Bin Doin HO

Yup - not N. Still slow that way. So here is some HO I am doing down the club.

We got in a couple of hundred various trees from an eBay shop called "WeHonest". They are wire wound armatures that have a real toy like green coloured ground foam foliage on them.

The trees themselves are great, just the colour is wrong and they are bit light on in weight.

So out with the hair spray and give them a good coat of it and immediately then sprinkle on some Woodland Scenics fine Turf colours. I used a selection of 4 different colours, therefore making the trees all slightly different and therefore more like what you see in nature.

I'l use the trees on the mountains and hills I am building down one end of the new HO layout at the club. One of the hills is in the background here.

The other day I did a bit of a test spray with a trusty airbrush gadget and mixed up some various colours and sprayed some small offcuts of old track to see what the ties come up like.

The six test sprays on the old track all came up fairly close to each other in overall colour - in strong light you can differentiate them, but under the current general lighting in the clubrooms, they are all fairly close to each other. The test sprays were just to show the fellas some colours and to get them thinking about it for the layout.

I used Tamiya Acrylic paints (flat not gloss) for my testing, as they are water based and hence easier to cleanup afterwards. These paints are also very readily available at just about any toy and hobby store in Brisbane. I picked some up at the Mr Toys in the city for about 5 bucks a bottle (23 ml). A bottle should go quite some way I reckon.

So I did these following mixes:

Tamiya XF53 - Neutral Grey

Tamiya XF64 - Red Brown

Tamiya XF53 - Neutral Grey

Tamiya XF68 - Nato Brown

Tamiya XF53 - Neutral Grey

Tamiya XF10 - Flat Brown

Tamiya XF51 - Khaki Drab

Tamiya XF10 - Flat Brown

Tamiya XF51 - Khaki Drab

Tamiya XF68 - Nato Brown

Tamiya XF51 - Khaki Drab

Tamiya XF64 - Red Brown

Each mix was made up for spraying, by using equal amounts of each paint as well as X20 Thinners. So I ended up with 1/3 Paint + 1/3 Paint + 1/3 Thinner. This sprayed on well and seemed to cover the black ties reasonably well.

The flash on the camera tended to really pale up the paint to what it looks like under the ambient lighting - but even with the super powerful light, it is still a good colour for the sidings.

Now today what I did was to spray up the yard and freight tracks in the area I've been working on the layout. I used the Neutral Grey and Red Brown mix. Bruce and I reckon it's not bad. Maybe for the mainline I'll use the Khaki Drab and Nato Brown mix - Bruce and I reckon that'll work well.

So that's what I did today. Maybe Saturday, beside it being the club Xmas party and Modelling Competition, in the morning I might put a coat of paint on some mainlines in the area I am working on.