Alan Kettlewell Posted August 8, 2018 Author Share Posted August 8, 2018 Apologies for my lethargic progress and lack of posts lately. I have been albeit very slowly progressing with the station area ballasting which I've now completed and more or less achieved the look I want. So it's now a matter of getting my mojo back together and getting on with some scenery. Hopefully there's something to report soon. Meanwhile I'll just leave this here- the awesome Mount Etna erupting in the newly completed Italy section at Miniatur Wunderland .. awesome modelling ... Cheers ... Alan 2 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Kettlewell Posted August 9, 2018 Author Share Posted August 9, 2018 (edited) Having finished ballasting right through the station area, it was time for some testing and of course .. playtime! Here's a link to a playlist of short videos to enjoy .. Cheers .. Alan Edited August 10, 2018 by Alan Kettlewell 14 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Vecchio Posted August 10, 2018 RMweb Premium Share Posted August 10, 2018 I like your beer train. I could spot 2 Austrian ones, Reininghaus and Goesser. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Kettlewell Posted August 11, 2018 Author Share Posted August 11, 2018 I like your beer train. I could spot 2 Austrian ones, Reininghaus and Goesser. Yes - one of my favourite trains! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
duff man Posted August 11, 2018 Share Posted August 11, 2018 Hi Alan. Nice to see you are back in the shed. I note your photo,s of the platforms clearly show curved slabs with a white row layed in. Could you please tell me how you did this. Also enjoyed the video. Many thanks. Craig. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Kettlewell Posted August 11, 2018 Author Share Posted August 11, 2018 (edited) Hi Alan. Nice to see you are back in the shed. I note your photo,s of the platforms clearly show curved slabs with a white row layed in. Could you please tell me how you did this. Also enjoyed the video. Many thanks. Craig. Hi Craig, Glad you enjoyed the video. The tiled platform surface is made from thick card. I do the design in PowerPoint, it's really just a lot of squares and shapes laid to look like tiles and with the white tiles for the safety line overlaid/printed on top. Once the basic look is achieved it's easy to do a mass copy and paste to fill up a page. I made several sheets full then when sticking them down on to the platform surface (with PVA) where it curves, I cut them into strips just one tile wide so I can get them to follow the curve. I find PowerPoint is really great as a basic design tool and use it for loads of stuff like this. Cheers ... Alan Edited August 11, 2018 by Alan Kettlewell Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
duff man Posted August 12, 2018 Share Posted August 12, 2018 Hi Craig, Glad you enjoyed the video. The tiled platform surface is made from thick card. I do the design in PowerPoint, it's really just a lot of squares and shapes laid to look like tiles and with the white tiles for the safety line overlaid/printed on top. Once the basic look is achieved it's easy to do a mass copy and paste to fill up a page. I made several sheets full then when sticking them down on to the platform surface (with PVA) where it curves, I cut them into strips just one tile wide so I can get them to follow the curve. I find PowerPoint is really great as a basic design tool and use it for loads of stuff like this. Cheers ... Alan Hi Alan. Thanks for your reply, I have a similar situation which I wasn't at all sure how to tackle so this is most helpful. Cheers. Craig. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Kettlewell Posted August 12, 2018 Author Share Posted August 12, 2018 Hi Craig, I'd be happy to send you the file to play with if you have Powerpoint. Perhaps PM me if interested. Cheers … Alan Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
duff man Posted August 13, 2018 Share Posted August 13, 2018 Hi Craig, I'd be happy to send you the file to play with if you have Powerpoint. Perhaps PM me if interested. Cheers … Alan Hi Alan. Many thanks for kind offer, I don't have powerpoint however I will go and investigate and get back to you. Regards. Craig. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Kettlewell Posted August 17, 2018 Author Share Posted August 17, 2018 (edited) I thought it was about time I stopped playing trains and got on with some work. The next job is to start building the scenery behind the main station which will be dominated by long, high butressed walls and rock faces. This will extend on all three levels behind and above the station area and when done will completely hide all three storage yards, one on each level. