It's been a while...

It's been a year since I posted anything new here. I'm sorry for you folks who were checking back periodically but my life got in the way. I've been really busy with model railroad, family and cooking projects.

Last fall I released a new DVD titled "EASY SCENERY from start to finish." It's available through this website.

The DVD shows building landform scenery from using cardboard strips, plaster cloth, and Sculptamold.

Doug Foscale shows you how to carve rocks in plaster and color them. I show you how to add cast plaster rocks, and then paint them using Poly Scale paints.

Next I add add ground cover and build trees. Hal Reynolds shows you how to use a wire twisting tool to build pine trees and weeds. I build a simple waterway using Woodland Scenics water products.

As a disclaimer I must say that some of the topics included in EASY SCENERY are also included in my Building Landforms DVD. Only in EASY SCENERY I use different materials, colors and methods to achieve similar results. EASY SCENERY takes you to the end of the scenery building process - finished scenery.

The 23 chapters include:

Building Mountains

Making rocks - two ways

Ballasting track - the easy way

Coloring rail

Cutting an shaping foam scenery

Painting rocks - two different ways

Modeling water

Adding scenic texture

Building a dirt road

Making weed trees

Making twisted wire trees

And, putting it all together to make a finished scene

Most of the tools and materials used in EASY SCENERY can be obtained from Micro Mark.

Please stayed tuned I'm going to do my best to post something informative and interesting every week. Thanks for checking back.

New DVD - Easy Scenery

EASY SCENERY from start to finish

My latest DVD is 103 minutes and 23 chapters long. The price is $29.95 plus $4.95 shipping. Available now from my web site.

Learn how to build great looking scenery from start to finish. Using simple tools and materials I show you how to start with cardboard strips, plaster cloth and carved foam to build your base; add rocks and paint them; build a realistic waterway; make trees and finish with scenic details to create scenery for your layout. Doug Foscale and Hal Reynolds add their expertise to demonstrate carving plaster rocks and making bottle-brush trees. This DVD is packed with tips and ideas to help you build better looking scenery. Great for beginners and experts alike.

The 23 chapters include:

Building Mountains

Making rocks - two ways

Ballasting track - the easy way

Coloring rail

Cutting an shaping foam scenery

Painting rocks - two different ways

Modeling water

Adding scenic texture

Building a dirt road

Making weed trees

Making twisted wire trees

And, putting it all together

As a disclaimer I must say that some of the topics included in Building Landforms part 1 & 2 are also included in this DVD. Only in Easy Scenery I use different products, colors and methods to achieve similar results. Easy Scenery takes you to the end of the scenery building process - finished scenery.

Most of the tools and materials used in Easy Scenery can be obtained from Micro Mark.

More competition BBQ

It was a good weekend.

Our iQue BBQ team this weekend consisted of Chris Hart and myself. We cooked competition BBQ at the Massachusetts State Championship held at the Peter's Pond Campground in Sandwich, Mass. This was a sanctioned Kansas City BBQ Society event. There were 33 teams from the USA and Canada.

Tornado watches and squalls were all around New England but Cape Cod was warm, dry, and about 75 Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday.

We went "old school" cooking on a Backwoods Fat Boy (24 hours on a bag and a half of lump charcoal and a few lumps of apple wood.) We cooked this contest "light" - a table, several chairs, an EZ-Up, two coolers, and the cooker. This was the way we started cooking 15 years ago when we didn't have any money.

Chris's great cooking won the contest. iQue received a large check plus cash, trophies, a pallet of Wicked Good lump charcoal, and 200 pounds of cooking wood. We scored 6th in chicken, 2nd in Ribs, 1st in pork shoulder, and 10th in brisket and beat the second closest team by 21 points. A great weekend!

Bottle Brush Trees and Weeds

Hal Reynolds and I have been experimenting making trees using the Micro Mark twister pliers. These are easy to use and make nice looking trees and weeds.

Micro Mark sells what you need to get started - the pliers, wire and 2.5" strands of fur-like fibers. The pine tree with foliage is made using the Micro Mark products.

It took a little practice and we experimented with other materials. In the photo at the top of the page you see the pliers, a length of sisal rope and some wire from the craft store. The tree I made from sisal rope is the one without the foliage. It needs to be painted and then have dark green scenic foam sprinkled on.

The weed experiment is shown in the bottom two photos. This is just short lengths of rope fiber twisted into the wire. The strand was painted and placed in the scene - bottom photo.

If you're looking for a train-related activity while you're watching TV, making trees is the way to go. I never watch a ballgame unless I make a few trees!

My next video

It doesn't look like much but this is where I'm shooting my next how-to-do-it video. As you may have seen in other posts I painted the backdrop but found it too distracting for the early parts of the video. Later when there's some scenery on the model railroad I'll pull off the black cloth so the greenery of the foreground scenes will blend with the background.

Doug Foscale of Fos Scale Limited is carving rocks from plaster. He did a great demo.

These pictures were taken as a test of the video lighting.

Rock Molds

I like using molds to model rocks. For many years I made and sold a line of over 20 molds. All were made from real rocks that looked good in miniature.

I still get requests from modelers who can't find the molds on my web site. I stopped making them over five years ago because they were very labor intensive and demand dwindled.

Nowadays when modelers ask about molds I send them to Sterling Models. They have a growing line of molds that are very realistic. Each mold is hand made using latex rubber and they're packaged to stay flat.

The larger molds are set in a cardboard "tray" for shipping. The tray is a handy holder when pouring plaster into the mold.

Check them out.

The Franklin & South Manchester model railroad

I just uploaded another video. This one is about George Sellios' F&SM railroad.

Here's the official blurb:

In this rare video I show George Sellios' Franklin & South Manchester model railroad as it looked in 1987 and again in 2001 and 2002.

I start by showing the early construction of the F&SM and George running the trains, next we jump to 2001 and see George presenting his kits and the layout on a Boston morning news show.

Next in 2002, we follow several trains as they circle the layout as part of a monthly open house, and I finish by showing and explaining many of George's scenery building secrets.

This video is 23 minutes long, a high quality 140MB download and is priced at $5.95.

This video was assembled from video I'd shot over the years. The presentation was made for the 2002 NMRA Sunshine Region Convention. That was it's only showing until until this week when I discovered I still had a copy of the tape.