Since my last post I've not made any spectacularly obvious progress but 'Lord Stoner' and the GVT Baldwin now have crew and look better for it even if it is hard to see them. I've also painted a little fat bald bloke and a Collie dog which look quite like me and my dog. Not decided where to plant them yet.
The footbridge is now plastered into the landscape and some trees were planted into the soft filler to give them a good solid root. I'm forever knocking trees over so these should stand a reasonable chance of survival.
I quite quickly came to the conclusion that the printed stone wall looked like wallpaper, which of course it actually was. To sort it out I bought a couple of packs of Wills finest random stone sheet and knocked out a much better wall.
My usual painting technique for this material is to individually paint each stone but life is short and this wall is quite large so a different approach was needed. Some while ago I bought a rattle can of textured stone effect paint in the hope of being able to use it for ballasting, it was useless for that but I thought I'd give it a go on this wall. It was horrible stuff to spray and went on quite thickly but in some ways that is quite good for disguising the ubiquitous nature of the Wills sheet. Once it had set it had a reasonable sandy texture but was virtually the same colour as the plastic so a quick squirt of very splatty track dirt was put on and wiped off; this gave a better overall colour. However it still looked too uniform so there was nothing for it but to get out the paints and to pick out about a third of the stones in a variety of virtually identical colours. After that a couple of washes of light brown and black on top and I'm satisfied that it looks enough like the fully hand painted areas to get away with it.
I've also finished off the filler work including the platform area; now I need to properly clean the track and give the whole thing a good hoover to remove all the loose bits and bobs then I can start adding colour and foliage.
The Station Master's Cottage has had interior lighting added including a hand lamp by the front door. It runs off a pair of AA batteries so that it can be easily removed from the layout to access the lift off section's handle. I'm proud of this little building, nothing remotely fancy but an archetype seen all over the world.
It's very hard to see during the all white plaster phase but I've built up an area to create a front garden and made a path to the footbridge which will all be much more obvious once the colour goes on.
Oh yes, I also made and installed the coal drop chute...
No comments:
Post a Comment