Making Cisco Townsite, part 5

: Sep. 24, 2017. Thompson Springs, UT

Each quarter section of the diorama will represent the four seasons. However, the surface of the ground is stable; the four seasons will be represented by the plants/grasses. I tried to make the Cisco ground by wash-painting method familiar to us as the weathering method.

As Cisco doesn’t have a lookout, I referred to the photos I took at Thompson Hill. I also put the piece of cinder block picked up at Cisco beside the diorama as a reference.

The first wash of thinned paint is of Liquitex Red Oxide, the second is of Raw Siena, and the third is of Raw Umber. This choice of colors is the same as the previous diorama I made, but I did it thinner to match the prototype. Finally, I added a wash of Ivory Black as a shadow.

Apart from the terrain, highway pavement is washed three times with thinned Unbleached Titanium and a little Ivory Black mixture.

: Red Oxide wash-painted
: Raw Siena wash-painted
: Raw Umber wash-painted
: Ivory Black wash-painted


From 1961 to 1991, D&RGW used slag extracted from the American Smelting & Refining Co. (ASRCO) smelter at Leadville, CO, and the United States Smelting Refining & Mining Co. smelter at Midvale, UT for the ballast. This was a dark purplish-black rock. So, I used the mixture of #24-331 Fine Ballast produced by Woodland Scenics (=Kato Fine Ballast) and #434 R-Stone produced by Morin for the ballast.

: highway painted and tracks ballast applied

After the ballast was secured, I airbrush painted Tamiya XF-68 NATO Brown acrylic paint to the rail as rust. I drew disappearing pavement markings using white and yellow colored pencils.
　
　　
大地の仕上げは水溶きアクリル塗料による染色である。薄い色から順に染め重ね、最後に陰影として黒を重ねた。

D&RGWでは、1960年代初頭から1990年代初頭の間、精錬所から排出される鉱滓をバラストに用いていた。それを再現すべく、最も黒いと思われる市販のバラスト２種を混ぜて線路に散布する。記憶にはもちろんないので、これで似ているかどうかは分からない。固着には水溶き木工ボンドを使用。道路の消えかかったセンターラインは色鉛筆。これだとマスキングなど不要で簡単だ。