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Isle Ornsay - Hebridean Light Railway


invercloy

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That rocky seashore looks good, I can just smell the rotting seaweed!  you'll have to see if you could model a few seals and Otters.

SWMBOs' artists paints, brushes and pencils look endangered when I get to the scenic Stage!

The Q

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As a resident of Skye I would like to say you have captured the colouring and texture of the rocks and shoreline perfectly.  This is a fascinating might have been railway and I look forwards to seeing it progress, please keep us updated.  If I was not commited to 1950's WCML in OO, I would consider doing Portree 'might have been' as a project.

 

Tony

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Thats looking absolutely marvelous Tom, spot on.  And the red colour of the coaches contrasts perfectly with the rock & moorland grass.

I'm pleased you've put in a conventional Forum Thread, I find the blogs awkward to follow and frustrating when you want to go back and look for a previous posting.

All the best,

Dave.

Thanks Dave. I found the blogs a bit clunky too, and this reminds me of 'old RMweb' a bit more. I'm really pleased with the way it's turning out so far.

 

That rocky seashore looks good, I can just smell the rotting seaweed!  you'll have to see if you could model a few seals and Otters.

SWMBOs' artists paints, brushes and pencils look endangered when I get to the scenic Stage!

The Q

 

Thanks. I've actually got plans for a couple of otters to be on the rocks once I've added seaweed to them. 

Give it a go, it's good fun and one of those jobs that's relatively easy to correct if you get it wrong.

 

As a resident of Skye I would like to say you have captured the colouring and texture of the rocks and shoreline perfectly.  This is a fascinating might have been railway and I look forwards to seeing it progress, please keep us updated.  If I was not commited to 1950's WCML in OO, I would consider doing Portree 'might have been' as a project.

 

Tony

 

Thanks Tony, nice to hear from someone on Skye. If you want to know more then check out my blog http://hlrco.wordpress.com - I tend to update that more often that this thread. It's also got more info on some of the other lines that were built on Skye. I was up there on holiday recently and did a bit of walking along the marble line and the Ord quarry line too.

I've drawn up a plan for a double decked shed layout that will happen when we move in a couple of years, it goes from Isle Ornsay on the bottom level, through Broadford and along a bit of coastline, then up to the top level for Portree and a branch to Dunvegan before heading into a fiddle yard.... Should be fun when I get round to it.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Some more progress, this time on the station building.
 
I've had a foamboard base for a station building on the layout for a while, but after some thought about this I wasn't happy with the design. So I decided to look for other options.
 
I enjoy kitbashing, so I decided to have a go at altering two well used kits to make something more appropriate.
 
The documents I found in the National Archives seems to hint at no need for a station building of any form - a little harsh when you think about standing waiting for a train on the Scottish coast in winter!
 
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Here are the ingredients to keep passengers warm and dry:
 
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After a bit of hacking, substituting of parts between kits and we get to here:
 
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Add some L section to support the new roof base:
 
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Then finish off with some SE Finecast Corrugated Iron, the rest of the bits from the kits, and some Evergreen strip to change the design of the ends:

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Apologies for the poor lighting in the photos, the light in the lounge was a bit dimpsy for photos yesterday evening.

More detail on my blog here: http://hlrco.wordpress.com/2013/06/23/station-building/

 

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  • 2 months later...
Some progress (of sorts) to report, nothing like doing a demo at a show to spur you on...!
 
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I've added the first stage of the waves, the basic shape. To do this I used some Galeria 'heavy carvable modelling paste'. This is funny stuff, somewhere between PVA glue, filler and stodgy plaster of paris in consistency. It's very rigid, so can be shaped easily and will retain that shape quite well - I've been able to pull waves up rocks and it's stayed pretty much where I created the splashes as it dried.
 
 
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As you can see, I've also added some timber bracing to the pier wall. This has been stained in a wash of brown watercolour paint and left to dry. I then decided that it wasn't grainy enough, so I carved in some additional relief, this is why some of the bare wood is visible in places. I need to apply a wash of burnt umber to tone it down and hide the carved areas.
 
 
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The waves are just a first step at present and require a lot more work, but it's nice to be doing some more work on the layout.
 
This afternoon I've continued painting the station building, and I'm almost done.
 
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There's still some tidying up to do around the windows, and the brickwork needs painting, as do the noticeboards. Then I'll get on to some subtle weathering and fix it in position. It will then be surrounded by the platform surface to hide the join with the ground, I'm hoping to do this using the zip texturing technique of wetting pre-coloured plaster to represent a gravel surface.

 

Next steps are as follows:
  • Paint the waves to blend them in with the surrounding sea (i'd probably wait to add the waves and do it all in one go next time)
  • Add seaweed to the rocks and walls. 
  • Add some gloss gel to create ripples on the flat areas between the waves, then coat the entire sea surface with gloss varnish.
 
