Good afternoon all,
I have managed to progress board 3 of the layout (or the London end of Par station) over the last week or so. Ballasting has taken place and the track has been painted.
I first painted the rails in Phoenix "rusty rails" colour, then a week wash of track dirt to take the sheen off the sleepers and blend the rusty rails a little. The ballast is a 70/30 mix of Woodland scenics buff and brown. I used this successfully on my swiss layout and having studied the many photos
Good afternoon all,
Not much progress has taken place over the last few weeks but I have managed to get the stone papers cut out and attached to the cardboard base structure. Thank you Pete and Tom for your tips on how to produce the stonework in my last entry, I used a good photo of the station itself and then cut part of the stonework from the photo, and copied and pasted it several times to get a strip of stone work. Then this was printed onto good quality paper and I carefully measured a
Good evening,
I thought i would post a few pictures of my re-numbered Farish class 37, 37207 "William Cookworthy"
I have also lowered this loco closer to the bogies using the techniques in bcnpete's blog which gives a more prototypical appearance. The decals are from precision decals and the nameplates from Shawplan. I still have a bit of work to do as i need to add the numbers and spray on a coat of varnish to seal the decals.
This is my first time re-numbering a loco and I feel it
Good evening all!
I have finally been able to get somewhere close to finishing this structure for Par station and I am rather pleased with the results. The mesh has fitted in well, albeit seriously tedious to fit, and I have finally painted the model, and added the lamps using wire handrail for the supports and wheel axle bearings for the lamps. I have also made some lamps out of rounded off cocktail sticks and painted them white. ( I have yet to fit these ).
I have also decided to take
Good evening all,
Before I embark on the complete change of track on Par, I thought I would write a quick blog on a little ongoing project that has been progressing slowly on my workbench for the last couple of months.
There are a trio of Cornish "Lizzie the Lizard" branded 37's that I want to model for Par. I have already done 37207 "William Cookworthy" and I would like to add 37181 and 37185 too.
So up first is 37181. I wanted to model this loco as she was in the mid 80's and thank
Good afternoon,
No modelling today but thought I would put boards 1 and 2 together and test a bit of stock on this section and take a few posed photos to show the progress to date (not as much progress as I would have hoped for!).
This exercise was beneficial as I have discovered that the sides of the footbridge are slightly too low over the main running lines (hence the card spacers to adjust the height), so tonight I will be removing these and filing them down.
The station building h
Good evening,
Just before Christmas I bought the wonderful Farish 4 CEP in blue/grey livery. A superb model and I'd wanted to get one ever since I had a play with BCN Pete's model on his Paddock Wood bay layout.
I decided to buy some concrete sleepers and some flat bottom rail form the 2FS shop and set out to produce a mini diorama for the unit and hopefully run it. My wife has suggested on several occasions to model something more local alongside my Cornish work in progress layout so I
Good afternoon,
It's been a while since I wrote my last blog and since then I have got married, found out my wife is now pregnant with our first child, and I've also changed jobs. And all that in the last 6 weeks!!!
Since the wedding and honeymoon, I have been making some good progress with the layout and in particular the station building for Par.
Since my last entry I have completed the windows, attached the roof and layered strips of thick paper to represent the tiles, made the ch
Good afternoon everyone, this is my first blog so hope that i am doing this correctly. I am currently building an N gauge layout based on Par in Cornwall and no layout based in the 80's would be complete without a class 50 or 2!!
I have decided to upgrade my Farish class 50 as i cannot afford one of the exquisite CJM ones and i have decided to post some of my progress pictures to get some feedback and any tips and hints on how to improve what i have done so far.
I have purchased etched p
Good evening all,
I'm getting a little more confident with these MIG powders now and have spent the last few nights weathering 2 MK1 GUV's, a MK1 BG and a MK1 CK.
I have used a combination of black smoke and Vietnam earth around the door hinges using a wet brush to allow it to run into the door grooves. Then a mixture of Vietnam earth, industrial city dirt, standard rust and black smoke to weather the sides to a varying degree. The roof has also been weathered using a mixture of the firs
Good afternoon,
Just thought I would add an entry as I haven't updated for a few weeks. Progress on Par is slow but I hope to add an entry by Sunday evening with progress on the layout.
This entry is to talk about my latest loco, class 37 37206.
Having looked through John Vaughan's excellent book "Diesels in the Duchy", I noticed that this loco is photographed on more than one occasion in the Par/St.Blazey area so naturally I wanted to have this loco on my layout.
The donor was t
Good evening all,
My second entry this week! I must admit, I have been fairly busy modelling over the past few days and the layout is starting to show some progress now.
I have decided to get the platforms down on board two. The edging is Peco and as you will see from the photos, I have used card to strengthen the centre and also used as the platform top as I feel it provides a good texture to paint onto. I still have to scribe the paving onto the island platform which I will do later on
Good evening all,
I have decided to spend a bit of time weathering my Farish class 37 number 37206 and having bought some MIG powders about 6 months ago, it has taken me this long to pluck up the courage to have a bash at using them.
