Castle Aching

[nick_bastable]

I now fear for our leader 72 hours and no posts 

 

Nick

[ChrisN]

Yes, I have not seen him around the threads either.

 

18" narrow gauge.  Busch do their own H0f, both track and R-T-R.  European outline of course, but the difference is not as much for diesel/petrol locos.

[Nearholmer]

Spotted this in the charity bookshop window, and thought of this thread.

 

An impeccably well-informed source tells me that The Chairman of CA Parish Council is alive, and well, but otherwise engaged at present.

 

Kevin

[Donw]

Glad to hear our host is well

Don

[nick_bastable]

Glad to hear our host is well

Don

no posts from our leader for a week I fear special branch may have arrested him with all the talk of explosives

 

NIck

[Donw]

no posts from our leader for a week I fear special branch may have arrested him with all the talk of explosives

 

NIck

 

Or he has been seconded to MI5

Don

[phil_sutters]

Spotted this in the charity bookshop window, 

Seems like good diversion to go on while the railway engineer and town planner is otherwise engaged and another possible way of upsetting the authorities.

Edited March 29, 2017 by phil_sutters

[Clearwater]

Spotted this in the charity bookshop window, and thought of this thread.

An impeccably well-informed source tells me that The Chairman of CA Parish Council is alive, and well, but otherwise engaged at present.

Kevin

Excellent news. I was hoping his exchange of views on another thread hadn't hindered his desire to continue his excellent and informative posts. Do pass him my best

 

David

[Edwardian]

Sorry for the sudden and prolonged absence.  A little melodramatic for my taste.

 

I am snowed under with work, would you believe, and parental visits have claimed any time that might have been free, so no progress.  This all coincided with the need to take a break, but I hope to be back to modelling soon and posting sooner.

 

Best wishes to you all and thank you for your patience and kind thoughts.

[Donw]

Sorry for the sudden and prolonged absence.  A little melodramatic for my taste.

 

I am snowed under with work, would you believe, and parental visits have claimed any time that might have been free, so no progress.  This all coincided with the need to take a break, but I hope to be back to modelling soon and posting sooner.

 

Best wishes to you all and thank you for your patience and kind thoughts.

 

Apologies if it seemed I was pressing you but having just been unwell and then hearing no more I feared you were feeling worse. Not that there was much I could do if you were.  Anyway glad it was just life getting in the way. All the best.

Don

[Edwardian]

 

The GER Teak Coaches can be seen at my RMWeb thingy

'C Davy's 7mm GER pre-Grouping Workbench'

As posted there the colour is very thinned Phoenix Precision Paints 'LNER Teak' over Halfords Vauxhall Mustard Yellow spray can. The apparent difference in colour between the 6-Wheel Brake Third and the close-up of the clerestory bogie coach is solely

 due to the overexposure of the negative (yes, it was a negative!) of the Brake Third.

I'm still concerned about the degree of enlargement of the clerestory coach as it brings out all the bad points of my painting. It doesn't look too bad in real life, honest!

Colin

 

   

 

 

A lot of good stuff for me still to catch up on, but despite distractions, there have been 'doings' in deepest Norfolk, though not especially photogenic ones.

 

First, though, I really must extend both thanks and apologies to Colin Davy of this parish, in reference to his post above.

 

Sometime ago, I cobbled together a sort of 'data sheet' of GE livery, and image searches found pictures of what I realise now are Colin's superb 7mm stock. I have posted cropped details to illustrate panelling and colour, not realising that I was rudely failing to credit a community member. 

 

So, may I apologise to Colin, thank him for popping up and posting and telling us how he gets his colour, and refer CA Parishioners to his work-bench topic, which features the coaches in question along with plenty of other really exquisite stuff I'd not seen before, including a T26, and, my GER loco of choice for CA, the No.1 class little Sharpie: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/3466-c-davys-7mm-ger-pre-grouping-workbench/

 

In the meantime, some progress has been made in prepping the layout's intended home.  The concrete floor under the baseboard location has now been sealed with PVA, as have the adjacent lower walls, and a number of large and quite alarming holes in the masonry have been filled in with expandable foam in a can.  Such Larks!

If you have never had an occasion to use expandable foam, I recommend you find one, because it's huge fun.  Like squirty cream.

