San Lorenzo Mini Layout | Final Details & Finishing Touches

Howdy folks. Dave here at Thunder Mesa's Studio where this week I'm putting the final touches on the San Lorenzo mini layout. This is the O3 mini layout I've been working on for the past few months. It's kind of a tribute to my late friend Vern Niner and his wonderful Estraa and Sonora Grande layout. And now we are in the final stretch. All of the big projects have been finished and all that's left are little detail projects here and there. Things like ground cover, uh, desert landscaping, the figures, small details, little things like that. A whole bunch of little projects that I need to finish before I can in good conscience call this thing complete. So, come along with me. Let's head back into the train room and we're going to pick up right where we left off last time. So, I'm going to start over here on this side where the aoyo is and kind of work my way over to that side of the layout. Right now, I'm just sprinkling on some more rocks and dirt. These are real rocks that I picked up in a dry wash near my home. And then we're going to hold all of that in place with some diluted white glue. Now, I make this by u putting about this much white glue in an old bottle like this one. So, 3 to one on the white glue water mixture. That's the way I like to make it anyway. Some people have a different recipe, but this has always worked well for me. Now, since this is all pretty large stuff in here, I'm not worried about it floating away. Sometimes you're going to want to wet down your ground cover before you put the white glue on, especially if it's uh a lot of small loose pieces. But um this is some pretty big rock, so I'm not worried about it washing away. Thing I like about applying with a glue bottle is I can squirt it back in back into the back there. Get a lot really good coverage. While that glue is still wet, I'm going to sprinkle on some of this Polylend sanded grout. Color is sandstone. And remember, going back to the early part of the build, I had this color matched uh so I could paint all the rock work to match this color. This was the color that Vern used on the original San Lorenzo diarama. So, I want to follow through with that. The main reason I'm sprinkling it on down here, I mean, I've already covered all this with real rock, right? Well, the main reason I want to do this down here is to make sure that the color matches up. A lot of times what happens with real rock and real dirt is that uh once you get it wet tends to darken up a shade because basically you're washing it. You're getting all the dirt off of the real rock. So, it's going to start to look a little bit lighter and cleaner. And so I'm using the sanded grout to bring back that dusty desert look. Hard to get down there under the trestle. So I'm just going to fling some back in there. Thing about the sanded grout is that, you know, it has a pigment in it. So it's going to add a little color to everything it touches whether you want it on there or not. Also has a adhesive in it or cement I guess. And you know when you get it wet it activates that. Some areas you can just take a spray bottle with some wet water in it. And wet water is just regular water with a couple of drops of liquid detergent in there and just wet the area down. And then sprinkle some of the sanded grout over the top and then watch while it absorbs the moisture and that's activating the adhesive that's in there. You can go back later and add more luted white glue to it if you think it needs that because it's going to dry and create kind of a hard shell over the top. All right, let that dry for a little while. And you can see I've already started to add some desert plants. I've got some prickly pear cactus over here. This is from Pegasus models. Um got some bushes that came from the original San Lorenzo diarama, including this one. I think Burn just got this at the floor shop or or the Florida department at like a Hobby Lobby. Same with this. I think this is a some pine needles off a fake pine tree which makes a nice looking yaka. Uh then I've got some sulfur sller sller. Always always think I'm pronouncing that wrong. Sler toughs prairie grass and burnt desert grass down here. Uh and then this is an old sawarro cacti that I carved many many years ago. used to be on the Thunder Mesa layout, but I've replaced those with some newer ones. These are made out of balsa wood the old school way. And then over here, I've got a couple of cottonwood trees because I want it to look like, you know, this is a drywashed, but there's probably water down underground and in the desert that's usually indicated by cottonwood trees. Uh, I made these myself and I'm going to show you exactly how I make them. I like to make trees out of sage brush. It has a really nice uh bark and branch detail that looks scale already. This is some stuff I collected up in southern Utah. If you don't have access uh in your area to sage brush um out in the wild, you can you can get it at some shops uh or you can order it on Etsy. I know someone that sells it on Etsy. I've seen them there. First thing I want to do is cut this off square at the bottom. Just going to trim this up a little bit. These stringer ones