Modeling Route 66 | On18 Thunderbird Mini Layout

Howdy folks, Dave here for Thunder Mesa Trains. Welcome back to the studio where we are in the absolute final home stretch on the ON18 Thunderbird mini layout. Of course, Thunderbird is the 2x4 foot mini layout that I've been working on for all these many months in collaboration with Gary Beatty, Jake Johnson, Bob Kerner, and Scott Carter, So, as of this recording, I still need to finish up the fascia, the gravel parking lot, the highway, that's Route 66 itself kind of important, the big billboard, and lots and lots of little details. It's a lot of ground to cover, so let's get started. Now, the trick to applying this fascia piece is to be prepared, especially if you're doing it all by yourself like I am. So, I've cut the next piece of fascia to size with my my jigsaw back at the house. I want to slather this with liquid nails. All right, that should do it. Get this up into position, and then we clamp the heck out of it. Start in the middle, making sure that this is flush with the bottom of the bench work. Never have too many clamps. Up here, where I don't have anything but foam to clamp to, I'll just drive in a few drywall screws. Then, once the glue is dry, I can back those out. We'll fill the holes, paint the thing. You'll never know they've been there. I'll go real slow and easy with the drywall screws into this foam. Otherwise, you'll just rip it up and it won't hold at all. Now, I'm ready for the last two fascia panels, and I've already cut these into some convenient 24-inch lengths. I'm going to clamp it into place temporarily. Now, I can take my soft lead pencil and mark where I need to cut on here. Some of this foam is sticking out just a little bit too far on this side. I'll use my hot wire cutter to trim it flush. It did pretty well on all the other sides. Just this one spot right there, and the front side. Now, I can go back to my garage and cut these two pieces out. You don't need to watch that part. It's a jigsaw. It's masonite. It's pretty self-explanatory. I'll see you when I get back. I love the smell of liquid nails in the morning. All right. This one is ready to go on. Look at that. It's almost like I measured or something. Does that work? I think so. Close enough. That should do it. Over on this side, this is where the few controls for the layout are going to be to control the sound and the lighting and things like that. Two or three buttons right here. I've cut out this piece of foam, and now I need to measure and drill some holes in the piece of fascia that's going to go right there to line up with this. I need three quarter-inch holes just like that. Test that out with one of these switches. Make sure they fit. That looks pretty good. All right. I can hear somebody out there saying, but Dave, what about these nasty-looking corners? Well, don't worry. I got a plan for that. Got this nice corner molding that I picked up at my local home center, and we're going to use that to hide the less-than-perfect carpentry on the corners. In fact, I think that's why moldings were invented. Just like the fascia boards, each one of these is a custom fit, but I can cut these right here with a coping saw, no problem. Always clamp your work securely when using any kind of cutting tools. For these, I'm going to use some Loctite Power Grab adhesive. It's not as great for panels as liquid nails is, but it grabs and holds a lot faster, which is what I need. Like this. All right. When those holes are filled and everything's painted, that should look pretty okay. All that glue is dry now on the fascia, and I've been removing the clamps, but I've got this little gap right here where the fascia meets the edge of the layout, and I really like the scenery on the layout to come right to the edge to kind of overlap the edge of the fascia. I think it looks really nice just the way I roll, so I'm going to mix up some Sculpt-A-Mold, and I'm going to go around the whole thing, all the edges, and blend the fascia in to the layout. I'm going to start down here at this end and just work my way around. I don't want to mess up Jake's beautiful Proto 48 track here. It's amazing how many people have suggested, oh, you should have an O-scale train running on there. Guys, the layout's only two by four feet. An O-scale Super Chief would be bigger than my arms can reach. And of course, this is all going to require touch-up all around all of the edges of the layout once this is dry, but that's a lot of what's happening this week is just final touch-up and finishing things up. Very delicate work down here along the edge of the Mystery Mine. Very small bits of Sculpt-A-Mold to fill in this little crack here. I don't want to get it up onto the model too much, and when I get Sculpt-A-Mold down onto the fascia like this, just take a wet paper towel and wipe it off. Easier to wipe it off when it's still wet than to sand it off when it's dry. And here you can see how I'm bringing that right down over the edge of the Masonite and the tops of these corner moldings. Looks a little funky now, but when it's all painted, they'll look like scenery to look good. All