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed that all the many hours of testing Train Controller's automation will pay off, as this will mean I'll no longer have direct visibility of what's going on in those yards. Touch wood all the sensors will continue to work without fail, controlling, directing and stopping all the trains in the right track and the right place! First though, I need to install the centenary masts on levels 2 and 3 as I won't be able to get at the nuts underneath to tighten them up after the scenery is in place. I mentioned much earlier on that I was fortunate to get a job lot of used Somerfeldt centenary from Rails of Sheffield on eBay. I saved a fortune with that deal but the downside is that the wires have previously been soldered on, so building the centenary is a bit slow because I have to clean up the solder before fitting. The cost of a good deal I guess. Here's a picture of the end of a wire as an example: Here's a couple of pictures showing the masts fitted along the double track on level two: The masts are vertical but a bit of camera distortion makes some look angled. The tiny nuts can be seen underneath - these are really fiddly to get on! Also note the trains in the storage yards underneath and on level 2. Keep watching because there's a 'now you see them, now you don't' moment coming up... Cheers... Alan Edited August 17, 2018 by Alan Kettlewell 4 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Kettlewell Posted August 17, 2018 Author Share Posted August 17, 2018 A few hours later- you've seen 'em, now you don't. The storage yards on level 1 & 2 are hidden forever! Level 3 seen above will get similar treatment. Big chunks of cardboard have been glued in place with my trusty hot glue gun. These will form the basis for the rock faces and parts of this section will be clad with high walling which I hope to make over the next few days. Before adding the plaster for the rock faces I'll paint neat PVA glue all over the cardboard to provide a key for the plaster to stick to. At this point I haven't soldered the catenary wires as I'll take them off before throwing plaster at the walls. I'll have to work carefully around the masts. The masts had to be fitted first as I can't drill the holes with the vertical walls in place, or get to the nuts underneath. A couple of shots showing almost the full extent of the task: About half way along I've built short tunnels on levels 2 & 3. These will be covered by a bulky rock massif lunging down from the top. I guess the architects, engineers and finance teams (all of which will be me) decided it was a better option to tunnel through it rather than remove it all. The 'verticality' of the layout is becoming apparent. When painting this area I'll be adding light tones to reduce the towering effect these rock faces are going to have over the scene. Also to help break up the rocky aspect as much as possible, I intent to add plenty of ledges where trees, grasses and shrubbery will grow. A layout can have too much rock! Cheers ... Alan 4 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Kettlewell Posted August 20, 2018 Author Share Posted August 20, 2018 (edited) I thought I'd get on with some civil engineering today and made a start building some of the retaining walls I'll need. For something as substantial as a retaining wall I like to over engineer a bit so I'm using my favourite material for the walling which is the 7mm scale Cotswold stone sheets from Slaters. I'm sticking this to thick cardboard, which I like because it's free and available in abundance! I decided to make these particular walls 85mm high - an arbitrary height that just happens to be half the height of a sheet of the Slaters stone walling. Work commences: Plasticard walling glued on, I use good old Bostik for this. I'm making just over 1.5 metres of walling today - there'll be more! That's one thing about building a large layout - everything needs to be almost on an industrial scale: More ... Edited August 20, 2018 by Alan Kettlewell 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Kettlewell Posted August 20, 2018 Author Share Posted August 20, 2018 Next job on the retaining walls is to make the buttresses. These can come in many different forms and you could spend forever highly detailing. I have a lot to do (and I'm lazy), so I'm making a simple vertical buttress running up almost to the top of the wall. Of course I'll positioning these to hide the joins where the plasticard sheets meet. I've cut poster card to the desired size and glued two together back to back to make it a reasonable thickness. Stone cladding cut to shape and fixed on (a bit fiddly). I make sure the cladding is cut so the stone courses line up then, once it's stuck, I fill the corners with DIY filler. I've used Humbrol and Squadron White fillers in the past but I find I only get one use out of it as it goes hard afterwards. So now I use a tube of cheap DIY filler I got for a quid somewhere. Here they are stuck in place on the walling: Some more grouting to do next to fill these 'orrible gaps: Cheers ... Alan 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Kettlewell Posted August 20, 2018 Author Share Posted August 20, 2018 Grouting done. Time to let everything dry now. All three parts done and ready for the next session tomorrow when I'll add capping stones to the top of the buttresses and along the top of the wall. Then it's on with the painting: Cheers .., Alan 5 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Kettlewell Posted August 23, 2018 Author Share Posted August 23, 2018 Got a bit more done on the retaining walls over the last couple of days. Got them painted. This is my 'pallette' of paints I prefer for this kind of work, which are all test pots from DIY stores and