Baxter's Trading Post Part 1: Foam Canyon Scenery | Thunder Mesa Model Railroad

Howdy folks. Welcome to Thunder Mesa Trains. My name is Dave and this week I want to start the new year off right with a project for the O30 Thunder Mesa Mining Company layout. I've been working on this particular model railroad project off and on for about the last 15 years now. And if you've been following along for all that time, hey, thank you very much and thank you for your patience. I appreciate it. The layout at this point has been completely disassembled and moved twice. It's been redesigned countless times, but now I have a design that I really like and I'm planning to stick with. So, what I want to do today is work on some new scenery for the layout. scenery that will help me integrate some old structures that I built many many years ago into the new configuration of the layout and into the new plan. And this is the area of the layout I want to work on over here. This back corner where the new Y is located. There should be a cliff face right over here according to the new plan. That's actually the edge of Thunder Mesa itself. And uh that's where this tunnel portal leads into. It goes right through the mesa there. And I've got a couple of old structures here. This is the Big Thunder Saloon, which I built gosh nearly 15 years ago. It's one of the original structures built for the layouts based on the structure uh at Disneyland. And then over here, I have this old cabin. And the cabin used to be part of Circle D Ranch on the old configuration of the layout. And I've been trying to figure out where to put it. And I finally came up with an idea that I really like. It's going to be Baxter's trading post, one of the oldest structures in Thunder Mesa. Now, all of this is going to take a little bit of time, so I think we better break this project up into two episodes. In this one, I'll show you how I build these desert rock formations using the layered foam technique. And next week, we'll come back and finish and detail the entire scene. All of this older scenery here is made from a polystyrene foam with a skin of sculpt over the top. So, what I want to do here is continue this on. So, the board sidewalk coming from the rest of town will meet up with the saloon right about here and then eventually terminate where the old cabin is right about there. Now I need to cut a blank that I can uh basically carve the rest of that shape out of. And I need a piece off of this which is 13 by 17 1/2 in. I'm going to use the old score and snap method. Cut down about halfway through. You can snap it just like that. Now, I've laid this blank up on top of the scene and, you know, made some marks here for some crude cuts. That's a place to start. And to cut it with, I've got a coping saw and a and a short hacksaw blade and a handle. Uh, I I prefer to use hand tools like this rather than a hot wire cutter because really don't think breathing the fumes of this stuff when it's melting is very good for you. So, basically after each cut, I take it back, measure again, try to align it uh with the scene, and then come back and trim off a little piece here and there and keep doing that and till it's the shape I want. Now, some of this is going to be covered by retaining wall here in the front. Some of it will be bare rock. Uh, so I want to go back and finish this edge a little bit just to make it look more like Thunder Mesa Rock. For that, I'm going to use mostly my stainless steel wire brush to add strata and rocky texture. Trying to make this a little bit more interesting over here. And once I'm happy with the way that edge is looking, I use my heat gun. This just uh melts the foam back just a little bit. Gets rid of all the the dust and loose pieces and it freezes that texture that I just put in into place. Now I can glue this piece down with some of this Loctite Power Grab allpurpose adhesive. goes right here. Make sure the tunnel portal still fits right. And to pin this in place while that glue dries, I've got some inch and a quarter drywall screws. And I'm going to go down right all the way through the foam and into the plywood. Now I want to mark the future positions of the cabin and the saloon. Okay. So now I'm working on this other side of the tunnel that will be up against the backdrop. And I want the the interior to be, you know, kind of detailed rock work, but only I only need to do it on one side because there's no place on the layout where this side of the tunnel is visible. So, if you look through the tunnel portal, you'll just see this this section of the tunnel wall right here. Now, once I get a piece that's the right size and shape, take it off here, take it back over to the workbench, and then I'll place the uh the top edge of that piece onto the next foam blank and trace it. And that way, when I cut this next piece out, it should uh match up with this one really well. Now I'll give that next piece the wire brush treatment and then trace that again onto the next piece. Now I can go ahead and glue this piece into place. And I'm checking this the whole time uh to make sure that uh my tunnel portal still fits and that the trains and the cars will clear everything here without hanging up on any of the rock work. And that's as tall as I need to go to clear all the equipment before I put a roof on here. And now I can use pretty much exactly the same techniques to finish up this section of cliff wall that's going to go here