Some progress this weekend on the western end of the layout. This is the area of the goods yard, separated from the station by a road bridge. I say 'goods yard' but, in fact it was nothing more than a short siding alongside the line to Hallatrow. The yard was equipped with a short loading platform and a two ton crane. On the model, this area is much reduced in length to fit on a small removeable board across the room doorway. The photo below shows this section looking east.
The foam base shown in the previous entry, "Camerton in pink foam", was covered in sculptamold to form the rough surfaces of the various slopes and embankments. These areas were painted in browns and greens to provide a background for the later addition of vegetation. The yard and road surfaces were covered in lightweight filler and painted grey. The road surface, intended to represent a loose surfaced country road in the early years of the 20th century, was then covered with chinchilla dust. Some patching will probably be needed later. I'll also be using this material with various grades of ballast to surface the goods yard.
Tracklaying has started on this and the station board. I need to finish the crossover between the platform line and loop before the goods yard is complete. This crossover has been moved a few feet to the west relative to the prototype so as to avoid the join between the boards. I thought at first that this might cause problems with the siting of the goods platform in the yard, as the siding here is much reduced in length compared with the prototype. However, careful examination of a couple of photos of this area show that the platform did partly overlap the crossover. A wagon placed anywhere except at the west end of the platform would foul the crossover and any traffic using the loop.
Today was mostly spent ballasting this short section, though not entirely satisfactorily. After a couple of hours carefully tamping the ballast with a soft brush, the misting spray decided to do an impression of heavy rain rather than mist. This undid much of the previous work so I anticipate some patching will be necessary when the PVA is dry.
Finally, a start was made on a part of a small bridge at the west end (foreground in the above photo). Further painting and weathering will be needed, but it is useful practice for tackling the more substantial bridges on the layout. Below is part of a typical surviving bridge on the Cam Valley line with red bricks and blues for the corners. This is, in fact, the bridge that will appear at the far east end of the layout. The photo gives an indication of what I'll eventually be aiming for. Of particular note are the extra large capping bricks in blue.
The idea for using chinchilla dust for the road surface came from this post by Doug (Chubber), though whether I'll get anywhere remotely near his standard of modelling is an open question...
- 8
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