The last of the curtains are back from the seamstress (Thanks Mom!), and ready to be hung when all the dust settles from latest scenery work.
Trying a new approach to scenery construction instead of the old plaster ways. I dont like how my pine trees repeatedly lean over in the plaster shell if you look at them wrong, and also wanted to see how use of foam techniques would play out. Foam will allow for stabbing those pines in without revisiting for maintenance, and sculpting of the contour more accurately than trying to camouflage a bunch of humps and ravines / crevices via multiple passes. Most notably, there are a number of locations with long benchwork spans that I think the foam will save some grief (not user friendly areas for cardboard lattice), like for the main river crossing contours below and around Hampton bridge. Also I have some narrow areas that need a plethora of conifers to convincingly force the viewer's perspective at both ends of Hampton. So Chip and John motivated me to get going by offering to come up and help out, where we made some good progress on installing the scenery base foam for the Expansion section. This was my first adventure using foam, and grateful to them for showing me their techniques on working with the stuff. Unfortunately the expansion section is mostly all curved radius, significantly slowing our productivity. It looks like a good number of man hours still left to get all the foam down and shaped there, plus a few sections that need it on the lower deck as well. Thanks for gettin me off to a good start guys! It wasnt as bad as I thought to clean up the foam remnants the next day, but still a little more work as compared to just regular sawdust (think static).
Here is a pic that Chip bagged while we all contributed to spreading the mess out in the driveway:
I think next time I will hook up the shop vac first, then cut and shave it all in the bed of the truck for easier clean up.... (no I won't drop the tailgate at 65mph.... lol).
Got a number of scenes off to a good start, including these areas where Chip caught a couple more images of the early progress...
around the backside from the KN interchange:
fitting pieces around the lower deck of Hampton siding:
Kinda' taking a liking to what can be done with the pink stuff... but gonna have to drag these guys back up again to continue making any decent headway. :)
Happy New Year!