off here. More tree- shaped. Pull the uh sage brush leaves off. What I do when I get this stuff is I soak it uh in matte I soak them in matte medium. You get a big a jar like this or a big bucket and put some diluted matte medium in there. Or you could use white glue. And what that does is it makes them less brittle. You know, once it soaks in and you let it dry, it gives the branch armature almost kind of a rubbery texture. Then I like to take my twist drill and put a hole in the bottom of the trunk so I can put a pin or a nail or toothpick in there, something to help mount it on the lamp. I think on this one I'm going to use a shirt pin. Cut the head off. Pop that in there with some sinoacrylite. Kick it with a little baking soda. Now we got a handle. and a way to plant it on the layout. Now I've got some uh silkler summer beach tree foliage. Cottonwoods, aspens, birch trees, poppplers all have very similar looking foliage. Uh so this this will work for any any of those kind of trees. Just take little pieces of it, cut it out. tease it a little bit. I like the foliage to stay where I put it, not fall off onto the layout. So, tend to use CA glue on it. Just start wrapping it around branches. to plant this. Eene's tacky glue there on the bottom. Push it down into the scenery. We'll put some of these tufts of prairie grass down here around the base to help blend it in. Almost always grass growing down at the bottom of these trees. The next little project is I want to build a grade crossing right here. I've got some wooden coffee stir sticks cut to length and stained up. do the inside of the rails first, giving myself plenty of room uh for the the wheels, the flanges to pass without getting caught up. And I will be testing that. I've also taken and sanded the ends of the boards to chamer them down a little bit. on the boards outside the rail. I like to have them come right up to the edge of the rail. You can always sand that down later if it gets a little too high up. I'm trying to create a little slope up here that makes a more or less smooth transition from the road up over the tracks. Now, the fountain is looking really dirty and dingy. Doesn't look at all like water anymore. So, I'm going to try to clean that up and bring the sparkle back to that modeled water in there. I blew all the loose dust out. I'm going to start with some clean water in a cup here and see if I can't scrub some of the grime away. That's dirty. Burn did a really nice job modeling this water and I would like it to, you know, look as good as it did when he first uh built the diarama. Burn Scratch built this fountain out of Sculpey. You know that oven baked clay. And the figure here, the statue of Adamacho, this is a knuckle duster miniatures figure. Just like the other bandits, he just painted him to look like a statue. Even after cleaning, that still looked pretty dull and dingy. So, I'm going over all of the water surfaces with some of this realistic water from Woodland Scenics. Just brushing it on. And that should bring the shine back nicely. It's a little glossier than say an acrylic gloss medium. Remember to get the pig wet, too. That looks a lot better, doesn't it? And I can go ahead and glue the fountain into place now. Fact, I can go and glue a lot of stuff into place at this point. Actually, there are some things I need to glue into place and some things I need to take off because um some of the figures have little stands that need to be hidden by the ground cover and then the other ones don't because we're dealing with figures from different manufacturers. Some are from Knuckle Duster, some are from Aspen models like the Cowboys on the horses back there, some are from Woodland Scenics. So, you know, you just have to uh figure this out as you go. Front porch of the assay office can definitely get glued down as can burrito eating man watching the scene unfold in the plaza while he enjoys his lunch. And the lovely senorita coming out of the saloon has a base that needs to be hidden. glued her glue her down as well as the three bandidos, not to be confused with the three amigos. And I can glue down the front steps of the mission church, which uh Vern made out of cork roaded, like HO scale cork roaded, which he carved and painted. I think that's so clever. Now everything else comes off. Another small project. I almost forgot. I want to build a little retaining wall over here. Since I've got stone on this side, I want to do wood over on this side. Use some railroad ties just for a little bit of variety, texture, interest. There we go. And now I'm ready to add the sanded grout ground cover to the rest of the layout. Now, there are several schools of thought on the best way to do this, but I've always found the easiest way is to put it on wet. I mix it up in a shallow dish like this, adding small amounts of water, little by little until I've got a nice thick paste. And I have a couple of old paint brushes, which this is their only job is applying sanded grout because once you use them for this, they're really not good for anything else. I'm going to start down here on this end. You see how I just kind of stipple it on. come right up to the edge of the roaded. And it's going to go on pretty