Using real granite

I have talked to model railroaders for several year now about using real granite in the scenery. Many were at first opposed because the size of the crystals in the granite would be out of proportion for HO scale. Just to let you know there is a form of granite called Pegmatite that took over 1 Billion years to cool as a result the crystals are the size of a football. the longer the cooling time the larger the crystal produced. So there should be no problem in your trains traveling beside a wall of Pegmatite. Isn't this fun and we learned something too. Big John former Professor of Geochemistry

Reply to
NICHE541
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I put granite on my layout about two years ago. Looks good. I get it for free from my son'nlaw (owns his own shop in Mananas). So that works out.

My wife is happy too her new counter tops are coming this weekend. He knows how to keep his mother n law happy!

Chris

Reply to
Chris

And that's a good thing for a model railroad why?

Usually something this weird is hashbuster boilerplate followed by a spammed url, but either you're just strange, or you forgot to put it in. *

Reply to
PV

One thing taht I've learned from John Allen is that when you do something, the rest should be to the same level of detail. When you looked closely at John's stuff, you'll see that there really wasn't that much detail but rather the level of detail was all the same and your eye filled in the missing stuff. Put a well detailed engine or car on his layout and suddenly the rest of the stuff looked crude. It was more the eveness of the detail and the finish of the stuff that made it look so good. Also, remember that he weathered his stuff in a time when practically nobody did any weathering of anything which made his stuff so much better looking in his time. For reference, look at some of the Old Master paintings for the effects of paint color vs. actual detail. This isn't to say that granite isn't a good material to use but remember the detail level it sets. On the negative side, also remember that granite pieces will be heavy and will take a fair bit of support to keep in place.

-- Bob May

rmay at nethere.com http: slash /nav.to slash bobmay http: slash /bobmay dot astronomy.net

Reply to
Bob May

Bob I found your comments about John Allen interesting and went to his Web Site. Compared to what is being done in scenery work today,one could consider his stuff very bland. Details on his work are however very high and every structure and scene look very nice.

I on the other hand believe we as modelers have gone overboard with weathering, details and the amount of "stuff" we place on our models.

I look at photo's from the later 1890's to the late 1950's and it seems that in the real world, AKA prototype, things were not as cluttered. Streets were clean and not to many cars around unless it was large City. Buildings were not too heavily worn unless they were abandoned. The same holds true for railroad structures and cars. Railroads took care of their "assets" and maintained them well. Even the little guys took care of things.

I'm modeling logging from the late 1890's to the early 1920's and after spending months worth of time and I mean months,looking at all the data and pictures on the web I could not find that much evidence of heavily worn shay's,climax's and heislers. Most photo's show them very clean with some buildup where steam and water have escaped. They are greased up well but for the most part look pretty well taken of. As for mills and axillary equipment, it looks like they are very well maintained and the mills are usually kept pretty clean.

There are photos of mills with heavy chip build up around head saws and edgers, but whose to say these photos weren't taken in the middle of a busy day and clean up was not done yet.

I look at the heavy weathering of loco's , cars and structures and wonder it these were translated into real life, would they really be that weathered.

To me, some of these heavily detailed dioramas do not look authentic. Sierra West for example markets their models with an enormous amount of cast details and their dioramas are really cluttered. Don't get me wrong, they look amazing and Brett has done a magnificent job, but is it true to prototype.

Just some thoughts Mike Mueller

Reply to
mike mueller

What models & layouts are you comparing the photos to -- in terms of saying that modelers have gone overboard with weathering and details?

Reply to
Mark Mathu

I'll bite. John Allen has been dead since 1973. Who's his ISP and does he have a blog? Oh, and do you have a URL? Thanks. :o)

Reply to
LD

No, the detail work on nearly *all* of his stuff (cars, locos, structures, etcetera) was not very high -even for that time and place - nor do his surviving models have very much detail either. John was not just a master builder, he was (as Bob pointed out) a master of illusion as well -and knew how to suggest things that weren't really there; both in photographs and in real life.

Depends on (A) what you're modelling and (B) what you most enjoy seeing. (After all, it's *your* layout and you shouldn't be building it to suit someone else's tastes.)

For instance, some structures in my locale are quite old and poorly maintained, and if you were to model them you'd want to make them look

*very* weathered if they were to look realistic on a layout that was set in the present. Or see the warehouse roof, the rust and dirt on the Coastal Schooner, and the discolored paint on the old boxcar on my layout that's set in the '50s.

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These are all examples of heavy weathering, but each is appropriate to the time and place of the layout setting, each is the result of my studying similar prototypes to see what they looked like as they got old. I think they work pretty well together.

So can one overdo the weathering and amount of "stuff" we put on our layouts? Sure. We generally work with layouts of limited size, and it's a natural temptation to try to include everything we like in a space that would never naturally contain it. But that's where the art and illusion part come in, and quite naturally some of us are better at it than some others.

My personal solution is to add detail until it "looks right" and then resist the temptation to add more.

~Pete

Reply to
Twibil

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Reply to
Twibil

Are those lumber loads 40' or 60' ?

Reply to
BleuRaeder

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Thanks, thought I was having a senior moment. I'll spend some time there.

Reply to
LD

It's been so long since I made 'em that I don't remember, but hang on...(walks to railroad room and back)...turns out they're 30 footers.

I was working from photos of old west-coast-based steam schooners when I scratched the ship and her cargo, so they may not be dead on to the prototype, but all you can do in those cases is assume that doorways are usually around 6'-6" high and scale everything from there as closely as you can.

~Pete

Reply to
Twibil

Mikd, go back and take a real good look at the modeling for the fine detail stuff that people are doing today. You'll find that really, a lot of it isn't there. However, what is there is the trash and stuff in abundance which makes you think that there is a lot of detail there. He was a master at illusion as another mentioned.

-- Bob May

rmay at nethere.com http: slash /nav.to slash bobmay http: slash /bobmay dot astronomy.net

Reply to
Bob May

That is a fine ship. I was going to ask about where it came from.

Reply to
Daly Bob

Thank you.

Mostly from the balsa-wood bin at the local hobby shop. But there are a few actual model ship parts in there as well, including the ventilator air scoops, the skiff, and the anchors. Everything else was scratched from left-overs and unlikely junk..

~Pete

Reply to
Twibil

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