behind the structures. Really no reason why I can't make this up out of multiple smaller pieces of foam. And that way I can use up a lot of the scraps that I have laying around. I always try to remember that I'm not just modeling rocks, uh, modeling a specific kind of geology that we find here in the southwest, these sedimentary layers of sandstone and limestone and shale. So right here all around the Thunder Mesa layout at this level between uh about 16 and 20 ft above the track. I've modeled in a layer of limestone. Um and this is actually based on a layer that we see over in Sedona, which is right across the valley from me. We call it the Fort Apache limestone. Locals call it the Sedona bathtub ring. Uh because it's a little bit lighter in color. starts off kind of white as as opposed to the red rocks. So, I want to continue this on uh through the new section of scenery, and that's going to require a slightly different rock carving technique. As usual, I want to start with a blank that's going to fit that spot. And I've drawn in my cut line here. But when I cut this out, I want to go a little bit outside of that line because a limestone layer like this often it's more resistant to erosion than the sandstone is. So, it's going to stick out a little bit more and you're going to get that realistic, believable variation in the rocks. I'm going take my utility knife and now carve that back at an angle to the line. Now, instead of going straight to the wire brush this time, I'm going to use a grinding bit in my Dremel tool to carve the rocks away. The first thing I'm going to do is add couple of horizontal lines. Remembering not to go back too far there. Turn this up a little bit. The trick when using the Dremel is to keep it moving all the time. If you keep it in any one spot, it's going to heat up and then it's going to it's going to sink melt right back into that foam and possibly ruin your piece. So, I've got a couple of horizontal demarcations there. And now we'll put in the verticals. You want to keep this as random and imperfect as you can. Uh the tendency is to make it look a little too regular and then it ends up looking like a man-made brick wall instead of a natural rock formation. When this limestone erodess, it tends to break off in big chunks. And that's really what I'm trying to represent here. Tends to, you know, break in at right angles and then fall off. That's probably good. Now I can take my wire brush and just lightly go over the surface. I'm not digging in like I was before. I'm just lightly adding some strata. And just like before, hit that with a heat gun. Just don't burn your hand like I almost did. Just that. Now I can glue that on. I've already carved the uh the rock work here on the edge of the piece for the tunnel roof. And I've gone in and traced the path of the tunnel on the bottom. I want to cut this piece out right here because I don't want this to completely cover that section of the tunnel. It's going to have a removable roof on it. So, I want that open so I can get in there in case there's a derailment or anything like that. So, I'm going to cut out about this much. And then I'm going to texture this part of it to look like rock because this part can possibly be visible to, you know, very short people if they're looking up at the layout. So, I want to add a little bit of texture to that. for this. Carve it back with my knife a little bit. And then I'll carve this out the rest of the way with a sure form tool. Kind of vault that ceiling. And this part back here, I want to sand smooth so it won't drop foam boogers on the track when I reach my hand down in there. Sure my tunnel portal still fits. Now, before I get too much further, I want to put a hole down through both of these layers of foam through the plywood uh for the wiring on the cabin. You can see here I already did a hole for the saloon and made kind of a mess out of it, but nobody will see that. And now here's what everything looks like with all of those sculpted foam layers in place. Now the next step is to blend them all together so they look less like stacked layers of styrofoam and more like real rocks. So now I put all of the foam cutting and carving tools away, swept up all the foam dust, vacuumed everything up because now I want to make a totally different kind of mess. Now, my scenery techniques have evolved quite a bit since I built uh most of the rock work on this part of the layout, but I want the new scenery to match the old scenery. So, I'm going to be using sculpt mold here. Uh kind of trying to mimic the original technique as much as I can. Just going to use it where I need it to fill gaps and blend things together and uh let most of that sculpted styrofoam show through. That's about the texture I like right there. It should plop when you drop it. So, I've got my sculptor mold, got some uh water, some paper towels, and my favorite sculpting tools, which are usually a butter knife, and this uh good old Bob Ross pallet knife has served me well with scenery over the years. Never used it for painting, but works great for scenery. Of course, my favorite sculpting tool is usually my finger. Oops, forgot to remove this. And jab this back into these uh these seams in between the layers of foam. It's really great for filling in where a couple of different pieces come together. I forgot to mention one of my favorite sculpting tools, which is a stiff brush like this one. This is an oil painting