Model Railway Forum

It's well worth painting the whole baseboard before nailing down any track. IanS is right when he says that it gives the right feel to the whole layout. This is because we perceive colours differently according to what other colours are next to them. By getting an approximate effect of the final look at the begining, it's easier to accurately work up parts of the layout keeping to the overall effect you want.

I web ordered a range of cheap acrylic craft paints in large tubes from Hobbycraft.

A mixture of basic green mixed with blue to make it a dark green yellow to make light green, a bit of brown wth yellow for ground covers.

It is quite fun adding and mixing colours, start with a base wash , white plus brown And / or green. Then try stippling the overlaying colours as you vary the mix. This will give differing back ground colour.

Finish off with a very sparse stipple of red, yellow for flowers / berries.

Then as said before use a range of greys, blacks were the tracks may go.

It sounds more complicated than it is to do, gives an interesting and varied appearance, does not take that much longer to do than a straight paint job, and provides a base for further landscape when you get around to it.

Edit. It would pay to also paint the underside of the board with a light colour , it seals the board and reduce warping abnd makes it lighter to work under when wiring.

At the end of the day, it's your rail world to do with it what you will. If you are very brave get the kids involved

Rgds

Thanks again for the responses. Hopefully the boards for my elevated sections will arrive this week so I'll finally get a chance to actually put 'track to board'.

I didn't paint my baseboards before laying track as my layout is in a relatively damp cellar. So I didn't want to risk 'sealing in' any moisture. However, it does make a lot of things harder as the bare wood tends to camouflage dropped track pins, rail joiners etc. Also the overall appearance of the layout is much more 'unfinished'. So if I started again I would at least slap down a layer of green emulsion.

I've mentioned this before on another thread (or two), but I've not ballasted my layout. I simply painted where the track would go: first browny-black, and then my ballast colour on top using a sponge (I think I used a lighter and darker version of the same colour) and finally some mossy-green for weathering (again using the sponge).

Here in Essex the ballast is a surprising pinky colour when the ground is dry. Of course, you can choose any colour to match the ballast of your chosen region. It works okay for me.

As Chiffchaff said, it's rather fun painting like this.

Uh-oh! Looks as if I'm going to have my work cut out. As can be seen in all the pix I've published, my entire layout rests on white plastic foam underlay, which has the advantage of being easy to mark up for the technical work that needs to done. I suppose making sure no white shows though anywhere will at least stop me being sloppy.

Cheers,
Artur