A bridge, a cottage and some coaches

Once again work and appalling weather have kept me away from the garage but I have been quite busy on the trusty laptray. First thing to show you is the footbridge made from the kit from Fair Price Models. It went together very well and after a squirt of brown primer I started painting it and it looked good.

After some more painting of the coping stones I added some Wills embossed sheet to the outside of the bridge supports.

Final paint, might need a light wash with something dark to pick out the stone courses.

Here it is plonked more or less where it will end up. The wall has some textured printed rock paper on it. I'm not overly convinced by it but maybe some paint and greenery will eventually make it ok. The next stage is to glue the bridge in place and make up the ground with filler etc so that it looks deliberate, rather than the after thought that it was.

 

This is the bare shell of the cottage basically made as intended except I left out one of the internal walls and made a hole in the base so that it would fit over the lifting section handle.

The cottage, which will be the station Masters cottage at Upper Bay got a coating of Tesco's cheapest filler. I applied it with a craft knife and I'm very happy with the result.

Next came Wills sheet roof and guttering from Modelu which is superb and really looks good. The down pipe is brass pipe with 3D printed fittings. Up close it looks great which I'm not sure these phone pictures do justice to.

Here it is all painted up and pretty much finished. I've fitted an LED tail light by the front door which hopefully will work once a battery box arrives.

The other thing I've been working on is my train of Corrisalike vehicles. The bogie coach is nearly done but the roof is still lose as I want to add a few figures.

The van and the 4 wheel coach are pretty much finished, the roof on the 4 wheeler isn't all that brilliant and may get a remake at some stage.

Stormtroopers, locos and mdf

On May the 4th Stoner had a visit from The Empire, a storm trooper had a browse at the brick a brack stall in the market at Rock Beach having parked his AT AT walker in the town square. No one seemed to take much notice.

Meanwhile back in the real world (?) Stoner has acquired yet more locomotives. The first of these came from eBay where it seemed to be largely ignored. Incorrectly listed as a Chilvers (lol) kit it is in fact a Paul Windle special which has a fairly illustrious history having been built for the Gairloch and Westeross Railway. I'm proud to add it to my fleet and have ordered 'Lord Stoner' name plates for it and a crew from Modelu. Other than a replacement front vacuum pipe and a couple of paint touch ups I will leave well alone.

Meanwhile back at Upper Bay the scenery has been making gradual progress with nearly all the filler work in place.

The first part of disguising the join of the lift off bit is in place with sections of stone wall glued down. This needs the addition of some filler and so on to disguise the joins but otherwise it looks promising. 

The goods shed siding and coal drops are all in place now, I just need to make a shoot for the coal.

I finally gave in and bought a GVT Bachmann Baldwin, the livery is so nice and I got it for a good price from work. It has had a subtle amount of weathering and will gain a Modelu crew.

I already had a few GVT PECO coaches so a whole train can be made up. I might make a version of the passenger van to go with it, it is basically a Dundas GVT van with a veranda.

On eBay I found a company called Fair Price Models selling very nice but quite basic laser cut MDF (?) kits and they have a small farm cottage which is ideal for the building to hide the handle which lift the hidden lid.

A pleasant evenings work on the lap tray saw the basic shell constructed. I love making buildings so am looking forward to finishing this off. I have guttering on order from Modelu which looked nice so hopefully that will finish it off nicely. A slate roof and then wiggly tin for the extension I think.

The same place saw a footbridge which will help to disguise the hidden sidings cutting. Very fine laser work. I stuck the kits together with superglue as I don't have the patience for pva, all seems fin so far.

 

Scenic progress

As predicted I didn't get much modelling time this week but when I've slipped out to the garage for the odd half hour I've cracked on with scenery at Upper Bay.

My usual technique has been applied, i.e creating a sub structure out of expanded polystyrene or strips of foam core. All stuck together with pva and hot glue gun.

Next phase is plaster bandage

I've added the last few bits of precast cast rock to the back of the station site, hopefully it will look like the site has been cut into rock.

After the plaster bandage has dried out I smooth out the contours using ready made filler. My theory is that in the real world there are rocks covered with soil. Both of these get eroded largely by water so I use a big wet paint brush to create the final shape of the landscape and to smooth out the surface.

The removable section has to be finished separately to its surrounding so that it will be easily removable. This has resulted in there being a bit of a difference at the joins, I'll sort this out next before the next stage.

All the main scenic areas are now complete so next is the remaining ballasting of the siding with filler and building up the platform area to just above rail level.

All a bit white but I like the road up to the station and the coal drop and yard are looking quite promising. I've ordered a kit for a small cottage to cover the removable section handle so hopefully that will arrive this week.

The cottage is from Fair Price Models and is laser cut from MDF I think. I'm looking forward to making this. I also bought a footbridge while I was at it.

