A day off work today resulted in the chopping of some ply into some rather random looking shapes:
Some cutting of stripwood, then construction of the cross braces ensued which has resulted in a kit of parts to construct the baseboards from.
So I've arrived at the point where most things are in a state to allow a dry run of construction, apart from the profiled end panels and the backscene being cut to the correct shape and length for each board.
Overview of the entire lay
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THE LOFT IS CLEAR!!
Thanks to a lot of help from SWMBO we've now sorted out all our stuff up there and it's now turned into a rather nice modelling room
This is where the layout will go, the stuff beneath it will be organised a little better before the baseboards are put in situ.
There's also room for Dunbracken to have a new home up there.
An
For a while I've been considering what motive power to provide for the HLR.
I like Irish Narrow Gauge and larger British NG such as the SKLR and W&L.
It will be built around the Farish 08 chassis with outside frames using plasticard, boiler fittings from whitemetal and some custom etched bits and bobs.
The loco I've decided to build first is a large tank loco. Initially I wanted to build a 4-6-4T based on this 4-6-2T from the Londonderry & Lough Swilly Railway, but it's not
Today I managed to finish the transfers on the opposite side of the coach with modified D's acting as G's...
I also added some MIG weathering poweder to tone down the white of the roof and give it a coating of soot, as well as adding 'europe dust' powder to tone down the black of the chassis and the footboards. The sides were coated with MIG 'dark wash' which picks out the panelling, then a light coating of 'black smoke' powder was applied to give some variation between areas of the side so
The full brake is now watertight having had a new roof added and painted.
I added a layer of wet tissue paper to allow it to expand before fixing it to stop bubbling when painting. Then it had a coat of paint before going to bed, Humbrol matt white spray, and was assembled today.
Apologies for the pretty abysmal photo, must charge the SLR for when it's fully lettered up.
I've got some 1 & 2mm gold alphabet transfers on order from Fox to finish it off. The lower sections
Whilst layout ideas are gestating I thought i'd crack on with the first item of stock for the new layout. All the stock will be much bigger than my previous 009 items as the prototype is closer to 3' gauge than 2' in loading gauge.
The first item i decided to build was a full brake coach based on the sides of a Ratio GWR coach kit. I've added plastruct strips to it including the beams beneath the body, the running boards, the bufferbeam, the steps beneath the doors, the entire end panels,
For those interested i've set up a blog independent of the forum where I will be documenting the progress towards building the layout as well as writing about various other bits and bobs including some of the Scottish prototype lines.
Click the image below to visit the blog.
I've just finished reading the information gathered from the archives, and have also started a workbench to document construction of the stock for the new layout here.
Here's a roughly sketched conceptual layout plan, not to scale and some elements are slightly incorrect but it shows the idea. I'll test out these ideas when I produce a full size plan with track templates. I've drawn the surrounding coastline, road and major topographical elements on to the plan to see how they fit in and it's looking pretty good. The plan is recycled from a previous layout idea.
If you click on the image it will take you to a flickr page with notes on it so that yo
Some of you will know that I've been contemplating what to do for my next layout for some considerable time now. I was thinking of doing a freelance line set in the West Highlands of Scotland, loosely located 'somewhere in the Lochaber region', however whilst coming up with these plans I came across a few references to a proposed line on the Isle of Skye. A little more digging revealed that there was a survey conducted and that the plans were held in the National Archives at Kew, so today Chri
