Single Line Halt - named! Niwbwrch

[jamest]

Hi all,

 

Its been a while but I hit a bit of a block with this layout with regard to platform access and how to blend between road bridge down to the track over the rough lane.

 

I also want to make the platform thinner by adding fencing and greenery behind it.

 

I had a light bulb moment the other day and that, combined with the current lock-down, has given me the impetus and time to make some really good progress.

 

So here is the catalyst....a ramp and steps to gain access via the road on the right. The gradient is in reality a little steep, but I'm really happy with it. It is a blend of scalescenes papers on a card base - combined with some excess jewelry making wire from my mum!

 

I see the hand rail as the 70-80s scaffold pole type I remember.

 

 

 

 

 

I've made more progress in the last few weeks, including a tidy up of my shed....so more updates to follow.

 

All the best,

James

 

 

[MAP66]

1 hour ago, jamest said:

Hi all,

 

Its been a while but I hit a bit of a block with this layout with regard to platform access and how to blend between road bridge down to the track over the rough lane.

 

I also want to make the platform thinner by adding fencing and greenery behind it.

 

I had a light bulb moment the other day and that, combined with the current lock-down, has given me the impetus and time to make some really good progress.

 

So here is the catalyst....a ramp and steps to gain access via the road on the right. The gradient is in reality a little steep, but I'm really happy with it. It is a blend of scalescenes papers on a card base - combined with some excess jewelry making wire from my mum!

 

I see the hand rail as the 70-80s scaffold pole type I remember.

 

 

 

 

 

I've made more progress in the last few weeks, including a tidy up of my shed....so more updates to follow.

 

All the best,

James

 

 

Hi James

Looks good to me, the wire made hand rail looks spot on. Everything about this build is impressive, so keep pushing on.

 

Nice work

Mark

[Calidore]

That's looking very nice James, it fits the space well. It's left you a handy gap for junk and/or station furniture on the side towards the back of the platform, too.

 

Adam

Edited April 21, 2020 by Calidore

[Sweet pea]

Nice work James it looks really good.

[jamest]

1 hour ago, Calidore said:

That's looking very nice James, it fits the space well. It's left you a handy gap for junk and/or station furniture on the side towards the back of the platform, too.

 

Adam

 

Thanks all for the comments... 

 

Adam... I've already filled that gap.... I'll post some pics tomorrow. 

 

Regards, 

James

[TechnicArrow]

As someone well-versed with "Building Regs M", that ramp is definitely too steep! 

But it looks the part, filling that corner and providing access. I'm still watching this simple layout with interest!

[jamest]

9 hours ago, TechnicArrow said:

As someone well-versed with "Building Regs M", that ramp is definitely too steep! 

But it looks the part, filling that corner and providing access. I'm still watching this simple layout with interest!

 

Blimey, there is another regulation to keep up with - although I think common sense would have hopefully prevented this in real life! Looking back I could have extended the top slope towards the platform or dropped it less in that portion and lost most of the drop along the platform in the second section as I have plenty of room that way....Or started lower! But hopefully it is a 'suggestion' of what might have occurred.

 

Moving on a bit - I said that I was going to thin the platform a little and I have achieved that with some fencing either side of a simple shelter. I will be filling with greenery behind the fence. I have laid a base coat of static grass and started to form the green lane under the track to the left. As I said previously I had already committed this way before the canal suggestion earlier but I plan to hide the lane by suggesting a bend around behind the platform and clever use of hedging! - later photos will explain this better.

 

I also posed a 25 with some ballast wagons too!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All the best,

James

Edited April 22, 2020 by jamest

[jamest]

Hi all,

 

Ok now for the aforementioned infill behind the fencing.

 

I carved some land forms from some celotex insulation and covered with javis brown scatter. I then static grassed them - which was much easier off the layout:

 

 

 

 

and here they are in place.....

 

 

I also ran some pva in a straight line on a metal quality street tin lid and produced some long lengths of grass - I can then cut them in half and use the straight cut edge against the fence - leaving the random edge outwards:

 

 

I've also started on the green track - also by gluing down straight 'pre-prepared' lengths of grass:

 

 

Regards,

James

 

 

[jamest]

Hi all,

 

Bit more progress to report.

