Following on from a few weeks ago 2 of the suggestions people gave me have been tried. The first was to use some DAS clay to cover the copper wire of the tree but so far I have not managed to perfect this given I am trying to make some Silver Birch trees at the moment.
The second was simply to spray the trunks a few times with a white coat. This seems to be work but I do need to get something that is a bit more of a mucky white.
Once that was done and the paint dry, the trunks
One of the key pieces of Hemerdon will be the wooded area that runs from the farm house to the end of the passing loops and one of the things I did not consider when choosing Hemerdon as a layout idea was how on earth was I going to cover the area with trees. I guess in my mind I though it would not be that expensive to buy them - wrong on so many levels.
Gven that I need around 150 trees to cover the area, and decent tree is between £3 & £4 I could have spent between £450 and £600 w
I'm modelling in the rain, I'm modelling in the rain. What a glourious feeling i'm having again - Come on, sing along as i'm sure you can make the words up.
What the hell is he on about I hear you cry as you look at this!!!!! Its not some wierd fantasy that I can only do things outside when its raining. Can you imagine trying to make a model from card in the rain?
I've always found the sound of rain on a tent canvas to be a fairly soothing sound except when accompanied by high wind, and
One of the pieces about building Hemerdon Bank has been the farm buildings above the layout and where can I get information about them other than via Google Maps or Bing. The image below is from a screen capture off Bing
So I started hunting round for other images of Hemerdon. I found various images and pages, but nothing that really helped until I came across a link with a picture of the line and some text that told me the farm is called Parkside farm.
So a new google search was se
The other day I set my status saying I was enjoying taking out an old layout from the shed. Cumberland Road was the branch line for my previous layout which I had kept whilst I work on Hemerdon.
So earlier today everything was packed away and the old layout broken up, so I started loading the car up. Having put the old wood in, I thought i'll clear out a few other bits and bobs. The only thing was my few bits and bobs FILLED the boot of my car with the back seats down. Hidden away I found
Curves have been bugging me for a while. How the heck do you cut them out? I've tried scissors, free hand with a knife, scoring with a pencil attached to a compass, scoring with a the pin end of a compass, and none have worked.
I was emptying the dishwasher the other day and it came to me. We've had pudding bowl hair cuts, so why not pudding bowl to create well cut curve.
I used a scalescene bridge as the template to create the bridge but adjusted the measurements as needed to creat
I'm starting to mull over just what to do with the fresh boards sitting down one side of the shed at the moment. Whilst there is the temptation to rush in, I made that mistake with the fiddle yard last time and it became the major reason for the destruction of Wycliffe.
I am playing with various configurations, but I may hold fire until the code 55 3 way point is released. Hopefully that will be at some point in Q4 of this year.
in the mean time the debate goes on within the darkest rece
Not sure how many of you remember the film "field of dreams" with the line, "if you build it he will come", but I finally got round to giving the track a good clean. OK, I used a track rubber becuase at the moment that is what I have, but boy O boy did it make a difference.
In fact it got me thinking that as well as running trains and building things I need to try and start a regular cleaning cycle, but what does that entail?
1. Track, well that one is obvious
2. Loco wheels. I lubricat
Forget your City of Truro, or that DCC controller, how much do we spend on all the stuff that we never see on the layout?
I ran out of blades again this weekend whilst attempting yet another go at the shops for the market square on my layout. I couldn't make it out to get some proper blades but did pick up a cheap craft knife which has one of those blades that you snap off the end of the blade and use the next bit as the point with the theory that its sharp, because surely a blade is a blade
After seeing the Captains work on the new houses for Callow Lane it got me thinking about how to create windows. Up till now I have used black frames by printing out on OHP. Whilst it works, its not perfect AND its always black as I can't print in white.
So along comes the Captain with his window method and it got me thinking how else can I do this, especially if the 2010 callange layout starts. Can I improve on what I have done, so using a few off cuts of pasticard I knocked this up.
Th
So as I sit here at the end of another modelling I find myself asking the question, what on earth did I actually do? Back in January my layout looked like this
Some 12 months later and after numerous restarts I have finally build the terraced houses but am still no where near finishing the shops, so it now looks like this
The wierd thing is I feel I have spent ages in the shed this year but do not have loads to show for it. Could this be because for the first time I have c
I have recently noticed something about my modelling habits. When I returned in 2001 I used a cold loft which it was not possible to heat, (or was pointless to try because of the drafts) so I simply made sure I had plenty of layers on. I used to have a long sleeve T shirt, then a rugby shirt and then a fleece jumper which was fine and if needed a fleece jacket.
Having just got my annual electricity bill and, I am wondering why now that I have a shed which is not draughty, I feel the need to
Fingers crossed some where in the post is a ticket for this years show, but before I start getting flustered because it has not arrived I find myself with a greater conundrum, how to get there.
Living in Reading I can get a train direct to Birmingham International, and it takes about the same time as the drive by the time I have got to the station BUT, the ticket for the train is ??40, where as the petrol will cost me around ??20 plus i'm guessing around ??7 - ??10 for the car park.
The
Does anyone else experience the issue that you "pop" out to the shed for a quick 5 to 10 mins, and by the time you get back 45 mins has gone by in real time?
Is my shed some how travelling some where near the speed of light, or was it just the battery in the clock running out, so the clock was very slow?
Amyway, this did lead to one of those moments where I returned to be faced by with my wife and the jobs I should have been doing. Its a scene you never see in Doctor Who!! I some how do
Today has been a good day. The house is clean, had friends round for lunch and my wife makes a mean cheese cake, London Irish are top of the premiership and my "puffer bottle" does indeed produce grass with a far better texture than scatter, and it took no time what so ever.
My test piece consisted of a 15cm by 15cm area of neat PVA on card, some Jarvis static grass and the said puffer bottle.
The biggest challenge was actually getting the bag of scatter into the bottle without covering
As the last post said, what to do next as I seem to have stalled over the last couple of months, so I have decided on a small plan of action.
Rather than work on anything big, over the coming month apart from running the layout I am going to do just those little jobs such as:
Add gutters and drain pipes to buildings
Get flowers in the flower beds.
Look at where people should be and the cameo's
etc
It will take a couple of days to get through but to help me on my way I have ordered
So what's the difference between the old way I posted information and updates compared to this brave new world of bloggery, apart from this is the first time I have ever written a blog, and more to the point what do I want to share, and get out of it in return.
At the moment I guess my biggest challenges/questions in no particular order are
1. What do i want to do next with the layout?
2. How do i avoid ripping it up to start building the next of many plans I have and becoming a serial
