By Jeff Moorman

Next Clinic:

The next Seattle-North clinic is Thursday, May 4, 2017. We will continue to explore the subject of creating layout backgrounds.  We’ll see the next installment in Chris Lyon’s YouTube series on “Painting Backdrops for Large Layouts…”. And a couple of members have promised to bring along more examples.

Last Clinic:

The fallen flag mini-clinic concerned the Tonopah and Goldfield Railroad. The T&G was a 100-mile-long, Class 2, standard gauge railroad in southwestern Nevada. It was active (sometimes just barely) from 1905 until 1947.

We continued our discussion of backdrops. First, those that wished had a chance to actually try painting some of the “blob, blob, blob” backgrounds shown in the prior clinic’s video. Yes indeed, you can get a presentable range of background foliage colors using a mix of just Mars Black and Lemon Yellow.

I brought a 4-foot backdrop section from a practice module I did many years ago. Nothing fancy, but it did show the impact of adding a little haze between the various “layers” of mountains/hills.

We viewed the second backdrop video in the YouTube series by Chris Lyon. This showed a few ways to enhance the basic “blob, blob, blob” technique previously used to establish the base terrain.

There were 3 contributors for show and tell.

  • Aidin M brought a couple of HO express boxcars. One forty-footer lettered for the UP and one 65-foot Amtrak example. It was interesting seeing the differences as they represented two separate eras in railroad operations. Also, they sparked a lively discussion of just want LCL traffic Amtrak handled, and when.
  • Bobj B had three various collections of tie dating nails, used for decades to document the manufacture date of wooden railroad ties. One was Bobj’s own collection and two were collections he had acquired. It was interesting to see the variety of “nails” used. Everything from miniature spikes to oversized brass tacks.
  • Dave N showed a couple of HO maritime pieces. One was a harbor tug built from the almost ubiquitous plastic kit from Revell. The other was an aggregate barge from a Kibri kit. Both were very well crafted.

Directions: We meet at the Ronald United Methodist Church, 17839 Aurora Avenue North, Shoreline, WA. That is on the west side of Aurora (State Route 99) between 175th and 185th Streets and more specifically, between the Cadillac dealer on the south and Deseret Industries to the north. Going southbound on Aurora, make a right-hand turn into the church driveway immediately after passing the Deseret location. There are parking lots at both the front and rear of the church. From the rear lot go up the steps to the main entrance. Once inside, the room where we usually meet is up to your left.

Meetings are the first Thursday of each month, September to May. In June we often do something different, so there is no “regular” meeting. Doors open at 7:00 PM and the program will start at 7:30.

Note that the next regular evening meeting is May 4, 2017. The next regular clinic after that will be September 7, 2017. In the interim plans are well underway for a local mini layout tour on June 1. Keep checking the Grab Iron for the latest details. Hope to see you there or at least sometime on down the line.