Will Vale

That's clever. I knew there'd be a good reason, I just didn't know what it was

I'm not surprised road markings get mucked up - they're really difficult to do!

I'm glad to see you're putting some pictures in as well. How much space do you have to work with?

I like the shapes of the shapes of the stones very much too, they seem to strike the delicate balance between regularity and randomness which is hard to capture. If clay causing card to delaminate is a problem, you could try using it over styrene, it bonds fine with PVA and obviously there's no way the moisture will damage it.

Aye, you're a bit good at this aren't you! Thanks for posting these pictures, I really like seeing what people get up to tangent to the hobby.

Both the scenery and electrics look very tidy, and (I might have said this before) the track flow is just amazing. Can I ask why you used the foamboard framing with polystyrene infill? It obviously works very well but it seems like you could get by with one or the other and save yourself some hassle.

Very sorry to hear of your loss, and also very glad to see you back John. I've missed your blog posts on here. The boats are wonderful, what a great idea to add railway stock to combine the hobbies. More of your excellent styrene work?

I thought from reading this that the layout was in bits - glad to see it isn't! Dealing with those thing that you know will irritate you seems to pay off in the long run although it can be tough to make the cut at first!

That's a really nice idea, much better than a laptop. Thanks!

Thanks all. I think the road is close for summer. Maybe this is a job where I really should get the airbrush out and learn to use it as opposed to trying to work around it with powders and drybrushing? On the last photo, I think the Noch car is a bit of a giveaway - it's not a very nice thing, I need to find some better road traffic. And I do have some lovely Scale Link railings but I'm waiting until I've done a bit more before fitting them because they're very delicate. Part of the reason for trying the smoke is that I've grumbled about the wispy white stuff before and I thought I should put my money where my mouth is and have a go. Doing it in B&W is a good way to make it easier though - I'm not sure if my effort would survive the transition to colour. It is satisfying doing things quickly, but also fraught and stressful. I kind of have to model this way because then I actually finish things (not that this layout is finished, but you know what I mean) as opposed to leaving them as started half-projects and flitting butterfly-like to the next shiny object.

The weathered timber upper walls are delightful.

Oh dear, I'm worried that adorable diminutive tank engines might be the thing which tip me over the edge into UK steam modelling. A deep rabbit hole which I've resisted for so very long.

Thanks all, it was indeed a great weekend. No cake delivery, but a nice benefit of doing the local show is that we were home and drinking beer less than an hour after closing time. Re. the presentation: I'm glad it works for you folks as well - I'm trying really hard to get around my ingrained dislike of backscenes since I can see the advantages quite clearly. The idea is to slot a straight (or curving forward?) backscene behind the scenery, but keep it detachable so I can get to that part of the layout, and keep the base weight of the board down. I'm also musing about adding some extensions to the light pelmet brackets to lift the whole thing up another 10cm, but I'll wait until there's some forest on the slopes to see how that looks.

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 without a backscene the fluorescent tubes were a bit hard on the eyes for the operators. We managed to get all three layouts (Höllental-Hirschsrpung, Tanis 1937, and Igelfeld) plus stock, light fittings, bricks and two operators into my dad's Prius, although it was a tight squeeze for me in particular. I didn't have a backup plan for the event that the new layout didn't fit, but thankfully it did The venue got pretty hot in the afternoon on both days, and was at times very busy indeed. I managed to see quite a bit more of it than last year since it was possible to leave the layout alone with something running around and go for a wander - the plan works! We also had help from Robert's friend George on the Saturday which was fantastic, thanks George! The heat didn't seem to affect the track at all - I was worried about expansion in the yard lengths of finescale rail, but it all behaved beautifully (I had left one expansion gap) and the only minor issue was a bit of unglued track in the fiddle yard went a couple of mm sideways towards the end of the weekend - not a problem, and it's easy to fix in any case. The electrics were rock solid, and I'm glad I put some extra feeds in because it was possible to detect the voltage drop in places. Maybe some more are needed still. The control system also worked quite well - the fiddle yard roads are selected by a three position rotary switch and a push-button. Turn to pick a road, press the button to change the points, done. The only issue was we occasionally forgot to press the button resulting in the train leaving the yard happily but running into a dead road and stalling when it came back. Running was basically faultless provided we had the train correctly on the rails in the first place, less so if not - and this is easier said than done in 1:220. We did have a pile-up during an unprototypical banking of a 1930s streamlined express with a 1950s-condition BR85. It looked great and I wandered off for a bit, came back to find my dad saying "we had a bit of a disaster" and I was expecting to find my prize loco on the floor. Thankfully it wasn't that bad - it had shed its pony truck screw and then the truck, and the whole shooting match had piled into the wreckage on the next lap. Never mind, truck reattached and I think a dot of PVA as ersatz thread lock is warranted since it runs much better with that screw (which also retains the belly pan) loosened half a turn. Tanis I switched on in the morning each day and basically ignored - I think I had to give the loco a push once, other than that it was perfect. It still gets some very nice comments. As did the new project - the rocks generated quite a lot of interest in terms of how they looked, and how they were done. The presentation also got compliments which was nice since it's the first time I've done the whole proscenium arch thing. I did identify one major problem - while the train is visible for a good long time, it's out of view for slightly longer, and with the layout being very "new" looking and lacking in detail, there isn't much to engage the attention while we get the next one out. Igelfeld and Tanis are much better in this regard since more of the track is visible, and there are a far more non-train details to look at in the meantime. Apart from doing all the detailing, I think it might help to have some kind of flashing "train coming" light at each end so people know what to expect. Or some kind of moving feature, but I don't know what that could be that wouldn't also be cheesy. Possibly some prototype info wouldn't go amiss either. My favourite quotes of the weekend, apart from the usual "Look at the tiny trains!" were a German diorama modeller (whose work I've marvelled at before) asking me if I was also German, and overheard by George a small boy being offered a train of some kind by his parent and saying "No, I don't want that one, I want a Z gauge!" I do feel sorry for any parents who've been influenced in this way by our efforts... Finally here are some highlights from other layouts in the show: Kerosene Creek, originally by Raoul Quinn 1970s Rhodesia, by Paul Napier Taumaranui (I think this is a club layout, I'm afraid I don't know which club.) Manners Street, by Kerry Willard There are more pictures and layouts in the gallery which should be attached to this post, or if you can see Flickr where you are, I recommend looking at them in my Flickr set since the full-size images are available there as well: * Railex 2011 on Flickr

