Stockrington - Mojo ignited. Thanks, Heljan!

[jukebox]

[David Todd]

Apologies for the hiatus - life has rather gotten in the way of hobbies as the year drew to a close.

 

I had three major closures to manage over October to December, which kept me away from Stockrington, but did let me get some lovely shots like these:

 

2910a.jpg

 

1012c.jpg

 

0912a.jpg

 

1112c.jpg

 

I had a clean up around the layout, as I want to complete the chicken wire skeleton all the way around, then move into plastering - not have to "swap trades" every few days.  I've bought a few extra lengths of pine and will make the frame for the large hill in the North East corner, hopefully this coming weekend.

 

I have two week annual leave from Friday, and so that should hopefully see a nice push into new territory.

 

Cheers

 

Scott

Pretty realistic mate ! Where did ya buy them from ?

[jukebox]

Pretty realistic mate ! Where did ya buy them from ?

 

I know a fella at the 12"-to-the-ft shop, dt....

 

It might be telling tales out of school, but to (almost) end the year on a humorous note: When the contractor got 2/3 of the way through building the trackwork prior to the first shut, he realised he was running low on pads, biscuits, and pandrol clips.  Turned out, no one had remembered it was dual gauge track, they were 1/3 short of all jewellery, and there was a mad scramble to find the shortfall.        There were lots of mad scrambles, actually,  but as I am now on annual leave, I chose not to remember any more of them. 

[jukebox]

Well Christmas Day is more than halfway gone here in Perth, with just three hours of daylight left.

 

Santa was thrift-fully responsible this year, and only at the last minute pounced on a Q6 on sale at rails for under £80.

 

My Christmas miracle was that it arrived safely on Friday afternoon.

 

 

There was never a question of not getting one of these - I could do with a second in late livery. Just a question of price.  I will be going to town with the weathering on this one - a nice burnt smokebox door, and plenty of muck.

 

 

It does look the part... dwarfed by the bridge abutments

 

 

One day I will be able to properly recreate the iconic scene of one crossing Monkwearmouth Bridge.

 

Merry Christmas everyone.

 

Cheers

 

Scott

 

[jukebox]

After spending the "free" moments over the last week cobbling together a skeleton of timber, some styrofoam contours, and chickenwire bones to hand the lot off, yesterday marked a big milestone for Stockrington: the commencement of terraforming proper.

 

I started with the biggest hill on the layout, in, appropriately enough, the North Eastern corner.  This was because it will be the least visible, and as I've not done this trade before, if what I produced didn't look so good, it is the least visible area.

 

 

My framework isn't as battleship inspired as Jeff's over at KL (I took a good long look at both his KL and KL2 threads as a refresher on how to do plaster scenery - if you are planning on doing any, you should, too!). I decided that I'd never be climbing on this, and especially in this corner, the shapes I'm dealing with - a curved backscene meeting the inside corner of a layout - meant I'd sort of have to make it up as I went along.  Essentially it's uprights coming off the cross members from the L-girders, supporting wither goalposts at the edges, or a platform of ply at the top, which then uses wedges of styrene to break up the flatness.

 

 

The plan (in my head) was to end up with a landscape at the top of the hill that mimics the backscene I'd painted.  From the top, the detail gets lost in the monotone of the plaster

 

 

But when viewed from the side, and this is about eye level when you stand looking at the layout, the effect has worked pretty much as I'd hoped

 

 

This was about an hour's work yesterday - really just a test section to find out the tricks and trips that can occur.

 

I used a mix of 50/50 PVA and water, added brown poster paint, and then topped up with Hydrocal to make a slurry to dip strips of bedsheet in.  It's very messy going - there is no chance for photos on the go, I'm afraid - and my "dipping tray" was a chinese takeaway container, so only held enough slurry to last three or four strips.  But any larger tray, and I think the mix would go stiff and be useless.  Today I'm off to buy a couple of cheap buckets - I need to have something I hand wash my hands in between batches (the walk through the house to the nearest hand basin, covered in PVA/paint/Plaster was a bit fraught trying not to touch anything).

