Rainbow Caverns on the TMMC is being modeled as three major show scenes: A bat cave filled with glowing eyes, colorful Rainbow Falls, and a beautiful grotto of color changing crystals. Major work has been completed on the central Rainbow Falls scene and that's the topic of today's post and video log.
Most scenery and effects work is now complete on the upper section of Rainbow Falls, a major scene within Rainbow Caverns, and I'm excited to share the results today in a new post and video log. Tried and true "illusioneering" and stagecraft was used to bring this scene to life with a major element being the "Pepper's Ghost" rainbow effect in front of the falls. Check out this month's video log for a rundown on how the scene was created, and follow along with the photo's below for a more in-depth explanation.
Thunder Mesa Video Log: August 2015
Some representation of Rainbow Caverns has been part of the plan for Thunder Mesa from the very beginning. In fact, it goes back even further, starting with early plans to model Nature's Wonderland, and then on to my HO and On30 Big Thunder & Western layouts. At long last I'm getting around to the real magic at the heart of this model railroad and having a wonderful time playing with miniature versions of some of those classic Disney effects. The Rainbow Falls scene is achieved with a combination of ultra-violet light effects and the classic Pepper's Ghost illusion.
A Pepper's Ghost Rainbow
The waterfall is made from clear acrylic, painted on the back with transparent blue UV reactive paint. The "floating" rainbow is a Pepper's Ghost illusion - basically, a view-point controlled glass reflection.
The Pepper's Ghost illusion is used to make semi-translucent objects appear to float in mid-air. In reality, it's the exact same effect you see when you look at your own reflection in a window. Here, however, the viewing angle is tightly controlled so that only the illuminated object, in this case a photo of a rainbow, can be seen in the reflection. If you've ever experienced the Haunted Mansion at a Disney park then you have seen expert use of this classic illusion.
Here, a simple black box has been created from cardstock with a blurry rainbow printed against black glued inside. An improvement on this design would be to curve the image around the inside of the box so that no edges will be reflected. My second version (not pictured) does just that.
To illuminate the rainbow, a single white 3mm LED was installed in this faux rock fixture.
The next step in creating the illusion is to position a piece of glass at an angle to reflect the picture or object but not the viewer. Note the the glass should be the full height of the scene. In this case, that's five inches.
Rockwork
All of the rockwork inside the caverns is made from pink polystyrene foam. Some are like set pieces, and are removable for maintenance. Layers of these set pieces are positioned to hide lighting rigs, and to complete the illusion of depth in the caverns when viewed from the proper angles. This is Stair Case Falls under UV light.
Here a piece of polystyrene foam is being shaped with a cone sanding bit in a Dremel tool. This goes fast but you have to be careful not to sand away too much!
Each piece is then painted flat black. Once that dries, varies purples and blues are dry-brushed on for a mottled appearance. Keeping the rocks a dark blueish gray helps to make the UV painted objects pop and makes the caverns seem darker, larger, and more mysterious than they are.
The Waterfall
The waterfall was created in the same basic way as the waterfalls for Big Thunder Creek, by sculpting 1mm thick clear acrylic sheet with a hot soldering iron.
The acrylic waterfall was then painted on the back with blue transparent UV paint before being cemented in place on its own set piece with clear silicone caulk.
A single 5mm UV LED is hidden behind the falls for illumination.
UV Lighting
Several of these 5mm Ultra Violet LEDs were positioned strategically in the scene for added illumination. Outside the waterfall, the creek itself is nothing but acrylic UV paint and gloss medium. Here you cam also see the 12v wiring buss that runs below the caverns from a DC transformer. The red wire is positive and the black is negative - important to know when working with LEDs.
I needed a simple way to mount LEDs to the roof of the scene and still have them be flexible enough to aim the lights. Cheep plastic bendy straws came to the rescue. Painted flat black and attached to the ceiling with a dab of hot glue, they make for quite serviceable miniature lighting rigs. A scrim of rockwork hides rigs like this from view.
What's Next?
Down below Rainbow Falls where the track crosses the creek on a stone bridge, there will be a series of deep pools, each slowly changing color as the magical waters drip down from above. Beyond the falls will be a Crystal Grotto, dancing with light. And let's not forget the Bat Cave with its hundreds of shining eyes. Yes, there's much more to come in Rainbow Caverns! But that will have to do it for this time. Thanks for checking in, Amigos. Adios for now!
