A close up of the HO scale track cartridge I made. I used Atlas' flex track, airbrushed and ballasted it.
The beginning of the formation of the mountain scenery with the foreground and cartridge in place.
I added cardboard strips like basket weaving in order to support the future scenery.
I dipped paper towels in Hydrocal to be laid on my mountain. I then added some wet plaster to roughen up the texture of the mountain for future rock scenes and to strenghthen soft spots.
In order to have great shots for future magazines and catalogs, I developed a universal corner piece to be placed on each side of the diorama to make the shots fuller with more background in angle shots.
The corner piece shaping up.
I was adding Bounty towels and hydrocal to this section. The Bounty Towels were a help because they were thicker and stronger for the mountain to form.
I created a foreground out of insulation foam for those eye level shots of the trains. I carved the foam to look like shale stone.
I added rock castings with Hydrocal and altered them to fit the scene.
This was after I was done painting the rocks to look real.
A wide view of the base coated mountain in brown paint and I sprinkled some scenic dirt on top of it.
I sprinkled fine green ground foam to the mountain for some weeds and grass.
I did the same to this section with a base coat and ground foam.
It is all coming together.
My hand made trees. I must have made over 15 of these foam skids.
Test shot for how the foreground looks with the subject area and the the background.
The beginning of planting artificial trees.
A close up of the rock scenery with some plants being added around the rocks.
Progress with more of the tree placing.
Testing out the overall look before continuing. The HO scale track cartridge is in this scene.
The main section is done.
There was a Atlas Model Railroad Catalog deadline and they needed cover shot. I didn't get the corner section done with the trees so the photographer used Photoshop to add them in the far top right the cover shot. It worked nicely. The cover with typography was done by another graphic artist.
Finishing the corner section
The finished dioramas together with the corner in place on the right side.
The finished dioramas together with the corner in place on the left side.
The 2 Rail O scale cartridge. I just got done airbrushing this piece and it is ready for ballasting.
Atlas Model Railroad's New Union Pacific F-Units for the next O scale advertisement with my O Scale 2 Rail cartridge and diorama scenery. The sky was added in Photoshop and some of the rocks were photoshopped out of the picture by the photographer Kevin Alex. Looks real doesn't it?
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Diorama Making
I created the backgrounds, foreground and the different railroad track cartridges for this special diorama that can be photographed with three different scales of Model Railroading. This project saved the Atlas Model Railroad Co. money with my idea instead of building three different dioramas for each scale. My Track Cartridge system can be interchanged with the foreground, background and the corner piece can be swapped to either side of the diorama for a different scene for photography of Railroad products. The pictures I included showed the progress of putting this all together.