 

Using the sheets worked well - this morning they have dried to a nice hard, thin shell.  The plan is to cover these with a ~10mm layer of plaster to smooth the contours.  I have a series of rockface castings I have made (using Woodland scenics moulds), and I'll integrate these into that layer.  Once trick/catch is to make sure I have enough space for these when I form the vertical faces - so I need to "build" the shell contours back from the finished face.

 

The slope down to the large river will use a lot of those castings.  I guess I could plan how that will work, but to be honest, and this may not work for everyone, I just need to get the area covered in this thin shell. Once I have that done, the "geology" of what I have created will be more obvious to me, and will dictate where I need rock face and where I can have a smooth area of grass or littoral material.

 

 

The extreme left of the above photo is a perfect example of this: the chicken wire didn't sit as I'd expected, but this now presents an ideal place to use a small rock face, which should then provide a logical transition from rolling hills to the rather twee, but necessary, rock cuttings that surround a tunnel portal.

 

Cheers

 

Scott

Edited December 30, 2017 by jukebox

[Andrew P]

Coming on well Scott, Love your new Loco, very nice indeed.

[danstercivicman]

Looking great!

[jukebox]

Happy New Year, everyone.

 

I'm not ashamed to say, I spent New Year's Eve getting utterly plastered.  And by the time I was done, it was coming on to 11pm, so I had time for a cold rinse, and was able to watch the rebroadcast of the Sydney fireworks.

 

 

I think I made four batches of plaster all up - I got a rhythm going, and have the mix proportions down pat, so it was a solid evening's work. 

 

It became quite a tactile experience - as I got going, I could feel the plaster impregnating the bed-sheet material between by fingers, and it became self evident when the individual piece of material was at saturation and ready for placement.

 

My work station includes two buckets of water - one for the first wash, to get the worst off my hands between batches. The second is clean water, where I can rinse my hands further still, when I need to grab tools or do another task between batches.  The system works quite well.

 

I had the house to myself, and knew I would not be interrupted, so targeted the areas that needed some concentration and fineseese, where the landscape meets the trackbed.

 

 

I finished my first bottle of poster paint, so moved to a different brand - this one seems to get better coverage

 

 

It doesn't really matter for this layer - though I'll probably want to go more "earthy": for the top coat, so may add a touch of black,

 

 

Bringing the landform across the valley is really starting to make the layout feel real.  Things I've seen in my minds eye are now materialising.

 

 

The protection managed to keep the trackbed clean, which is a plus.  I've done some more work this morning, but have paused for now, as I want to make the two tunnel portals and fit them, so I can bring the contours down and around them.

 

I'll also need to come along with some cut off discs in my Dremel, and nip some of the chickenwire close to the tracks back a bit.  Now the embankments and cuttings are formed, there's no need to secure it everywhere, so if it is sitting high - which it is in some places -  I'll do some local surgery, and re-apply patch bandages so it comes in closer to level with, rather than above, the rail level.

 

Cheers

 

Scott

Edited January 1, 2018 by jukebox

[jukebox]

Enjoying being off work this week - it's meant I can hook into stuff without delay.

 

I didn't want to dwell too much on the tunnel portals; they aren't supposed to be features.  But it did send me back to my companion computer folder "Stockrington Reference (Material)" for the first time in ages (I have a partition on my hard drive for all my hobby stuff, and there's two main folders for the model railways "Stockington Construction" - where all my layout build photos are stored - and "Stockrington Reference").  Inside the reference folder are sub folders by subject; bridges, loco classes, level crossings, large stations, etc etc - each one full of photos I've saved off the internet, to aid my very long distance attempt to recreate a slice of North East England, and so to use as references "someday". Yesterday was the "Tunnel" someday.

 

There's a good bit of variety in the shape of tunnel portals - and it seems to have evolved over the years.  I have a penchant for the ovoid looking ones - I'm sure they have a proper name - but there are also ones that are much stubbier, and more recently ones that are circular.  But ovoid over double track, leaving a large air gap above, assumedly for smoke dissipation, was my choice.

 

Now these seem to be uniquely built from brick.  And thematically, on one side of the hill at least, that makes sense, as the portal is close to my brick bridge.  The other leads onto the large bridge, but will be less visible, so I wasn't too worried by the contradiction.