For the 009 Society convention demo I'm hoping to have done the following additional work:
  • Reshaped the hill behind the platform to match the actual location (more shallow fall down to the coast, much like the headland I've already coloured)
  • Add the platform surface
  • Colour the rear rock faces
  • Get a backscene printed and fitted for this board.
 
All of the above will be in varying stages of completion to enable me to show the various techniques used.
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  • 2 weeks later...

More painting of the waves...
 
 
Prior to painting the sea colours on the flat surface I painted the ply with some artist's gesso primer. I did this as I knew several different materials were going to be used and I wanted the same top surface.  This will give a consistent primed finish so that all of the sea and waves  accepts paint in the same way.
 
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This is the gesso used - for those of you who haven't seen Bob Ross's painting show take a look on YouTube, there might be some handy hints for painting backscenes...
 
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This was then applied relatively thickly to the waves and surrounding sea.
You may spot in the above photo I've also added a couple extra timber baulks to the seawall and I've added a surface to the platform using some chinchilla dust - this is drying in the photo above.
 
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The gesso was then painted over with a mix of acrylics to match the surrounding sea, but also to show a lighter colour around the crests of the waves and near the shore/wall.
 
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Some additional rock castings have been glued into position using a glue gun. These have then been surrounded by scrunched up 'freebie' newspaper, clumps of which are held in place with masking tape. This area will then be covered in paper mache (doubt I will get to do any of this as Emma is still enjoying it!). 
 
 
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I've also added the first coats of paint to the waves. The colours used are the same as those I've described before on my blog.
The paler colours were mixed in whilst the blue was still wet. It's not perfect, but then a reasonable proportion of it will be covered by white spray and foam, and then gloss varnish over the surface. 
 

Finally some some dry brushing of white gesso onto the waves and areas of foam. Hopefully this completes the painting of this area of the sea, but we'll see how it's dried in the morning.

 
 
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Those waves are just pure amazing! In the first stages as i looked through the pictures i wasnt sure how it was going to turn out but kept scrolling down to see the finished pictures and im blown away, can almost smell the sea air!!

Lovely layout.

 

Look forward to more pictures.

 

Cheers

Jack.

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That's impressive work invercloy.

 

To me modelling water in any form is quite a challenge, and seaside waves-in-motion the most off all difficult to pull-off convincingly. I think you've done an exceptional job there - I can really feel the motion of the waves and hear them breaking against the rocks.

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I've done a little more tonight. The paper mache that Emma did the other day has now dried, so it's received the first coat of brown paint. When this is dry I'll need to add a little more plaster around the edges of the rear plaster castings to blend them into the surrounding ground/coast/baseboard edge.

 

More interestingly, I've been adding some 'wavelets'. This is done using some clear artist's gel. I like using artist's materials, they seem to suit my way of doing things on the layout.

 

 

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A thin coating of this was applied to the entire sea surface that I've painted so far.  I stippled it on to gives a gloss coating with a little texture. I then piped on some thin sections of the gel and shaped them into a few small waves to add some additional texture to the surface between the main waves.

 

 

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We'll see how it dries...At the moment it's a bit of a fight to keep them in the right shape as it dries...
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  • 2 months later...

More progress on rocks and water...

 

Inspired by a visit from my mate Chris to discuss a micro layout project, I decided to fish two of the boards out of the loft to continue the rock painting. To do this I also needed to add a couple of small patches of plaster to the base of the rock casting at the rear of the layout. Once this had largely dried I cracked out the acrylic paints.
 
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I've added the first coat of dark acrylic paint to the next sections of rock and stone walling. The paints used are acrylics by Windsor & Newton, and the colour used is a mix of roughly 60% Payne's Gray and 40% Raw Umber in quite a thick mix. This is applied over the entire surface, stippled into all the recesses, to give a dark colour to act as shadows. This will then be matched into the section I've already completed dry brushing and adding washes with the acrylics, and finally using pastel pencils as before.
 
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As you may have spotted, the sea has gotten a bit whiter in front of the pier. This is just some Woodland Scenics 'Water Effects' that's been added to give a bit more texture. 
 
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I applied small blobs of the product across the flatter areas of sea. I then stippled the surface with my finger to pull small peaks up across the entire surface. If i need to repeat this process to get the desired finish that should be ok. It will dry clear, so the paint effects should show through well.
 
The black was completely dried this morning so I moved on to the dry brushing.
 
Here's the colour palette I have used:
 
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Its a mix of pale umber, burnt umber and raw sienna in varying amounts. 
 
This was then dry brushed sparingly onto the blackened rocks to give the base colour to work from.
 
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When this has dried well I'll add some washes of varying colours and perhaps a little more dry brushing after that before cracking out the pastel pencils to detail.

 

Here are the results of the Woodland Scenics 'Realistic Water' being applied to the areas between the waves...

 
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I'm quite happy with them. The varying surface is quite reflective and catches the light at different angles, so it actually sparkles a little now, just like the real sea which is a very pleasing result :)
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