bigindoortrains.com

Okay, we're calling this done:

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54964335287_335f1faee0_b.jpg

Lots of room for further process improvement, but after three hours in the basement alternatively glittering and vacuuming, then 36 hours for a thorough dry, I think we're generally pleased with the ...

Shot the tunnel with a basecoat of Rustoleum "moss green" and "warm caramel", topped with a coat of Rustoleum "primer white". Paint really exposes all of the imperfections in the paper, so a bit of touch-up using some lightweight spackle compound, then some more paint. Following that, the masons ...

Shopping for Christmas decorations yesterday at an antique shop (Thanksgiving Eve), spotted this little Marx "set" marked ten bucks...figured it would be worthwhile, even if for no other reason than to learn a bit more about Marx:

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54949968018_3c6a80dee8_b.jpg ...

Finally got back to this, giving it a papering yesterday evening:

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54947203168_5787313a7a_b.jpg

Made a number of mistakes during this effort, primarily forgetting to crumple up the paper bag before tearing it up into strips/pieces. You need to do that to break ...

I had planned to use this building as part of the 2025 tunnel.tree-stand project, but the footprint proved too big to fit onto the hillside. Instead, we went ahead and finished it as a stand-alone:

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54932103544_8b0fc721bf_b.jpg

We call it the Buena Vista , a ...

An uncatalogued Lionel Junior set from 1934 or 1935, a 1681 2-4-0 dragging a pair of Lionel O-27 coaches (1690, 1691):

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54923916738_cddb52f6ef_b.jpg

We found this set at the December 2008 Arbutus VFD train meet. The 1681 was in pieces, needed a new pinion gear ...

Okay, so the last thing I've managed to finish (well mostly finish) is pasting in some paper webbing to help support the paper mâché application. In its sopping wet form, paper mâché sags pretty bad, so you need something underneath to prop it up a bit. In the model train world, one would use ...

So we next cut out forty-some contours for the hillsides. It's a tedious process, I'll admit, especially since each needs some amount of fitting to make them work. I also cut and pasted in the two bases for the buildings I'm going to use:

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54906900541_a6523dd1cf ...

Well, a bit more progress over the last week or so. First, we gave the three buildings a coat of paint and pasted in some windows. I picked up a couple gold paint pens thinking those would be useful for drawing in the mullions on the windows, but they didn't work so great. I tried two different ...

Spent the weekend working on the three putz-style buildings for the tunnel project:

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54883350334_98860d52f8_b.jpg

Still a ways to go, but once these are done I'll have a better sense of what will go where and I can start cutting the contour partitions for the ...