Davor ballasted modules after painting plaster undercoat. Also, The Loop begins to take its shape.
Rails
Before ballasting, we painted the tracks. Oli cleaned the rails with alcohol to remove any dirt and manufacturing residue. This improves paint adherence. He used small brush (old toothbrush is even better for this!) and liberally brushed and soaked rails. Since alcohol evaporates quickly it was dry for next step in no time. Niko used airbrush to paint all the rails and ties dark brown with Tamiya acrylic colors. Rails are painted from both sides (and top) which gives a overspray over the ties and reduces its plastic looks. While the paint was still wet we cleaned rail tops with scrap pieces of soft wood.
Ballast
We used dark grey ballast, the same one used last time for mainline. Since there are no new siding we didn’t use lighter shade of ballast this time. Tried and proven method for ballasting is used. It is poured and leveled by hand, sprayed with alcohol and saturated with diluted white glue using eye dropper.
The Loop
Another mayor work we started is hill on single loop. It is inspired by Tehachapi loop but does not follow it completely. Idea here is, to get the feeling of a loop by placing (separated) piece of track in a curved shape over the loop closing part of loop into tunnel(s). Hill is made from foam by stacking and gluing it. As we cut and glue each layer we also cut it in place of module separation.
Tunnel portals are made from foam, sanded and painted to look like concrete and portal caps are also made from foam.
