Couple of Things Going on Here

Rock Faces So I decided (yesterday or the day before really) that I didn't like the way my rock faces were turning out. Too much gray I guess. Not enough of anything else. Plus I've done some other reading lately, that kind of made me decide whatever was wrong it just wasn't working for me. I just can't really put my finger on what it is that isn't working...I've been thinking about what I can do to fix this. So I repainted them with my tan base tonite. Except for this piece, maybe I kept it to remind me of what NOT to do? I dunno, I kind of like this one. It's the one piece I've kept as removable rock. I'll put some kind of foreground feature on it and detail it out really nicely. Maybe a wood kit of some kind I can turn into some kind of greasy spoon for the train crews. Gotta have something on this side of that crossing, eh? Civil Engineering Project After I posted one of the pictures I posted here on Monday later on Trainboard, I got a few comments back. Notably one from PowerSteamGuy that basically said, "That's nice. Why don't you paint it with some Rail Tie Brown and after that dries, dry brush with some grimy black." Everybody that commented said it looked really bumpy... Well that was the idea! It's supposed to rural and not that well maintained.... Hey, it sounded good to me...So I sanded it a little and gave the thing a coat of Polly Scale Rail Tie Brown. And puttered around waiting for it to dry. I'm still trying to fix my fiasco of painting the rails with a brown paint pen that makes the rails look this awful shade of Red. I even took the paint pen and painted some of the scenery base with it to see if it just reacted with the metal to turn it that color. It didn't. It wasn't even brown on my painted scenery base. They shouldn't be able to sell that as a shade of Brown. So I screwed around with that for a while and went back in the house after a while. Trouble was when I came back around to it, it was probably ten thirty or eleven o'clock. I must've been too tired. I didn't just drybrush the thing...I buried it in grimy black! My new found buds at TB wasted no time in telling me about either! PSG said, "Give it another coat of Rail Tie Brown and then DRY BRUSH it with grimy black." Flash said he liked it better BEFORE the paint at all. And skipgear posted a picture from one of his grade crossings! With pointers! It was Great! It was all good in my opinion! So after I got home from work I gave the durn thing another coat of paint waited around for that to dry and did the drybrush thing...And sanded it ALL off again. I think the two coats of paint were just too much for my liking. Gave it yet another coat initial coat. Sanded a little bit And drybrushed...And this is how it came out. Not too shabby in my humble opinion! Can't wait to detail this out!