My throat feels like it is full of broken glass at the moment but I am determined to make the best out of a bad situation so I have been testing some techniques out on the trusty (and well used) test plank.

The first is DAS clay being used for the roads. I was originally going to use printed sheets for the roads but I am not overly convinced that they will be the most durable and the amount of work needed to get each section of road customised was considerable. Therefore, I spread some PVA glue yesterday and set the clay. I made sure it was flat using my trusty clay modelling tool. Then today I sanded it down and added a plasticard strip for the pavement. Unfortunately when I originally laid the clay I should have spent more time smoothing it out so that was a useful lesson to learn. Once sanded I got my scribing tool out and scribed the kerbing on the pavement and the kerb like features buried in the road. These were both then sanded before being painted beige and grey:

I scribed one section more thoroughly than the previous and as such I found this turned out far better after painting.

I now need to get some better paint for the road surfaces as this grey is just not the right texture. I am thinking of trying out some Warhammer paints as they have a good range of greys and blacks.

The second technique I tried was a continuation of my printed textures experiment. This particular experiment was a large section of retaining wall that is needed over the road from the station. I photoshopped an original image and got it into a state where it could be tiled next to itself. Once this was done I copied the image to create a long strip of seemless wall for the model. At the same time I made it in such a way that the wall could be wrapped around card so that the top and other side of the wall could be modelled from the same sheet.

I guestimated the size it needed to be printed off at and was surprised to find I got it bang on!

This test print was done on the laser printed, the final version will be done on the inkjet to get the best colours. Since the test print I have taken steps to make the strips look less uniform. This has been quite successful on screen and I plan to test print some of these soon.

I have plenty more textures to modify for some of the projects needed for the layout. I was surprised that the majority of the work took about 15-20 minutes. Using a computer to get good results is, in my opinion, the way forward!

Thanks for reading

Stephen