dark, but when it dries, it'll be about the same color as this rock work here. Again, the color I'm using is called sandstone, appropriately enough, although it's actually a little bit closer to limestone. I don't mind if I get it up on the rock here. In fact, I want that. Remember, this stuff has pigment in it, so it's going to color everything it touches. Stippling it like this gives you a nice texture and it'll kind of calm down as it dries. And you can fill gaps and holes and stuff with this, but uh use caution. You don't want to put it on too thick. Put it on too thick, it's going to crack and maybe flake off. You can make it stronger by um soaking it in diluted white glue uh after you get it applied. But again, you shouldn't put it on any more than a 16th of an inch thick at the most. Use a smaller brush to get in around things, tight areas. Starts to get a little sticky in the pan. You can spray it with water to extend the working time. I have another little structure plan for this flat area up here, but uh probably not going to be getting to it in this series of videos. I'll come back to this in the future. I can use it here. Help fill in this little crack between the foam and the cork that I use for the roaded. Bring that right down to the edge track. work it in here around the grade crossing. So, my process is basically, you know, take a glop of it out of the tray like that, plop it on there, then dip the brush in some water. That allows you to move it around, spread it out, and if it gets sticky and it starts to be hard to move, a little more water, all you need. And I'm carrying this right over the edge of the rock work because uh since the rock work is painted the same should all blend together in the end. That's my theory. Probably the most challenging part is working the grout in around the figures and the structures. And all I can say is take your time, be careful. Use a small brush, smaller brush. Now, having these little U cardboard foundations makes my life a little bit easier. I just need to bring the grout right up to the edge of that. Okay, that's coming along nicely. It's time to make up another batch. Now to finish up, just taking a small flat brush, going around the base of things like these figures. Make sure that's well blended. So, you can't see their little stands. Could have cut the little stands off, but um Vern left them on there, so I thought, "What the heck? I'll leave them on there." Work in here around the base of these steps. There's no reason why I can't start placing the uh trees and some of the other details from the original diarama. These cottonwood trees made by Vern. These big cottonwood trees were made by Vern. Very similar technique to what I showed you earlier. And if I have any serious questions about uh where things were located, I can always refer to the 2015 ON30 annual. some great pictures of the San Lorenzo diarama and they're in the rest of the ENSG like this sarro with the Harris hawk up on top. I'd forgotten that it was right over here by the corner of the mission and the blooming arbor has always been over here between the mission and the assay office. Then this yucka let's go right here. Vern made this out of some pipe cleaners, juke twine, bits and pieces from the floral department. It's a great job. Then there's this really cool oat that's made of wire and ground foam basically. And that goes over here between the cantina and the SA office. And there was a small sarro over here also. Layers of detail. Now Vern made these saros from Sculpey that uh clay that cooks in the oven. This is a technique we learned from Travis Hchug. Great technique for making very realistic saros. Travis makes the most realistic uh saros and other desert foliage that I've ever seen. But very grateful to him for teaching us this technique. And Vern made a few for his layout and I'm very happy to have them to put on uh the San Lorenzo mini. Then we have these great little potted flowers. And uh I love the idea that the uh Padre is keeping a little garden out here. Great storytelling. There was a big prickly pair against the wall over on this side. These are from Pegasus scale models. This one's already painted, but I've got some I need to paint. So, I'll show you how I do it. I'm not sure exactly what kind of desert bushes these are supposed to be. But, I do know that on the original diarama, one of the speakers was hidden inside a bush like that. This detail is not from the San Lorenzo diarama. Actually used to be in hanging rock on the Thunder Mesa layout, but I thought it would have worked really well right there. Now Vern used these sulfur burnt grass toughs all over the place on the original diarama and u it's a great choice, great artistic choice because you know they contrast so well with this sanded grout. really gives everything a a dry, dusty, desert look. Right now, I'm using them to define this road into town. Another thing that was not on the original San Lorenzo diarama was this case of Puerto Vacho tequila with half the bottles missing. I don't think Vern would mind. Vern usually had uh Chuck Wallace Slims Model T truck parked over here by the uh by the Merkantile. But that is the one piece from the San Lorenzo diarama