 

The next phase will be to create an air-gap between the wall and a layer of insulation, up to layout height, and I will store boxes under the boards, kept off the ground with pallets.  This, I hope, will be adequate to keep damp at bay.

 

The next phase will be to install insulation between the rafters to keep the heat in.  I don't have the funds for this at present, and must wait until the autumn to ensure that any nesting birds have departed!  The plan was to have a room for the layout ready before the onset of winter 2016-2017.  The plan is now to have the room ready before the onset of winter 2017-2018.

 

This does not prevent work on the boards, of which I now have 2, in the meantime, as I can do this indoors, one board at a time.  I plan to move onto construction of the remaining 2 boards within the next two-three weeks.  Then I shall proceed to track laying.

 

(I may will need some help when it gets to wiring).  

[Nearholmer]

Good news.

 

I've never used the expanding foam for it's intended purpose, but can vouch for its usefulness making scenery. Needs a bit of care, though, because it expands more than might be expected, and sticks like the proverbial, to anything. Make sure any nearby track, for instance, is covered with a sacrificial sheet of newspaper.

 

K

Edited April 3, 2017 by Nearholmer

[Edwardian]

Spotted this in the charity bookshop window, and thought of this thread.

 

An impeccably well-informed source tells me that The Chairman of CA Parish Council is alive, and well, but otherwise engaged at present.

 

Kevin

What a wonderful picture, and more than a passing resemblance ....

 

Like the real CA, all it needs is a railway line!

[Edwardian]

 

Hurst Castle is Interesting but quite a long walk out to it I think it is nearer in this photo taken from near to Fort Victoria

 

hurstCastle.jpg

 

 

There is also this place 

 

 

Pembury Country Park is on the site of an old armaments store some interesting structures and bits of track and there is a minature railway on the site run by a local MES at weekends I think.

 

It started as a Dynamite factory in Victorian times was producing TNT for WWI and WWII there was a connection to the GWR at Pembury on site were standard and narrow gauge lines. Some tracks of both are still to be see buried in tarmac.

 

Don

 

 

Brilliant pictures, Don.

 

Hurst Castle and Fort Nelson.  Not with steam traction  ... but I could change that!

 

(though maybe not so close to the magazines!)

[Edwardian]

Some progress, and a trip out!

 

I have now made the 2 rear, purely scenic, frames for CA.  The first frame was modified so that one end is narrower. This is the better to incorporate a point leading the goods yard. Also now visible on the first board are Edwardian's Patent Leg Pockets, into which the rear legs will slot in due course.  The first board is now ready for scenification. 

 

Yesterday,however, I spent a jolly day out at the York show.  One of the layouts I was taken with was St Martins Wharf, a Light Railway in East Anglia, in 7 mil.  I know I keep saying that the West Norfolk isn't a Light Railway (because it isn't), but I thought something of Colonel Stephens out of the East wouldn't go amiss here.

 

 

[Compound2632]

Some progress, and a trip out!

 

I have now made the 2 rear, purely scenic, frames for CA.  The first frame was modified so that one end is narrower. This is the better to incorporate a point leading the goods yard. Also now visible on the first board are Edwardian's Patent Leg Pockets, into which the rear legs will slot in due course.  The first board is now ready for scenification. 

 

Yesterday,however, I spent a jolly day out at the York show.  One of the layouts I was taken with was St Martins Wharf, a Light Railway in East Anglia, in 7 mil.  I know I keep saying that the West Norfolk isn't a Light Railway (because it isn't), but I thought something of Colonel Stephens out of the East wouldn't go amiss here.

 

How had the Colonel come to have abducted a Midland Railway Stores Sleepers wagon? Maybe not so light a railway after all but a cunning Derby plan to push a finger deeper into the Great Eastern's pie?

[Nearholmer]

With these baseboards, Mr Edwardian, you are really spoiling us!

 

The Birlstone Silver Band are already practising their rendition of "See the Conquering Hero Comes", in the hope that they will be invited to perform at the opening ceremony, with the Washbourne Orpheans providing the chorale.

 

In the mean time, here is something with both a band, and a railway, in it. The tune is exceedingly good. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BVUTfA427EM

 

Kevin

Edited April 16, 2017 by Nearholmer

[Edwardian]

With these baseboards, Mr Edwardian, you are really spoiling us!

