Finnish countryside in 1930's

[ATT]

Lots and lots of trees!

 

The Tree Show has begun.

 

The first batch of trees is ready for coating of the trunks. They will be covered with a mix of concrete plaster and glue. The foliage for pines (twelve on the bigger block in the photo) will be Heki mikroflor in different shades. The five trees on the left side will be miraculously transformed from copper to birches. Their foliage will consist of Woodland Scenics' Poly Fiber and Noch's Classic Flock.

 

The task of making trees is rather terrifying. Here's only seventeen of them and the whole layout will require something in between 300-400 full grown trees and smaller bushes and shrubbery will be added to that.

 

[ATT]

Here's the same trees as in the post above. Some seamoss based bushes have been added. The enbankment at the edge of the forest needs some further wild flowers and such although on this kind of dry sand based ground not much is growing except grass. The plain grass doesn't look right though so the issue requires further attention.

 

 

[chris p bacon]

I've only been to Finland once in 2009........you need more trees....thousands of them.

[SHMD]

I really do like those trees. Especially the brown trunked ones centred in the second photo.

 

 

Kev.

[ATT]

I've only been to Finland once in 2009........you need more trees....thousands of them.

 

Unfortunately so! It's probably the biggest job for the layout. Luckily not thousands though but hundreds, yes. Over half of the 3m² area of the layout will be forest/trees.

 

 

I really do like those trees. Especially the brown trunked ones centred in the second photo.

 

 

Kev.

 

Thank you! The brown trunked trees represent pines, the others are birches, aspens and alders.

 

I'll probably need to work on that particular area more as when pines grow together they have branches only on about the top third or quarter of the trunk. That leaves the forest rather spacious closer to the ground. Here the depth of the layout reserved for the trees is only about 20cm or less so you can see right through the pines. Hopefully a background with a print of a real forest will enhance the depth illusion. If not, something must be done...

[Al.]

That's all coming along nicely.

 

Your trees are very good.

[ATT]

The edge between the trees/bushes and the long grass looked annoyingly clean in the previous photos. To correct the issue I added some flock to piece of poly fiber and placed that at the edge of the bushes. It's not perfect but unless I can come up with a better solution, that will be used elswhere too.

 

[ATT]

Why on earth there is a photo of a GW engine in this conversation!?

 

 

The question of electrics have been unanswered as long as the layout has been under development. I have purchased a handheld PICtroller in the past and intended to use it as the controller for this layout. A while ago I started to put together the control panel for isolated sections of the track and point contols and the number of wires needed was closing fifty. As it is not a permanent layout but consists of sections there needs to be a solution for connectors between the control panel and the sections, as well as between the sections themselves.

 

I have been following the development of radio control for some years now but with them there is still the problem with batteries that are virtually impossible to fit to the small Finnish steam locomotives. I am also reluctant to add a permanently connected wagon or coach to the locomotive where the battery could be located.

 

Previously I haven't had any kind of interest for digital control but earlier this summer I decided to have a go with it to see if that could solve the wiring issues on the layout. I purchased the latest incarnation ot the ESU ECoS to see if that could serve as the control for the layout. So far the impression have been positive and it looks like the solution has been found. I installed decoders for some of my RTR models, which are mostly GW engines and powered up a couple of the sections for the first time. It probably describes how much I'm interested in actually running the trains that my previous layout from over a decade ago also had a train actually running on it for the first time now.

 

For the connectors between the sections of the layout I purchased PC power extension cables which I cut in half resulting a six pin cable that can be used as a connector between two sections. Six pins should be enough to give three pairs of wiring, one for track power, one for point control and one reserve.

 

As the layout will not have an actual control panel, I'll add fixed switches for each of the isolated tracks on the shelf at the back of each section where the electrics are located for possible troubleshooting and temporary analogue operation.

 

[Ian Morgan]

Why do you need isolated sections when you have moved to DCC?

 

Ian.

[ATT]

Why do you need isolated sections when you have moved to DCC?

 

Ian.

 

There's of course no an actual need for isolated sections but as the track has already been laid with insulated joiners and each section of track wired individually, I might as well do the routing of track power with switches. That allows easier search for, say, short circuit and also proper analogue operation in case the layout is run connected with another layout that most likely won't use digital.

[TerrySVR]

Stunning modelling well done

[88D]

That's all coming along nicely.

Your trees are very good.

Now you need a billion or so dots to represent the pesky mosquitos that plagued my visits to the forests of Finland. Lovely place though!

[ATT]

First photos taken in the new model railway room where the layout will be placed. The main interest while taking the photos was not the layout but the freshly painted walls. The top half of the room is painted so that the blue gradually lightens when nearing the horizon and also some very light clouds have been added. There will also be a low relief of trees manufactured from a panorama of photos in the horizon to improve the illusion of a large distance. A real life example of a similar background can be seen in an earlier photo in this thread from this same spot of the layout that has an actual photo added to the background.

 

 

[SHMD]

I am so glad you are back and making progress.

 

As with all your efforts, I am stunned by your room walls as sky!

 

 

Kev.

[TomHolley]

Outstanding work! You wouldn't have a track plan to share, would you?