I have already weathered this loco but I was just missing the smoke streaks on the roof.
I have used the "Black Smoke" pigment to create some smoke stains on the roof using some photos from Flickr as reference.
On the box it recommends using a drop of turp
Good afternoon,
I spent a few hours yesterday trying to make some progress on the footbridge for Par station.
I have now cut and attached some of the sections of mesh to the bridge (mesh courtesy of devondynosoar), and fixed them in place. I have ordered another section but it seems that most suppliers seem out of stock of this item so I can't progress any further until it is received.
I have also made some progress on the footbridge sides as the undersides needed trimming back to al
Good afternoon,
This will be the second blog for me in a week!! Not bad going !!
Just thought I would update on the progress of the station building. I have now strengthened the structure with some extra card along the centre of the building which has now made it a little more sturdy.
I have also made the doors from artists paper. As these doors are panelled, I first cut out the panelled areas and then glued a second sheet of artists paper behind to represent this, and they have now
Good evening all,
A couple of blogs ago I mentioned that I would dedicate a blog to my Dapol class 56. There are very few photos of the loco in Cornwall but thankfully the legendary John Vaughan has several photos published in one or two of his books which were used as reference material. There is also a nice colour one taken by Craig in the Cornish Railways section of this site which will come in handy to get the weathering accurate at the time of the visit. I also have found some rare foot
Good morning,
I have been meaning to post something about my layout for quite sometime now.
Just a bit of background, I have been modelling the swiss scene for many years and have decided to model china clay operations in Cornwall for my latest project. Par was chosen as a prototype as I have never modelled a prototype location before. A visit to Par was tied in with a holiday in Cornwall during July 2010 and many pictures were taken. The great thing with this particular station is that
Good afternoon,
Having had the day off work today, I have managed to finish the basic construction of the station building for Par.
When I was down in Cornwall last week, I dragged my fiancee down to Par to measure the station building so as to make the most accurate model possible. I checked permission with the station staff first.
So permission granted, and a half hour later (with a very embarrassed wife to be!!) I had my measurements.
The main structure is made of 1mm thick card
Good afternoon all,
It's been a while since i've been able to post a bit more progress on my layout. Work commitments still getting in the way of the project, but i've managed to make a little bit more progress over the last few days.
I've laid some of the very realistic ratio concrete trunking which i was initially going to build from thick pieces of card, but having sampled the ratio product, I decided to use it instead. I still need to paint it and add some weathering though.
Prog
Good evening all,
I have been making some progress over the last week or so with the footbridge for Par station. I have still to find a suitable mesh to complete the side railings on the steps up to the bridge and I am hoping that I will find something that will work well when I visit the Warley show at the NEC in Birmingham in a couple of weeks.
The footbridge ends are now complete, the second end being a complete nightmare to build as the structure somehow would not glue together strai
Good afternoon all,
First update on this project for 2014! Quite a few small bits have been going on and the model is starting to come together now.
First of all, I decided to make a start on building the handrails. Whilst there is no etched kit available in this scale to model handrail I set about making my own as it looked like they would all be different sizes anyway. Various techniques were tried and tested for making these. First of all, I blue tacked the parts to a pre drawn handra
Good evening all,
It's been a while seen I have added a blog entry, so thought it was time to pick up on this. This particular one is another "off Par station" subject, after having almost finished my class 90 upgrade, I decided that I would like to build a little home for my Dapol A4, purchased a while ago as I have always loved this loco. I currently run this loco on Par as a specials working, but thoughts have turned towards a mini layout set in it's own period late 50's.
So ideas hav
Good evening,
It's been a while since I posted a blog entry so thought I would add a little update. I have now almost finished the third rail on one side and painted it. I think a lesson has been learnt here as next time I will wipe down the top of the third rail as I paint as the peco track cleaner is a bit harsh on the third rail as the supports are only every 5 sleepers so it tends to bend it and loosen it. I'm also considering painting it a slightly darker shade as per the prototype, whi
Good evening all,
While the station canopy dries from being painted I have decided to move onto my second structural project, the footbridge.
This is definitely my biggest challenge to date and my first scratch built structure that is to be entirely in plastic. Last time I was in Par, I decided to take numerous shots of the footbridge in order to make as near to accurate model as possible.
Ok, so some L-shaped plastic strips in 2 different sizes, 0.5mm and 0.25mm thick plasticard and a
Good afternoon all,
Well, Grantham is progressing well and this week I have been laying the easitrac and soldering on the dropper wires as I go along. The two tracks to the rear, where the coal wagons are shunted along ready to be tipped into the coal pit, have been laid and wired in.
Next i have moved onto the track that runs in front of the coaling tower and I have laid the best part of both of the turnouts on this section with just a couple of bits left to finish.
The plan is to lay
