To the Continent ...

[Neil]

Since my last update I've been tackling more groundworks particularly on the small right hand board which up until now was bare apart from the track. I've both added a concrete quay edge and tarmac hardstanding and track infill. Though my researches into the quaysides of Ghent show that cobbles/setts/pave to most common, tarmac is not unprototypical and as I wanted to differentiate this area tarmac it is.

 

 

Whilst I waited for glue, air dry clay and paint to dry I took the opportunity to make a start on one of the other structures for the layout. Again it uses a resin cast facade, this time by Artitec. To allow for easy integration I've built the rest of the structure from plasticard but with a blank front wall pierced  with large openings so that the resin front can be stuck straight on.

 

 

 

 

 

[NHY 581]

This is all looking very nice, Neil. 

 

 

Rob. 

[Neil]

Thanks Rob, I feel that I'm slowly getting there. It's a more densely built up scene than I normally tackle, and the buildings are bigger and fancier too. I'm enjoying the fact that it's unfolding slowly. So far the measured approach has meant very few mistakes and blind alleys, which has been a big bonus.

[Re6/6]

Nice cobbling there Neil.

[Neil]

Since my last post I've been battling with representing water. Usually I get it right first go, this time it's taken four turns before I've got a finish I'm happy with but at least it's there now.

 

 

 

 

I've also went shopping on e-bay for one of those drinks company promotional lorries, a Mercedes Benz L322 and trailer. It's required some effort to get to this stage, rebuilding the rear hubs and dropping the load bed lower on the chassis, but I'm pleased with how it's coming along.

 

 

Stuff like this is very much my cup of tea and while it might seem to be faffing about with details I think it's just this sort of thing which gives a layout character.

 

 

[Neil]

I've managed to drag myself away from the car crash that is the announcement of the announcement thread for just long enough to put the Merc through the paint shop.

 

 

Since taking the photo I've tackled a bit of detail painting and managed to progress one of the waterfront buildings a little.  I post further photos when there's some more progress.

[Neil]

Now back in one piece. I still have some final fettling to do, but so far I'm reasonably happy with it and it's been fun getting to this stage.

 

[pinzaboy]

Neil

Only just come across this thread and what you have achieved is absolutely fantastic. Really enjoyed looking at the progress. 

Tim

[Neil]

Look back a few posts and you will notice a length of track dangling above a watercourse. It's been waiting more than a while to have a bridge fitted to properly span the gap. Over the last week or so I've been faffing away with bits of plasticard to do this.

 

 

As the gap to be filled tapers towards the rear I could exploit this and make the bridge as a unit which could be slid into place below the tracks before lifting up into position.  Here I'm part way through the build and testing for fit. Before final installation I though it would be a good idea to paint both the track and the bridge as they would otherwise be very tricky to do.

 

 

The graph paper offcut protects the river from drips and splashes of paint The bridge meanwhile has been painted at the workbench before being slid into place for the final time and fixed to the underside of the track (set track) by solvent welding.

 

 

It requires weathering and the approach tracks ballasting but trains now look a lot more secure traversing this stretch of line.

[NHY 581]

Splendid stuff Neil. 

 

This is all looking rather nice. 

 

 

Rob. 

[Neil]

Though the shipping office still needs some painting to complete I've made a start on another building, a small theatre or concert hall. The starting point was an Artitec facade, I think meant for a church though it has similarities in style to the municipal theatre in Bruges.

 

 

Whilst a lot of the work has been dome for me by the creatives at Artitec, I still needed to turn a low relief building flat into a full 3-D structure. Round the back I wanted something plainer and utilitarian to contrast with the showy front.

 

 

The side shown in the above photo is almost blank as it will butt up to buildings next door. The other side lies next to a bridge and while there will be a small gap the lower section will be hidden away in the gloom. For the upper section I wanted to depict a row of blind windows as the auditorium inside would be unlikely to have views to the outside.