right, just finishing up on this side. I want to go around the whole layout again and make sure that all of the edges are clean and the transitions are nice and smooth. Now all the Sculpt-A-Mold needs to dry overnight before I can touch up all the edges and paint the fascia, but that's okay because what I really want to do now is finish the highway after I wash my hands. Now I am no Route 66 historian by any stretch of the imagination. I'm not Justin Scarred, but we do have a long remaining section of Route 66 running through Arizona, up at Peach Springs, Williams, Seligman, out east, Holbrook, Winslow, that area. And a lot of that was inspiration for that Cars movie by Pixar you may have seen. But what I do know is that the highway was commissioned in 1926 as a way to create a route from Chicago to Los Angeles by connecting up all of these rural highways through all the different states. They had to build some new sections here and there to connect them up. And 1926, that means that Route 66 is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. So it seems appropriate that we're doing this Route 66 themed layout. Now I would like to be able to say that that was the plan. That we said, hey it's the 100th anniversary of Route 66. We should do a Route 66 themed layout. But to be honest, we found out later that it was the 100th anniversary. We just wanted to do this. You know, we both love roadside attractions and you know Route 66 and this part of Arizona. So we thought this would be fun. It'd be something cool to do. It's just serendipitous that it happens to coincide with the 100th anniversary of Route 66. Now I've got a very short section of Route 66 right here. It might look a little narrow to your modern eyes, but this is actually fairly prototypical. The highway's not much more than 20 to 25 feet wide. And just a narrow strip of blacktop, one lane going in each direction. That's the way it was and that's the way we're going to model it. Way back at the beginning of this project, I glued down this piece of MDF here and yes it is a scale 20 feet wide. Now how are we going to model the blacktop on here? So glad you asked. This is some 400 grit black sandpaper and at scale it makes excellent looking asphalt. So I'm going to take this and cut it into some 20 foot wide strips and we'll start working on our road. Actually I lied. Instead of 20 feet wide, I cut these to 22 feet wide and I'll show you why. I'm going to take and measure in a foot from each side, a scale foot, that's a quarter of an inch to you and me. I'm going to lay my ruler right on top of there, lining up with those marks, and then I can just grab one corner and rip it along that edge. Now we've got a nice kind of ragged edge, but not too ragged, along each side. But I'm not done tearing the paper quite yet. Now I want to take each sheet and fold it in half right down the middle. So basically each side is now a lane and I'm going to tear it down the middle here. The reason I want to do that is because asphalt highways like this, you know, they have a crown and if you look close when you're driving at 70 miles an hour, you'll see that there's often a crack right down the middle of the road, right under where they paint those lines. So that's what we're going to simulate here. Now I'm going to start laying these down one lane at a time, but first I need to trim this end and then I want to tear it again down at this end because that's where it's going to meet up with the next sheet and we'll make that look like a tar, a little tar line there. In fact, let's see, I'm going to do something crazy here. I'm going to rip off this corner, set that aside, and I will paint the back of this with some lightly diluted Eileen's tacky glue. Just dilute it enough so that I can spread it on with a brush. I like to use Eileen's for this because it grabs and holds quickly, unlike a lot of PVA's. Line that up with this edge and this edge. Must be a big pothole there. And I'll take this piece that I just tore off, and I'll glue it right in there, right where I tore it from. And when all is said and done, this will look like a road repair, or a road in need of repair. And I'll weight that down while the glue dries. Now I'll move over and start doing this side of the highway. Line that center line up. A bit of a dip right here. That's just a speed bump for people coming into Thunderbird, make them slow down. I've driven out near Cameron on the rez, there's there's definitely some, there's definitely some speed bumps like this out there. Over here with this next piece, crosses the wash. I'll take a little chunk out. Roads are always eroding away like that. These washes are located. Again, I think I will rip this. A couple of pieces, keep track of them. Add that to the edges. We're putting together a puzzle. I want that to overlap the edge a little bit so I can create that little, little bit of a dip down by pushing down on it. And that's where it's going to meet the gravel of the parking lot. And this one goes here. And on down the highway we go, till we get to the end. And the last piece, bringing this right up to the edge, overlapping