brush. It's great for getting the sculpt mold back into those cracks and crevices. And uh I should probably warn you that when you first start doing this, it's going to look terrible. Kind of like this does now. You know, it's not going to look great. It's a process and you have to trust the process. Um as the sculpted mold starts to set up, it gets easier to work with. Uh it's going to be easier to to get it where you want it to go. When you first start slopping it on there, it's going to be you're going to be fighting with it. But, uh, you know, give it a little time and keep working it until you get it to look the way you want it to. And don't forget to, you know, get that finger wet and smooth it out here and there. The, uh, working time of sculpted mold is going to vary quite a bit uh, depending on the humidity, where you live, and, you know, how wet you make the the mixture to begin with. But if it starts to dry out and set up on you before you want it to, you can always just mist it with a spray bottle. And that uh gives you a little bit more working time. But now when it starts to set up, this is the time you can really go back and smooth it out. You can also use a coarse brush like this to add a little bit of texture to the sculpted mold. Make it match the carved in texture on the foam. Now I'll just mix up another small batch of sculpt the mold and go in from the backside and finish the interior of that tunnel. Well, I think this is about all the damage I can do for now. We'll let all this dry overnight and we'll come back tomorrow and get some paint on the sink. Here we have a brand new onegon can of Thunder Mesa's scenic base color. This is the color I've been using on all of the rock work since the very beginning. And if you want to know what color this is, if you want a name for it, it's basically raw sienna. But how I attained this color is when I was first building the layout, I took a rock that I picked up in Sedona, went down to my local home center and said, "Can you match this color?" And they matched it for me and mixed me up a gallon of paint like this. And that way I'm assured that all of the real rock and real dirt that I use from the local area matches the paint color perfectly. Yep, looks pretty good. I have the brushes I'm going to be using here. This is a soft filbert brush for use with acrylic paint. And I've got a couple of smaller ones to get into the harder to reach areas. All right, that should be enough to get us started. This paint is a flat interior latex. And my only goal right now is to get a nice even coat on all of this pink foam and all of this sculpt mold. That'll be a good starting point. Now, I have learned through experience that it's a really good idea to keep a record and some samples of the paint colors you use. That way, if anything's damaged or you want to change things or add to things, the colors are going to match. I try to usually start from the top of the scenery and work my way down, but you know, sometimes I forget to do that and I start in the middle. Really good idea to put some painters tape on top of the track so don't drip paint on it. There we go. Now I can slop paint around a little bit more freely. And see up here I'm blending it with the existing scenery. When this dries, you won't even be able to tell um where the new paint starts and the old paint ends. thing about painting textured surfaces like this. You see all these highlights here catching the light. To the naked eye, it's almost impossible to tell if those are highlights or if those are spots that I missed with the paint. So once it's dry, usually have to come back and, you know, take a small brush like this and hit a whole bunch of these little little spots that I missed. All part of the process. Once again, it's going to be a little easier to come around and do the interior of the tunnel from this side. Okay, while we wait for this to dry, let's take a closer look at the structures that are going to go in this scene. So, this is the Big Thunder saloon. And, you know, it's one of my favorites. It's one of the first structures I ever built for the layout. In fact, I think it was number two. And um in fact, I built it so long ago, it was before I started doing regular YouTube videos. So, there's no build video on this structure. A lot of people have asked, but I'm sorry, there is no build video for the Big Thunder Saloon. Um, I really packed in the details, though. You can't see it, but there's a fully detailed interior, which you can see when the lights are on inside through the through the front windows and through the saloon door. And of course, this structure is based on uh a building at Disneyland, which is actually a prop structure which stands above the queue on the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. It's an old structure. It's actually been around since the old mine train through Nature's Wonderland in the 1960s. So, yeah, uh one of my favorites, one of the things I love about it is that um and what attracted me to it is that it's a log structure. So, this was a challenge figuring out how to build a log structure like this at scale, how to do the logs and all that. And even though I didn't do a video for this one, I did do a video for the log cabin, which uses exactly the same technique. And I'll talk about that a little bit more in a minute. Now, I did do a full build video on this tunnel portal, this peaked roof tunnel portal, which is