 

[Neil]

The theatre/concert hall has been put on hold for a few days while I wait for a trip to Aberystwyth for an eye test and to visit Halfords to pick up a tin of white primer. In the meantime I've not been letting the grass grow under my feet, instead I've been growing it on the layout, in over and around the ballast of the few inches, sorry centimetres, of track that's not fully inset into the road surface.  Here's the sort of condition I was aiming for, a cropped screenshot from streetview of Ghent docks.

 

 

 

 

Here the track lies over a baseboard joint so I've split the boards and inserted a strip of silicone baking sheet so that I don't gum the whole ting up solid. In fact by the time the photo was taken the ballast had been glued in place and while still wet a mix of summer, autumn and winter fibres sprinkled on top.

 

 

Moving to the only other section of ballasted track, the mix of fibres are in place and they've had an application of dilute pva the same as the ballast the idea being to make sure that they're firmly attached so the don't become entangled in the working parts of the rolling stock.

 

 

The finished thing once the glue has fully set.

 

 

 

[Guest Jack Benson]

On 7 July 2019 at 17:20, Neil said:

 

Whilst a lot of the work has been done for me by the creatives at Artitec.

 

That would be Floris DilZ, also known for his industrial models.

 

Cheers

 

Jack

[Neil]

Thank you Jack, I already know of his work and had gathered there was some connection with Artitec. For those that don't check out this fantastic Belgian steelworks project of his.

[Neil]

You may have wondered what I was going to do here in order to get the tributary to disappear off scene.

 

 

Well you wouldn't have been the only one as it had been on my mind too. The initial idea had been for some form of culvert until I remembered this bridge on the approach to Minnewaterpark in Bruges. Out from my stores came the Triang Hornby brick overbridge and out from my toolbox came the razor saw. A bit of cutting, faffing and sticking later I have the basis of a similar bridge.

 

 

 

[Mikkel]

That made an already interesting scene even more attractive. Grand buildings are all very well but features like these really capture the eye, I think.

[Neil]

Activity on the layout is being ramped up for it's second exhibition appearance over the August bank holiday weekend. so far I've completed the basics of the theatre and finished the weathering on the class 81. Occupying a place on my workbench is the first half of the remaining area of pavement.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[SteveyDee68]

On 17/12/2016 at 19:33, Neil said:

For the past year I've been without a permanent layout, my last project Morfa having been dismantled in January. It went because we planned to move and while there was some sadness the overriding emotion was excitement at the prospect of a blank canvass. With the move likely to happen early in the new year it's time to start marshalling all the pleasant possibilities into a coherent-ish concept. Given that model railways are essentially escapism thoughts have crystallised around escaping from the dreadful head up 'arris, little Englander, inward looking stance which seems to have infested our country the latter half of this year. 

 

These days I find St Pancras to be the most exciting station in the UK, not because of its architecture or the trains but because of what it represents, travel to the rest of Europe. There's something magical about setting off from the familiar by train and ending up somewhere like this.

 

 

Now I'm not really a modeller of the current scene, but London has always been a  gateway to Europe with trains like the Golden Arrow and the Night Ferry. The setting of the next layout, London, has almost chosen itself. The era will be the sixties, a time when the continent was generally held to embody glamour and mystique, though it's likely that my enthusiasms for stuff earlier and later will burst out of the straitjacket of true fidelity. 

 

However we've yet to move so to keep my hand in and to get a bit of a head start, I've started putting a few pieces of stock together. In keeping with the European theme I've taken a couple of the old Triang Hornby ferry vans and given them a bit of a make over. My pair came at a bargain price being liveried in white and marked up for Transfesa and Fyfes.

 

 

To cut a long story short I fixed the doors closed, got rid of the lower runners, filed off the circular thing at the centre of the roof, fixed and lowered the swivelling axles, arranged the couplings to pivot, swapped the Triang tension locks for Bachmann, dropped in new Hornby metal wheels and fabricated the missing anchor points on the underframes. The bodies were resprayed with rattle cans before applying transfers by Railtec.