the fascia. Look at that, already looks like a road. When do I get the lines on there? We made a pretty good start, but now I want to paint the road. I know it's already asphalt colored, but it's a little too dark, looks a little too new. So I'm going to dry brush it with some apple barrel pavement and some country gray in varying quantities, both mixed together and straight. As always, with dry brushing, when I get most of the paint off the brush, what I'm going to do is just go down the road first in one direction, this way, and then in the other direction. And if you decide you want to model a road this way, I suggest you don't use a brush that you like for this, because you're painting sandpaper and every stroke wears some of the brush away. And by the time you're done, you're not going to have much more than a nub. And this is creating a look of tire wear and oil and dirt and grime on the road. I'll do the final weathering with chalks, but this is just to get it to a point where I can start adding the stripes and things down the middle. See what I mean? Now you remember all the rips and tears I put in the paper. Well, that's to represent road damage and places where it's been repaired. I'm using some Vallejo black and a fine brush to go over all of those seams to represent road tar. And in this case, I'm dabbing the paint on rather than scrubbing it, because A, I like this brush and would like to keep it, and B, that's the way road tar looks. Now, here's a fun fact that might blow your mind if you don't know this already. Those dashed lines on the highway are actually 10 feet long. That's the standard for US highways in the United States. They're 10 feet long and 30 feet apart, right? Most people think they're like five or six feet long, maybe eight, 10 feet apart. No, 10 feet long and 30 feet apart. So, I've decided to fudge just a little bit. I've created some stencils to help me out with the road markings. And I do have some 10 foot long dashes here, but I put mine 20 feet apart, because if I was to put them 30 feet apart on here, it would look kind of odd on just this short section of road. So, we're going to compromise just a little bit. I cut stencils like this out of a very thin laser board known as polyback. It's about 15 one thousandths of an inch thick or less in some cases. And what I like to do is coat the back with a little bit of this spray adhesive. Not too much, just enough to make it tacky. I don't want to permanently affix it to the road. I just want it to stay where I put it. I can line this up with the center of the highway. Smooth that down like that. We're ready to stencil. I prefer artist's tube acrylics for this because you want a thick paint. You don't want a thin paint that's going to run underneath the stencil. And I'm using a stenciling brush or a stipple brush. These are sometimes called. You can pick these up at your better stocked art supply stores and craft stores. And you see this motion I'm doing right here. Getting paint on it. I'm kind of stabbing it down and that's exactly what we're going to do over the top of the stencil. Paint on there. Pull it off and see how we did. This is great. I love doing this. It's like a magic trick. Look at that. Just like I knew what I was doing. Except I got paint on the road. It's okay. I can fix that. And when that first application is dry, take my stencil and line it up with that line. And that's going to tell me right where to put the next one. Right there. Look at that. 20 feet apart. I've only got room for three of them. Now I can imagine that some of you youngins out there right about now are saying something like, hey Dave, aren't the lines down the middle of the highway yellow? Well, I'm old enough to remember when they were white. The center lines on interstate highways were white up until 1971 and that's when they went to that safety yellow that they use on all the roads now. Can't really tell in a lot of old movies because most of them are black and white. But it's a fact. I measured in about six scale inches from the edge of the road. Going to line on here real quick. I'm going to use that as a guide for the next stencil. And that is for this shoulder line. You know, the one, the white line that's right on the edge of the highway. I made this one a little thinner, about six scale inches thick. And we'll do the same thing again here. There we go. That's not too bad. And same thing again. When this is dry, I'll line this up, do the rest of the line, and do the one on the other side as well. On the final one, I've left a break in the line right here because that's where you pull in the Thunderbird. I'm going to have one more stencil, which is very special. This is a Route 66 stencil designed by one of my collaborators, Jake Johnson. And we're going to put two of these shields on the road. One eastbound and one westbound. Again, lining it up with the center line. I love when a plan comes together. You could use an airbrush for this as well. Might be a little easier for some people. But I like the kind of flecked effect that you get using the stipple brush. I think it looks more realistic than an