 

The Birlstone Silver Band are already practising their rendition of "See the Conquering Hero Come", in the hope that they will be invited to perform at the opening ceremony.

 

Kevin

 

Excellent, and thanks; the Birlstone boys will be most welcome.

 

I plan to make the board in front of the castle next, as this will carry merely plain track.  Thanks to March's edition of RM, I will be able to plot a simple transition curve in and out of what was otherwise to be a plain 3' radius curve.  My chief engineer, Mr Equilibrium Cant, insists that I include super-elevation, but I worry that, at West Norfolk speeds, this will merely result in the locomotive falling over. 

 

It strikes me that this will involve cutting the first sod, an event that must have taken place at some point in the mid to late 1850s, so I think we may be asking the current Lord Erstwhile's grandmother to wield the silver shovel.  A perfect excuse to break out the Stadden 1860s-1860s figures.   

 

First, though, the scenifying of the main/castle village board.

Edited April 16, 2017 by Edwardian

[Northroader]

That's a very competent level of chippy-ness, if I may say so.

[Edwardian]

That's a very competent level of chippy-ness, if I may say so.

 

Thank you, that is kind, though I suspect distance lends precision to the scene!

 

Creeping into shot of the village have been some glimpses of the castle mound.  This is the linchpin of the scene, and, as everything must be planned around it, it should be the first thing to place on the boards.

 

I have tried to make part of a hill in perspective.  In fact, it is really only a quarter slice of the pie, as it were, but, by tightening the curvature of the mound towards the rear of the layout, I hope to add perspective and make it look as if more of the hill is depicted than its footprint might suggest.

 

To manage the shape I used foam-board profiles, radiating from the centre of the hill.  Rather than the traditional card lattice, I filled the gaps between the spines with pizza bases.  I hoped to fill in between the spines with Polyfilla, but this left the spines all too visible and with depressions in between.

 

I had been very happy, however, with the overall shape and height, but recently decided that at the correct layout viewing height, it sat a little low and looked a bit weedy.

 

So, I resolved upon a thick layer of papier-mâché to cover the spines and bulk out the mound.  I reckon the hill gained about a quarter of an inch of fat covering its bones and I am happy with the result.

 

The next stage was to fit the mound onto the baseboard frame.  Having done so, the scenic work can begin.  As a base-layer, I painted the hill with dilute PVA and added a layer of sand.  

 

The next stage will be to coat the hill in paint and a base-layer of grass in the form of flock, various.  

Edited April 17, 2017 by Edwardian

[Edwardian]

I thought I would mix up a light earth colour to coat the sand. Then I thought, "why not mix PVA in with the paint, then you can scatter the flock immediately afterwards?"  So I did.

 

For flock I mixed a variety of shades and grades of scatter material (old stuff from my childhood layout days, before static grass was invented) and bulked it out with some (undyed) tea leaves, and a few bits of Woodland Scenics coarse turf. So, while the jury's still out on my valley, I can say that my hill is now pretty green.

 

To give the PVA/paint mix a bit of top down assistance, I unloaded most of a can of cheap hairspray over it.  I took it outside first, because I had not troubled to buy the perfume-less variety.  This seemed to work, because when the Memsahib returned from the stables, there were no comments such as "why does the dining room smell like a tart's boudoir?".  So I think I got away with it, and it seems to have secured the flock nicely.

 

The path down will need building up, once I work out where on the enceinte the gate will be.

 

Next on the list is to secure a plant mister.  The idea being to go over the whole with dilute PVA before sowing some static grass.

[uax6]

Looking a bit stone circle around a long barrow at the minute, what are the upright standing stones for please?

 

Andy g

[Bedders]

Looking a bit stone circle around a long barrow at the minute, what are the upright standing stones for please?

 

Andy g

 

Human sacrifice

[Edwardian]

Looking a bit stone circle around a long barrow at the minute, what are the upright standing stones for please?

 

Andy g

 

They mark the course of the enceinte wall, so I know where to put it in due course.

 

No mystic druidical sacrifices.  Just the Norman Yoke.

[nick_bastable]

gosh be careful  its beginning to look like a railway in the landscape

 

are you sure no sacrifices took place if only to get the paper-mache to dry ?

 

well done on some excellent progress

 

Nick