that I do not have. I'm going to put the ox cart over here instead. The old Padre would move around quite a bit in different places. He's got a pen so he could be relocated, but most of the time he was over here by the uh front porch of the mission praying for the poor lost souls trying to shoot the pig in the fountain. There was always a snake right over here kind of slithering away from the mission. Not sure what kind of snake that is, but he sure blends in nicely with the uh with the ground cover. Things are starting to get kind of crowded up there in town. So, I decided to put the two cowboys down here in the Aoyo. Maybe they went up here hunting strays, but now they're just looking for shade. Now, with these Pegasus Hobbies cacti, you can see that they're molded in green plastic, but um it's not really the right shade of green for cactus. So, my first step in finishing these is painting them with some uh Rustoleum dark green camo. I like to paint them while they're still on the sprew. Makes everything easier. And then when that's had a chance to dry, I'll take some Apple Barrel Marsh Green. These are flat colors, by the way. Always get the flat, not the glossy. I'm going to mix in a little bit of this uh antique white. We get a shade that looks about like that. Now I just go over and dry brush all the cactus. I'm not going to do all of these right now, just the ones I think I'm going to need. I usually don't bother with these little stands that the cacti come with. I usually just plant them straight into the into the foam. And take just a bit more of that antique white, mix that in and hit out towards the ends. And I'll go ahead and assemble this guy together. And these have little uh pegs and holes. You can put different cast pieces together and make a more 3D looking cactus. Then I like to take a little bit of this khaki and dry brush it down here around the base there. Now that's ready to plant on the layout. Looking at old photos, I know that there was a cactus like this growing against this wall of the mission. Got lost somewhere along the lines. So we'll replace it with this one. And I'll put another prickly pair over here, too. So, I'm just going to go around and continue to place cacti and weeds and other details until I'm satisfied with the way it looks. You know, I think this is a good spot up here for uh Tuco and his burrow. Vern had a very similar guy uh wandering around the ENSG with a burrow. So I carry on that tradition. The burrow is a great sculpt from Aspen Modeling Company and Tuco here is from Knuckle Duster Miniatures and I painted both of these figures. When this structure was on the Thunder Mesa layout, the sign here for the Burrow Creek Merkantile got damaged. So, that's something I want to fix. I've I've created a new sign for it, and we're going to put that on there. I made this sign in Affinity Photo, which, you know, is a lot like Photoshop. used some uh wood plank textures, CG textures that I downloaded off the internet and you know composited the type on there and give it a little age and weathering. Now I want to laminate this to some Bristol board which is a thin illustration board just to thicken this up a little bit, make it more like like it's painted on planks. So, I'll spray the back of this with some Super 77. Now, I'll frame the edges with some Ocale 2x4. Then this gets glued right over that damaged part of the wall. And while I was making signs, thought I'd go ahead and make one for the Royal Deos Buros as well. Now I'm going to take some of this very light tan tan pastel. I'm using it to delineate the road into town a little bit better about a shade lighter than the uh the sanded grout. I'll just kind of fade it off into a town square here a little bit up onto the gray crossing. One thing I always suspected that Burn meant to add but never got around to was an outhouse. So, we're going to rectify that now. There should really be a couple of them back here, but uh one is a good start for now. Another thing I always thought was interesting is there are you chickens on the soundtrack, but no actual chickens visible here in San Lorenzo on the diarama. So, I thought we'd fix that. Start with the rooster up there. Now, these chickens are from Bergkshire Valley models. They're u white metal castings, and I painted them to look like lang horns cuz I thought white chickens would stand out the best. Chickens are very funny birds. I've I've kept chickens and, you know, they all have their own personalities. You know, they're they're kind of very individualistic. You think they'd all be the same, but they're they're not. There we go. One flock of Langghorn chickens. For the final little project, I want to do just a little bit of detailing and weathering on ENSG number five. This is one of the last locomotives that uh Vern put together for the Australian Snar Grande. And um you know he left it in as new just shopped condition. There's no weathering on it or anything. All of his other locomotives and rolling stock were very nicely weathered. So I kind of think he meant to get around to doing that. He just never did. Doesn't have a a uh engineer either. We're going to add that. That's the first thing. In fact, got a little uh figure