 

I used artist mounting board for the first time - up till now I've wrestled with plywood.  The foam core is so much easier to work with - when it comes time to build the terrace houses to populate the West bank, life will be a lot simpler than if I use plywood.  But I still plan to use ply for the engine shed, and the station building.  I've still got some lingering doubt about the longevity of the mounting board, and it's long term propensity not to warp, given the variations in temperature in the railway room.  But for a tunnel portal, it should be just fine. No rocket science in this effort: I cut the shapes, and used construction adhesive to glue a laminate of brick card over the top.

 

 

Right now the glue is drying on the tunnel liners that go back around 70mm.  Once they are fully cured, I'll need to take them upstairs and nibble a little of the cutting away to get them to sit nicely.

 

After they are checked for coach overhang clearance (which I've already had a quick shot and and all seems fine) I'll paint these up to mimic the bridge brickwork.

 

Then they can be placed, and the land forming can proceed.

 

Cheers

 

Scott

 

 

[jcredfer]

Didn't know you were Israeli?       

 

Regards

 

Julian

[jukebox]

Didn't know you were Israeli?     

 

Regards

 

Julian

 

You don't know how badly I want to drop a politically incorrect reply here right now, Julian!

 

The last time that happened on a modelling forum, I ended up packing up my bat and ball and moving here...

[jcredfer]

Yep, me too  ....    clasps mouth tightly with both hands!

 

Kind regards

 

Julian

 

Actually, it might be totally politically correct, but just not done!  

[jukebox]

Onward we go.

 

Lest you think all this stuff is ad hoc, and I wing everything, a couple of examples of forethought today.

 

I knew it would be nigh on impossible to work behind the big bridge, so when I installed it, I made the electrical connection with a plug.  And today I removed the span so I could work on the East Bank and abutment.

 

 

It looks a bit rough, but I was being very careful not to wipe a plaster impregnated strip across my neatly weathered abutment.  I managed to get most of the area done - just a bit of sheer face on the right approach needs more material, which I'll get to tomorrow.

 

I painted the portals up, and used them to test clearances.  They still need to have some smoke stains added - that's an airbrush job, possibly for tomorrow.

 

 

A little nibbling of the hillside with the Dremel on the lower right hand side, and I was able to get them sitting right - they are just placed loosely for the photo; once properly weathered, I'll plaster them in place.

 

 

The other bit of planning is access to the rear corner.  I'd love to complete this corner, but to get to the back, I stand on the L-girders, where the green "X"'s are in the next photo.  The red lines show the edge of the hill contours in this corner.  If I bring that plaster work all the way to the front, I'm pretty sure I will struggle to reach the back to do static grass, plant trees, fences etc.  So I'll stop short to give my feet somewhere to stay, and finish the corner when I come back to do the front of the layout on this side of the room.

 

 

And one final example of planning, I got some sheet strips ready for tomorrow.  I've actually set these up in a dry run to be sure I have coverage - running out of sheet strips whilst the pot of plaster is setting is a recipe for a mess.  That fetching butterfly pattern disappears under the poster paint and plaster mix.

 

 

I used cotton sheets for the majority of the hill and valley, but switched to old tee shirts for the bridge approach.  The thicker material behaved quite differently, and soaked up a lot more plaster, which I guess was the plan.  I want that area to be a bit more rigid, as I'll be sticking plaster rock moulds to it, and a lot of it is just hanging material, that dries into a sheer wall face, so I figured it could do with the extra strength.

 

 

Even with the think cotton sheet, the PVA + Plaster seems to be working well; I wouldn't lean all my weight on it. but certainly can store tools and material on it as I progress.

 

Cheers

 

Scott

Edited January 4, 2018 by jukebox

[Buhar]

Crikey, Scott, you're really cracking on and it makes such a difference to the feeling of progress.  I hope the planning pays off and you don't end up with items needed in inaccessible places otherwise you'll need to rig a harness and dangle in there.

[David Todd]

Crikey, Scott, you're really cracking on and it makes such a difference to the feeling of progress.  I hope the planning pays off and you don't end up with items needed in inaccessible places otherwise you'll need to rig a harness and dangle in there.

 

He'll be fine, with all that Ikea training behind him.