Once again, I'm back to work on Rainbow Caverns, bringing the "dark ride" portion of the TMMC to life. I'm currently up to my elbows in wiring, LEDs, and black light paint but plan on publishing a full step-by-step and how-to post in about another week. In the meantime, please enjoy this short video highlighting some of the effects in completed scenes thus far. Adios for now!
*Note: Original Disney soundtrack has been replaced by royalty free music from YouTube.
All of the final touches are in and the sound is turned on for Big Thunder Creek. Does that mean the scene is finished? Well, there's always more to add but we'll call it done for now!
Welcome to the fourth and final post chronicling the build of Big Thunder Creek. Its been a fun and rewarding project that has brought a lot of life to the layout. In this installment I'll add the finishing touches to the scene, including some animal life, an old cottonwood tree, and the sound effects of birds and rushing water.
The Cottonwood
Throughout the desert Southwest, the majestic cottonwood has always been a welcome site. Cottonwood trees only grow near reliable sources of water like springs, creeks and stock ponds where they provide shade for weary travelers and habitat for wildlife. The bright green of a cottonwood grove can be seen for miles across the desert and always means life-saving water. When planning Big Thunder Creek I knew that it simply would not be complete without at least a representative sample of the cottonwood.
A Fremont Cottonwood in fall color beside a desert wash. Even if there's no water visible on the surface, a healthy cottonwood means that water can be found just below ground.
Cottonwoods have gray bark and distinctive branching trunks. I created mine using yard clippings from our paradise trees and Super Sage tree material from Scenic Express. The paradise tree clippings do a good job of representing the twisted trunks and thick branches of a typical cottonwood, while the sage is perfect for representing the smaller leaf-bearing branches and twigs. Paradise branches were trimmed and cemented together and a pin was cemented into the base to make it easier to plant on the layout and to work on at the bench. The Super Sage was soaked in diluted matte medium to make it pliable (as per the instructions) and then individual sprigs were cemented to the trunk and branches with fast-setting ACC.
Much has been written about modeling trees so I'll just cut to the chase here. Once the trunk was complete, the crown was sprayed with 3M 45 General Purpose Adhesive and then sprinkled with Noch Spring Green Leaf Flake. The other creekside bushes were made in a similar fashion and all were planted on the layout using Aleene's Tacky Glue.
Ground cover beneath the tree was created with a layer of fine dirt from my Sedona collection and ground up dry leaves from the yard. Everything was held in place with a spray of "wet" water (water with 1-2 drops of dishwashing liquid) and then glued down with diluted matte medium. Various ground foams, sticks, plants and grasses from Woodland Scenics help round out the scene. Good scenery is variety and layers, just like nature.
The finished cottonwood and environs. The challenge here was to build a tree of realistic size that didn't completely overpower the rest of the scene.
Critters and Other Details
Water in the desert attracts animals like a magnet, and while much of that illusion will be conveyed through sound effects, I wanted a few representative critters that would be visible to viewers.
Some ducks and a turtle made from Sculpey II. These were baked for about 15 minutes at 275ยบ and then painted with acrylics. For scale, the pin that makes up the head and tail of the turtle is about an inch long. It was trimmed much shorter before being added to the layout.
The ducks and turtle in their natural habitat of Big Thunder Creek. For the record, the ducks are named Donald and Daisy.
Why did the armadillo cross the train tracks? To get to the creek of course! This little guy is a white metal casting from Wiseman Model Services.
More greenery along the creek. This small hill between the bridges was created to help separate the creek from areas to the right. The cacti are excellent plastic castings from Pegasus Hobbies.
An old Indian trail winds its way down to the creek from the mesa and a pair of Ute braves have stopped to pay their respects to Thunder Falls. The figures are from Woodland Scenics.
Finishing the creek scene meant finishing up the track too. Here, ballast is being spread along the mainline with a small, soft brush. This was then held in place with a spray of "wet" water and then glued down with diluted matte medium. The mainline ballast is died chick grit and the sidings are red dirt from Sedona.
