That's more like it!
Hi All.
After the first failed attempt to paint the Carriage and Boiler shop, a much better green has been found in the form of, appropriately, Railmatch Malachite green. I suppose I should have considered this in the first place, what with the MHR being deep in SR territory....! Suffice to say, I'm much happier with how this looks in comparison to the previous colour!
High-vis man in giant 50p find.
Now, onwards with the roof!
Cheers all
"Can it be true, that I hold here in my mortal hand a nugget of purest green?"
Well, yes, but not the right green!
A rather failed attempt to paint the Carriage and Boiler shop has occured today! After browsing the array of greens on sale in the local Halfords, I picked one that I thought was the closest match to the building, as seen in exhibit 'A' below:
Exhibit 'A'
Now a small disclaimer, the lighting conditions are not ideal for photography in the room, espec
A possible fiddle yard plan?
Hi all!
Not a lot of modelling to report on at the moment. I find myself on Monday - Friday 9-6 shifts for a few weeks whilst training a new chap at work, and I'm missing my usual 4on-4off pattern. I don't know how people who work a normal week ever get anything done!
Anyway, following a very enjoyable weekend in the company of WillJ operating Queensquare's Highburry Colliery, I've found myself thinking about the more mundane area of the fiddle yards
Hi all.
The last few weeks I've been giving some thought to making the final jump and building a 2mm finescale layout. Ropley was always intended to be a learning process, a method of proving to myself that I could work with easitrac and produce hand built track that would actually work. Now I've somehow managed to achieve that, I have been giving some thought to what a first 2mm layout might look like.
Due to space limitations at home, any layout would have to be fairly small. Having se
....Just the roof to go!
Hi all!
A little more progress on the Carriage and Boiler shop building. The Southern side is now complete, and the whole building as now been assembled. All that remains to tackle now is the roof.
Following some suggestions after the last entry, I've added a roof, to aid keeping the walls straight, and added a third layer to the walls on the inside. I've also decided not to remove the window spaces. The real building has opaque cladding which you can't see
.....one more, and the roof, to go!
Hi all!
Today has mostly been spent cutting strips of Microstrip and applying them to the Northern side of the Carriage & Boiler works. The photo above shows the completed Northern wall of the section being modelled. There is about another 1/3rd 'off scene' to the building which gives some idea of just how long this thing is! Still to go in are the windows, however I've left the inner layer of plastic complete for the time being to prevent any war
MHR Resident Black 5 heads towards Alton to collect it's first train of the day.
Hi all, and belated seasonal greetings!
Well it's good to be back on-line, even though I can't help but think a few more bouts of enforced downtime might do wonders for modelling productivity levels!
Anyway, since the last update, a fair amount of progress has been made on various areas of Ropley. The Christmas break gave me chance to pretty much finish the trackwork the Ash pit being the last major pa
Hi all.
Slow progress is being made with the carriage shed building for Ropley. The laborious task of applying each individual raised section of cladding is not the most enjoyable modelling task to date, but hopefully the end result will be worth it!
In the previous entry a request was made to show the process of construction, so here’s a quick run down also showing the progress to date.
The first step was to work out the dimensions of the building. This was done using photos to gene
Hi all.
Just a quick update tonight to show some work on the Carriage and Boiler shop building which is located at the Eastern end of the yard.
Using the paper mock-up shown in the last entry, the front part of the building has been started first. I've used some evergreen V grove styrene sheet to try and represent the cladding used on the real building, with thin strip then used for the ribbing. The doors were made using Evergreen N gauge car siding, and hopefully the effect captures the
One of the problems in modelling the contemporary scene, and in particular prototype locations, is that over the past few years the railway infrastructure in the UK has changed beyond all recognition in many places within a relatively short period of time. Old infrastructure is realigned, removed or new constructed meaning the modeller is often forced to pick one moment in time to recreate through which they can then run their less period restricted stock.
Whilst Ropley was in the planning s
Hi all.
Apologies for the recent dearth of updates, this will probably be the last until Christmas as work is shortly to intervene again!
This morning I've been drawing up the plans for the carriage shed which is located at the Eastern end of the yard. I used one of the photos of the building I took on the last site visit and by importing this into paintshop pro, I was able to resize it to the correct proportions then trace over it to create a basic mock-up to make sure it all looked ok.
Polystyrene balls! The damn things get everywhere!
