West Forge: Track Detailing

This turned out to be a fun project to let the kids help out with. I decided to use acrylic tube paints for coloring the ties. granted they will not hold up as well as something like Polly Scale or Model Masters would have, but I had them and they are easy enough to clean up that I wasn't too worried about the kids spilling anything. Plus I really didn't feel like dragging the air brush out for this. I choose a dark brownish red for the base color. I'm really not sure why I choose that color. It went on and dried very red looking rather than a dirty brow. Already the track is looking better than the glossy black color it comes.

Here is the layout after the red paint was dry. Again not sure why I went so red. It's pretty clear here that the color is too red. You can also see the cut hillside I added to the corner here has the scultpamold but on it now.
This is a close up of the track after I decided to dry brush a grayish brown over top of the red. Things still look overly red here as the sides of the ties are red in a lot of places where the dry brushing didn't touch. Once the ballast is down it should cover up a lot of that. After this shot was taken I wound up replacing the bad section of track (seen as the top track in this shot) and things began to run much more smoothly.

Next step: Ballast!