Vintage Trailers & Red Rock Scenery | On18 Thunderbird Mini Layout

[Music] Howdy folks. Dave here at Thunder Mesa's Studio where this week I'm back to work on the Thunderbird layout. This is the O18 mini layout that I'm working on in collaboration with my friend Gary Batty. In the first installment, I introduced the entire concept. We got the layout base built and we even got the O18 track laid and running. This time out, I want to concentrate on the scenery, blending this roaded into this pink foam, sculpting this rock, adding a few more land forms, and hopefully getting a nice coat of paint on here so it looks a little bit more like the Arizona desert and a little less like oh Baskin Robbins. But first, I want to point out a couple of small changes that I've made to the plan. A couple of the viewers of the first installment suggested that maybe it might be better to angle Route 66 up here at the front of the layout to give the whole thing more dynamic visual interest. Gary and I talked about it and we decided that by gosh, those guys are right. So, uh, we decided to alter the plan a little bit, angled Route 66 across the front, and as a bonus, that gives us, uh, more area for parking up here in front of the trading post where we can put some more of those cool classic 1950s cars. Another new addition is this uh, sturdy stand that I built. It's on casters, so I can move the whole thing around the studio. And this is going to be the temporary home for Thunderbird while I work on it. Here we will be building a a a themed stand for the layout which will be at about the same height. But uh in the meantime, I've got this and I can move it around and move it in and out of the way as I need it. I wanted a table like this in the studio for a long time. So this is going to be very helpful. Another thing that's pretty important when you've got a project that multiple people are working on is that everyone sees the same plans and everybody's on the same page. It's not just me and Gary. Uh, we've also got Jake and Robert and Scott and Sam are all doing things for the layout. So, I decided to create these little cardboard cutouts that show the footprints of all the structures and elements that various people are working on so we'll all be on the same page and know where these things are going to go and what size they need to be. I also need to make a quick addendum to the roster of highc caliber talent who are contributing to the Thunderbird layout. Uh besides myself and Gary Batty, Jake Johnson, Bob Kerner, and Scott Carter, Sam Toller has agreed to come on board and help with the animated billboards that are going to go over here on this corner of the layout. Sam is is an amazingly talented young man. He currently works for Walt Disney Imagineering, and many of you might know his work through the Mine Train through Nature's Wonderland layout that you can see at Walt's Barn in Griffith Park. And speaking of that collaborative effort, before I jump into the scenery here, I want to show you the stuff that Gary Batty's been working on for the layout. He has been doing some fantastic modeling for Thunderbird. This is Bud's Place, a vintage 1947 Airstream trailer scratchuilt in Oscale by Gary Batty. This is home base for Thunderbird's proprietor, a crusty old desert rat we're calling Bud in honor of Wendell Bud Hurl, the inventive miniature train genius behind Knots Calico Mine Ride and other attractions. Gary was kind enough to send me all of his notes on the build. So, here's a rundown on how the entire project went together. After doing a little research, Gary decided to loosely base the model on a 1947 Airstream, one of those aluminum skin trailers that were heavily inspired by aircraft construction of the 1930s and4s. They came in various lengths between 22 to 28 ft by 8 ft wide. And that made it a perfect candidate to start with a two-inch thick, five and a half inch long piece of pink foam, which scales out to eight feet wide and 22 feet long. After drawing the top, side, and front profiles to oscale on 1/8 inch graph paper, Gary began cutting and sanding the foam to match the streamlined shape he needed. Then the whole thing was painted flat black with a lowcost acrylic to create a better surface area for gluing the paper siding to. Paper patterns were drawn and cut, and diluted white glue was used to attach them to the foam body. Once all of the exterior metal paper had been attached and dried, Gary cut out the wheel well areas and then painted the complete body with various shades of gray and silver acrylic paint. Window and door openings were cut out, and an interior cavity was hollowed out from the bottom of the body for the installation of a planned interior. The interior insert was made with paper and chipboard material from a cereal box, then painted with acrylics. A few oscill details were added to the countertop to finish things off. At this point, Gary glued a small flickering LED into the ceiling, powered by a 3-volt battery. Clear acetate was used for the window glass and all the window frames as well as the screen and entry door were made with varying thicknesses of cardboard and paper. The door screen itself is a small piece of wedding veil material. The rooftop cooler was carved from foam with paper grills. The water line that supplies it is made from 22 gauge wire with the insulation removed intermittently to represent pipe joints. The garden hose for the drain was made with the same wire with the insulation left intact. The Airstream logo, travel stickers, and license plate were found on Google, then printed out, cut out, and applied with white glue. A little more paint and chalk were used to add some