Salad and woodwork

I've spent the week adding to the scenery with a variety of green stuff and paint.

Gradually it's coming together, I've also spent quite a lot of time cleaning ballast and stray scenic gunk from the track so that basically I can now run trains in and out of the station. What japes.

The coal drops have gained some coal sacks and a couple of Bachmann coal bunkers, just needs some crushed coal now.

I decided that I had to do something with the sky, so a trip to B&Q and a tester pot of what looked like a sensible blue.

I'm pretty happy with the colour so I've bough a couple more little pots and a couple of slightly lighter shades to try a bit of variety. So far I'm pretty happy with the colour, better than white anyhow.

The next section of railway starts with an over bridge which I've built using some parts from two kits like the one at the other end of Upper Bay. I've made a wider track bed for this one using Wills chequer plate plastic sheet. 

This evening I've started on the woodwork for the next bit of layout. The road that leads to the station curves round under the railway and also rises up to become the road of the roadside tramway section.

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...

 

Three locomotives

 You know what it's like; you wait ages for  a loco to build and then three come along together.  In this case four but I made myself leave one in the boxes for later.

A Dave Malton special 'Lyn' type loco but smaller and an 0-4-0 on the new Bachmann Percy chassis. I've made a few changes such as a non stove pipe chimney and added handrails on the cab. As you can see on this side I drilled the holes in the wrong place, grrr.

The joker in the pack was this Hunslet style tram loco which Dave sent as a present, very nice it is too. As ever I've removed the moulded on handrails and changed the printed couplers for RT models brass PQR ones which are very at home on a Hunslet. It had a very nice printed smokebox door dart which I snapped so that got replaced too.

The third of the trio is 'Upnor Castle' from Stan and the Merseyside gang. A very good CAD and very well printed, probably the best 3D print I've ever had. A fitting tribute to the late Roger Christian whose favourite engine this was. 

Work on the layout has stalled a bit as I've been busy with other things, not least loco building. However, I bought some plaster dry stone walling from eBay which I've used before. It is ripped off Hornby but costs about a quarter of the price and seeing as I chop it up, stick it back together with hot glue and plaster it really is just the job.

A bit more paint and it will be time to start on the greenery which is a bit of construction which I really enjoy.

Another thing that arrived in the post were the plates for the ex GWR, Paul Windle loco. It is now called 'Lord Stoner' and proudly carries the name. I'm looking forward to running some trains with this in charge.

As an 0-4-0 the Baldwin was looking as though it needed a rear pony truck but I couldn't be bothered to construct one and go through all the faff of trying to get it to work properly, so I cheated. It is a trick I've used before, namely to file the tyre flat on one edge and just glue the pony wheels onto the frame giving the illusion of a trailing axle. This one is a solid PECO wagon wheel so even if it rotated propely the odds of anyone ever seeing it do so are minimal. It took a few minutes and completely looks the part.

Final detailing and painting were the next tasks and all three locos came together at the same time, in some ways it is easier to batch paint things even when they are in different liveries.

The Baldwin acquired the nameplates and headlamps from the Heljan MW of which I sold the chassis. This means the loco is named 'Song' after one of the rivers on the island. I like the look of this loco and am glad I didn't go for Southern green as I had originally intended. I may add lining to the tanks in the fullness of time if I can summon up the courage. 

'Uproar' has been finished in IoSR passenger diesel livery and named 'Roger'. I hope he wouldn't have minded the livery too much.

This wasn't the livery I intended for the Hunslet but actually I rather like it. It has been named 'Smallerfield' which is the name of the station on my stalled n gauge layout. The nameplates are signal box plates but look the part on this loco. In Hunslet terms it is bigger than a quarry class but not as big as 'the ladies' so I guess probably around the size of 'Lilla', it certainly looks feasible and will be very happy with tramway carriages back and forth to Underhill.

Hitting the wall

I've been quite pre occupied with other things such as work, real life and clearing out all the music making equipment which the garage shared with the Isle of Stoner Railway, so actual layout progress has been rather limited. Planning and preparation for the last big push, completing the line back to the other terminus at Port Lucy, has been extensive.

I did clear out all the loose ballast and plaster and have a bit of a test/play and for the most part it worked as I'd hoped.

However, in a near disastrous shunting manoeuvre I stopped the loco in the nick of time with the rake of PQR carriage pointing very much down hill. It has been suggested than a buffer stop might be a good investment but I'm just going to build some more layout instead. 

I was looking at the couple of repainted and detailed PECO GVT coaches that I have and decided that what they needed was a brake van. I'm not mad keen on the matching van as it comes but have previously modified a red one which looks much nicer. (To my mind) It's a relatively simple conversion which is fundamentally blocking up the single window with styrene sheet. It makes more sense in terms of the way a van like this would be used.

Once that is done I removed the moulded hand rail and replaced it with brass rod and added the roof grab handle in similar vein to the coaches. Then it was repaint the ends black and the top half of the body in cream. All the unpainted PECO roofs look better for some grey paint, no steam hauled railway had roofs which stayed white for long.

With the addition of vac pies, job done. Probably need another coach now to fill out the set...

Meanwhile, back at Upper Bay with some testing I realised that my concern that the new wall was too close to the running line was right so some demolition and reconstruction was needed to move the wall back. I didn't take any pictures of the work as I was too cross with myself. It all results from fitting a third siding in and therefore not leaving enough room for the wall. I had to cut away a large part of the supporting foam core behind the scenic wall and even with that moved out of the way it's very tight and the wall has a slightly concave lean where it comes close to the track. This may all lead to a complete rebuild at some stage but it would involve too much work for now.

Before and after the wall surgery I have finally started to add colour, brown so far. Very much just a base coat for other colours and textures.

I painted the removeable section... removed.

The next section of railway is relatively simple and I think I've got all the bits of wood and track I need to get going on this. I'm on holiday for a couple of weeks now up in Scotland so the only modelling will be virtual but I hope to crack on with it as soon as I get back. 

The line leaves Upper Bay towards Port Lucy over a bridge over a minor road and then there is a section of road side tramway (to justify all the trams and tram locos I've acquired over the years). This will be a straight forward for a couple of feet and then it all gets very complicated. Port Lucy is not only the junction station where it meets the 'mainline'; it is also a port and has the loco sheds, carriage sheds and so on. I'm looking forward to having both ends of the line and a passing loop but there will be an awful lot of work to do to get that far. Tom Dauben has offered to do the water in the harbour which is great so that only leaves the rest of the layout to build.

 

It's a wall...

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...