Independence Station and the Residential District

Over the last few weeks, I started working on the parking area for the train station, as well as the hardshell for the surrounding area (the residential zone, etc). One decision I had to make was whether the depot was going to be “up” on a raised parking area like the rest of the town has been so far. I decided not to do that. The main reason I chose to put the station more on “ground” level is that the platform for boarding is sort of built assuming that — raising it to the level of a sidewalk made it look too high (to me). So I decided to use 0.020″ styrene, as I did with the road, to make a parking area, but I did NOT place the depot atop it. Instead, I cut out the footprint of the depot — I sort of “cut around” it to make a parking zone.

My next step was to prime, and then paint, the parking lot. I moved the depot out of the way to avoid getting paint on it.

The pink area that is left around the parking lots will end up being grass, dirt, etc.

With the parking area ready to go, I then used the WS plaster cloth to make a hardshell surface. I find this works better than trying to put grass right onto the pink foam, and it also is very easy to add some bumps and hills to the terrain. There’s not a lot of room in this section so I only made a small hill. Not sure if you can pick it out thanks to the lighting.

The little smudge on the parking lot was just a wet spot. I had gotten some of the dust from the plaster on the parking lot and found that if I dampened a sponge and brushed it off, it cleaned off nicely. But I took the picture while it was still wet there.

My next step was to slather on a layer of Sculptamold. I was of two minds about whether to do this. Having used it last year while testing with the learning kits, I found that it was not really necessary to get good coverage. However, the plaster cloth, because of the odd, non-square shapes I’d had to cut it into, had made a very uneven, bumpy surface, and this made leveling off the houses slightly problematic. In the end i decided to go with the Sculptamold and I could not be happier. It gave me a nice, flat, smooth surface.

It did, however, make a bit more of a mess than the plaster cloth did, even with my attempts to use newspaper or tape to cover things. I am going to have to touch up the roadways and parking lots after I get everything else done. But I’m going to wait on that until I have all the turf down and houses installed.

My next step was to paint the hardshell an earth color. I chose Acrylic Burnt Umber color from Michael’s (in a “toothpaste tube”) and used some Acrylic white (same type of paint) to lighten it. It came out looking (to me) like dark dirt, which is what I wanted.

As you can see I am going to have to touch up around the edges, but it shouldn’t be a big deal. Again, I will wait until after the turf is done before I do that.

Next I masked off the footprints for the houses and put the gravel driveways in place (used ballast for it).

Following that, I laid down the turf.

The turf was hard to get the glue in place here because I couldn’t spray it on (the working area just did not allow it without making a huge mess). I used a dropper, and that left all kinds of little “river marks” in the turf, which will also have to be cleaned up. I fixed some of it but now I have to wait for it to dry.

The driveways look pretty good. I managed to slop some turf into them and some of the glue dribbled in by accident, so it’s stuck in there now, but I’m not sure I hate it. From a distance it looks like there are some weeds growing out of the driveway gravel, which is certainly not unrealistic. I will have to see how it looks when it is all done. If necessary I can cover it up with a bit more ballast.

I also learned not to do ballast and turf at the same time. The ballast is very hard to control, gets everywhere, and once it is inside the turf area there is no good way to get it out. Fortunately this only happened in one small patch, and I was able to attack it with the tweezers. Next time though, I am going to wait until the turf is completely dry/hardened to do ballast, so if necessary I can vacuum up any stray particles.

At any rate, with the main turf area hardened, I used WS foam putty to put the houses in place. This looks a little messy at first, I realize. But I was able to fix it later. The houses puttied in place:

I still have lots of small white and brown spots that need touching up and covering with small amounts of turf, but I’m going to wait to do that until the other side of the street is finished and do it all at once.

And then cleaned up with more turf filling in the gaps and covering up the putty:

This part was a little tedious. I actually used tweezers to put tiny clumps of turf onto the glue-covered hardshell and then tamped it down with my little finger. All the way around each house. I did a couple of houses at a time to spare my aching back. 

As you can see the neighborhood was starting to shape up earlier in the week. The road still needed some paint touch-ups and the driveways still needed to “set” with the glue but otherwise things are nearing completion. And I have to say, for once, it looks basically the way I had envisioned. You can see that the train station has been glued in as well.

Next, I did the touch-up painting of the train station’s parking lot. It’s looking a lot better now.

The residential area and depot were now more or less complete, except for the ballast, some trees, and some final touch-ups. The trees won’t be going in until next month (have to wait for the budget to refresh), but I definitely want to have a few in the back yards of the houses, and also a bunch on the hill just outside of town. Here are some looks at the progress.

The hill on the way out of town, which came out pretty much how I wanted it.

And the residential area from two different angles:

I’m particularly happy with the way the hedges around the depot parking lot look… it has a “landscaped” look to it. I was toying with putting up chain link fence instead, but I decided this made it feel more “residential.” The neighbors wouldn’t like a big ugly fence, I’m guessing. 

I gave the one house nearest the tracks the light green bushes instead of the darker green, though I don’t know if you can see it from the pictures. I decided the owner of that house doesn’t water his shrubs as well as everyone else, so his bushes are wilting. Heheh.

Finally, I completed the detail work including bushes and trees…

And an overview…

I still need to add trees to the back area (off to the right of the last shot) against the wall, but I’m going to finish the hardshell first.