shadows, highlights, and weathering. And just like that, Bud's trailer was ready to be towed into its new home at Thunderbird. Gary also made these amazing teepeees for Thunderbird's Indian Village area. They're basically just paper, paint, and sticks. But Gary did a great job capturing the look of these iconic Native American dwellings and miniature. Can't wait to install them on the layout. And that beautiful Airstream trailer that Gary built is going to go right up here at the edge of the layout where everybody can see it. The the tepee he's been working on are going to go over here in the Indian village. And as I record this, he is currently working on the restrooms for Thunderbird. Got to have some restrooms for those people that have been out on the highway for so long. I'm going to start by putting in this slight realignment of Route 66. The adhesive I'm using for this is this Loctite power grab. Works as well for MDF as it does for the pink foam. This also gives me the opportunity to make this area where the culvert comes out a little bit more scenically interesting. I found that uh just using hand tools like a like a utility knife, places like this, you're going to get a much more interesting texture and you know much better look to the rocks than using a hot wire cutter. And then of course you'd also don't have to worry about the toxic fumes from a hot wire cutter, which is something I really haven't talked about a lot here on the channel, but uh you really don't want to be breathing the stuff that comes out when you melt this polystyrene foam. It's basically a toxic gas. So, uh, if I can avoid using one, a hot wire cutter, that is, I'm I'm going to avoid using it as much as possible. I'll give this some more texture with my stainless steel wire brush. This really makes it look a lot more like rock, especially sandstone, which is mostly what we're dealing with out here in the Southwest. sedimentary rocks, layers of sandstone and limestone and shale, mostly sandstone. Now, I'll hit this with my heat gun. That gets rid of the fuzz and locks the texture into place just by melting it back just a little bit. This is only a 300 watt heat gun. I use it basically for two things. use it for this and for uh heat shrink tubing on wiring. If you get a heat gun that's more powerful than this, a higher wattage, um you run the risk of completely melting the foam and and destroying the texture that you put in. So, uh 300 watts is probably the max. little later on in this project, probably not this week, you know, in a future installment, I'm going to take a a power sander and sand all of this down flush because we're going to have, you know, a Masonite fascia on here that's going to follow the edges of the terrain all the way around. So, I need this to be nice and flush. Now I'm using my knife and my wire brushes to uh add that rocky texture to the lower part of the wash here. Bringing out the big guns. Got the big big wire brush for this. Really can't be afraid to just really dig into it. Break those pieces away because that's what's going to make it look realistic. getting closer. Had somebody ask me, "Well, how do you how do you know how much texture to add? How do you know when you're done with the wire brush?" And got me thinking about it. I'm like, "Well, I I it's it's done when it looks like rock to me." And of course, they say, "Well, then how do you know when it looks like rock?" I said, "Well, go outside and look at some rocks. A lot of people want these things to be an exact science and with some parts of this hobby. It is, you know, things like electronics and things like that. But scenery is not an exact science. It's very much artistic and intuitive. If you want to get in touch with those parts of your brain, then uh grab yourself some foam and a wire brush. and get all artistic and intuitive on it. In places where I want to remove a little bit more material, like down here in the bottom of the wash, use one of these Sure Form scraper tools and then come back and clean that up with the wire brush. And as always, keep the shop back handy. [Music] Now, one uh new technique I've added to this process recently is to use a hard lead pencil like a 5H and add some vertical cracks here and there. Sometimes branching off from each other. Kind of separates the layers into individual chunks. Again, going for that more believable look. And oftent times the places that you hit with the wire brush, maybe it dug out a little bit more there. That's going to suggest where these cracks and lines should go. That's that's what I'm doing now. I'm just kind of following what's already there and enhancing it a little bit. got a mini scene I want to put up in this corner. So, build this up just a little bit higher. Coping saw works just as well cutting the foam as a hot wire cutter. And again, no toxic fumes. Now, someone commenting I should add the coyote and roadrunner in three, two, one. Guys, there are places all over the southwest that look like this. Not just in cartoons, but in real life. Now, with the foam carving done, the next step is to go back and, you know, try and disguise these layers of foam a little bit. Sometimes you'll get little gaps in between them. They don't, you know, set down perfectly, one on top of the other. So, we want to disguise the fact that this is just stacked up layers of polystyrene foam. And in the past, I've used a lot of different things to do this plaster, sculpt the mold, uh, joint compound, but this time I'm going to be using some vinyl spackling compound. I've used it before and it works great and it's quick and simple and easy and you know we like that. Something I like for doing this