sample pots I get mixed. I find these far cheaper than other paints plus they mix with water for when a thin wash is required. First, a full coat of light tan, the rest will be dry brushed hopefully leaving this first coat showing to represent mortar in the joints. Next I picked random stones and painted them individually with a mixture of the other shades- brown, dark grey, sand and light grey. This gave quite a mottled look which I didn't like too much, so a final dry brushing with light grey blended everything in nicely. I mentioned earlier that I didn't want to make the walls too dark as I thought that would be too dominant over the whole scene, so I'm happy with this lighter stone look. Here's the wall propped in place along level two. Next will be to glue it into place and add the capping stones. This 1.5 metres stretch of wall looks quite dwarfed in the context of the whole layout - There'll be more do do that's for sure ... Cheers ... Alan 7 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Kettlewell Posted September 17, 2018 Author Share Posted September 17, 2018 I thought I'd share a little project that's underway. There's a double track on a curve that converges with the station throat at the West end and I want to make a facing cross over so arriving trains can have better access to more platforms in the station. Standard Pecos turnouts, which I have a lot of leftover from previous layouts, will not fit due to the curvature so I'm thinking of hand building a crossover. So here's what I'm up to. First, a photo of the curve from above, as squarely as possible: A while later- I've imported the photo onto the background in 'Templot' (great programme) and I've built the templates for the crossover turnouts over it. It's a bit tricky getting the picture to the right scale so you can line up the templates directly in top of it, so a bit of trial and error was needed. A while later after a fair bit of tweaking, got the Templot print I need to build the crossover and here it is overlaid on the layout. It looks good enough. So all I need to do now is er..buy the parts and build it! Cheers .. Alan 6 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Kettlewell Posted October 2, 2018 Author Share Posted October 2, 2018 For your amusement ... I was just clearing out old electronic tickets on my phone from our holiday in Switzerland earlier this year and I noticed the last line on this e-ticket. It made me larf as I wondered how the inspector would have reacted if I took it literally .. Cheers … Alan Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
eastwestdivide Posted October 2, 2018 Share Posted October 2, 2018 <insert Fahrt joke here> 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
TT-Pete Posted October 2, 2018 Share Posted October 2, 2018 <insert Fahrt joke here> When they were little my kid's favourite on Autobahn journeys was "Ausfahrt" - always resulting in fits of raspberries and giggles. Can start getting just a leetle bit tedious on a 6 hour car journey... 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Kettlewell Posted October 2, 2018 Author Share Posted October 2, 2018 When they were little my kid's favourite on Autobahn journeys was "Ausfahrt" - always resulting in fits of raspberries and giggles. Can start getting just a leetle bit tedious on a 6 hour car journey... Ha, yes ditto with my kids. Also 'Fahrt Frei' .. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
eastwestdivide Posted October 2, 2018 Share Posted October 2, 2018 Extrafahrt on the front of a relief bus service and the boat trip on a Black Forest lake, the Titisee Rundfahrt, are my favourites. Our normally-strict German teacher gave us a whole lesson to get the giggling out of our systems. It didn't work. Sorry for the diversion (Umfahrt?) 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Kettlewell Posted October 2, 2018 Author Share Posted October 2, 2018 (edited) ...and don't even get me started on rude sounding German town names ... Edited October 2, 2018 by Alan Kettlewell Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Vecchio Posted October 2, 2018 RMweb Premium Share Posted October 2, 2018 Well I have the same problem the other way round when I am at Furzton (Milton Keynes) as Furz = fart and ton = sound.... 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
TT-Pete Posted October 2, 2018 Share Posted October 2, 2018 ...and don't even get me started on rude sounding German town names ... Or car registration plates, always fun spotting those... My new partner wanted us to move to Bitburg as soon as she saw a car in a Hochgarage in Trier with the registration starting BIT-CH Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
TT-Pete Posted October 2, 2018 Share Posted October 2, 2018 Ha, yes ditto with my kids. Also 'Fahrt Frei' .. Ho ho, and what fun the little swines thought it was, calling me "Vati" (farty) but not as funny as my Belgian now ex-Father-in-Law thought it was to deliberately mis-pronounce my name as "Peteur" (as in "someone who farts"). Hmm, but then I have always thought Francophones to be culturally suspect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_P%C3%A9tomane Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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