here. 3D printed guy. I just finished painting him. This was actually printed for me uh custom. This was uh is Ward Kimble. Some of you may recognize Ward. Um but he also looks a lot like Vern. So in this world, this is Vern Niner and he's going to be the engineer of number five. Here first I want to give him a dark wash. I do this with all of my figures. That's to get back into all of the folds and and the clothes and the cracks and crevices, bring out the detail. Also kills the shine of that acrylic paint and, you know, makes him look kind of dirty. I mean, the guy is working in a locomotive, so he's not going to be clean. Now, dry brush on some highlights. I think he's ready to go in. I think I can get him in here without having to take the cab off. Little Johnson bark. And it goes right between his feet. There. There we go. And for a fireman, got a crew member that Vern painted. I'm going to put him facing backwards right here by the coal load. And we've got a full crew. I also want to detail this cast in coal load a little better. I'm painting on some diluted white glue. Now I've got some real coal dust. Real crushed coal. Put that over the top of that glue. And when that glue dries, that's going to make that plastic coal load look so much better. I'm going to do just a little light weathering on this with some pan pastels. And the first thing is to add some alkali stains here around the water fill. That was something Vern always had on all of his locomotives. And it's a great detail of, you know, desert railroads where the water is often very alkali. Unlike just regular colored chalks, the pan pastels tend to stay where you put them. Put a little grime here at the bottom of the saddle tank. Thing is, it's easy to overdo weather weathering. It's it's hard to do subtle weathering. Well, and Vern was really a master at that. He was very good at it. What I'm doing is I'm kind of putting it on with a small brush and then scrubbing it away and blending it in with a larger brush. Grime and dirt on the steam chests. Staying away from the wheels pretty much because I like my trains to actually run. And of course, I'll be going back and cleaning the wheels and the contacts and everything before I'm done here. front pilot and dust that up a little bit around the base of the cab. And a little tinder. And finally, the roof. And the roof is super important because that's a part of the locomotive that everyone's going to see. Now, I'll wrap up the wheels, the running gear with some tape, and we'll get a clear matte finish on that. Well, about the only thing left to do now is finish up the fascia. You can see here I've added these 1 by twos along the bottom of the box frame. And that's a decorative touch, but it's also practical in that it makes it easier for me and a friend to lift this whole thing up off the stand. So, now I want to cover up these speaker holes. And I've got a solution for that. I've cut a couple of squares out of this soft open cell foam. I'm going to put those right over the speaker holes and we'll attach them in place with some uh industrial strength uh scotch mounting tape. Now, to really dress up this box frame, I've got some peel and stick wood veneers. This is real cedar. It comes on sheets that are about 12 in wide. So, I'm cutting strips to fit along the box frame here. Now, this is the same stuff we used to cut uh shingles out of for Crescent Creek models, laser cut shingles. Um, but on these particular sheets, the the wood grain is is too big to look, you know, to look realistic and ocale, but it's perfect for something like this. And it's super easy to apply. Just cut it to the right shape you want, peel off the backing, press it into place. So, I'm starting on the ends and then working my way around the corners into the front. And hopefully everything will meet up nicely in the middle. This one took a bit of doing. I had to make a paper template. and then transfer the paper template to the cedar veneer and then cut it out to match including the holes for the uh switches there. I think I got it pretty darn close anyway. I just do a little touch up around the edges. I think we got it. Well, that certainly classies up the joint, doesn't it? Heat. Heat. Thank you all so much for joining me for the build of the San Lorenzo mini layout. This is a project that's been near and dear to my heart for a long time and I'm thrilled to have been able to share it with all of you. And if you missed any of the episodes, there's a playlist on my YouTube channel, San Lorenzo Mini Layout. I hope you check that out and I hope you're subscribed with those notifications turned on so you won't miss what's coming next from Thunder Mesa Studio. A lot of new projects, a lot of cool stuff coming down the pipeline. So stay tuned for that. Until then, you can also follow Thunder Mesa for free on Patreon. That's patreon.com/thunderma and on Instagram at thunder.mesa. And you can check out the resources and the photo galleries over on the ThunderMA studio website. That's thunder mesa.studio. As always, a huge thank you to our Patreon members who helped to make these videos and these projects possible. Until next time, keep moving forward, everybody. Adios for now. Thanks, Vern.