The OO Garden Shed By John Geeeee
It has been about 18 months since I last posted a blog update on here. I have mainly been playing with sound decoders and growing my sound fitted loco collection.
I picked up a Bachman stone signal box the other week which was at a sale price in my local model shop. It came in a blue/green colour scheme (Scottish??) so I have repainted it to fit more in with my loose LMS type theme. I am now putting together a Ratio white metal signal box interior kit
The OO Garden Shed By John Geeeee
Well the Garden Shed is feeling a bit neglected of late. It's been a long while since it's had any work done on it and the spindley legged spiders have taken a good hold everywhere I look, shudder...... I did a refit of the main station platform which looked ok but now after a few months it has buckled up slightly in the atmosphere of the shed so another disheartening project may need to be revisitted.
So whats happened in the last couple of we
The OO Garden Shed By John Geeeee
Well it has been a while since I last posted a blog entry. After months of nothing, I have been re-skining the station. The base was a Scalescenes card job that had turned a silly shade of pink due to using cheap printer inks. Rather than waste it I thought I would try and add Finecast stone sheets to it and paint it accordingly.
I broke the building down into sections and removed any signs and cills etc.
I used another printout of the scalescenes
The OO Garden Shed By John Geeeee
I have replaced the cardboard platform with a plastic based one. Made from a Ratio platform kit and scratchbuilt steps. I painted it to give a stone effect in my usual way as described in previous entries. It is fixed down with a bead of milliput. The milliput just needs painting and a few crates and other goods added to finish it off.
Well its been a while since I posted any updates so I thought I would show some of my recent weathering efforts. Its all done with an airbrush and I use humbrol enamels leather and matt black and a bit of encouragement from the various frenzy of DVD's, books, and magazine articles that have been released over the last 12 months or so. I am not sure if it is to everyones taste but I like what I have done so far. I think there are some interesting effects especially some by using a bit too much wh
The OO Garden Shed By John Geeeee
After a few months of lack of enthusiasm for modging about in a cold shed, I have finally got back on with things and finished off a new wall for the station. It's scratchbuilt using Wills Stone sheets and painted with cheap artist acryics in my usual method. Yellow Ochre basecoat, repeated burnt umber washes untill some of the dark brown starts to settle on the big stone, then finish with a creamy coloured wash and wipe off with a damp kitchen towell to lig
The OO Garden Shed By John Geeeee
Well it's been a few months since Part One, but slowly I have been making progress. The platforms have now been weathered and fencing added.
The high street road and pavements have also been relaid using Scalescenes printouts. A new station wall is in progress made from stone Wills sheets to replace the flat looking brick card used previously. It now just requires capping stones, painting, and fixing down.
I have also ad
The OO Garden Shed
By John Geeeee
I decided to extend the length of the terminous track and add an extra crossover for a longer runaround. I also thought I would build a new station building and a new platform to accomodate the extra length. The extra length will now hold 5 carriages plus the loco and tender. I also wanted to move the station building to sit along the track rather than across the track ends.
The new station and platforms are made using Scalescenes kits. Here is the s
The OO Garden Shed
By John Geeeee
I have just got a mini DV recorder to play with on the layout for a bit of fun. It is just small enough to be able to hold on the side of a wagon and for the size and memory the quality of the video seems quite good. Here is a pic of how I attach it It is a bit heavy so it does need a counter weight in the wagon:
So with a bit of playing to get the best angle and height so as not to drag I offer you the following videos to watch (you will ha
The OO Garden Shed
By John Geeeee
Hi All.
May I take the opportunity to wish you all a merry Christmas.
I have started work on a diesel refuelling point. It still needs weathering and once in place I will also add some pipework to join it to the two storage tanks.
I have also done some work on the first Dapol turntable. I have replaced the plastic rail post, that I kept breaking, with a rail and posts from brass wire. I have also added some decki
The OO Garden Shed
By John Geeee
I purchased the new Right Track 11 Weathering Techniques with Tim Shackleton from the Warley 2009 show. He makes it look so easy so it inspired me to "Attack, Attack, Attack"
I already have a "cheap" dual action airbrush and compressor which I have used for colouring the track. Time to put it to better use. Following Mr Shackletons recommendations I use Humbrol 62 Leather and Matt Black mixtures diluted with white spirit to give a nice sprayable consis
The OO Garden Shed
By John Geeee
I decided to add a small representation of a coal pit so that there was somewhere to load coal into the wagons for delivery around the layout. At the time I was not up to scratch building standards (and still not ) so I searched but could not find exactly what I wanted. In a desperate move I went for a Faller kit to use as loading screens over a track. It was fun to build but to be honest it does not work for me because it is not "British" enough in my opin
The OO Garden Shed
By John Geeee
Here are some pictures of the next build, a Coal Merchants Ratio kit. For the wood construction I paint the wood a cream "pine" colour and then "stain" it with burnt Umber washes until I think it looks right.
