This is a mixture of chipping at the dry mud, then streaking it as per Martin's suggestion:
and the other side (there's only one muddy wagon at the moment). Looking at these, It might be worth doing a little more to get the vertical stripes of thin mud (presumably waterborne) around the thick streaks.
I also fixed some underframe damage to one of the wagons and took a couple of new pictures of the first two since there was a bit of sun this lunchtime. You can see the effect of
I've had a go at the interiors, inspired by this picture...
http://ukrailrolling.../p57256754.html
...and it came out OK I think. It's quite hard to capture the almost salmon shade (rust plus dust/dried mud?) of the prototype picture but provided it looks believable I'm not too worried if it doesn't look identical
I've started another two and taken some pictures to accompany the process.
Step 1) I stippled on artist's acrylic (the stuff in tubes - the one I use is called P
Retaining wall and tunnel by Will Vale, on Flickr
For the Flying Kipper, obviously
Not much to report last week - I slowly layered up some more foam for carving the Hirschsprung itself, but didn't get much more done than that until Sunday, when i had a blitz on the remaining structural engineering works. I built the retaining wall and east tunnel portal for the Unterer Hirschsprung Tunnel, as seen above. Then I knocked together some 2mm section to make the rock shed which was added rath
Zombie Hands by Will Vale, on Flickr
Just a quick update to say that I'm still plugging away at the layout despite work, distractions, and minor disasters. No decent pics yet but I have done the following:
* Melted some track and distorted the track bed.
* Painted all the rocks
* Made a lighting pelmet (which works) plus brackets to fix it to the layout, and primed and sanded it.
* Added ground cover to most of the layout.
* Weathered and installed the bridge (more-or-less, it still
Train to Freiburg by Will Vale, on Flickr
I thought I'd take all the junk (well, most of it) off the layout so I could see how things were going. The ballast has worked out well, the tunnels are boxed in at long last, and I like the sweep of the track at the left hand end. Still no bridge though, as you can see:
The problem I've come across is that with the tunnel through the Hirschsprung in place, and the Oberen Hirschsrpung Tunnel which hides the exit to the fiddle yard, there isn
Tinted ballast comparison by Will Vale, on Flickr
Cold as in colour temperature. The finer ballast I'm using (as seen on the right in the above picture) is a bit too blue-grey and not buff enough, so it needs to be coloured.
I poured some onto a bit of MDF and set it as I had on the layout, using alcohol and Klear (stay off the floor polish!) Once that was dry I tried various colouring options:
From left to right, MIG Ashes White, lightly then heavily applied. MIG Beach Sand,
As a lead in to building my Schoema, which is still languishing on my bench as a pile of plastic rectangles, I've started to build some rolling stock. I like this as a way to get a feel for the scale, although making locos is probably more fun because they go Anyway, I've built two (and a half) flat wagons as the base for a light HIAB-type work crane. The wagons are based on some tunnel construction stock used at the Neuer Distelrasentunnel in Germany - I found some detail pictures which I've s
I laid the fine-ish track last week and did some minimal wiring, and have run some trains successfully. The code 40-code 60 joints were reasonably trouble free, the most I had to do was tweak the end of a rail with pliers to smooth a bend. I'll try and take some pictures of those since there are some details I wouldn't mind getting an opinion on.
I've been quietly wondering whether I'd get my modelling (as opposed to construction) mojo back, and it appears to have happened last night. Almost
Ballast by Will Vale, on Flickr
This always feels like a make-or-break point for layout building. You've got to do it, but once you have going back is impossible, or at least wildly unpleasant. I have ballasted Z track before, as seen here on Igelfeld, but the ballast I used was pretty coarse. I was happy with it at the time, but given that the new layout has closer-to-scale rail profile, I felt it needed closer-to-scale ballast as well.
Before getting into that, I laid the track wi
Three weeks to go by Will Vale, on Flickr
As requested, a few photos of progress in a sort of "where are we now" sort of way. Afraid I didn't pose any stock on them. Above you can see the whole layout, with two big jobs remaining - the rockwork in the right foreground (from where the stag is alleged to have leaped) and the groundwork around the bridge.
The big things I've been doing this week were carving the rocks at the right, and making the road. The pavements are thin styrene
I thought I'd share a picture of my workspace on Saturday morning before the exhibition - I like working on the kitchen table, but I'm beginning to see why Mrs. V. might not be so keen.
There is yet more mess out of shot.
To be fair, after working until 2am two nights in a row to finish the layout and rolling stock, I did come home from day one of Railex and spend my evening tidying up. Perhaps that's why I'm not sleeping on the sofa?
Ballast empties by Will Vale, on Flickr
I thought I'd try and be like the cool kids and attempt some smoke effects with Photoshop. This is a white mask with a lot of dodge + burn + smudge, then some filters, unsharp mask and selective re-blurring. I still don't think it's detailed enough compared to the reference I was looking at, but in fairness I was using a trackpad. I'll have to try this again with a tablet when I'm at my desk. Here's a crop (if you click through you can see it at 100%)
I spent a fair while yesterday working on the MTA underframes with powders, plus painting a few details and doing a little drybrushing and black wash for fake shadows and highlights. I think the drybrushing may have helped to lessen the overly soft finish, since it sharpens up the edges and also puts a bit of fine flecked detail on the panels. I've also cleaned up the data panels/overhead flashes a bit more, painted the shiny grab handles, touched in the buffers again, and rusted the steps and g
I spent some time pasting together Google Maps images and watching cab rides to see better how the line behaves between Falkensteig and Hirschsprung. Then I laid out potential track plans in SCARM (which is brilliant) and tried to put the two together. It looks like I'll need to compress reality about 2:1 to fit the stretch I want in the space I can manage. For a "railway in the countryside" layout that doesn't seem too bad to me.
