Actual scenery

I've been silly busy at work the last couple of weeks but thankfully over the bank holiday weekend I've had a chance to really crack on with the scenery on the new bit of layout.

Before the scenery work I finished Dave Malton's little Baldwin which has come out really well. I lined out the tanks and it has now had a coat of varnish and I look forward to it entering proper service on the railway.

Also finished off is 'Roger' the 3D print of  'Upnor Castle'. I decided that there would be too many FR livery versions so I plumped for the same maroon as all the other big IoSR diesels. It's an excellent print and I shall remember Roger every time I run a train with it, so hopefully a fitting tribute. I believe that there are well over a hundred of them in the wild now.

The most recent addition to the fleet is an original condition Jouef Decauville. It came from the estate of Roy Link so again I'm proud to give this a home in my small heritage collection. It runs like I expected it too, ie bloody awful but that isn't what it's for.

After turning it brown I set about turning it green.

One of the things I've been waiting to create is my little pond. I may have been a bit previous in pouring the resin as I didn't really let the PVA set and the water has gone a bit cloudy in places but it could be frog spawn?  If it looks crap when it sets I can always splosh some filler over it and forget it's there.

Progress can be see here on the coal drop which I'm really pleased with. The whole goods shed area is based loosely on pre preservation Tan y Bwlch, about 1965 before all the atmosphere was lost in the name of progress.

A major change has been to move the lighting support to the rear rather than the front, much better for access and also for viewing. It caused a great deal of swearing and sweating and it was what I knew I should have done in the first place. It has made me add a piece of wood which will allow me to add the next section of railway more easily. I think that what I will do next is to create the roadside tramway section of railway but then to connect it to the old fiddle yard temporarily as I won't have the time or money to immediately build Chickentown Works or Port Lucy. 

I've been struggling with skies for a while so I decided to give painting a plain blue colour a go, we'll see...