it has been a few weeks since i posted the last wwr. what's the reason ? well, i was out for holidays. spent 25days in canada visiting my parents. besides just hanging around i did some railfanning along the clearwater subdivision of canadian national. weather and most of all the forest fires didn't allow for much traveling.
last week i spend some time upgrading freight cars from plastic to steel wheels, adding weight, tweaking couplers. a few engines finally received a dcc decoder and the necessary programming. reading out all cv from a sound equipped loco can take more than one hour. incredible. now i just need to figure out how to change the function/sound combinations of the rapido locos with an esu decoder. i don't like how the horn works. as soon as i figured that one out i will post the change process here.
work continued on the tunnel portals as well. now both are in place with all the rockwork installed. some ballast, grass and bushes have been installed along the rock walls.
yesterday was "pampe tag" or "putty day". i mixed a few lbs of the usual sawdust/water/white glue until it had the consistency of soft peanut butter. here's what "pampe" looks like. i thought it is more than enough for what i tried to achieve. but then i had to mix a second one.
this putty then is applied to the styrofoam and forms the landscape. while still wet it receives static grass. it will take 2-4 days to completely dry but the the putty will be rock hard. like normal wood. easy to work but still very strong to hold trees, building and whatever in place. since the putty is made out of sawdust it looks like soil once dry. any spots without grass are just light brown. there's no need to use any paint. as said give it a lot of time to dry. after vacuuming the excess static grass of the landscape the tree planting frenzy may begin. of course pics will document this process.
weekly work report..........09/24/2023
Posted - 09/25/2023 : 09:14:30
