A while ago I posted an entry covering my attempts at knocking together a short photo plank upon which to pose my Deltics. This has served its purpose, but with the opportunity to exhibit these publicly looming, I felt that the display really ought to have a bit of a backdrop against which the locos could be viewed. The shelf that the board sits on is quite limited in height (95cm), and whilst this limits dust gathering, it also limits the height of any attached backscene. I opted for a brick wall, constructed from Metcalf red brick card… which I acquired from a local model shop; next time, I’ll try some scalescenes stuff (greater range of colours) or maybe some textured material… but here I was seeking inspiration… found the card in the shop and gave it a go; it was a learning exercise and some lessons have been learnt. The card was stuck to a suitably sized length of MDF (left over floor laminate), screwed to the photo plank base… allowing removal as required. Card spray mount affixed to laminate.

I wasn’t too happy with the colour of the wall… surprise surprise, it was very red! The alternative was the engineer’s blue and I felt that too blue! Once the card (with supporting walls) was constructed, I set about toning it back using charcoal and weathering powders… applied and blended using cotton bud and finger tip (all of which ended up looking as dirty as the wall at the end of the process!). For the capping stones… after some head scratching, I sprayed some balsa section with Halfords red primer and then intented this along the top surface and one face at 1cm intervals with a sharp blade (Swann Morton 10A). Black enamel was applied to the “gaps†and then it was all blended in with more very thin black… leaving more pain in the gaps and generally toning everything down. Plasticard strips capped the supporting walls (painted a suitable dirty brown) and the balsa strip glued to the wall top. OK… so it’s not as good as most… but as a first go before working out what bits I should really be using… it will do for now. I really need to fill the gap between the ballast edge and wall; I will either extend the ballast, add a path and/or some ground scatter and bushes (woodland scenics stuff)… I thought the bushes would add some colour but I’m not convinced that this would be too prototypically accurate… so maybe some artistic license will be applied

It’s been nice to break into this, to have a break from the Deltic conversion... to try and see how to achieve a reasonable result given that I’d not tried before; this hobby really is quite entertaining with a plethora of skills to acquire and master.

I really ought to find a name for this plank; given the local locos… Napier Lane Sidings sprung to mind, but may be as little obvious… any thought?

A "view over the fence" type shot... and it's begining to look ok.

After some discussion... then men decide that cleaning the locos can wait for another day... there'll be no specials called for today.

Once this is done to a reasonable stage, or to a standard that will be “exhibitable†for the Burgess Hill Model Railway show (May 14^th), it’ll be back to my current Deltic project… (I’ve had a bit of a break with other stuff to do including decorating) but it’s really time to starting hacking the fuel tank off the chassis and making space to fit the pipework. Must get in touch with Brian and see if he’s reposted his ref photos elsewhere (previously on fotopic and currently missed).