[jukebox]

Crikey, Scott, you're really cracking on and it makes such a difference to the feeling of progress.  I hope the planning pays off and you don't end up with items needed in inaccessible places otherwise you'll need to rig a harness and dangle in there.

 

Yes, it's been a big week - I have been trying to get three 60-90 min sessions a day in upstairs, just to keep things moving.  That's been broken up a bit by needing to make then paint the portal, but now that's done, and I've a couple more days left before I head back to work. I'll be pushing onward.  

 

Not planning on hiring Tom Cruise to do any Mission Impossible style harness work - but I now do have to give proper thought how to finish the top of the mountain, before I build myself out.  That will slow me down, as I've not got a static grass applicator, nor any flock yet, so while I'm doing some research, watching some how-to Youtube's, and visiting the large hobby store in Perth to see some materials first hand, I'll keep working my way around the layout with the plaster shell.

 

 

He'll be fine, with all that Ikea training behind him.

 

It's a bit like yoga or tai chi, actually, dt.  The railway room is rather humid, what with wet plaster, and buckets of water.  I have a couple of "painting shirts" that are rather heavy, and after 90 mins they are soaked from within.

 

The things we do in the name of our hobby, right?

 

Cheers

 

Scott

Edited January 5, 2018 by jukebox

[jukebox]

I fired up the airbrush this morning, and dusted on some smoke.  It took me longer to set up the compressor, and clean the airbrush after, than it did to paint, but I do like the way the airbrush lays paint down.  I know there are brush painters who can get a result similar to this, but for me, this is a godsend

 

 

No more butterflies - although I ran out of the brown poster paint, so this batch of plaster was a tad grey:

 

 

This view shows why there's a tunnel here - it hides most of the tight 110+ degree curve leading around to the bridge very well.

 

***

 

This afternoon I had my first shot at adding a plaster skin over the top.

 

 

I mixed two batches, and am now using acrylic interior room paint, blended in measured quantities, so the finish should be consistent from here on in.

 

 

It was very fresh when I took these photos - still wet and shiny.

 

I made two large (by my measure) batches, and they barely covered the hill - less than 5mm skim.  I'm in two minds on this - now I've used up two of the 2L buckets I was storing Hydrocal in, I *could* use one of those to make bigger batches of plaster.  I'll see how the thin layers play out first.  This one got a brushed finish while wet, and seems to look the part.  I'll need to sort out some rock castings to complete this part - so there's lots to do, even if I don't plough on with the cloth shell.

 

Cheers

 

Scott

Edited January 5, 2018 by jukebox

[jukebox]

Another day, more plaster under the fingernails.

 

I thought I'd show a little of the prep and materials, as photos of plastering is, well, almost as monotonous as plastering.

 

Here's the set up:

 

 

The white bucket on the benchtop is 5kg of decanted Hydrocal (from the 20kg bags I bought in bulk - none of this fannying around with 1kg of Woodland Scenics cartons when you have a room to populate!)

 

Lots of pre cut strips of sheet - I cut three sizes: rectangles for big coverage, long thin strips to do edges, and small rectangles to fill in the holes that always seem to be left when I place big rectangles on the odd shaped hills I have.  The black bucket up top is "brown water" for washing hands, brushes, and tubs, the one on the floor clear water, for rinsing my hands.

 

 

 

Brown water bucket on the left, two sized tubs for batching plaster. I used to use the low tub for dipping strips, and the high tub for the skim mix; I've simplified after today, and now will just use the deep tubs, as it's easier to mix the batches in those.  The PVA is diluted 1:1 with water, and the second bottle is water fo me to tweak the stiffness of the batch before I use it.  Those are sample pots of paint, with my glyphs on top to show I needs two parts of one and three parts of the other, using that plastic shot cup.  The old towel is to wipe my hands as I go... and to mop up if there's an accidental spill.

 

 

 

Here's this morning's worksite.  The tracks are covered loosely in strips of an old shirt, so protect against dripping plaster.

 

 

 

20 mins later, the first tub is all used up.

 

 

 

You can see one of those pesky triangle gaps that seem to appear.  I'll get that with my next batch of plaster.

 

 

 

another 30 mins and the second batch for the morning is down.