Adding Sound
As I have on previous projects, I turned to ITT Products when it came time to add sound to Big Thunder Creek. I wanted an ambient effect with the roar of the waterfalls coming from an upper speaker and babbling water and bird sounds coming from a speaker near the layout fascia. Their small sound modules are perfect for adding spot sounds like this to specific locales.
Sound modules and 2" speakers from ITT Products. The modules were wired in series to a panel switch but the speakers were placed farther apart. The speaker for the waterfall sound module was placed directly behind the big falls and the speaker for the brooks and birds was placed closer to the front of the layout.
The wiring for the sound modules is very straight forward and the instructions are quite clear and easy to follow - even for an electronics dummy like me. Here the two modules have been wired in parallel and leads have been added to connect to a 9v power source. Small jumper wires have also been connected on the center on/off terminal to allow for continuous looping sound. The orange disk at lower left on each module is the volume control.
Here the two sound modules have been mounted to benchwork below the layout in a relatively easy to reach location.
The best way to demonstrate the sound modules is with a video. To wrap up the project, here's a short movie on the sights and sounds of Big Thunder Creek. Enjoy!
Thanks for coming along for the Big Thunder Creek project. I hope everyone enjoyed the journey. Of course, there's still lots to do on this side of the layout with Thunder Mesa Mill and other structure projects waiting in the wings. We'll see what I'm in the mood to tackle in the days and weeks to come. In the meantime, thanks for checking in, amigos. Adios for now!
Welcome foolish mortals, to the Never Mine! Happy Halloween!
Just beware of hitchhiking ghosts!
At the end of September I described building the shaft house and head-frame of the spooky, abandoned Never Mine. In today's post I'll detail construction of the mine tunnel base, including the addition of a happy haunt who only comes out after dark. Then we'll finish up the scene with a tailings pile, timber crib retaining wall, and all of the final landscaping details. Follow along with the photos and captions to see how it all went together.
The base for the Never Mine was carved from two layers of 1" thick Balsa Foam laminated together with wood glue. Most of the carving was done with #2 and #11 hobby knives and a hard, 5H pencil. A random stone foundation for the shaft house was integrated into the carving. Here I'm test fitting the top beam of the timber framing for the mine adit.
For my happy haunt, I cut some 1mm clear acrylic sheet to size and fogged the surface with fine sandpaper. Then the outline of the ghost was painted from behind with thick black acrylic paint. The acrylic sheet was cemented into place and all of the edges blended with spackle.
A hunk of Baxter's Butte was cut away and a simple power bus made from two strips of thin brass sheet was glued in place. Accessory power from a 9v transformer feeds this bus and all wiring leads from the model were soldered on to it. Special care was taken to keep track of the positive bus as LED lights are polarity specific and will not function if the positive diode receives a negative charge. Here a 5mm green LED has been soldered into place to illuminate the ghost.
A quick check to make sure everything would fit and work properly.
The carving was painted with acrylics to match existing rock-work on the layout and the mine adit was finished with scale 8' x 8' beams and 1" x 12' planks stained with a shoe dye and alcohol mixture. The boards were distressed and broken to look as if they have been there for some time. The nail holes were added with a sharp 5H pencil.
Here is the entire assembly installed on the layout and the lights turned on. The shaft house has a single blue LED and the hoisting shed has a flickering amber LED as described in part I.
The carved base was glued down and blended into the existing scenery with Sculptamold. The mine structures above merely sit in place and can be easily removed if required. A short length of Micro Engineering code 55 N scale bridge track was added to represent O scale 18" gauge mine car tracks emerging from the tunnel.
I had originally planned to build an abandoned ore tipple to go with the Never Mine but later decided that such an imposing trackside structure would detract from the tiny mine above. Instead I opted for a timber crib retaining wall and tailings dump - a very common site around old mines. The first step was to rough in the dump pile with EPF (pink foam).
Here the tailings dump has been smoothed out and blended into the cliffside with Sculptamold. It was then given just a quick coat of Raw Sienna since this base will be entirely covered by scenery materials.
A couple of rickety, broken old ladders were scratch-built from strip-wood to provide a way up to the mine - albeit a hazardous one. It's nothing but fun to build details like this.
