits in the loft in my barn deteriorating as the mice and leaking roof take there toll...I had all the track layed, the mountain/tunnels finished, and had started on the grass/trees...and had everything wired...

If anybody wants it and will help move it they can have the whole setup...its turned into a waste of space. i can take pics if anybodys interested...

[arbskynxnex]

CRT: It is too bad I live on the West Coast, otherwise I'd be all over it. I'll bet if you throw it up on craigslist or some model RR forum you could find a good home for it.

Our model is coming along nicely. We got the terrain modeled and started putting down plaster yesterday. Here are some pics after the terrain. I'm actually hopeful that we'll have it done by Oct 1st now.