airbrush does. Ta-da! Yes! And now I want to weather the heck out of this with some chalks. Mostly black and white and gray. A little bit of brown. The nice thing about using the sandpaper is that really gives you something to work with with the weathering chalks. Got a lot of tooth, as the artists say. Here I want to have an indication of a lot of vehicles turning off the road from either direction. So some tire marks with black. Peeling out, I guess. Look at that. Now that's starting to look a little bit more like sun-baked Arizona asphalt. Doing some black right down the center of both lanes. Cars back in those days leaked a lot of oil. It stained the roads. Okay, I think we've about got it. Now I want to lock all of this in place with some Rust-Oleum clear matte finish. Get your kicks. Now with the road done, I can start backing out all of these screws and filling the holes with wood putty. I like to flatten the holes out first with a sanding block, and then I can fill the holes with a little bit of Elmer's wood putty. Put it on there with my finger, scrape it off with a putty knife so it's flush. Of course, that'll all be sanded again before we paint. Then the next thing on the list is to finish up this transition between the modeled scenery and the fascia. And the first step to doing that is painting all of this Sculpt-A-Mold with the scenic base color. Well, a lot more to do on that, but that looks 100% better already. Now while I wait for all that latex paint to dry, I can finally go ahead and finish the parking lot. And for that, I'm using some of this Woodland Scenics medium gray ballast. Same stuff we used to do the roadbed for the L-918 line. Start over here on this side and just sprinkle it on. Bring it right to the edge of the layout here. Presumably there's there's more parking over here. I think we're going to have a sign to indicate that too. Now I get to hide this crack between these layers of cork that's been bugging me all this time. I brought that right up to the edge of the highway. I'm just going to use a soft brush to remove any that I don't want on here. I want some of it coming out onto the road, but not too much. I don't want a lot of gravel on the road. That'll lead to broken windshields. Now the usual routine. Wet this down with some wet water. I always have to explain what wet water is every time I say that because I didn't explain it one time and somebody in the comments thought I was a complete idiot. Water is already wet! Wet water is water with a couple of drops of liquid detergent in it to break the surface tension. That's just what we call it in the trade. Now with that all wetted down, glue it down with some diluted white glue. This is regular white glue diluted three to one with water. One part glue to three parts water. You see how it hits that wet ballast and spreads out. Now we know all of it's getting glued down. Now that the gravel is dry, I can start detailing the parking lot a little bit. You know one thing I often see up in the Colorado Plateau country, which is what we're replicating here, is that they'll use whatever's handy. Things like rocks or in this case juniper logs for parking bumpers or to delineate the edges of a parking lot like this. These are actually some pieces of sage that I've cut into six to eight foot lengths. We used sage also for the juniper trees on the layout and that's because it has a remarkable resemblance to Utah juniper bark at scale. I'm going to glue some of these around and see how that looks. Now that they have a place to park, glue down a couple of these old trucks that Scott Carter did for the layout. The power wagon right there, obviously World War II surplus. I've got this great looking panel van that Scott did for us. I took one look at both of these and said, man, those are res trucks for sure. And by the way, if you're wondering, these two vehicles are originally from a company called Denver Die Cast. That's what it says on the bottom. And all the rest of the vehicles we're using on the layout are from Woodland Scenics. We're going to have the little blue convertible pulling right out of the parking lot here. Okay, and those cars are going nowhere in a hurry. Now one thing you may have noticed about the Thunderbird parking lot is that it's too small. So I'm going to fix that with a parking lot extender. This sign is something that Gary and I discussed from the very beginning as a way to explain why the parking lot is so condensed. And this just adds extra imaginary space over on that side. And the sign does double duty here because it also tells you where the motel and the cafe are located. Those are over here too. And that's good because a place like Thunderbird would certainly have a motel and cafe. And the layout would too if it was only a little bit bigger. I've also added some oil stains to the parking lot here and there. And that's just a dark acrylic wash. Some black acrylic paint mixed with a whole bunch of water and then dribbled on so that it's soaked back into the gravel. Makes a very convincing oil stain. But speaking of signs, I think it's high time we added the big Thunderbird