 

I've continued to add greenery and dirtied up the platform area and shelter.

 

 

 

 

I've also started on the hedging that takes over from the rear fencing half way along the layout. It is horsehair cut into strips, teased out, sprayed brown and covered in scatter. I do this off the layout and glue the resulting hedge down with pva. Hopefully you can see how I plan to bend the road right to hide the point it hits the back scene. The fact the hedge line drops at the back is not ideal but I plan to hide this with trees:

 

 

 

 

As you will see I have also added a wills lineside fence along the front of the layout - I need to tone down the supplied translucent wire with a darker wash:

 

 

 

Thats all for now - I'm currently experimenting with making trees from wire.

 

Cheers,

James

 

 

 

 

[Jerry1975]

Hi James. 

 

Your layout is looking really good,  regarding trees, I make my own from florists wire, lichen or clump foliage. 

 

If you need any help/advice please feel free to ask, look forward to seeing your results. 

 

Jerry. 

[jamest]

Hi,

 

Actually.....before I go onto trees I want to share my efforts on the fiddle yard - I was keen to get stock moving on the layout.

 

I mused over traverser, sector plate, fan of sidings but settled on cassettes. I have some experience of them and a few left over from a previous layout - Braybridge. I wanted to have a simple frame work supporting the cassettes and all the track alignment dealt with on the scenic board as I don't have any alignment devices to hand!

 

I extended the line on the scenic board via a short section of code 100 on a 12mm piece of ply. I then solder two pieces of code 100 rail in the 'side' of that track which guides in the extruding rail on the cassettes:

 

The extended section with code 100 rail - the second piece of ply underneath is to guide the cassette on height - the frame work is pulled away to show what is attached to the scenic board.

 

 

A view from above showing the cassette approaching

 

 

And the cassette located:

 

 

The support 'ladder':

 

 

The power normally runs fine by contact on the rail above but I've added crocodile clip points to supplement this if required:

 

And an overall view - please excuse the mess - what looks to be growing out of the top of the scenic board is in fact the upturned fiddle yard for one of my other layouts behind it.

 

 

The advantage of these types of cassette (these are just under three feet long) is they can be stacked - I plan to make some more that are a little longer at exactly three feet.

 

 

Thats all for now.

 

Cheers,

James

[jamest]

Hi,

 

Right back to the trees as promised.

 

Last year at the Taunton show I bought some wire and bark 'pre-mix' artex like paint in a tub from Greenscene. I'm not in the shed at the moment but I'll get the Greenscene part number because it is really good stuff - I'm sure there are many who do their own mix but for £4 for a pot that I've hardly touched (for five trees so far) its great value.

 

Ok - I have a book - Model Railway Scenery Vol 2 - Fields, hedges and trees by Anthony Reeves, and I was lucky enough to talk to Gordon Gravett (sorry if that is miss-spelt) at the Minehead show a few years back. Its the tried and tested twisted wire covered in 'bark' mix and foliage attached with hairspray. I always avoided this in the past as I was not confident in my ability to re-create what nature finds so easy, but I was struck by how rewarding and calming it can be - and you get custom 'made to fit' trees for your layout. The starting lengths and number of wires takes time to gauge but I would encourage anyone to have a bash. Its not expensive to try.

 

I've made several in different sizes but here is the build of the first one:

 

Here is the wound wire in the rough shape - note the masking tape at the base to keep everything secure while you form the tree - I also pull out two or three wires by 25mm ish to use as a 'root'. That is what is pushed into the foam. None of this is my idea - it was all the book!

 

And tidied up a bit:

 

Now I applied masking tape around the main structure - the bark pre-mix is thick, but this masking method helps mask the wire beneath better and means you don't have to apply the bark mix too thick:

 

Bark mix applied with a brush:

 

and painted with a green/brown paint - my walks with the wife in the evenings around the countryside in North Devon has helped a lot - not many tree trunks are brown!

