End-of-summer Update: Sky Painting, Laser Silhouettes, and Collecting

It's been a couple of months since my last update, so I wanted to share how I've been keeping busy since then. This hobby has many different parts and while what I've been working on may not appear like I've been making big changes, I have remained busy, painting, researching, collecting, and planning. Let's get started. Since my last update I've installed 2 foot high masonite panels around the wall, spackled, and primed everything white. To begin roughing in the sky I started with 3 colors, light blue, a darker grey blue, and white. The goal? To blend the horizon into the sky smoothly, light at the bottom and darker at the top. I began with pure white at the bottom, followed by a mix of light blue and white in the middle, and then a straight up middle blue at the top, all the while using a ruler to blend the colors. Next I added horizontal bands using the two darker blues, applying them with an airbrush. This gave the backdrop an overcast, hazy look. I went back over some of those same darker areas with lighter colors to create misty clouds. After much trial and error, and certainly repainting a few scenes, I finally had a sky that I was happy with. I next added silhouettes of large apartment buildings to create the illusion of distance on the backdrop. I've been photographing city skylines and converting them into stencils using Adobe Illustrator and my laser cutter. After trying various sizes, I settled on two stencil sizes. Small buildings for the very distant horizon, and medium sized stencils for the foreground. I applied the smaller building stencils over the horizon line using a light blue paint. I spaced them into clusters to leave room for larger buildings. Then I painted in a regular horizon line with that same light blue. Next I used a darker blue grey for the larger stencils, spaced logically between the lighter ones to create a believable horizon line. I kept the horizon fairly high because I plan on adding retaining walls to the backdrops base. This time instead of brush painting the horizon line, I experimented by tearing bristol board to create irregular patterns, which I then stenciled across the base of the larger stencils. Happy with the backdrop, I moved my attention to painting the rails. I have been hesitant to move forward with painting as I seem to have ongoing track adjustments, but now that everything is running fairly smoothly, I decided to finish the paint. I applied a standard rusty brown to the rail sides, followed with an overspray of taupe. After wiping the rails clean with a paper towel multiple times, and allowing the rails to dry, I gave everything a final polish with a bright boy. While working on the backdrop, I've been delving into some of the hobby's less glamorous yet equally captivating aspects. Research and collecting. I've always been intrigued by how Via Rail continues to mix different passenger and locomotive equipment to create their consists. Even today, it's unusual to find a train that doesn't have a blend of older and newer cars, each sporting various paint job and heralds. The practice of car mixing dates back to Via Rail's creation in 1974 when they amalgamated rail cars from the Canadian Pacific and the Canadian National. Historical photos often revealed an eclectic mix of cars and paint jobs and trains on different corridor routes or even on the Canadian. Researching these mixed consists led me to the Maple Leaf train, traveling between Canada and the United States. Over the years, Amtrak and Via Rail have traded locomotives and passenger cars for the Maple Leaf, resulting in some intriguing combinations. These unique train sets inspired me to start searching for model combinations and collecting rail cars that could possibly represent these consists in the 70s and 90s. Finding exact matches is tricky and very expensive, so I have enjoyed the hunt for affordable scale model passenger equipment that comes close to representing these various train sets. Additionally, my research unveiled Amtrak's bi-level gallery cars, which introduced me to the Montreal Transit Corporation, where I subsequently learned of a brief period where CP Rail had a small fleet of these same gallery cars, manufactured by Canadian Vickers Industries and painted with the iconic CP Action Red Stripe. With that, I'm now also scouring the internet for used gallery passenger cars to try to create these exact same CP train sets. Lastly, I've been investing in inexpensive urban structures. When I initially launched this channel, I bought several kits from a company called Outland Models, and these kits formed the basis for many of the structures I've constructed over the years. Outland Models has expanded its range of kits and some buildings appear to be really suitable stand-ins for specific downtown structures near the Toronto Union Station. I've also discovered another manufacturer that offers similar and affordable urban structure kits. In short, I've been amassing these kits with the hope of having enough necessary materials to begin constructing the city soon. So there you have it, an end of summer update. With the backdrop done and the track painted, I'm finally looking forward to building some structures and running some trains. Thanks for stopping by, and I'll see you next time.