Fully Plastered

All the plaster work is done and now need to have a final dig out of the track especially the points areas. The walls arrived and are glued in place and all the gaps filled with plater and little stones from the garden cover any unsightly ends. I really like the Skaledale range, the walls especially. I've used loads of their buildings on St Ruth and will continue to do so on the rest of the Island, The station building at Underhill is a cricket pavillion, on the subject of which I've been painting and finishing off the buildings too. The goods shed thing is finished as is the water tower, the station is still in process but with luck I'll get some done on that tonight.

Painting and backscene are the next big items to tackle. Then it's onto the greenery and playing trains... then the next module...

More whiteness

I've finished burying the track all except for the points and I've cleaned all the running surfaces and flangeways so that I can run trains again. So far so good.

The point motors are all hidden as is the wiring, (I've done a little bit more than in the picture.) I have the trees for the station end which will do the job of creating a softer end to the layout. One of my next jobs is to start creating a backscene from photographs, mostly it will be sky but a few foothills are needed too.

The next most important job is to build and fit a lid for the electrics. I'm going to screw a piece of wood to the back and then cut a piece of MDF or ply, whichever I find in the junk pile. Then its more filler to make the shape fit.

White at the end of the tunnel

I've been beavering away (fnarr) for the last few days whenever I can grab a half hour so the scenery has been plaster bandaged and then a layer of filler has covered that to make the contours a bit softer. I've also started burying the trackwork in filler. This branch is supposed to be quite run down and was always the poor relation of the St Ruth to Port Lucy 'mainline'.

I've nearly finished the goods shed, sort of thing, which sits at the front of the layout. I also have a water tower which is a really nice resin casting from Unit Models. They also do a range of trees, some of which may well appear later.

Not good pictures but they show how the scene is coming together. Quite a bit of the wiring has now vanished under filler but some obviously remains. I've got some Skaledale stone walling on order which will go along the front as boundary wall and to stop any derailments taking a dive off the layout.

The only really major thing left to do is to make the removable panel which will cover the wiring at the rear of the control area. I think if I don't make it removable I'll regret it.

Underhills are alive...!

Having spent some more time working on Underhill I have some progress to show for it. The wiring is finished and all works as it should, trains have been run. My biggest electronics triumph is to buy the correct bridge rectifier and wire it in so that the LED 'power on' light works and the the light in the station and the lamp at the buffer stopdo to.

I've also added the rudimentary structure of the hills with polystyrene. Hopefully I will start some plaster bandage work tonight.

The building in the foreground which covers the point motor started life as a medieaval thatched barn but now has a fancy tile roof and a bay window/door arrangement. I will have to invent a reason for it.

Oops I did it again

I seem to have started building yet another layout before finishing the one I'm building. It is a portable layout which will be exhibitable unlike St Ruth, it represents the terminus of the Underhill branch so it is still part of the Isle of Stoner Railway. There won't be a physical connection between the two layouts. Underhill will be an L shape consisting of two boards, so far I'm concentrating on the terminus board which has the main control panel built into it. The idea is that the whole thing will fit in the back of a Ford Focus with room for a passenger. I'm building it in B&Q cheap pine board which is 18mm thick and comes in a variety of lengths, each board will have a back and ends made from the same material making the whole thing strong and stable. A side effect of wanting to keep the whole thing tidy is that all the wiring (steam powered DC) has to be kept above baseboard level, I will hide it all within scenery.

Here the baseboard is finished and the track is placed vaguely where it will be.

This shows the track laid and the wiring started.

The control panel in place and wiring has progressed, point motors work and the track cleaner lights up.

Control panel from operators view point.

I'm using a Gaugemaster hand held controller and the PSU also plugs in so that keeps everything tidy and flexible. There will also be a multiway connector to take power to the other board. I'm waiting for parts to finish most of the rest of this so this evening I may well concentrate on the station buildings.

The station building.

The main station building is a modified/butchered Skaledale cricket pavilion. The canopy brackets came from NGRM forum member Bernard and originally stood for Isle of Skye Railway but they are perfect for the IoSR, so thanks to him for those.

Some scenery and a loco

My daughter was off school yesterday with a cold so I got the chance to do a bit of modelling. I painted and installed the bit of wall in front of the church yard and painted the Mk2 bridge, this one is the complete opposite of the Mk1 in that you can hardly see it but I prefer it.

I've splodged some filler about over the hill to the right of St Roudley's but it still looks too regular, I have some rock faces to cast when I get time so I think a few bits of that will break it up.

In the evening I progressed the new 0-8-0 a bit further, quite pleased but I think I need to change the steam pipes to the cylinders as they are too thick. I only had some sprue to hand so its back to Porthmadog Models for some Evergreen of the correct size.

Sailing by

Off to bed but, I did finish a small boat tonight. It is a Russian kit as seen in the RM a while ago, I had one before that... Nice little kit.

Now, the shipping forecast.

Plastered again

I've been back in the garage again today, albeit with a bit of a hangover. All my own fault, no sympathy.

The river bed and the landscape behind it now have their basic shape and St Roudley's church has a space and a wall although I'm not sure it needs a wall. There is a tiny chapel which stands on an artificial island at Aberffraw on Anglesey, the sea has eroded the land from round it and the Victorians built a stone retaining wall to protect it. It has no wall and I'd quite like to reflect that here. Have a look on Google, worth a visit if you are in the area too.

I need to add a layer of filler and some cast rocks but the landscape is coming along. Now the trackbed is established I need to build some abutments for the bridge. I've roughly cut some Slater's stone embossed sheet to size so that is on the way too. In the coming days I shall pop down to the beach at Penrhyn and take some pics of how a tidal estuary really is so that I can add sand/chinchilla dust etc.

I have now got the point motors basses and switches to wire up and install the points, I've never done it this way before, I've always cut a big hole in the baseboard or mounted the motor above board. this time I'm going for the small slot approach so I can ballast the points properly as they will be very visible.

Progress and St Roudly's church

Between the domestic chores I found some time to fiddle with the layout and decided finally to move the cheese factory to somewhere else and to plant the church I made for my Xmas layout. I like the way the church turned out even though it is basically just a Dapol kit. It has Langley stained glass windows so should look nice once it is illuminated. On the subject of which, I added some end bits to the road river bridge and attached some street lights to them.

I've decided that the rail bridge looked a bit enormous for the job so I'll save it for a ravine I have in mind further down the line.

Things are starting to give an idea of what they will look like once this bit is done. The new size of the loop is much more realistic. I cut a replacement bit of track to size to replace the ex cheese siding point and fitted it too. Progress at last.

Over the hill

I've finally found some time to do some work on St Ruth. I've used up a couple of rolls of plaster bandage and half a pot of cheap filler and covered the pile of polystyrene which is the extension to Lighthouse Hill. It feels good to have taken this step forward, I need to grasp the nettle and get the points wired up and installed.

I was going to have the cheese factory where the pub and cottages are in this picture but I don't think there will be room for it and its siding, I'll have to re do the track to remove the point from here and try to find room for it on the other side of the river where it was originally going to be.

The tram is pretty well finished but I will need to re think the coupling as it can't even deal with the gentle curve of the platform as it is.

Both the power car and the driving trailer still have loose roofs but I think they will be an interesting addition to the Isle of Stoner Railways passenger fleet.