I ended up truncating the fiddle yards to two roads eac
Unteren Hirschsprung Tunnel by Will Vale, on Flickr
Well, it's showtime tomorrow! I've been finishing things off as best as possible this week - as ever there's an awful lot which could be done that hasn't been done, but I think the overall result has the right kind of consistency. The deciduous forest also failed to materialise - I made and planted a lot of trees, but they weren't really good enough to they ended up getting yanked out agian. The bog brush firs are a cliche but they're one I
IR2217 by Will Vale, on Flickr
I've been dreading this particular job but I at least figured out a way to do it, so yesterday and today I've been gritting my teeth and getting down to marking out the B31 through the Höllental. From photos I think the markings are between 100 and 150mm wide, which is roughly 0.5-0.75mm in 1:220 - ouch. Thankfully they're almost all solid lines - this is a dangerous road so no passing on the stretch I've depicted. On the prototype there's a passing lane just o
This is a week late, but I spent a couple of hours today going through my images from Railex, adding captions, and picking some to show off. We had a good show, packing and setup were both painless, and I opted to put the layout up on plastic crates (weighted with bricks) on top of the supplied table to improve the viewing height. I think this worked quite well, but I need to give a bit more thought to display next time: The pelmet made conversations with punters a bit tricky at times, and witho
Rock painting experiment by Will Vale, on Flickr
The plain brown undercoat has finally reached the right side of the layout, so I've been putting some (maybe) final paint on the rocks on the left. It's not too bad, it looks a bit frosty and overdone under my worklight, but nice in daylight and it seems to photograph OK. The green bits are just stood there to get a feel for the colour balance - it's going to be very green which I think will reduce the contrast in the rocks and make them appea
I finally got hold of a Bachmann SSA locally, which I've wanted for ages in order to try Nigel Burkin's underframe conversion from the Modern Wagons book.
I followed the book's recipe fairly closely, although I cleaned up the original SSA buffer mouldings (which had a fair bit of flash) and used brake details recovered from the PNA's underframe. Not strictly correct, and I suspect there should be more stuff under there but I can't figure it out from the pictures in the book. To fit the
So having solicited some opinions a little while ago (thanks to everyone who responded!) I seem to be about to ignore them... Unfortuntely, while I've been doing a little plastic-kit-making for Tanis (Do335A Pfeil) I'm still drawn to the Höllentalbahn. It seems like something to do that I could get to a good state for Railex at the start of October. I'd only want to model a bit of it as a tail-chaser, and the bit that appeals most is Hirschsprung and associated tunnels.
[image by Joachim
Step 1 by Will Vale, on Flickr
I thought I'd try and put a step-by-step up for this, because when I went back to the earlier entry on this tunnel portal to try and duplicate the painting onto the second wall, I found I hadn't listed the paint colours. So this is partly for my benefit. But maybe it'll be useful. It's always tricky to remember to put the brushes down and take pictures between steps. Usual disclaimer - I don't think this is an exemplary result - it looks good from six inches aw
Looking a bit tidier now by Will Vale, on Flickr
I forgot to pose a train! Rats... But I thought it was worth posting the picture anyway since it shows quite clearly what's done and what's to do. The key thing I've done today is sand down the baseboard, round all the corners, prime and paint it. I also sanded down the brush marks on the pelmet and brackets, dusted them off, and gave them two more coats of black with a roller. The fascias have had one of primer, three of semi-gloss acrylic "e
Some pictures of the speaker install I talked about here. Sorry for the nasty digicam quality, it was too much work to go and find the tripod and the SLR. While I had the body off I took the opportunity to make a styrene bottom plate for the sound box to replace the blob of Blu-Tak which was filling that role in the Mk.1 version. It's still not a classy install, but it works and apart from cutting the hole is still reversible for when I find a better way.
Here are the main components. I've a
Just finished installing a Howes LokSound micro in my Christmas present - a Cotswold Rail 08 intended for duty as the Whitemarsh Yard pilot. It wasn't particularly fiddly, only a couple of hours' work really, although I underestimated the care required to cut out the body shell behind the front grille. I started off drilling the four corners and thought I could then cut through the edges with multiple passes of a knife - bad idea A slight slip left a mark on the warning stripes, but it isn't to
Br. 85 zwischen Falkensteig und Hirschprung by Will Vale, on Flickr
Br.85 no. 85005 brings a short train down towards Freiburg some time in the early '50s. It's nice to see a bit of steam power on the line, especially when it's such an attractive loco.
This weekend I managed to spend a fair bit of time working on the layout. The landscape around the left-hand end has been built up to about the right height, and I've been carving away at the rock faces. This is an interesting pass-time -