is kind of a stiff paint brush. With a stiff brush I can force it back into that gap in between the layers and then spread it out over the rest of the piece like that. pretty much gonna paint the whole thing uh at least all of the the carved parts of the rock work with the uh the vinyl spackling compound. And that way it will, you know, it'll take paint very nicely and you'll have a nice even uniform surface to work with. But first, I want to fill those gaps. You can thin this stuff with water and just dip your paintbrush in there. And then you can paint it onto the surface just like that. You want it thick to get back into the uh cracks and crevices between the layers of foam, but you want it thin to uh spread it over the top. So anywhere you're not trying to fill those gaps or you're just like painting it over the the surface of the foam, you do want it to go on pretty thin because you don't want to hide that texture that you work so hard to put in there. Try to show you in a closeup here the results I'm after where these gaps between the foam are filled. But then the texture on the rest of the piece is just got a thin skin on top of it. While that spackle is drying, I want to start putting in the surface for the parking lot and the pedestrian pathways. This is some 316 of an inch thick cork. The road here, as I mentioned, is quarter inch MDF. So, I want a little bit of a step down between the road and the parking lot, but not too much. So, this 3/16 of an inch thick cork is just perfect. And I'll use this to define basically all of the guest facing areas here in Thunderbird. And we'll see if this stuff works on cork, too. Yeah, I'd say that works pretty well. A lot of glues make the cord curl up, but this doesn't. So, I like that. [Music] Something like this. You want to press down hard until the glue squeezes out from the edges. [Music] [Music] putting together a jigsaw puzzle That is the last piece. Not bad. [Music] Now I want to ease this transition here between the foam and the O18 roaded, which is a quarter inch MDF. basically create a little burm right here on each side. And the best product that I know of to to do that is uh some sculptold. Sculpta mold is basically a mixture of plaster and paperiermâché. So, you know, there's there's cellulose in there mixed with the plaster and that gives it some body. So, it's great for pushing into nooks and crannies and, you know, and building things up. Comes in a dry powder like this. that you add water to. And uh little bit of dust there. I usually just like to add enough water just to make a thick paste. Just adding a little bit of water at a time until you get it to the consistency that you want. Of course, a thicker mixture like this is going to dry faster than a thinner mixture would, but that's okay. Usually um it's usually dry to the touch in a couple hours, fully cured in about 24 depending on what the humidity is where you live. Stuff is made by the American Art Clay Company, AMO for short. You can find it at most better craft stores, art supply stores. You can find it online. Amazon sells it. So, I'm just going to use my finger fingers and build up a little burm here. Then, you can go back with a wet finger and just kind of smooth things out. Or you could use a paintbrush or butter knife, whatever's handy. So, I want to come right up to the edge of the roaded, but I don't want to, you know, get a bunch of sculpt mold up on top. Just kind of trying to smooth it off the top there and create a little embankment. And if it starts sticking to your fingers or your tools, uh, that's the sculpt telling you, um, use more water. just dip, you know, dip your fingers in some water and uh or your knife or whatever and you'll be good to go. Not trying to do anything fancy with this as far as sculpting. Just it's basically just a dirt embankment. Blend that down right into the wash. I also want to use it to uh fill any large gaps that I may have left between cork and the road bed here. I'm just adding a very small amount at a time. Just a little pinch and sticking it down in there. The key to success with this stuff, I think, is to not try to work on too large of an area at once. Just a small little area. Get that the way you want it. Then move on to the next. Also want to ease the edges of these cork pathways a little bit. Blend those in better. Here I want to bring the sculpt mold right to the edge of the future tunnel portal that's going to be here, the tunnel opening. But I don't want to go any further than that because this is going to be a different kind of rock work. I'm going to sculpt some rock work here in a future installment that's designed to look like fake rocks rather than real rocks. So, that should be an interesting challenge. And I'll do the same thing here for the shoulders of the highway. When this stuff dries, it dries very hard. Um, though lightweight because, uh, it's mostly paperier-mâché rather than plaster. And then you can paint it, sand it, do whatever it is you need to do. The only hard thing to do is remove it. Um, so you want to make sure you get it where you want it the first time around and not where you don't. Well, I figure while I've got the sculpt mold out and all my hands still look like this, I might as well build this culvert right here. uh where the wash widens out down at the other end there's going to be a trestle bridge but right here since it's just a dry wash I'm going to have a pipe culvert going through here and that starts with a piece of pipe and this is just some plastic tubing that I've spray painted flat black that try to center that under there and we'll build up with sculpta mold all around Obviously, this is going to need a lot of touchup before we're done here, but uh that's a pretty good start. Okay, now we wait for all of this to dry. This is a kind of a a neutral sandstone color, a kind of a light reddish tan. And I had them make this up for me down at my local paint store. It's an interior flat latex, which mixes well with the acrylic paints I'll be using later to, you know, finish off all the scenery. Right now, I'm going to use this as a scenic base coat over all of that foam and cork and sculpt the mold and spackle that we put down and give everything a nice uniform finish that uh we can work with. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Okay, now all of this needs to dry completely overnight. Well, I've given the uh base coat a chance to dry overnight. But now, before I finish the scenic painting, I want to get some paint on the track here. And I'm using some Rustoleum dark brown camo for that. One of my favorite colors for painting the track. And I don't mind if I get a little bit of this on the scenery as well. It's no big deal. It'll all be covered up when the scenic painting is finished. One thing about a small layout is steps like this don't take very long. As soon as the spray paint is dry to the touch, I want to clean it off the tops of the rails with some mineral spirits. Definitely don't want to wait until the paint has had a chance to cure completely because it's a lot harder to get off. This is my usual favorite track cleaner, by the way. A piece of old t-shirt wrapped around a cork. And then the next step in a scenic painting is to apply a dark wash. This is diluted acrylics, Mars Black and burnt umber mixed together. I know it looks like it's really dark going on, but it's going to lighten up quite a bit. while it dries. This is a really important step because this is going to soak back into all of that texture that we created, all those straddle lines and cracks and crevices. And then when the final painting is done, those shadows are really going to pop out from underneath. Just occurred to me that I'm putting a wash on a wash. And now we wait for this to dry. For the final scenic painting of the rock work, I only really need a few basic colors. I've got our our scenic base, which we already applied. Then I've got some raw sienna, a little bit of burnt sienna, and some unbleached titanium. I prefer the artist colors in the tubes like this to say craft acrylics. um they're a little bit more color rich and they go on a little bit thicker which is better for this kind of painting. I'm going to start by mixing some of this scenic base with that raw sienna. Give us a red rock shade. And I prefer what's known as a filbert brush for this kind of thing. It's like a flat brush, but it's rounded on the edges so uh you get fewer brush strokes. This is where the fun begins. My favorite part. I'm just hitting the top surface and not uh getting back into the cracks and crevices and the nooks and crannies. Most of the strata goes horizontally, but you notice I'm using vertical brush strokes to hit the top of the texture. So, basically what we're doing here is we're starting with a medium tone. That was that scenic base. And then we're going to come back and put in the darks and the lights. Okay, we're getting there. Now, I want to add in some darker red streaks. I'm going to mix in a little bit of this uh burnt sienna. This is a very strong color. So, I want to dilute it down quite a bit with the scenic base color. And I'm just going to use it to create some bands color here in the rocks. They don't call this the painted desert for nothing. Using a pretty dry brush here. I want to be able to feather that back uh into the other rock work and uh you know not have a stark line. We'll add a dark red band right here also. And now for the highlights. For that going to mix some more of the scenic base with some unbleached titanium to lighten it up a shade. I find that the the step of adding the highlights is what really really brings it brings the whole thing to life. Just getting the edges of things where light would hit them. And I think that's about got it. Just a couple more things I want to do before we call it a day. First, I want to just touch up this drain pipe. I'll be adding a lot more uh details and weathering later on to this wash, but uh right now just want it to look like metal. Then I wanted to paint the road with uh some of this asphalt color. This isn't the final look of the road surface, but uh just wanted something to indicate the direction that things are going. And finally, going to dry brush the ties with some light tans and grays. Give them some uh desert weathering. Now, I'll just clean the paint from the top of the rails one more time and we can wrap up for this week. But before we go, I want to show you one more thing. Remember I told you that Gary was working on the bathrooms for Thunderbird as well? Well, I just saw some photos. He's finished them. And once again, he's hit it out of the park. Check these out. [Music] And that's it from Thunderbird for this week. Thank you all so much for watching today. I'll be back next week with an update on the HO3 Barllo Pass layout. So, I hope you are subscribed with those notifications turned on so you won't miss that. In the meantime, of course, you can also follow for free over on Patreon. That's patreon.com/thunder mea or on Instagram at thunder.mesa. Or you can check out the resources that are available on the ThunderMA studio website at thunder mesa.studio. As always, a huge shout out and thank you to our Patreon members who helped to make these videos possible. Until next time, keep moving forward everybody. Adios for now. [Music]