Love the real/model comparison, I think the model is very close. The 2FS track is particularly nice in these side-on shots. FWIW I think the blue water could do with a little bit of black to tone it down, but take that with a pinch of salt - colour is very subjective, and as you say if you don't like it it's easy to re-do. One tip which might not be relevant for the PVA method (do you pour it on or paint it on?) is that I've found it better not to mask the edges when applying acrylic water - it creeps up the tape and leaves a meniscus when you peel it off. If you leave the edge open and pour very carefully you can get it to go up to the edge of the board and not spill over. I guess it depends whether you like convex or concave curves

Thanks Mikkel, it's surprising how little depth there actually is in that scene - probably about a foot. I hadn't thought about the staggered rock planes in those terms but I can see how that works - they clearly have relief and it's not apparent how thin the layers are in this view. I think it would help to have another car in the foreground to make the perspective clear. I'm looking forward to doing some more work on the river - I think maybe a tint in places, then one more coat of pouring medium to get depth, then I can start doing the white water and surface ripples. One thing I've wondered about is whether the road is too light, and if so how to make it darker. Any ideas in this area would much appreciated - I had a quick go with powders but they tended to stick to the surface in places and make it look "wrong scale" dirty.

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%) of the above image (modulo rotation) to show what it looks like close-up: I also got a couple of shots of the Kleber Express descending the valley towards Freiburg in the morning sun: The last one isn't coming out as well as I'd hoped when designing the layout - I think because there's so little room between the tunnels. It'll be interesting to see how this develops as the area acquires more detail. Oh, I forked out for a Flickr Pro account so you can click through for the really big (original size) versions now!

That resonates for me. I want to do the best I can, but not do the things which will spoil what's already been done. I really dislike (for example) inappropriately bent or wobbly things on models which should be straight - much like your lines of rivets, I might stop short of doing them. Or do them, dislike them, and remove them again. Or do them, get lucky, and keep them It's all about consistency of finish. Which reminds me - I'm looking at a photo of my bridge pillar, which has rather soft irregular stone courses (done in a hurry for a show deadline) and thinking I might need to replace it Will

Thanks Chris, I wasn't quibbling the price, it seems reasonable for what you get and the fact that they've done the work. I think it's about 2-3x what I paid to make one, and similar to the price my local model shop does their own version for (amusingly named "The Germinator"). I did read and follow the link to the FMR/FMW page, it just seemed a bit devoid of content, so your comparison to the Grasmaster is appreciated.

Very nice results! I assume that means the budget tool did a good job? It does look a lot like my home-made one (flyswat handle + tea strainer, inspired by John de Frayssinet + Jennifer Ayres) - do you have any more information about it?

Thanks again! I like the idea of filing down the belly pans of all the locos, would make them much easier to oil too if the gears were all exposed The show went well, I have some pics to post tomorrow when I'm less tired. I actually got home nice and early but then had to make tea for a sick family. I spent the rest of the evening pretending to be Batman - great success.

Thanks for the compliments! I checked and it wasn't really three months, I started the board in July which makes it just about four. Apologies for making dubious claims Would love to come to ChCh but have never had an invite to the show. In fact the only one I've been to apart from Railex is Masterton. Probably just as well, the travel + accommodation make it an expensive business attending shows away from home.

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 quite like, they don't stand out as being wrong to me in the same way. My main complaint is that it's a little dull - there aren't any people, vehicles, buildings, signs, or details apart from landscaping, so at the moment the layout feels a bit like a canvas waiting to be filled in some strange way. I'm quite looking forward to approaching this job at a slightly gentler pace - three months for one layout isn't enough time really, although it does help to keep me motivated. Luckily my DB stock in both Epoch III and Epoch V modes is nice and colourful, and everything works well, so tomorrow I can run trains and chat to people without having a late night beforehand - I think that's the first time actually! Big thanks to Murray for securing our group a corner where we're all together, and scaring up some barriers from the Kennel Club - that means I can put the layout up on crates on top of the trestle table to get the right viewing height. I'll try and get some better pictures tomorrow, but for now here are some grab shots (with slightly off colour balance - some kind of ICC problem maybe - and blurry moving train) of the new bits: Here's the bridge over the Engenbachdobel - I made a nice set of checkrails and centre walkway for this, but they don't fit as the locos seem to protrude slightly beneath rail-top level - ah well. and here's the narrows of the Hirschsprung itself. My dad found an N-scale goat on one of the trade stands, I might grab that tomorrow as a stag stand-in If any Kiwis are reading this and fancy visiting tomorrow or Sunday, come to the show and say hi! http://www.eventfinder.co.nz/2011/nov/porirua-mana/railex-2011

Shh, don't say anything about trees. They all blew away or something!