 

 

Note that the van above is missing the right hand anchor point, the yellow painted projections on the solebar. At first I thought I'd boobed and carved them off in mistake when I was removing the door runners. However on checking photos of pristine, unmolested vans it seems that Triang never moulded them in the first place. The lower van shows my fabricated remedy, the upper van also now sports a full set of anchor points.

 

Okay, this post is three years old but it is responsible for me now searching out ferry vans! Any chance of any more details as to how you altered the wagon, so I can do the same?!

Steve

[SteveyDee68]

Looking back on your thread you mention discrepancies in size of HO stock - I just won a bunch of stuff off the Bay of Fleas including a STEF van which all looked big, but on your layout look true HO. Did Lima produce outsize wagons generally, or just the "ferry vans"?

[Neil]

21 hours ago, SteveyDee68 said:

Looking back on your thread you mention discrepancies in size of HO stock - I just won a bunch of stuff off the Bay of Fleas including a STEF van which all looked big, but on your layout look true HO. Did Lima produce outsize wagons generally, or just the "ferry vans"?

The honest answer is that I'm not sure. I have an oversize Fleischman van and an early Rivarossi Italian 2-6-0 which has similar issues. I also believe that many HO carriages dating from the sixties and seventies were shorter than scale length. All a bit of a minefield.

[Fat Controller]

10 minutes ago, Neil said:

The honest answer is that I'm not sure. I have an oversize Fleischman van and an early Rivarossi Italian 2-6-0 which has similar issues. I also believe that many HO carriages dating from the sixties and seventies were shorter than scale length. All a bit of a minefield.

Lots of 1960s/70s H0 passenger stock was under length; the figure I heard quoted was 1/100 scale for length, against 1/87 for everything else, so about 10% under length. This would give less overhang on 'train-set' curves, though whether this was the reason, I couldn't say.

[Neil]

On 04/08/2019 at 22:08, SteveyDee68 said:

Okay, this post is three years old but it is responsible for me now searching out ferry vans! Any chance of any more details as to how you altered the wagon, so I can do the same?!

Steve

 

There's a little more on another web forum I haunt (Western Thunder) though the only significant difference is that I show the fabrication of the missing anchor point. Fortunately I have an unaltered ferry van so I've taken a few photos to further illustrate what I did.

 

Roof alteration. I filed away the circular thing from the middle of the roof. I assume it's something to do with the moulding process.

 

 

Centre and right hand solebar. To get rid of the ugly lower door runners the body needs to be removed from the chassis. I cut off as much as I could of the runners with side cutters but as can be seen  from the close up they also intrude into the solebar area. I used a burr in my pendant drill to get rid of the bulk of the remaining moulding and finished with file and emery paper. The doors will no longer slide and need to be glued in place onto the body side.

 

 

 

To the left of the door there's a square hole in the body moulding which a locating tab on the chassis fits into. I thinned down the locating tab and filled the hole with a square of plasticard finishing with filler.

 

 

Underneath the single axle bogies were cut to separate the coupler arm from the axle box and springs unit. The axle unit was glued into place. the coupling arm was arranged to pivot on a self tapping screw. At the same time I replaced the large Hornby coupling with a smaller Bachmann example. Still to do some years on is to devise some means of restricting coupler swing preferably to give a degree of self centering.

 

 

Finally I painted the body before final fitting to the chassis, applied transfers and fixed with a coat of Testors Dullcote.

[Neil]

Back to the layout, I have a couple of photos of recent work, a concrete sectional fence to separate the quay from the adjacent industry.

 

 

 

Finally for today, another portrait of the 81, this time in glorious technicolour.

 

 

 

 

 

[Re6/6]

Looking good Neil. It has a nice feel to it.

[Neil]

Yesterday I took the layout into the garage where I could set it up against a plain sky blue backdrop. For the first time I was able to take shots without all the background clutter of my upstairs playroom getting in the way.