also based on a structure at Disneyland on the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and originally similar ones on the old mine train through Nature's Wonderland. Disney loves their peaked roof tunnel portals. I guess technically this would be a snow shed uh to keep snow drifts that are falling off the off the mountain side, off the cliff, off the tracks. So, you've got a you've got a peaked roof like this. The uh fire barrels up on top are prototypical, but yeah, this is it's fully framed in because all of that is visible uh on the layout. On the old Thunder Mesa layout, this tunnel portal was over by um Hanging Rock and Horse Thief Canyon, which was fine, but I was kind of wasn't really satisfied because it wasn't as visible as I wanted it to be. I want people to see the hard work that I put into these models. So, this will be uh much more visible in its new location. And it, you know, it fits the the theme of Thunder Mesa perfectly. And that brings us to the log cabin. And this was originally built for uh Circle D Ranch on the old Thunder Mesa layout. And it is based on a structure from Big Thunder Ranch that used to be at Disneyland, but now that whole area is part of Galaxy's Edge, Star Wars Land. And this is where I really uh went all out with the uh the log construction. Uh the logs are uh basically quarterinch dowels and then I use um acrylic modeling paste to apply bark texture to them, paint them, stain them. They're notched just like real real logs and and and then stacked one on top of the other. There is an entire build video on the cabin and I'll put a link to that. But now uh I want to talk a little bit about the backstory of Thunder Mesa and how this cabin will fit into it. As the story goes, an old prospector named Badwater Baxter, based on Tony Baxter, the main imagineer behind the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, he discovered gold, the headarters of Big Thunder Creek, and that's what gave rise to the town of Thunder Mesa. And that's why the big but there is is called Baxter's but um and I thought it would be fun to take this old cabin with the the swayback roof and uh turn this into Baxter's trading post. We'll have a sign up here and everything and there'll be you know goods to trade and things up on the front porch. um as if you know after he uh gave up prospecting he uh he built this cabin and uh discovered there was actually more money in supplying all the miners and all the the fortune seekers that were flocking to the area as the town began to boom. So that's the backstory there. So you've got these these two log structures, the cabin and the the saloon right next to each other as if this is the oldest part of town. That's kind of the story I'm I'm trying to tell here. This was the original heart of town. Basically, a store and a saloon. You know, that's the way most of these old boom towns would start. So, um, and for those of you asking where the logs come from, uh, on a desert layout, if you've been to Arizona, you know, it's incredibly diverse, uh, depending on what elevation you're at. Totally different things grow from the the the low Soran desert with the big Sarro cacti to the high plateaus, which are blanketed with pine forest. In fact, it's the largest ponderosa pine forest in the world. So that will be indicated over on this new end of the layout where where the trading post is going to be. I think I'm going to model a couple of ponderosa pines there. So it's like the whole layout is sloping down in elevation from that high side down to the lower desert where McKennon Arch and the Cactus Forest and things like that are. So, that's uh that's the story there on the cabin soon to be Baxter's trading post. Now, let's head back and finish up that scenic painting so we can put all of these structures into place. Now, I've let all of this paint dry to a nice matte finish, which means we can now proceed to the next step. And the next step for me is always to apply a dark wash. And this is a mixture of black and dark brown paint thin down with enough water until it's transparent and runny. So, it's running down the side of the cliffs like that. And what the dark wash does is uh it soaks back into all of that texture and darkens the shadows. And you know, then when we do the final painting, those those dark shadows are going to show show through. And it I think it really adds a lot to the the look and the the believability of the rock work. You can see it goes on pretty dark, but that's going to lighten up as it dries and drips down. And I'll use a paper towel to soak up all that stuff that pulls up at the bottom of the cliffs. This also has the added benefit of, you know, getting back into any of the tiny little spots I might have missed with the uh initial base coat and darkening those up. Want nice and dark back here inside the towel. And now we wait for all of this to dry. Of course, if you're impatient like me, you uh you can help things along with a haird dryer. And I'm impatient because I really want to get to the next step because that's when the magic happens. That's when all of this starts to come together and look like real desert scenery. And for that next step, we're going to need a lighter shade of paint. This is my light scenic base color, which is just the same as the dark scenic base, but it's been lightened up a couple of shades by adding white to it. As you can see, I buy this stuff by the gallon as well, but