As hoped I've managed to make a start on the embankment that runs along the Northern side of the running lines. The basic shape for this has been made from Foam Board in order to keep the weight down, and then wedges of polystyrene cut to shape and glued into the gaps. A thin layer of a PVA/polyfiller mix was then spread on top and this will be lightly sanded before being painted.
Here's the basic construction taking place:
The po
Hi all.
A rather intense period of work hasn't seen much opportunity for work on the layout recently, however things should start moving again and a trip to Warley has give me a burst of enthusiasm!
The main purchase at Warley this year were a couple of the new DCC Concepts Cobalt point motors with a decoder built in, removing the need for a separate decoder. It also brings the price down slightly!
I am a big fan of these motors. Smaller than a tortoise and a doddle to wire and pr
Hi all.
With trackwork nearing completion, there are only a few outstanding jobs to be done before thoughts can turn to finishing point motor installation and then scenery!
Here's the current view looking East:
This shows the one remaining point to be completed outside the boiler & Carriage works, a very rough mock up for which has been created for positioning purposes! The lines will continue further inside the works, but I need to visit the site again to see just how far d
Hi all.
Looks like the PW gang have moved in!
After a few trials, I've settled on the treemendus Normandy earth powder for the ballast on the main line. First the area is sprayed with Railmatch sleeper grime, the rail painted and then the ballast is fixed in place with Kleer.
Track laying in the yard is now mostly complete with just the one point left to build, so a more comprehensive update is coming soon!
Tom.
Hi all.
Just a couple of quick photos showing the current state of track laying on Ropley. The yard entry point is now motorised, the Barry slip is complete bar a couple of check rails and the points for the C&W shed lines are coming along. Unfortunately I'm now waiting for a fresh supply of sleeper planking having run short following the re-positioning & re-building of the yard entry point and a fresh supply of sleepers to finish the yards plain trackwork.
With a bit o
Morning all!
Just a quick photo to show work on the Barry Slip is nearing completion! Just the guard rails to add. Amazingly everything runs through it without de-railing Not sure how I managed that!
Cheers,
Tom.
Afternoon all!
Having been re-united with the basebaord for Ropley for the next 8 days, a few jobs needed doing I've been putting off for a while. The first was addressing the yard area. Originally I used foam board as a base, mainly in the hope of reducing noise, but unfortunately it wasn't up to the task of maintaining the desired shape and had sagged in a couple of places between its supports. So, off it came:
and in it's place has been fitted a piece of ply instead, a much more
Hi all!
Continuing to refine the tree building method, here's the latest attempt. This time I've tried to match the tree at the start of the line along the top of the embankment at the Western end of Ropley.
It needs a little trim here and there, and I might add a little more tuft to the top too! I used some Anita Decor Foliage I found in the supplies this time rather than the WS turf to try and give a better match for this particular tree. I don't think its turned out too
There is something really therapeutic about making trees!
Here's the latest attempt, this time thinning out the poly fibres a little more and adding a couple of splits in the trunk to add variety:
And with the previous tree for comparison:
Cheers all,
Tom.
Hi all.
Just another quick experiment in producing trees, this time using poly fibres intended for use in re-stuffing teddy bears in place of the wire wool. This tree is yet to have any foliage added, which will be a trial using Woodland Scenics fine turf in place of the Noch leaves. It does make quite a nice winter tree as it is though!
This tree is 5" tall and uses very slightly thinner wire than the first attempt which I think gives it a finer appearance. I have some even thinner
Hi All!
Back to experimenting with scenic techniques ready for when the time comes to start this stage on Ropley.
A little while ago somebody posted a link to a thread on a different forum showing some of the most impressive tree construction I've ever seen. Following the methods used in that thread I've spent the morning constructing a test tree, and here are the results:
The basic tree was used by twisting gardeners wire around a central wire 'trunk'. After about 4-5 twis
Hi all!
Just a brief update on the oil store building as modelling time has been in short supply the last couple of weeks! This has really been a trial of a few different methods, some of which will be used for all the buildings and some which won't!
The version photographed below has doors and wooden panel made using photos from the full size version however I’m not overly happy with the flat appearance for these so for the final version I'll be reverting to plastic. I also tried the
Hi all.
Just a couple of photos of progress the oil store building. I've completed the 3 main brick sections of wall and I'm happy with the effect using the printed brickwork, although I may yet go back and produce another one as I'm not sure the folds are good enough. Really they should have been scored with a brand new knife blade, but we'll see what they look like once they are touched in with paint and this version has been varnished to seal everything!
Cheers!
Tom.
