"Howdy Folks! Welcome to the little mining town of Rainbow Ridge, the gateway to Nature's Wonderland"

This is my documentation of my miniature re-creation of the long-gone Disneyland attraction: Mine Train Thru Nature's Wonderland. This is a selectively compressed model railroad, in On30 scale at 5' X 7.5' that has been in progress since September 2005. In May of 2016, I finally got the layout to a point where I declared it "finished".

I started the layout when I was a sophomore in high school with basic skills and over the years the layout has been improved and reworked in drastic ways to match my ever improving model making skills. In fact, since I started rebuilding the sections to better quality and standards, I've actually created a whole new layout, piece by piece.

This is a stand-by basis project without a deadline, so it tends to hit the back-burner a lot due to other things with higher priorities. But whenever I can, I'll give an update when there is something worth talking about. All of my updates since day one are here, which include photos, videos, and plenty of rambling notes and descriptions.








Progress Report: 1/14/09

Rock formations are in place, temporarily, and the papier mache is patched up. They are sitting are specially cut platforms that follow the contours. Makes it easier for removal for painting.



Painting might be the next step, but I think I might want to go somewhere else on the layout this week.
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Progress Report: 1/11/09

To show how these formation are created, I've documented the making of the Natural Arch.

First I stacked a bunch of thin blocks to get a very rough shape. I glued all the blocks together in the middle with hot glue. Then I drew a rough top view on the top of the block.






I cut the whole block on the band saw.






Next I carved and smoothed out corners and edges using the same kind of tool shown in the photo in the post above.





Then I carved out the indents and details, and later took a wire brush and carved some subtle horizontal lines. Also, I hit it with a real rock to give it a little bit of that rock texture.






After that, a layer of paint should seal it up.
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