 

 

 

I've reached the South East corner, and those holes are now filled in...

 

 

 

The whole mixing paint shades thing was driving me crazy.  I have a *long* way to go, and really can't waste time pretending to be Tom Cruise (in Cocktail, this time!), two parts this... three parts that...  so I bit the bullet, went to the hardware store, and bought 4L of paint.  I still need to measure the amount I use in each batch, but it's one less thing to worry about (till now, I'd started with poster paint in tubes, then bottles, but that gets a tad pricey; this house paint works out at less than $10/L, and the consistency of shade is priceless. I'll keep the tubes for rock faces, and detail painting)

 

 

 

One last "dipping" batch this afternoon gets me around the corner onto the South wall.  This is a small embankment, that will lead to a retaining wall behind Stockrington Station.  You can see as I worked toward the right, and the distance to the backscene reduced, the cloth was starting to fight being hung here...

 

 

 

And my last batch for the afternoon was a skim batch, as I wanted to cover the multi-hued output from the start of the work a week ago.

 

 

 

This batch covered all the hill and the meadow back to the river, and makes a big difference, being one shade now.

 

The room Stockrington is in is 7m long (23ft in old money), and now there is landform end to end, it is quite satisfying walking through the door.  I'm pleased how even with only the "rear" side in place, it is starting to look like a mainline in the landscape - which was the main driver being me choosing L-girder construction way back when I started. I wanted to avoid having a "flat earth", and after this week, I can see I've succeeded on that count.  Once I build up the front of the embankment leading to the river, and the cutting back from that, I'm confident there are going to be some great photo opportunities revealed.

 

Cheers

 

Scott

Edited January 5, 2018 by jukebox

[gordon s]

That second last pic is looking great.  Just love to see flowing curves in wide open countryside...

 

I found the same re paint and mixing stuff.  Our local paint shop has one of these fancy machines (spectrophotometer?) for analysing colours and then matching them, so I played around with Humbrol's etc to get a basic track colour I wanted.  Painted it onto a piece of wood and the guys were able to give me 2.5L of matt emulsion in minutes for a fraction of the cost.

 

As you have found, perfect matching every time and no need for mixing.

 

Good stuff!

[jukebox]

Thanks Gordon - late Saturday here, and I can see I won't get all the way around the room before I head back to work on Monday, but I do have another week of leave scheduled for March...

 

(actually, as I hinted at earlier, where I'm at now opens up a lot of possibilities work-wise: I can mix up and spread a batch of skimming plaster in an hour, so can do one of those on a weeknight after work, working my way around the East wall;  I also will need to bulk cast some rocks - now that I have one side of the big river gorge roughed out, I can see just how many of those I need, and will want to paint them up in a batch, so they all have a similar tone).

 

I'm thinking I will actually draw up a landscaping plan for the hills - and that will steer me towards ground covers, fencing vs. herbaceous borders, and even trees... a couple of nice willows would be a good way to disguise the brook meeting the backscene.  I also want to use the meadow beside the brook in a logical manner - a small cottage, perhaps?

 

***

 

I fitted the portals and bonded them in place this evening - after a fair bit of juggling to get the clearances right.  

 

The other task was to decant the paint from the 4L can into 1.25l bottles - trying to measure out 100ml at a time from the paint tin was asking for trouble.  After four batches doing that, I knew I needed a Plan C.

 

Cheers

 

Scott

Edited January 6, 2018 by jukebox

[jukebox]

Well it's been a big nine days, and I've taken my foot off the pedal today, to start to get focussed for my 4:45am work alarm routine.

 

The tunnel portals are glued in place; I used the wing walls on the meadow side only - my logic being this side will have earth embankment approaches, and therefore needed wing walls - the river side will have sheer rock faces, and therefore wing walls would not have been needed.

 

 

I'll need to fill in behind the walls with a thick plaster slurry - and pack around the base as well.

 

 

 

I like this overhead view - it also shows the portal is about 30mm out from the current face of the hill - which gives me room to position a rock casting back from and above it.  I actually cannot see the cutting face on the left - it's about 1100mm from the front of the layout, and faces the back scene.  I think it could be a good candidate for some hanging greenery.

