A busy week

I have had a mad busy week including a trip to London to help set up the display of Velinheli and Chaloner on King's Cross Station concourse. If you wanted to see it, too late as it will be all be taken away over night tonight. Thankfully, I'm not involved in that.

 

Making a life-size model railway in London

 

Back in the 4mm scale world, I made a couple of finishing touches to Castell Coed so it's ready to take to Llanberis this week. Oddly the show days are Wednesday to Friday...

 

The main jobs I did were to take the controls from the front left of the baseboard and put them on the side out of the way of small fingers. This left an area of pristine baseboard which I covered up with some scenic bits and bobs and a new section of wall. I think it looks much better for it and wish I'd done it ages ago. 

The new bit of scenery, bottom left

The whole layout

 

I've really got the bit between my teeth with getting on with the scenery on Underhill and I'm having a whale of a time. I really enjoy bringing my ideas to life with such basic materials.

Both sides of Parrott Cutting are now complete and awaiting paint and so on.

 

The next big area to receive attention with the putty knife and the plaster was Quarry Hill, the Town Quarry now has an adit which will have a 6.5mm gauge track in the fullness of time which will join up with the quarries upper level tramway which is already in place.

The adit

Quarry Hill

The new adit and the cutting below

Lots of colour to add

 

Today, I've added the filler layer over the plaster bandage for the area of transition between the beach and the rocky countryside. This is a slightly tricky bit as strictly speaking some of the countryside below the quarry is now below sea level but I'm hoping that this won't be too apparent once the scenery is complete.

In this picture you can see bare plaster bandage and then an area with roughly applied filler, beyond that there is an area where I've smoothed the filler out with a wet paint brush.

Here is the completed transition area. To the left of the dry stone wall will be sand dunes and beach and to the right, green countryside etc.

A wide view of the beach area with the first polystyrene formers in place to the left. The beach falls away from the back of the board to the sea as it did previously, I need to get that bit done next.

 

Oh, I sorted out Herman's inability to go round corners and it now can get from the fiddle yard to Underhill Town.

Rock and grass roll

Having got the bit between my teeth for a bit of scenery building I've cracked on quite a bit. I'm away from home till next week now so won't get a chance to get any further so I thought a quick post of progress was a good idea.

 

 

The plaster bandage work was set hard above Parrott Cutting so I've covered that over with filler to form the soil. The nightclub is also walled in and in place now.

 



In my next session I glue gunned in place some expanded polystyrene foam to form the rest of the quarry hill and then set about it with plaster bandage.

 



More plaster bandage action

 

The final thing I did was to apply a smoother coat of filler at the cutting which will form the basis of the scenery. A coat of brown paint etc next and then greenery.

 

Building a wall of my own

This week I've focussed on two projects, firstly I constructed a Ratio kit for a retaining wall and the over a couple of nights I painted it in the sort of Isle of Stoner rock colours.

The Wall

The Wall in place in Parrott Cutting

The other project was also fundamentally a painting job. My new 'blood and custard' carriages needed a brake van to finish off the rake. I'd originally planned to build a Dundas VoR van and indeed, I bought one, however I then took a better look at the PECO GVT van and decided that with a couple of bits of styrene to blank out the rear windows and some paint I could over come my dislike of it. So I did and I really like it now.

The completed rake

After a suggestion form Mick Thornton to add a black band I tried it out... not sure

With the new cutting wall ready I had no excuse for not getting on with the scenery. I put on an extra jumper and headed for the garage with some plaster bandage and some water.

An hour or so later the basic scenery was in place

I really enjoy this bit of layout building, next there will be some more filler to round out the scenery a little more. I had a little bit of bandage left so I started work on the other end of the quarry cutting.

Plastered again



This week I haven't done much modelling but I have finished off the weed killer wagon and its friend. Mostly this has been adding some weathering to make the unit look more lived in. I used Games Workshop thin washes, black, brown and green. I also used some rusty orange acrylic to dirty up the under frames and a few other bits.

When I was nearly finished doing the tank wagon I fumbled and dropped the whole thing into my Vegemite pot full of thinners which I clean brushes and dilute paint with. Bugger, I said and fished it out as soon as I could. All of the paint was starting to melt and I feared I might have to start from scratch but after the thinners had dried off and the paint set again it was mostly OK. Some bits needed touching up and the rusty edges on the tank cover up where the plastic was starting to show through.



The other painting I got done was the Stonerisation of the PECO GVT four wheelers. I have three of them and after finishing two off the same with the added cream and black ends I couldn't face the fiddling about on the third so I just painted the roof and picked out the droplights and footboards. I might revisit this at a latter date... but I might not.



Its been very cold in the garage so the scenery hasn't progressed much in recent months so on a spur of the moment I decided that I'd make a start on a simple job. I've widened the quarry board by screwing a section of 2 x 1 along the front. It won't make a huge difference but it will make photography easier and help blend the quarry area onto the transitional cutting before the beach section.

One pot of filler later and voila. Quite exciting and I now feel spurred on to get on with the rest of it...

  

I tried out Herman the railcar while doing some testing and found that it nearly goes round all the curves on the new formation but it still needs to be able to pivot slightly more. The wire from the rear bogie pickup is slightly too short which stops it pivoting properly so a simple job to lengthen the wire.