The timber crib retaining wall was built in place from 3/16" diameter dowels, stained and distressed to resemble old timbers. Here I'm backfilling behind the cribbing with small rocks and dirt from Sedona, AZ. This was later cemented in place with diluted white glue.
The slope of the tailings pile was textured with Polyblend sanded grout. It was mixed in a paper cup with a small amount of water to form a thick paste and then stippled on with a cheap paintbrush.
The grout was allowed to dry for a couple of days and then it was stained with thin washes of acrylic paints to represent colorful minerals, and to blend it with the surrounding scenery.
Another layer of fine rocks and dirt was sifted over the tailings pile and cemented into place with diluted white glue. Then more rocks, bushes, cacti, weeds, broken boards and other miscellaneous bits of debris were cemented in place to finish up the scene.
Cacti, bushes and other details near the shaft house foundations. You'd have to be pretty brave to climb those ladders!
The boarded-up mine entrance. The ghost is invisible during they day and only appears when the structure lighting is turned on for night operations.
Overall view if the tailings pile. The weedy overgrown look contributes to the story of a mine that has been abandoned for some time.
With the completion of the Never Mine, just about all of the scenery is now finished on this side of Big Thunder Creek. I'm sure that a few more details will be added here and there, but I was happy to get the haunted mine finished just in time for Halloween. I had considered adding a sound module to this project but decided it would be a little too much with the sounds of the creek, mill and town right next door. Hope you've all enjoyed the tale of the Never Mine and following along with the build. As always, any questions or comments are more than welcome below. More to come real soon. In the meantime, here's a video showing the lighting effects and documenting the Never Mine build. Adios for now!
The Never Mine. Abandoned to the elements back in '85, some folks claim the old place is haunted.
Legend of the Never Mine
High above Big Thunder Creek, on the rugged slopes of Baxter's Butte, rests the Never Mine. This is old Badwater Baxter's original claim, the oldest developed mine in these wild canyons and the same rich find that started the gold boom in Thunder Mesa Country. According to legend, when Baxter first set out from Fort Wilderness in 1865, the naysayers and local know-it-alls at the fort canteen told him he'd never find anything prospecting in that weird hoodoo country. Old Baxter just grinned beneath his big mustache, slapped his burro on the rump and said, "Never say never!" And the rest, as they say, is history.
Though it was undoubtably a rich find, misfortune and strange goings-on seemed to plague the Never Mine right from the start. Mysterious cave-ins, inexplicable equipment failures, frequent accidents and more than a couple of grizzly fatalities soon gave rise to rumors that the claim was cursed or haunted. Evidence of an old Indian burial ground had been found nearby and it was commonly known that the local Ute people held the entire Mesa as sacred. It's no small wonder then that Baxter became a little addled by all the misfortune and eventually sold the claim in 1877. He drifted west to Discovery Bay where the remainder of his years and his fortune were spent experimenting with outlandish airships. The Never Mine was taken over by the Rainbow Ridge Mining Co. which was later acquired by the TMMC. By all reports, the strange happenings continued until the rich ore finally played out and the mine was abandoned in '85.
Today, the dry desert wind whistles through the timbers of the old head-frame and the mine opening has been boarded up to keep out the curious. Or perhaps, to keep something in. Rumors of hauntings persist. Some foolish mortals say that on certain nights, when clouds obscure the stars and the zephyrs howl down the canyons, strange apparitions and ghostly voices seem to emanate from the long abandoned shaft house and the dark, gaping drift of the Never Mine.
The Model
The shaft house and head frame of the Never Mine; a little less spooky when photographed outdoors in the brilliant Arizona sunshine. The crooked smoke jack is a nod to the original Rainbow Ridge Mine that helped inspire this structure.
Inspiration for the Never Mine came from several sources. The design is loosely based on the Rainbow Ridge Mine, a tiny structure that once stood above the first tunnel on Disneyland's original Mine Train Thru Nature's Wonderland. The overall look and weathering was inspired by scouting trips to southwestern Colorado's Red Mountain Mining District. The name, "Never Mine," is a direct reference to a bit of Imagineering humor: A signpost in the queue area for Disneyland's Big Thunder Mountain Railroad points the way to several local landmarks, including Dinosaur Gap, Coyote Canyon, Busted Flats and Never Mine.