 

Regards,

 

Tom Holley

[ATT]

I am so glad you are back and making progress.

 

As with all your efforts, I am stunned by your room walls as sky!

 

 

Kev.

 

Thank you Kev! Technically I'm not back as I haven't actually left! I have been reading RMWeb daily, there has just not been much interesting going on to write about - just doing same things what I've written about already. Sand, grass, trees, bushes, repeat...

 

Outstanding work! You wouldn't have a track plan to share, would you?

 

Regards,

 

Tom Holley

 

Thank you, Tom! There is one track plan that is the original CAD drawing plan for the layout, unfortunately it is rather spartan in detail. There are some minor variations here and there but the basic setup has stayed the same from the beginning.

 

[ATT]

Some small updates about the layout project, unfortunately without photos this time but there will be some later.

 

As I mentioned, the layout now has a proper space, a warm 8x3 metres room built inside an old cow house (if that is the correct English name for it). The optimistically named exhibition layout has a space at one of the long walls and to extend that, a permanent layout is and will be built around the rest of the room. There will also be proper work benches, paint booths and so on.

 

On the other side of the room there will be another station that is set in a Finnish city in about 1938 with business and apartment buildings from the early 20th century art nouveau period as well as older wooden buildings.

 

The two stations are connected by lines at both ends so that the track will eventually form a complete continuous loop. I'm still to decide whether there will be a fiddle yard between the stations on one of the line sections. Knowing that I'm not particularily interested running the trains, that wouldn't be an essential thing to have.

 

So far a 1.2 metres wide table frame for the city station has been built as well as an 0.8 metres wide table frame between it and the exhibition layout. Track has been laid for part of the line but so far no base for the landscape has been built.

[ATT]

The city station now has almost all track laid. Only the locomotive depot area and two industrial sidings are still missing at one end of the yard.

 

 

 

There are five sidings on the main yard, first from the station house is a passenger siding, the second is the main line also with passenger platform. Third is a siding without a platform for freight trains. Fourth and fifth are storage sidings, the fifth will have a platform for freight services. The main freight depot is at the extension of the first siding.

 

The background will have a city centre with mostly art noveau/jugend buildings. There are many good examples for such buildings at the nearby city and few of them will likely be used on the layout.

 

 

 

 

There is also a delicious building near the railway station that used to be the station master's house. Currently it serves as a café. Although I have not decided which buildings to use from the city, the station master's house will be included in the layout.

 

 

 

[chris p bacon]

Which city are you using for the prototype models ?  The Station masters house has some lovely detail windows.

 

That is some very neat tracklaying, you've working to a very high standard. 

[south_tyne]

On 11/08/2018 at 17:11, ATT said:

First photos taken in the new model railway room where the layout will be placed. The main interest while taking the photos was not the layout but the freshly painted walls. The top half of the room is painted so that the blue gradually lightens when nearing the horizon and also some very light clouds have been added. There will also be a low relief of trees manufactured from a panorama of photos in the horizon to improve the illusion of a large distance. A real life example of a similar background can be seen in an earlier photo in this thread from this same spot of the layout that has an actual photo added to the background.

 

 

 

That's absolutely stunning modelling! Love it! 

[ATT]

On 05/02/2019 at 11:06, chris p bacon said:

Which city are you using for the prototype models ?  The Station masters house has some lovely detail windows.

 

That is some very neat tracklaying, you've working to a very high standard. 

 

Those building photos are all from the city of Lahti. There are many more similar buildings there and although I haven't yet decided what buildings I'll be modelling mine after, at least some will be from Lahti. Helsinki has also some very attractive early 20th century buildings that would be interesting to use.

 

The Finnish state railways used typical drawings for most of it buildings so that same station master's house can be found from few other cities as well. That also makes it more realistic to use them in a fictional landscape (like all mine are) as the building doesn't belong to only one specific place.

 

[ATT]

11 hours ago, south_tyne said:

 

That's absolutely stunning modelling! Love it! 

 

Thank you very much for the kind words! Hopefully that landscape will have trees and bushes planted soon so it will be less like desert...

[Corbs]

I just stumbled across this from the main page. Really nice stuff. My girlfriend's grandmother was Finnish, she fled from the Soviet invasion into Sweden. The architecture there is quite similar.

[Glover]

This is real modelling. It's not just the craftsmanship but also what I would call the 'art direction'. 

That is, the overall vision and the clear focus on what to include and, perhaps more importantly , what to exclude.

To use that hackneyed old phrase, "less is more" but you are showing how to really achieve it.

 

I have no knowledge of the railways of Finland (apart from them being broad gauge but Ireland is wider at 1600mm!) but the actual prototype is irrelevant when it comes to recognising great modelling.

 

Looking forward to the city side.

 

Cheers,

 

Glover

[ATT]

Has it already been 1½ years since I last time visited here? Not much has happened with the layout or the railway room in general. For the past year a certain star decorated hobby item has taken most of my time. 

 

Taking it slow has had it's advantages though. Having enough time to think about it, the layout of the city on the layout has also started to make more sense after few complete redesigns. Also, I think I've found a commercial turntable that is suitable for conversion, that hopefully allows me to finish the track around the locomotive depot area.

 

More as soon as there is something new to tell.