Scattered Thoughts . . .

I n my previous blog entry, I wrote about my custom designed, homebuilt truss bridge that I have been working on lately for my little garden railroad.  I had applied far too many coats of paint in varying colors and shades in an attempt to get the color I had envisioned.  I eventually landed on a pale olive color for this bridge like many truss bridges in real life. After writing that previous blog entry, I also applied additional shades of green to this bridge to add some tonal depth to this paint job.  The single shade of green was a bit "flat".  I'm not referring to the finish of the paint...  ie, gloss, satin, matte, flat...  but referring to the tonal depth of the paint job.  I had applied one or two more shades of green lightly with a dry brushing technique to add some tonal depth.  Today, I applied some reddish washes very lightly to give the impression of rust developing on the bridge. In this photo, below, my locomotive is just departing the long curved trestle b

A s with most of my projects, I had thought that painting my homebuilt truss bridge would be a quick and easy job.  It hasn't been difficult but it has not be the least bit quick. This paint job is becoming a very long process.   First, I primed it with a spray can or two.  Then I spray painted an Anvil Gray spray paint and it was far too blue.  I wouldn't even call it a gray.  It really was a very dark blackish-blue and I didn't care for the color at all.  Once I started spraying this color, I realized that I had been fooled by the name of this color once before when I was painting my steam locomotive.  It was far too blue for that project too and ended up wasting a few days while I searched for a more appropriate color.   Then I sprayed a can of something named Deep Gray.  One would think this would be a gray that is into the darker shades of gray but, on the contrary, it was a rather light shade of gray.  This paint also had an odd hue to it that seemed to be leaning int

S o, the other day, I built a retaining wall for the front side of our little garden railroad and wrote about it here  in this blog previously.  That new "model" retaining wall looks great and I have to say it was a brilliant idea to add this detail.  Today, I started working on building a truss bridge for the back side of the garden railroad.   I've been sketching different ideas over the past couple of months because I always knew I wanted one of these bridges on this garden railroad but I finally decided on a plan this morning.  Once I had the plan sketched and figured out all the dimensions of each of the parts, I immediately headed outside to start cutting lumber and building a truss bridge.  My civil engineering days are long behind me but, if I remember correctly, this would be a Warren Truss bridge due to the equilateral triangles across each side of the bridge. Designing this bridge required me to test my geometry and trigonometry skills (and my memory).  Other t