A stone wall will be added later to seperate the coal merchants from the rest of the yard area.
Next Up - Coal Loading Building.
The OO Garden Shed
By John Geeee.
Lets see if we can turn two Dapol single engine sheds into a two road roundhouse shape shed for the area by the turntable. I managed to make the two sheds form a triangular shape by adding an extra window section at the back and using a piece of plasticard to fill the gap between the roofs.
I lined the inside walls plastic stone sheet and added gutters and down pipes to the outside. I also added some beam structures to the inside roof. The
The OO Garden Shed
By John Geeee
I needed a space filler for the top left of the layout to add a bit more interest but there was not much ground surface available because of the way I had fitted the backboards. Therefore I decided to go for a warehouse unit that I could fit over the backboards without actually taking them off. I went for the Scalescenes model because it could easily be configured to fit any space. It was something different to build and because of the size I was building
The OO Garden Shed
By John Geeeee
This is the row of terraced houses and the church yard at the back of the layout on top of the tunnel section. They are all Metcalfe models and I have added gutters and drainpipes for extra detail. The top of the tunnel is in two pieces to make it easier to take off in case of a derailment. Therefore I have to be careful how I set things up on top so that I can still take the top off in two halves.
I added part of a P
The OO Garden Shed
By John Geeee
I like the Metcalfe card buildings because they are easy to build and you can fill a space very quickly but sometimes I do not think they look detailed and textured enough for areas that are easily viewable. So as time goes on there are certain buildings that I want to replace with better quality options. The first was the Goods Shed. It's at the front of my layout so very visible. Here is how I built the Ratio Goods Shed.
Personally I think this is m
The OO Garden Shed
By John Geeee
The first turntable was a learning curve and not all of it was for the good. I decided that the next turntable had to be better in every way. I went for the Peco turntable and I needed a way to motorise it and get better reliability. Whilst visiting an exhibition I came across a Meccano stall and bought a motor some rod, couplings, worm gear and a gear wheel. I made a fixing bracket for the motor from a 6"x4" steel panel and fixed it in place to the baseb
The OO Garden Shed
by John Geeee
Here are some pics of the Cattle Dock, Coaling Stage and Water Tower. All of them are Wills/Ratio kits and are easy to build. I think the most difficult thing to decide with these kits is how to paint them. I do not know how they looked in real life and most pictures in reference books are black & white. So in my case it simply comes down to imagination. Hopefully I have got them half right, if not please let me know.
This is the Coal Stage just a
The OO Garden Shed
By John Geeee
I look on my layout as eventually being a series of Diorama scenes all linked by railway track. I am certainly learning all the time so I never consider any scene to be complete untill I can master all forms of the art of railway modelling. Therefore as I learn a new skill I revisit one of the scenes and try to improve it, as seen earlier with the way I think I was improving the yard surface.
For the area past the new turntable I decided to create a smal
The OO Garden Shed
By John Geeee
I was becoming dissatisfied with the facilities available to the terminus. I wanted a nearby turntable to turn locomotives but I did not have the room. So another extension was required, "but thats the last one!" said Mrs Geeee. I therefore got the wood out again and increased the area so that I could add a turntable with some storage sidings and a loco service area. This extension would offer more room to develop the goods yard, add a coal merchant siding,
The OO Garden Shed
By John Geeee
I wanted to do something to add to the scene around the terminus station. I got the wood out again and added about another 8 inches to the left hand side baseboards so that I could add a row of high street shops and at the top end some kind of factory.
To cover the baseboard joins I put down some black card and stuck it with some spray adhesive. It seemed a good idea at the time but about 12 months later the card has slowly bubbled up and be
The OO Garden Shed
By John Geeee.
OK, lets break things up a bit shall we? Here are some videos of the trains moving. Its not the best digital camera in the world for taking the first five videos but I hope it gives you a different view of the layout in action. The last two vids were taken with a new camera and have a better quality picture. You will see that I like to run things at express speeds so my appologies to those that get travel sick:rolleyes: Lets feel those G forces......
The OO Garden Shed
By John Geeee
So, this is my first attempt at a working turntable. I bought the Dapol turntable kit because it was relatively smaller than others available and it was cheap. I thought I would try and motorise it and use it in the first loco yard. I bulit the kit easily and tried to paint it to make it look dirty and weathered. This was my first attempt and I think it shows!
I plonked a length of track on top of the turntable and added a couple of brass strips undernea
The OO Garden Shed
by Ginger64
original page on Old RMweb
I did not want to buy ready-made buildings if I could help it, after-all what do you learn about modelling from them. I discovered Metcalfe and liked the look of them. I thought they would be good to get the layout populated relatively quickly. I had actually started building some of them before I had laid any track so that I could measure things up like stations and good sheds etc. The long term plan is to slowly replace the