A signpost at Disneyland. 79 miles to the Never Mine? I think it's closer than that.
I began the structure with no real plan, just modeling by the seat of my pants. Generally, I wanted a small and interesting looking abandoned mine to help round out the scenery near Big Thunder Creek. I had long thought that something which looked a little spooky and haunted might be just right for this spot and a paper model mock-up of a generic abandoned mine held the space for a couple of years. Follow along with the photos and captions to see how the shaft house and head-frame for the Never Mine went together.
The available space for a mine was pretty tight, only about 5" wide by 3.5" deep. Fortunately there was a lot of vertical space to play with and my solution was to simply stack all of the mine elements one on top of the other. A shaft house and head-frame sits on a stone foundation directly above a mine adit, which in turn will sit above a trackside ore tipple. The cliff face with the adit, or drift, was carved from Balsa Foam to match the surrounding scenery and the hoist house was laid out with 1/16" thick illustration board. The door and window are styrene Grandt Line catsings.
The tiny shaft house is a scale 8'x8' with a 24" wide catwalk on two sides. The illustration board structure was spray painted flat black.
Coffee stir sticks were distressed with an X-acto knife and razor saw, adding woodgrain, splits and knotholes before being stained with a mix of Kiwi black shoe dye thinned with alcohol. The stir sticks are cheap, readily available, and scale out to about 11" wide in 1:48. They were cut to size and then glued in place over the illustration board with yellow carpenter's glue.
A foamcore jig was created to keep the head-frame supports straight and true during assembly. The head-frame was built up with scale 8"x8" timbers following photos of similar structures I'd seen in Colorado.
The head-frame was glued in place to the side of the shaft house. For added visual interest, the head-frame sits an inch (4 scale feet) lower than the shaft house.
The problem of where to put the hoist mechanism on such a tiny mine was solved by building this simple shed between the legs of the head-frame. I guess there's a little steam hoist in there that must draw its water directly from the nearby creek. The sooty smokestack is a painted soda straw.
After assembly, the shaft house was dry-brushed with acrylic Buff Titanium to simulate old, faded whitewash. The Grandt door and window castings were primed and then dry-brushed to match, and signs were printed out on heavy paper to decorate the structure.
Grandt nut/bolt/washer castings were installed in logical places on the head-frame and watercolors were used to further age and weather the boards. Here rust stains are being added with a #1 sable brush. I mix up a batch of burnt sienna and ultramarine watercolors to create varying shades of warm grey. These are then brushed on to simulate age, rust, soot, water stains and other weathering effects. The watercolors soak right into the wood for a very realistic look and if the color gets too heavy it is easy to scrub off and blend with just a bit more water. If you try this technique though, take care, too much water can dissolve the yellow or white glue on your carefully constructed model.
Here is the rest of the head-frame assembly and the parts hidden by the shaft house roof. The sheave wheel is from a 1:43 Model T truck, turned down with a rotary tool. The brackets holding it in place are painted paper with nut/bolt.washer castings affixed.
Before the roof was installed, lighting effects were added in the form of two 5mm LEDs. A blue LED emits a ghostly glow through the frosted panes of the shaft house window, while a flickering amber LED simulates a mysteriously rekindled firebox glimpsed through the roof of the hoist shack. The LEDs are wired in series with 510 ohm resistors soldered to the positive diodes of each bulb. A pigtail of wires protrudes from the base of the structure to connect to the layout's 9v DC accessory buss.
The shaft house roof was made from illustration board with paper corrugated roofing. The roofing was cut into scale 4'x8' panels and painted with red oxide primer before assembly. Weathering was done with watercolors and brown, black and rust colored chalk powders.
Rafters and rafter ends were created from scale 1"x8" stock. The crooked smoke jack is a Grandt Line casting with the crook created by sawing off the uppermost section, filing at an angle, and then glueing back in place. The jack was airbrushed silver and black and then weathered with powdered chalks.
Another view. The hoist cable is black painted elastic thread.
With the shaft house and head-frame complete I can now turn my attention to the mine adit and ore dump down below. There will be a lot more on how I built those coming in a future post. For now, thanks for checking in. Comments and questions are always welcome. Adios amigos!