billboard that goes right here next to the highway. Now I've gone round and round several times on what kind of sign that Thunderbird should have exactly. Early on we talked about doing an animated sign which would be pretty cool but that fell by the wayside for one reason or another. I thought maybe a neon sign. Lots of neon on Route 66. Those two things just go together naturally. But neon was mostly used for, you know, motels and bars and places like that. Funky roadside attractions like this almost always had, you know, big hand-painted signs. Not neon. Neon was expensive. So what I finally landed on was a dimensional sign. Something with a little bit of 3D to it that could have been built by the owner of Thunderbird and, you know, some of his cronies. And here is the printout for building that sign. I created the graphics for this in Affinity Photo 2. And now I need to laminate this probably to some illustration board to give it a little thickness, a little heft. And what we're going to do here is we're going to cut out these individual Thunderbirds and then apply them on top of the ones that are printed on here. So we'll get a 3D effect. Should look pretty cool when it's all said and done. So first thing to do is coat the back of this with some Super 77 spray adhesive and we'll get it laminated on some illustration board. This is some Crescent 300 illustration board and I want to laminate this to the back side for reasons that will become obvious in a minute or two. Go over it with a roller. Make sure we have good adhesion. No air bubbles or anything like that. Now with a new sharp blade in my hobby knife, I just need to cut these out as precisely as I can. Take my time. It's going to be a minute. Now that is going to go on top of this like that. But first I need to detail the backs, clean up all these edges. Turn it over so the good side of the illustration board is face up. Take my fine tooth razor saw and a little bit of wood grain to the backs of these. And I found that this Minwax Early American does a pretty good job of looking like plywood when you put it on this illustration board. Don't want to use the markers around the edges with something like this because they will bleed into the artwork and that would be bad. Sometimes I'll use watercolors for this. But I found that this is pretty effective and I always like showing you guys the new techniques that are quick and easy. Now I will paint all the edges with watercolors. There's no white illustration board core showing through there. No white paper. Now I think we're about ready to put this thing together. Apply some glue here to the main sign board where the bird goes and lay it right on top of his little silhouette there. And the same for the other side. Now I've painted up some of these 1x4s with some Vallejo red because I want to add a little bit of trim around the outside edges of the signs. This is going to give these signs a much more finished look. Now I want to flip these over. I'm going to do a little light framing on the back. Got some 4x6 and I'm going to glue two of those to the back of each sign about six inches in the top and from the bottom. I'm adding some 4x4s running vertically here. The idea is that these will act as brackets for these 12 inch diameter 20 foot tall poles that are going to be holding up the sign. In fact, I can go ahead and start adding these poles right now. The trickiest part is lining them up so they're all square, coming down at a more or less 90 degree angle. I can go ahead and glue the other side into place. Make sure to position it exactly aligned, kind of a mirror image, with the other side. And I've added some additional 4x4 bracing around the edges of the bird to keep them from blowing away in a high wind. It does get pretty windy up there on the big res. Now I can come down about two feet below the big sign and add the smaller secondary sign. Center it on those posts and on the other side too. Now I just want to do a little light weathering on here with some chalks to make the sign look a little bit more faded by the sun. All right, now I can get a clear matte finish on there and this is ready to install on the layout. I want to put it right about here perpendicular to the highway, so I need two, three holes down through the foam. Fortunately, that's easy to do. I'll bury those legs in there about two and a half, three scale feet. Now I can dirt all this in and finish blending the edges of the layout into the fascia. Now I'm just going around touching up the rock work here and there where it's needed, adding more ground cover where we need that. And once that's done, we'll be able to start adding some final details. One of the main details I've been itching to add is old Johnny Law over here waiting to catch speeders. All of you Disneyland fans out there will probably recognize this guy. This is the wooden Indian that's in Frontierland and on Main Street USA at Disneyland, affectionately known as Jimberly, if you know, you know. And this is a 3D print that was sent to me by Scott Eastburn. He's got a new business called the Characters Count Miniatures. Great looking 3D