Don’t Forget the Little Things on Your Layout! - Detailing The Grunge Ep. 18 

If the 80's are the dark ages, I remember milk crates that were made out of wood. As a kid in the 60's, I used to deliver milk and we had wooden crates. 🙂

Stunning details….wow, nice job 👍🏻 big wheel, potted plant 🪴 go a long way to compliment everything else you’ve added.

Much better! Actually looks like a neighborhood rather than just buildings....

One cool detail for a future build could be if you cut some of those double windows in half and put one half at an angle to make it look like the window is tilted open, and then hang the window blinds straight to emphasise on this effect =)

Thank you for the inspiration on detailing some buildings.

Joe thought you might like to know the grumpy old man is Bruce Wilson from the podcast A modelers Life 😀

Love those chairs. Great details. Thanks for sharing. Dave

Thanks for another inspiring video Joe. For a frosted glass look, you can use a layer or two of satin "Scotch" tape. Might be quicker to apply. Just a thought.

Detail always brings a scene to life. Big difference, Joe. Thanks for sharing, David (F & B Railroad).

When building a model railroad you have to realize that there are different people with different knowledge of railroads who come and see it. Some know how a real railroad operates while others just want to see the trains run around the layout and look at the details, especially kids. I am the latter. I’ve seen other YT channels where the owner has many little vignettes that catches the person’s eye. I really like what you did and how you did it. I like the lawn chairs as I remember them as well. And the little girl playing hop scotch is great. One thing I don’t like. You have a stop sign on a road that leads into a building. You need to change your backdrop to something that may show the road continues down a city street. I will be waiting for your next video. 😊

Nice one 😊

Great video! Good idea using the Sharpies.

Looks good and very life like

Obviously a little late to the party on this one. While I am, admittedly, an armchair railroader I am a very active wargamer and miniature painter. There are a couple of things that you can do to make it easier to paint small items. First mount your intended victims on something to serve as a handle to use while you are painting it. Good handles that you can find around the house are: Popsicle sticks, especially good for painting multiples of similar miniatures (I like jumbo ones for larger miniatures) Pop (or Soda) bottle caps, for painting single miniatures, particularly larger miniatures Wine Bottle corks, same use as pop bottle caps Really just about anything that will keep your fingers off the miniature while you are painting (or marking, coloring?) You can mount them to handles with just about anything; double sided tape, hot glue, PVA glue etc. Do not use CA glue. You are likely to break things off at the base rather than simply removing it. I prefer hot glue or PVA myself, just depends on my patience level at the moment, waiting for PVA to dry means I need to have something else at hand to work on. Pay attention with glues you only want it on the bottom of the foot, don't let it slop up on the surfaces you need to paint. In HO, and smaller scales, we need to at least hint at details that aren't there to make the miniatures "come alive" or "pop". We don't have to paint things down to the buttons or the eyes but if we give the illusion that they are there the human mind tends to fill in the details. The easiest way to do that is by adding shadows and the easiest way to do that is with a wash. I prefer acrylics or even oil paints as the base color for a wash and I avoid inks because they have a tendency to stain the paint. Making your own wash is relatively easy but there are plenty of commercial products out there (Vallejo, AK Interactive, Ammo by Mig and a number of others). Apply the wash evenly over the entire miniature, don't let it pool, let it flow and use a brush to wick away any excess. Use a clean brush to wipe away areas (especially on highest surfaces) were you don't want it, but for the most part it will flow into the crevices and lines and give the miniature a quick pop. You could also go back and add highlights but those would need to be very small and are probably not worth the effort except in a foreground scene. Almost forgot avoid using black, instead use a deeper brown like burnt umber especially if its going on a miniature with skin tones. There are certainly times when black would be the right choice but thing about the environment that particular miniature is going to be in. This one is preference. I never use a rattle can to prime anything this small, its has a good chance of filling in some of the molded detail. If I had to use a rattle can I would go with a primer that is designed for miniatures, while more expensive it will provide a thinner layer of primer and not hide the details. My preference is to use an airbrush so I have more control over the spray. I usually load the airbrush up with gray primer from either Vallejo or Badger. Rattle can primers are great for a lot of things on our railroads just not the really small stuff, like people. The age old fight amongst miniature painters is which color primer to use. There are a lot of colored primers out there but the big three are white, black and gray. That base primer color affects how your colors will look, so use the one best suited for the environment. Black is going to subdue the colors you paint over it and some colors are really hard to use on black primer (reds, whites and yellows come to mind). The colored marker technique is not going to work on black primer. White primer will make the overlaying colors much "brighter" and seems to work pretty well with the colored marker technique. Gray is neutral, what you paint is what you get right out of the bottle. I prefer gray primer for just about everything I paint and adjust colors with washes and highlights. This colored marker technique should work okay on grey primer. For brushes I would purchase a good quality #1 kolinsky sable brush. There are a number of different manufacturers out there. Winsor Newton, Rafael, DaVinci and Rosemary come to mind but there are others. Don't think that you need some 000 brush to paint something small, a #1 with a good tip will handle any kind of detail that you can see. My preferred brand is DaVinci and if you take good care of it it will last a long time. There is plenty of uses for cheap brushes but having something that can really get in there for fine detail is a must have tool. Sorry, this got way longer than I intended.

How about some streetlamps and power poles, Joe? Great video! Thanks

Thank you for another great demonstration. Details are important, but not immediately. Appreciate all that you have done.

Fantastic! The hop scotch was an inspired detail, as was thee big-wheel. And I love Mini-Prints. I just got the lawn chairs as well, plus wheel barrows for my pickle station and water troughs for the stock yard. Placed another order this week. If I were to add anything, it would be more trash in the alleyway where the tracks are, papers, tire, etc. - Paul

I feel like detailing smaller scenes makes the overall build process of your layout so much more enjoyable. Especially if you end up keeping the scene for a later layout allowing you too see how you’ve improved in the hobby

Another great segment!! It's the little things that count. Those details really bring the scene together.

Nice detailing. The street runs directly into the back building, which looks weird but I guess it’s better then running directly into the bare wall. I wish there was a better way.

Ultra Fine Sharpies may work better for the fine detail areas.

Hey Joe! Happy new years, I just stumbled upon your channel and youve given me some inspiration and motivation to start this year off on the right track - Especially now that i have a new job that can facilitate a small layout. Cheers!

Wow!! your detailing really brought everything thing to life! Great ideas!! Love your videos 🙌🏽 I think it’s FOS scale models that makes the fire call boxes 😃

I don't plan on having a lot of people or cars on my layout. One thing I always didn't like about model railroading is how the trains were the only things moving. Your miniature people don't walk down side walls and your cars don't drive on roads. I'm planning on only having people who look like they are in a very stationary activity, a couple guys chatting on a smoke break for example. And I think I'll only have cars in positions where they are parked.

Seems like the guy on the crate wasn’t the only “grumpy old man” in the video 😊. Just wondering. What if you made the curtains out of aluminum foil? It’s much easier to paint than tissue. I’ve used it to create “tarps” to cover flatcar loads.

Another very informative video. Definitely sweating the details a little help make a scene. Have you thought about making a hole so your dead end road can go under the building? Maybe a small mirror in the background to give it more depth.

Fire call box might be from DPM kit....

I just found your channel, but if you aren't aware, the moderately agitated mailboy is from "A modelers life" podcast.

OMG! I've run out of Grunge videos!! Now what will I do? All is lost!!!

WHERE ARE THE CROSSBUCKS?! Motorists should be alerted to the active rail line that passes between Laila's Joint and the apartment complex.

The person driving that red vw must be drunk being they driving all up on the sidewalk like that.