just going to put a little bit into this red solo cup so we can get started rendering the scenery. So now with that black wash dry and using the same 1in filbert brush as before, I just want to go lightly over the surface of all of these rocks. Not trying to get back into the cracks and crevices at all. just hitting the tops of the texture. And it's going to go on pretty stark and bright like that. But it's going to darken up a shade as it dries. I'm going to do this with all of this scenery that I just built except for the interior of the tunnel. I think I'm just going to leave that dark like it is. Now, to finish up the scenic painting on this, I have several tubes of artist acrylics. This is some unbleached titanium. Got some raw sienna, which of course is very similar to the scenic base color. Some Mars black, some burnt umber, and some burnt sienna. Now, most of the mostly I'll be using these two colors. The rest of these are only used very very sparingly. Now, while this is still wet, take a mixture of that burnt umber and that Mars Black and I'm going to add some streaks down the sides of the cliffs. This is what's known as desert varnish out here in Canyon Country. See it a lot anywhere there are big sandstone cliffs like this. It's basically just where water runs down the sides. Doing this while all this is still wet so I can blend it in with the color underneath using a slightly smaller brush. So, I'll go down and then I'll come back and kind of feather it back. Just any place logically that water would run down and stain the sides of the cliffs. Now looking at this existing scenery over here, I've got a darker red band coming through. So going to mix some um burnt sienna with some of that raw sienna. Try to match that and carry that line across through the new scenery. And then I've got another slightly darker red band down here. Also try to carry that all the way through. blending as I go here. All the paint is still wet. I'm doing what's known as wet into wet. So, I can blend it right on the surface of the rocks. Up here above the uh the tunnel portal, I want to put some black soot stains on the rocks. And I can do that, you know, wet into wet. Now, come to that limestone layer I was talking about earlier. And for that, I want to mix some of that light scenic base with that unbleached titanium. Get a lighter tan limestone color. And bring it all the way around into the existing scenery so everything blends together nicely. Now, I think I'm ready to start on the the final highlights. And for that, once again, I'm going to be using a mixture of the lighter scenic base color and a little bit of unbleached titanium and dry brushing it on the tops here. Just barely touching. Nice thing about this painting technique is that it's almost impossible to screw it up. uh acrylic paints, latex paints mix well together and uh they're very forgiving if you you know if it gets if it dries and you don't like the way it looks, it's really easy to go back and just paint over it. Um, but notice I said when it dries. You always got to wait till the paint dries because that's the one thing about acrylics and latex paints is that um the uh they shift as they dry. You're not going to see what the true color looks like until that paint is completely dry. So, it's important to wait. Now I want to do a final highlight pass by mixing a little bit more of that unbleached titanium, that light scenic base, just dry brushing it over the top just where I think it needs be punched up a little bit. Little highlights. I'll show you a little trick. You want one of these particular rock formations to stand out, just come and uh hit the edges like that with that highlight. Brings it right out. Now, there's just one more thing I want to do before I call this rock work done. This is a technique I first used over on the Bandit Canyon Railway, and I really, really like the way it looked. And that's to use my pan pastels, punch things up just just a little bit. Mostly I use this very dark brown. That's great for punching up the the desert varnish streaks. And then um use this very light very light tan to punch up limestone. Just a just a hair. We can punch up those rusty reds too here and there. There you go. I'm giving away all my secrets today. Now I'll hit this with a clear matte finish. You can start putting the structures back into place. Start with the tunnel portal. Oh yeah, I like that. That's definitely working for me. in the cabin. Use the old bamboo skewer trick to run the wires down through the foam. In the good old Big Thunder Saloon, HOME OF THE WILDEST RIDE in the wilderness. That's going to do it for part one of the Baxter's Trading Post project here on the Thunder Mesa layout. Hope to see you back here next week for part two when I'll continue to work those structures into the scene with ground cover, a whole mess of details, and maybe a surprise or two. So, please be subscribed with those notifications turned on so you don't miss that. And in the meantime, you can also follow Thunder Mesa for free over on Patreon or as a paid member. That's patreon.com/thundermesa or on Instagram at thunder.m mea. And I hope you will check out the resources that are available to you on the ThunderMesa Studio website at thunderma.studio. As always, a great big heartfelt thank you to our Patreon members who help to make these projects and these videos possible. Until next time, keep moving forward everybody. Adios for now.