 

I use pulled horse hair for the finer branches but you can apply any coloured fine foliage from the scenic manufacturers. Note I have also added some Mini-natur ivy to the trunk:

 

I've not got a photo of the next stage but if you use horse hair it is recommended to spray it with a colour similar to the trunk - I used a slightly darker aerosol I have but on subsequent trees I have used an airbrush to apply a thinned mix exactly the same to the main trunk colour.

 

I simply use hairspray over the horse hair to attach it - and then hairspray again to attach scatter - but you could use PVA/water in an atomiser spray (3 parts water to 1 part PVA):

 

You will need to spend time trimming and tidying up the stray horse hair to get to this stage.

 

Here are some other smaller trees:

 

 

I've dry brushed the bark with a light brown and added fine scatter to replicate moss.

 

Regards,

James

 

 

[mudmagnet]

Good work on the trees James.

 

 

[jamest]

Hi all,

 

I've now added a lighting strip to the layout and painted the fascia black.

 

The LED light kit was around £11 from Amazon and consists of four lengths of warm white LEDS - you can join them in line or zig zag them - Two strip lengths are about the length of my layout so I went up and back in two lines. there are several connectors supplied and you can cut the strips at predetermined lengths if you need to.

 

They are self-adhesive backed and I coated the ply underside with aluminium tape before fitting them - you can see the connections between the two strips in the photo below - you can have a straight connector between them or a corner piece to space them out/make corners.

 

 

 

 

The blackboard paint was drying as fast as I could paint it - I could go straight on and start the second coat after the first - must be what the forth bridge painting gang are used to!!!

 

 

 

 

 

Cheers,

James

 

 

[TechnicArrow]

Your work on the station area looks awesome out in the sunshine, well done!

[AireValley1962]

That's looking brilliant, James! 

 

I use a similar method for my lighting too, but the reflector is an additional bonus, methinks.

[jamest]

Hi all,

 

More progress to report.

 

I've planted my trees and developed the hedging around the rough track under the bridge. I was going for less tree but found they blended in quite well and went with it!

 

So it was going to be one or two trees:

 

but turned into several!

 

 

 

 

I'm really happy with how the turn in the track and the tree canopies cover the transition into the back scene.

 

 

All the best,

James

 

 

[jamest]

Hi again,

 

Been having a play so here are some pictures with stock....

 

I still need to get some lights for the platform/steps (non-working) and populate the platform with a few people/clutter. I also need to name the layout and produce some signage - I think it will have a welsh feel to the name - for no particular reason!

 

I really like the concept of doing other moving cameos of about four feet - using the same fiddle yards and cassettes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and an overall shot....

 

 

cheers,

James

 

 

[jamest]

Hi all,

 

I found the broken lights from my attempts to add lights to my Braybridge layout - they are knightwing white metal ones. Rather than buy some more I decided to make my own versions!

 

So I've used some 1mm dia wire with some plastic rectangular sectioned wire for the tops:

Here is an example of a bought one (broken):

 

 

and my efforts - I've wrapped masking tape around the bottom for the larger dia at the base - the tops had a hole drilled for the wire and I will need to fill in some gaps with model filler and paint. I need to straighten the wire a little more (it came off a reel).

 

 

 

I'll show the end results later......along with the name of the layout!

 

regards,

James

 

[Sweet pea]

James your scenery and foliage work looks very good. This is a lovely layout.

[jamest]

Hi

 

18 hours ago, Kevin Johnson said:

James your scenery and foliage work looks very good. This is a lovely layout.

 

Thanks for that Kevin.

 

Right, here are the lights painted and fitted to the layout - along with the long overdue name boards. I like to name my layouts around places I have a connection to - and not necessarily places that have connection to railways.

 

We have friends who have a place on Anglesey and we have spent many a great week there in the summer with them. Their place is at Newborough, or Niwbwrch, and I thought it appropriate as a name. In reality it is not rail served but it could have looked like this if you close one eye and squint a bit!

 

I'm not sure about the larger sign with the BR logo - it might be a bit too big - but its there for now. It might well have been dual signed in Welsh and English too - but I've obviously stick with the Welsh name.

 

So here are the pics of the lights and signs - The light nearest the shelter has a bin attached too:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Regards,

James

 

 

[Sweet pea]

James the name looks crisp and clear. You have done a nice job on the lights, nice pictures mate.