I made a start on the underframe today. The more I look at detail pictures, the more I marvel at Hornby's tooling - there's really nothing missing.
The first step, as seen above, was to paint the entire underframe with Tamiya Nato Black, which is a useful not-quite black and has a very flat finish which should help the powders stick. It also means that because my finish is based on an out of the bottle colour, it's easy to paint out mistakes.
Then I went looking for pictures - I fou
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
Had a fun time today applying powder and paint to 60014's roof:
Had a less fun time trying to make good after botching truncating the printed nameplate so it doesn't stick out from behind the etched ones. I did both sides the same way (enamel thinners, cotton bud) but the first one I was too rough and removed some of the base paint. I had a go at matching the base paint colour but it wasn't too hot, so I decided to try and make it look patch painted. I think the real loco may have be
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 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?
I went back to the MOA for another hour or so and hopefully fixed some things. It's getting closer to the prototype pictures.
It makes a bit of a change compared to yesterday, I think:
The wheels have been touched up and the backs painted. I also applied some powders to the bogies to correct the colours, add detail, and dull them down a little. It's odd, they still look glossy here, whereas they look very matt in real life - possibly the location of the layout at the moment means th
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
Hirschsprung retaining wall by Will Vale, on Flickr
I think it's salt deposits from water running down the face of the retaining wall. If it was a bird it must have been a legendary beast.
As you can see the retaining wall is painted up now - I used a similar method to the tunnel in the last post, although without the pink tones. After doing the basic drybrushing I added a 'mortar' mix of MIG Concrete with a little Industrial City Dirt, made into a heavy wash with their pigment fixer. A
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
Falkenstein Tunnel by Will Vale, on Flickr
I'm afraid these entries are a little dull, but it's nice to have a record of things as they happen. I've been piecing together the landscape at the left-hand end of the layout, which is a pastiche of two real locations - the Falkenstein tunnel (see the gallery at the lower right here) and the bridge over the Engenbachdobel. In real life they're the other way around.
I'm trying to use cheaper, lighter expanded polystyrene for the smoothly-contou
I did some more work on the limpet I started the other day. I applied the modern warning flashes (very nice Fox transfers) and blacked out the DC prefix on the data panel which I forgot to do last time. The body has had a little bit more work with washes and powders to try and tone down the contrast a bit, otherwise it's much as before. The white filler on the inside is to cover a soldering iron mark from the denting process, it'll get sanded down and painted over tonight hopefully.
The o
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
What number am I thinking of? by Will Vale, on Flickr
"Sixty-nine, dudes!"
These are the profile boards for the ends of the layout. Over an hour's sweaty work to measure and cut out with a Stanley knife, no new scratches on the kitchen table though! The cut-outs are hand-holds for lifting rather than tunnel access - it's easier to reach in from behind the layout since the openings are bigger. The sticky-out top bits are a possible lighting pelmet mounting strategy, if it doesn't work out
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
I really didn't mean to vanish for several months - it just sort of happened. I had a big burst of activity to get Whitemarsh ready for the challenge and then the show at the end of November, then a short break from modelling. Unfortunately this ran into Christmas, which ran into a new work contract, which was happening at the same time as writing a conference paper and a hobby game project. Yikes.
Anyway, the culmination of all this madness was a two week trip to the 'States involving a lot
I think this code 40 lark is going to be pretty good - pantograph and dodgy focus aside, I don't think the picture screams "this loco is 3 inches long"
In terms of layout progress, I've spread a tub of lightweight filler over some of the elevations previously built up from scraps of foam card and styrofoam.
I also made a code 40/code 60 join by soldering the thinner section on top of flattened fishplates on the code 60, which I'm sure I read somewhere years ago as a suggestion for cod
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 -
Bricks scribed by Will Vale, on Flickr
Yet another tunnel portal post I'm afraid, but this is nearly the last one! I've carved the retaining wall and attached portal, as seen above. It wasn't entirely straightforward owing to the shape, so I thought given that and the different course heights on the different sections of stonework I'd better draw some guides before starting. I used a propelling pencil and a small styrene square as a ruler, tipping it carefully over the angle between the wall
I did a lot more planning and tweaking and deciding, and was finally able to get some MDF cut for the sides of the board, and the track bed.
After more tests I went with keeping things simple and not having any elevation changes on the track. I think the deciding factor was listening to the Z locos struggle on a 2% gradient - the Märklin Doppelstockwagen driving trailers have power pickups which add quite a lot of drag, and the hard-working motors are amplified by the lightweight board
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
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
I've been messing about with a new (to me) product - MIG enamel washes. This is also the first time I've used enamels of any kind (except pigments, I suppose) since I was a nipper. The aim was to get some streaks on 60014's flanks and ends.
I took some pictures to have a look in close-up before the second set of washes harden, so I thought I might as well post them and get some feedback I based what I was doing on a series of prototype pictures of the loco at Peak Forest around
I was unhappy with what I'd managed last time, so I thought I'd have another go.
The H&S poster is from a photo, printed on the computer - the paper is a bit thick, but the real thing appears to be a metal or plastic plate rather than a sticker, so some relief is OK. I should have used a low pass filter to remove the ambient light before resizing though! I've also painted the armrests and the knobs on the handles black as well as a couple of other details, and dusted some grot aroun
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
I made an unpleasant mistake on this one at 2am, which took quite a bit of fixing. Came out pretty well in the end, I think.
I wanted to make something along the lines of these pictures of 390181 by Martyn Read:
http://ukrailrolling.../p36338863.html and http://ukrailrolling.../p24117355.html (large image!)
The disaster was deciding to fade the paint too late - I applied a wash-like layer of MIG white pigment with their fixer, and of course with the fixer you can't really see ho
