The Crossing

[Vox Repeater]

I am a man who is easily distracted. I was searching for some brick rubble to use on my dio when I ended up on the DioDump website. I had a look around it, like you do, and there were many things that I thought "ooh, thats a good idea" and "mmm, thats nice".  One of them was the resin base of a road/railway crossing - 

 

 

I made some quick justifications to myself - "well, if you are going to build dioramas, you will end up with vehicles that you want to take photos of before they go on the diorama, so you need a photographic scene" and "It'll be good practice painting it". So I got one (along with with a whole load of other stuff).

 

I spent the weekend painting it and have got this far

 

Crossing 1 by nomisd2002, on Flickr

 

Crossing 2 by nomisd2002, on Flickr

 

Crossing 3 by nomisd2002, on Flickr

 

Crossing 4 by nomisd2002, on Flickr

 

Crossing 6 by nomisd2002, on Flickr

 

The whole thing was undercoated with Tamiya Aqua colour black then -

 

The road - a base of Tamiya German Field Grey with lots of individual cobbles done in a variety of shades of grey. A wash of Tamiya black liner was then put on and taken off. The road was then dry brushed with white and then attacked with Noch weathering powders (I used white, black and brick dust). I also put some streaks down the middle using a paint from a seller of paints for model railways (whose name escapes but I will check later) that I have had unopened for about 10 years called Oil Spill. It dries like its wet oil oil - it was a bit too shiny so I went over it with a bit more weathering powder.

 

The fields - a base of Tamiya Red Brown and same liner wash. I then dry brushed various browns in different places and a bit of white too. I picked out some of the wood debris and the tree stump with three colours from the Vallejo Wood and Leather set (Wood, Smoke and Japanese Uniform Yellow) mixed in various proportions. The concrete box was painted using Vallejo Concrete. Some DioDump Wild Farmland ground scatter was, erm, scattered and a couple of their grass tufts were added.

 

The railway line - The ballast started off as a base of Tamiya German Uniform Grey which then had a black liner wash put on and taken off. It was then dry brushed with the same base coat again with individual stones picked out. The sleepers had a base of Fresh Creosote (from the same company as the Oil Spill Paint) which was gone over with Worn Creosote from the same manufacturer that was almost immediately wiped off. The inside and outside of the rail were painted with Vallejo Light Rust and the tops with Vallejo Steel. Some dark brown coloured sand was sprinkled in the ballast.

 

Overall I am pretty happy at my first go at this. The rust needs toning down and I am not sure about the colour of the road, its a bit too light. Does anyone have any suggestions for a colour mix for a fresh cut tree stump middle?

 

 

 

[Badder]

Hi V.R.

 

Exellent work in all respects.

 

If I may suggest a couple of things?

First, for the freshly cut tree stump. I'd use Tamiya Buff as the base coat, and assuming that the growth rings are well defined in the moulding, a few light washes with something like Tamiya Japanese Naval Grey followed by some dry-brushing of the growth rings with a darkened Buff.  I'd then think about some more light washes towards the yellow/orange part of the spectrum and then rubbing them back. Unless you envisage the stump as being a mahogony tree, in which case forget everything I said.

My second suggestion would be to polish some of those cobbles. Probably a scrub with a nice stiff dry brush is all that will be required. Failing that, sprinkle some graphite dust on the cobbles and work that in with the aforementioned brush.

 

I look forward to seeing your vehicles photographed in place.

 

Rearguards,

Badder

 

 

[Vox Repeater]

Badder

 

Thanks for those tips - I will try they stump suggestion. I have done a quick scrub of a small section of the cobbles and it has done the job

 

5 hours ago, Badder said:

I look forward to seeing your vehicles photographed in place.

Yeah, me too 😉

 

VR