MiniArt railway crossing

[Tim Marlow]

Good idea, thanks Leave the PVA to dry first, or apply the filler while it’s still wet?

Let it dry I think…..the moisture in the filler should reactivate it enough to generate the bond. If you are making the filler from powder it’s worth mixing some PVA in anyway. Improves the resistance to chipping and strengthens the bond to the substrate.

 

[Jakko]

I've used pva with a sprinkle of fine sand in the past to give a grippy surface for filler.

Oh, that’s a good idea too, I think I’ll try that for the next section (three more to go!).

in the heat you're working in!

I kind of doubt I will be doing much work on that diorama today, given both the heat and that I feel like I barely slept last night for the same reason

If you are making the filler from powder it’s worth mixing some PVA in anyway.

I’m using pre-mixed filler from a tube, so this trick is going to be a bit difficult It does seem to be stronger already than the types you need to mix yourself that I’ve used in the past at various points, though.

 

[Gern]

Nice fix on that height issue. Coming along very nicely now.

 

[Jakko]

With the heat finally over, my attic modelling room was habitable again today (after leaving the window open for a few hours beforehand). I wanted to try both Tim’s and Andy’s recommendations, so last week I had put PVA glue on two of the still unlandscaped areas and sprinkled sand over one of the two:



We had an official heatwave around here at the time, the first one ever in September since records began, so I very quickly decided to leave it at that until today. After applying the filler to both sides:



Unfortunately, it doesn’t feel like it made much of a difference, though it was definitely worth a try. The real problem, I think, was that the filler was a bit old and starting to get dried out. After doing part of one side, I went and got a cup of water, and just by dipping the ice lolly stick I was using to spread the filler around into it, I could get it to stick better than straight from the tube. In the end there was not enough in the tube to do all three remaining bits (I had to cut open the tube to get enough out for these two areas), so I’ll buy a new tube and see if that sticks better

 

[Jim R]

This is proving to be quite a learning curve Jakko. Your original plan seemed so straightforward. Looks as if you're getting there now.

 

[Jakko]

I used to buil plenty of dioramas 20–30 years ago, but lack of room for them has left me long out of practice

 

[Jakko]

Bought a new tube of filler today, a slightly different type but the same brand. It suffered the same problem: it sticks poorly to the card but well to the ice lolly stick. But again, a little water on said stick solved that well enough, so I now have all four corners landscaped:



That done, I could fit the rails:



The set gives you four rails, but you only need about one and half each side. You get fishplates to connect one side, while the other is meant to splice onto a second section of rail. I wanted the fishplates visible, so I cut a short piece off one rail and attached it to the next with those plates, then added the remaining section to the other side and cut it to length. That done with two, I glued them to the sleepers and added the little retaining plates-with-bolts on the inside. All of those only on the three sleepers where they will be visible, as you can see in the photo above.

With the rails in, I could fit the actual crossing:



Once those were in, but after taking this picture, I used a little more filler to close the gaps between the beams and the paving. Now I need to wait for it all to dry so I can start painting.

 

[Tim Marlow]

Could be the card facing was a little water repellent in nature. Looks like you’ve sorted it now though…..

 

[Jim R]

Glad that's worked.

 

[Scratchbuilder]

Good idea, thanks Leave the PVA to dry first, or apply the filler while it’s still wet?

Dry, if used wet you will have a bigger mess...

 

[Jakko]

Could be the card facing was a little water repellent in nature. Looks like you’ve sorted it now though…..

I think so too, the foam board has the glossy kind of card on both sides. The filler sticks well enough when dry, but when wet, it likes to stick to wood better than to smooth card.

if used wet you will have a bigger mess...

Probably, yes

 

[Jakko]

Now I finally got the paint I needed for this, I sprayed the road grey:



First a coat of Tamiya XF-24 Dark Grey straight from the bottle (except for thinning it, of course), and then I mixed a bit of XF-52 Flat Earth into what remained in my airbrush cup and sprayed random patterns over it. You can see a few lighter areas in the photo, which I missed when spraying — it’s not that easy putting medium-dark grey paint over slightly lighter grey plastic

 

[Graeme C.]

Coming along nicely Jakko, even with all the pitfalls.

 

[Jakko]

As I was spraying my Weasel, I also did some more here:



I put some Italeri 4861AP Flat Rubber into my airbrush, thinned with water (don’t use alcohol with Italeri paints!) and sprayed the ballast between the sleepers, as well as some more random patches on the road surface. Well, semi-random, as I aimed to cover the bits I had missed with the base colour

 

[Jakko]

Finally got round to doing a bit more on this.

I first hand-painted the sleepers with Tamiya red-brown and the rails with a dark red-brown from Army Painter, but I don’t recall the name on the bottle from downstairs on the sofa After that I also painted the beams that make up the actual crossing with the same Tamiya red-brown:



The next step was a black wash (Tamiya flat black) over all of the ballast, sleepers, rails and their hardware:



However, I didn’t put that on the beams for the crossing, except at their ends, because I figure those will weather differently because of the road traffic coming over it.

I also put a wash of Tamiya NATO black (very dark grey) over the road surfaces:



It’s a bit shiny here because it wasn’t dry yet when I took the photo.

 

[JR]

Well you got there in the end Jakko, all looking good.

I mixed PVA with water then add the dry powered wall filler , just my way . You don't need a lot of PVA to give a good bond with wall filler .

 

[adt70hk]

Coming on nicely Jakko!

 

[Jakko]

Thanks

I mixed PVA with water then add the dry powered wall filler , just my way . You don't need a lot of PVA to give a good bond with wall filler .

Back when I built a fair number of dioramas, I usually used pre-mixed wall filler from a tube. I did use the powdered kind sometimes, but I always find that so messy, so I prefer to stay away from it — even if it will keep for longer than pre-mixed, if you store it where damp won’t get into it anyway.

 

[Peter Gillson]

Well you got there in the end Jakko, all looking good.

I mixed PVA with water then add the dry powered wall filler , just my way . You don't need a lot of PVA to give a good bond with wall filler .

I do the same, but also add a little brown paint to colour the filler.

Petet

 

[Jakko]

We’re slowly making progress …



I painted the verges in Tamiya XF-52 Flat Earth, then followed it with a wash of medium brown and drybrushing with a light earth colour, and also attempted to show where cars cross the wooden beams between the tracks:



On the right as well as in a few random spots more in the middle of the road, I’ve added more Flat Earth along the sides of the road to try and blend the road with the dirt from the verges, because on a real street there wouldn’t be such a neat separation:



Compare to the left side, where I hadn’t done that yet when I took these photos:



These still need more work, mainly in applying the dark wash and light drybrushing here as well.