I have made some progress on my Oxford Die Cast box building and also have been painting the other building (that has taken a silly amount of time to get this far...
The construction of the box building was relatively simple, although the odd corners and dimensions did throw me a little and some minor surgery was needed in one corner to allow a little extra room on one of the walls where I cur it too short. I have painted the insides of the plasticard black so it can have lighting at a later
After what I said the other day I was surprised to see myself picking up the scalpol and eagerley starting work on the next building for the layout. Indeed the work seemed to be a bit easier and (perhaps) a little better. As posted previously I am using an Oxford Diecast plastic box as the base which the plasticard structure will be added. I have so far made the 4 walls in plasticard and established that a piece of 80thou plasticard at the top is enough to counter the box's slightly tapering sid
Its taken me long enough, but I finally made a roof for the building I have been scratchbuilding. Like the rest of the building it is not perfect but I am content with it since it is my first effort.
To be honest though, I am not going to continue scratchbuilding. I have given it a go and found that I am not accurate enough to make the cuts in the right place. In fact I find that my hands are quite like blunt instruments when doing work like this, so unfortunately after the first two buildin
Its been far too long since I managed to do any modelling. Unfortunately this is mainly due to my health at the moment, its been up and down but I appear to be on the mend and after a nice energy drink today I felt up to doing some of the tasks I had set myself last time.
One thing that I wanted to do was to find a quicker way of scratchbuilding structures out of plasticard. I found that laminating things added another level of complication for me and I wanted to try simpler methods. Luckil
Well with working on the layout being hard for me at the moment I have been acquiring the bits to start work on conversion kit produced by Etched Pixels for converting a class 159 DMU into a class 323 EMU. Aside from a few bits of kit like paint and filler I am ready to get started on this project, plus with it being a sit down job then it might not be so bad for me at the moment.
Indeed this is a total break from the SNCF layout I have been constructing for some time now, however I have al
Unfortunately there has been very little in the way of progress since the last blog, however most of this is down to me being ill for the past 4 weeks. I have some sort of lung problem that the doctors are scratching their heads over and some of the next few stages of what I would like to model include the use of liquid cement and I really do not wish to endure the wrath of my lungs again.
I find that I have moods that last a few months where I want to do some modelling and one of these moo
Well in my last blog I wanted to do a few smaller lower budget jobs on the layout. However time got the better of me and I have so far only managed to do a little bit on the building I am in the process of constructing. I have made the 4th wall for the building. I am not very impressed with my finish and I was so dismayed with the way the quoins lined up that I used a bit of polly filla to sort out the gap (which actually seems to have done the job, I just need to sand it a bit before painting!)
Hello everyone. Well I wish I had some more pictures to show you all but unfortunately I do not have any for today. Basically at this time of year the Christmas Presents for my friends and family have had to be purchased which has left no money for any further work on the layout. However I do have some time off so in the next few days I hope to be working on the following low budget improvements to the layout (and for some reason when I post a list of stuff to do on here it actually helps me get
I know its hardly the most impressive blog entry but I put another wall on my first scratchbuilt building today. I did this one slightly different to the other 2 walls in that I added the supporting wall first and then added the outer shell wall and Quoins.
I added the front piece to the other 3 walls to see what it would look like. I will be cutting out the windows and doors on this in the next week or so. Once the windows and doors are stuck to the front I will then at
In the past few weeks I have been adding in a few smaller pieces of details as well as construcing different types of trees. I did have a go at making my own armatures and although it was relatively successful I think my technique could do with being refined (don't panic I did not use any of those trees covered with sea moss...). However I was very pleased with the Woodland Scenics range of tree kits that are available. I purchased a pack of the smaller sized trees and found it to be relatively
Its taken long enough but I finally got the motor in the post to convert my Del Prado static model of an X3800 Picasso Autorail into a motorised and working one. I had been toying with the idea for some time and I had seen pictures on the net of it done well:
and not so well:
Even the poorer attempts to motorise these Del Prado body shells go for almost a ??100 on French Ebay. No wonder that the body's go for silly money on ebay:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=38
Here is the new stock that came to the layout today. An SNCF shunter (ex German) made by Hobbytrain. Very well made and has a fantastic motor mechanism for such a small size. The detail is superb.
Other notable new arrivals are 2 wagons (off ebay).
And a carriage with internal light fittings.
I just need some Autorails and I will be able to run a pretty varied service.
Well a new forum and this is my second go at writing this because I just tried to click on the attach button and it lost my last post. Anyway I am considering doing a brief summary of the previous forums topic on this layout in the international thread but for the most part I shall be keeping the old stuff on the old forum.
Progress this week on the layout has been quite uplifting. I have tried a few new things. I have created a better mock up of the building I intend to scratchbuild. It ha