Not sure where it will go but I liked the look of it.

 

Small and large rocks

At the end of last weeks thrilling episode I left a cliff hanger - what would become of the left over bits of the Lilliput coach? Well, breathe again. Those terribly nice chaps at Light fantastic stores despatched the balcony etches in super fast time and so now the funny little tram saloon is reborn. 

The other little train I've been working on doesn't look like it has changed but in fact both the van and the bogie coach have had modification to their running gear. The van as designed has large holes in the whitemetal castings that the pinpoint axles run in, in actual fact they just fitted too well and so hardly turned, it was as if the guard had forgotten to take the brake off. A simple fix was to drill out the castings and fit a set of brass bearings. Job done. 

The problem with the coach turned out to be that one of the bogies didn't rotate freely enough on its pivot which was easily fixed by a little fettling with a file. The whole set now rolls nicely and goes round all the curves without any problems. Some paint is the next job and then some lining. I ordered a 3D print of Brazil style loco which is quite nice but actually is far too big as it is designed for a KATO 109 chassis so I'll probably just sell it on.

I grasped the nettle and started ballasting on the new bit, I had a jar of ballast I bought for my stalled n gauge layout so it seemed sensible to use that. I ladled the dry ballast on and then wetted it with the traditional water with a drop of detergent in it, then I soaked it in dilute PVA.

The first bit looking very white

Fortunately the glue set nicely and left the track nice and solid so I did the other side of the loop. I've avoided the points for now but will have to bite the bullet eventually. The goods siding will be done with my usual filler method.

The removable section has gained a set of contours which are foam core stuck to off cuts of timber. I need to work out a way of attaching a handle to remove it easily. Plan A is to have a door handle hidden under a removeable building, I have a farmhouse which will be just the job.

I've sprayed the ballasted track with Railmatch frame dirt paint which will make a good starting point for track colour. The water tower is now glued down and I mixed up some resin water for it. In the picture it is just poured in and looks good. Hopefully it will still look as good when it sets.

The landscape is gradually taking shape and is starting to look quite promising in photos.

All the scenery now has its bare bones, so it's plaster bandage time next. Getting there.

 

Coaches and that

This week has seen a few bits and pieces going on down on the island. Firstly, I've replaced the chassis that I buggered up under 'Cat' with a fresh one. I don't feel as bad breaking 109s as Portrams! It turns out that the gear which engages with the brass worm is quite a delicate plastic one and if you squeeze the body to cut a bit off, as I had, you can damage the teeth and then they doesn't mesh properly and it's game over. Lesson learnt. I used the pre-cut bits of chassis with the undamaged new bits inside. It's quite easy to swap them and as I'd spent quite a bit of time dismantling the first one I'd got quite good at it.

After saying last time that it was time to get on with the layout I have done some work on hiding the hitherto un-hidden hidden sidings. I started by building a firm wall and some supports.

I decided that the easiest way to cut the lid out of 9mm ply was to cut a template out of spare foam core board.

I cut the ply to fit and then cut some more foam core to form the wall between hidden and not hidden bits. Now I need to work out some form of handle that I can use to lift the lid on the sidings that can be hidden in some cunning way...

I bought a couple of part-built Corris coaches and a bag of bits a few weeks ago and finally decided to see what could be done. It turns out what could be done was to build a Corris clerestory roofed coach.

It came with no bogies but fortunately I'd acquired a pair of Minitrains bogies about the same time. It was a bit of a fiddle to get them to fit and to swing enough to go round corners but after a couple of false starts all is well now. I originally used the couplings from the bogies but stuck them on the buffer beams as the kit intended. Slightly concerned about the length of the chassis I tested the carriage and it got nearly all the way up the line before experiencing an issue; i.e. it threw the loco off the track.

I changed the Minitrains couplings for BEMO ones which have a wider loop and all was well.

The Corris made their bogie coaches by mounting two four wheel carriages on an underframe. I reverse engineered the idea and made a four wheeler out of bits of one of the dismantled bogie coaches. The balconies are chopped off a Lilliput Waldebahn coach (I had used the roof for something else). The balconies are slightly too long I think but close enough for rock and roll. The roof is just some styrene cut and sanded to shape. The whole thing sits on a butchered PECO wagon underframe.

On test at the quarry. Just need a Corris loco now. Come on Bachmann, lets have 'Peter Sam'.

The three figures and a dog I ordered from Fine scale model figures arrived. The poses are very good and the fat bloke sitting down may have been modelled on me. I'm looking forward to painting them.

I looked at the remaining bits of the Lilliput coach and thought hmm... looks quite nice like that. I chopped the handrail bits off and stuck a roof from Stan's bag o' bits on. I'll add different balconies using Narrow Planet Eggerbahn replacement etches. It should fit in with the other tram coaches then.

I'm not crowing...