Painting the dirt

Today I put a coat of paint on my steam bed and the surrounding area. It was a paint I had matched to the dirt sample (blipped earlier) at Home Depot. I put the sample in the blip as well for comparison. While the paint does match the dirt pretty well, it is way too dark. No problem - I will mix up some washes of raw and burnt umber and run it over the base. Maybe a little white as well. Anything to tone down the paint that I put on. Sort of a mistake - but I was going to do the washes anyway so that the "earth" was not consistent in color. So that is next. Then comes the grass and bushes and trees.

I will blip progress photos of the stream bed as I go. I still have to paint the bridge supports and weather them so they don't look like wood - which they are. Once the stream bbed is in and the surrounding vegetation is in I can pour the water. Going to use Magic Water this time. Hopefully it won't crack or yellow in the future. It is supposed to be the next great thing in model water. I hope so!

While the paint dries, I am going to work on my new control system for my future N scale layout. Yes - I will have two railroads here. My old N scale layout at the last house was DC control - the "standard" model railroad power source from the 50's. The new one will be a NCE DCC system. I plan on blipping that layout as a new journal once I get started and will explain it all. I know few people have two layouts of two scales, but hey - if you don't go first class your kids will. Anyway - short trains in Sn3 with lots of detail and switching, long trains and big steam in N. More later......