printed stuff. You should check them out. I'll put a link down below. We've got to have at least one hubcap down in the wash here. This is from one of the cars that Scott Carter did for the layout that didn't quite make it. It was old Packard, didn't quite make it onto the layout, but I've been parting it out. There's some tires in the wash and one of the hubcaps right here. So it's here in spirit. Thanks, Scott. Here's a fun one. The old Route 66 road sign has the mileages to several other desirable vacation spots. That's only 85 miles to Thunder Mason. Now the color and design of these signs is accurate for the era as well. We did do our research back in the fifties. These signs were black and white and not green and white like we see today. Very similar to railroad signs actually. And I've got a bunch of figures that I want to add. These guys are from Eve model. I picked this set because it actually had some children in it. For some reason, O scale children are hard to find. And we'll add grandma there taking the picture. Sure, I wouldn't stand that close to the buffalo pen if I were you. This kid definitely looks like a troublemaker. Looks like Dennis the Menace. Put him over here by the teepees. And we need his parents nearby. This guy looks like a tourist. He's got a camera around his neck. And pink shirt man can be married to green dress lady. We've got this mother and daughter with them heading across the bridge to see the reptiles. Well, that's a pretty good start on the figures. And I think we're going to add some more when I get together with Gary this weekend. So we'll call that good for now. Next thing is, I think I'm ready to paint the fascia. First things first, I need to sand down where I filled all those holes. So everything's nice and smooth. And for my paint color for the fascia, I've chosen this Red Rock Red. It should set things off very nicely. And this is just regular interior latex house paint. Probably going to take two coats to cover this. You might notice I'm not using a big house painting brush for this. I'm using an artist's filbert brush. And that's because I find it a lot easier to do things like this. Get right up to the edge of that scenery. You know, an experienced house painter could probably do it with a with a two inch brush. But me, I find this easier. One nice thing about the very low humidity here in Arizona is that on a layout of this size, by the time I'm done going all the way around, the paint's already dry on this side, ready for a second coat. That doesn't look half bad now with the fascia all painted. Come on over here on this side, I want to show you something else. So this is Thunderbird's extensive control panel. Well, it's a pretty simple railroad, so we don't need that much. In fact, these are all for the accessories. This single pole, single throw toggle switch controls all the lighting and accessories, turns everything off and on. Then we've got two push button switches here, and these are for the sound units. When Gary was here, we installed a couple of ITT products sound units. One is a tractor sound for the locomotive, and the other one is a bell. I'll let you hear those. This one turns on the motor tractor. You hear that? And this is a temporary on switch, which activates the bell. Nice thing is you can turn that sound off if you get tired of it. There you go. And I don't think I've talked at all about how the train itself is controlled. It's basic DC. We've got an old MRC power pack down underneath the layout, and that works fine for running the train. No problems whatsoever. It's just a simple loop after all, nothing complicated. Now at this point, the layout might look like it's completely done, and you know what? It is really, really close. But we've got one more work session to do, and I'm going to do that with Gary Beatty and Jake Johnson. We're going to get together out at Gary's house in Riverside, California, and we're going to add some reptiles to the reptile house, plant some weeds and cacti, and add a bunch of other details to the layout, and bring the whole thing up to a high level of finish. And that will be in the next installment of the Thunderbird build. But right now, I've got to pack everything up, put it in the back of the van, and hit the road, which seems appropriate for this layout. You see, while I've been doing all this, Gary has been working on a stand for the layout. And when we get together at his place, we get to find out if we both measured everything correctly. Hey, thank you all so much for watching today. I hope you're subscribed with those notifications turned on so YouTube will let you know when the next video is coming from Thunder Mesa Studio. Until then, you can also follow Thunder Mesa for free over on Patreon, or as a paid member. That's Patreon.com slash Thunder Mesa, or on Instagram at Thunder.Mesa. And check out the resources that are available on the Thunder Mesa Studio website at ThunderMesa.Studio. As always, a huge thank you to our Patreon members who help to make projects like this, and videos like this, possible. Until next time, keep moving forward, everybody. Adios for now.