Getting Plastered

It's been quite a while since I did any work on the landscape of Jerusalem but having now finished the main buildings I have no excuses not to get on with it. The first step is to fix the track in place; it would be silly to build a long tunnel without the track being down first.

I already had the 4% risers in place but I've now covered these in plaster bandage to match the only other bit of scenery that had been done so far. On top of the plaster bandage I've now added a thin layer of polyfilla to give a smoother finish and to fill in the holes in the bandage. I made the polyfilla up 1:1 with Woodland Scenics earth undercoat. I was hopping this would dry an earthy colour (the name would suggest so), but it has dried much paler than I expected, although it isn't a bad colour. My main reason for doing this (rather than just painting the undercoat on) is that if the plaster ever gets chipped it shouldn't show up as a bright white spot. Once the plaster had dried I then glued down the track.

Gluing down the track was much harder than I expected. Making sure the sections lined up around the oval was actually quite difficult, as was sticking it to a slightly uneven surface. If I ever build another layout then I will be putting the cork on top of the risers and gluing the track to the flat surface; not only will that make track laying easier but it should deaden the sound somewhat. While my current approach may not be perfect it works okay (I've run my locomotive around it quite a bit), and any problems should be hidden by the ballasting.

I've now started to paint the track and once that is done then I'll do the ballasting using the mixture I worked out before. So after all that it will still be a while before I get to build a hill!