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Prelude to Coventry - mutual cooperation


Captain Kernow

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John F (Re6/6) came over today and we spent a very convivial afternoon helping each other out. I'm preparing 'Bleakhouse Road' for it's first show in 20 months at Coventry, and John is also there demonstrating scenery, including his superb trees.

 

John is also taking his lovely Wye Valley diorama 'Netherhope Halt', and wanted some weathered ballast wagons (ex-Tintern Quarry) to pose on it.

 

I had been meaning to improve one of the trees on BHR for some time. I had scratchbuilt the armature back in 2000 from copper wire, soldered together and covered with masking tape, then a mixture of Polyfilla and PVA glue. The foliage was made from teasing out 'Postiche' artificial theatrical hair and adding gound foam leaves, but I had left quite a lot of gaps between foliage clumps, and I knew that John would be able to show me how to improve on that.

 

In the end, we split the jobs and John most kindly provided some replacement foliage from his stocks of Noch, which I think are relatively recent productions. He stripped the original foliage off first and cleaned the armature back up, bent some of the branches into more realistic positions and applied new acrylic paint to the bark.

 

John had wanted a 'quickie' weathering powder job done on some Heljan 'Dogfish' ballast hoppers, so I got my weathering powders out and literally did a quickie once-over on his six wagons.

 

CTMK popped her camera round the door and caught us in the act...

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Here is the finished tree, John just has 'the touch' with scenery and anyone visiting the RMWeb event at Coventry will be able to see more of his creations at close up:

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We also posed the tree on 'Callow Lane', even though it won't end up there:

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Here are some of John's wagons posed on 'Callow Lane' (the eagle-eyed may notice that he hasn't re-wheeled them yet, just opened the OO wheels out to enable the wagons to sit on the P4 track of 'Netherhope Halt' for the show, proper conversions to follow):

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I would normally use an airbrush and also drybrushing, in conjunction with powders, to weather of these, but time wasn't really on our side.

 

After John had gone, I put my new tree back in it's transport box, which is made of Dalerboard, with a length of brass tube glued into the base, to hold the tree upright and keep it away from the edges of the box:

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My preference would normally be to fix trees to the layout, but in this case, there isn't sufficient clearance when the layout is packed up for transport.

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  • RMweb Gold

.......Is this the big tree by the level crossing?

 

Indeed it is Andy!

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  • RMweb Gold

Another splendid tree from Farmer Farmer. :)

 

Is this the big tree by the level crossing?

Yes, on both counts - it's now the splendid tree by the level crossing!

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  • RMweb Gold

I will have to check out this Noch foliage, it certainly looks the part.

 

John , sorry it's from 'Heki'. I have difficulty remembering 'Noch' from 'Heki' (and indeed from 'MiniNatur'!). All the best scenic materials come from Germany and also the Czech Republic (Pol

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