 

Working in this area is a good advertisement for planning to build your layout with enough strength to support you own weight. I'm nudging 100kg (esp after Christmas!), and I as I stand up on the L-girders, I'm conscious that until I plant my second foot down, all that mass is being supported in one spot.  Flimsy girders, or layout legs, would have been disastrous.  But again, knowing I was building a layout 1200m front to back, and would need to climb it, I tested the strength back in the early days.  But even so, as with that cutting face, there are places I cannot contort myself into to reach, unless I want to lean heavily onto scenery risers that are not built to take my weight - four 40mm screws in sheer would lose that challenge I have no doubt.  Common sense is the order of the day.

 

 

 

This is the river valley end.  The portal needs to be at an angle here as the curve begins immediately off the end of the abutment.  This and the next view brings to life what I previously said about not planning the rock faces, but that they would reveal themselves...

 

 

 

I can see near the portal there is about 50mm to play with on the left hand side at track level - this is handy, as it allows me to use some of the deeper relief rock moulds, and step them upward.  By my reckoning, there's about thirteen castings needed - give or take a few, as I tweak them to fit.

 

My plan for this area is to now apply layers of plaster till I get a smooth finish, and then fit the rocks - even cutting back into the set plaster, if needs be - and plaster around those castings.  I think I need to do it this way, so I am not trying to form smooth faces in and around the rock castings after they are in - which I think would end up with my contaminating the rock castings, and swearing repeatedly.

 

 

 

Just the one plaster batch today - extending the hill behind the signal box cut out.  Even then, I ran out of plaster, so still have a few more strips to place to bring it all the way to the back scene.  I've got some paper in place to protect the backscene - some of the splashes from last week did not come off easily, and I'll need to either repaint or disguise.  Some protection should lower the amount of rework needed.

 

 

 

And here's the state of play at the Southern end of the room.  This morning's work is on the right.   The landform now reaches the lift up section - although the area between the tracks, which needs a very high level of finesse to get right - still needs to be done.  The drop cloths on the floor there protect the surface from the worst of any run throughs.  Behind the tools of trade in the middle, there is a retaining wall to be placed.

 

The left hand corner will have some form of feature... housing, or possibly an overbridge to break the visuals of the sharp curve there.  For now, the landscape will end at the top of the embankment.  I'm sure the right solution will make itself known in due course.

 

Cheers

 

Scott

Edited January 7, 2018 by jukebox

[jukebox]

Hmmmm.  Turns out, thick layers of plaster aren't a good idea:

 

 

On the weekend, I had a go at rendering the rock face - filling it with a stiff batch of plaster, to try and make it look less like a hanging curtain of plaster soaked sheet.  It went on pretty thick - about 10mm.

 

The next day, that section of plaster had cracked quite badly.  A couple of things were in play;  It was a warm day.  I think the moisture in the plaster may have wicked into the layers underneath.  Also, the faces are sheer vertical.  This no doubt introduces stresses to the material as it dries.

 

It's not a disaster - most of those faces will be covered by rock castings, and those that aren't I'll have to re-skin, or even use the cracks as natural features.  But I have a lot more vertical face to plaster, so I'll do some experimenting this coming weekend, to see if I can minimise the effect.

 

I pressed on, on Monday night, laying some sheets over the face above the portal, and using my fingers to push slurry into the cracks, to reduce the depth:

 

 

With the remainder of that batch, I skinned some of the top of the hill - about 5mm thick this time.

 

 

It dried normally.

 

Here's the meadow portal from above:

 

 

And after I added the plaster strips for the rock face to sit on:

 

 

All this is from Sunday.  I've been upstairs tonight and applied two more batches to the top of the hill.  This time I wet the plaster underneath with a 4" paintbrush and water - to see if that helps reduce any cracking.

 

Cheers

 

Scott

[The Blue Streak]

G'day Scott.

 

Regarding the cracking, you are quite right in guessing the warm day had something to do with it.

 

When it's quite a thick application, the outside layer starts to dry due to the warm air around it, whilst the inner layers remain damp for longer and that causes the cracking.

 

I once watched horrified when the same thing happened to Chrysler Charger We'd just painted (probably one too many coats) looked a million bucks until an hour later it cracked like a mirror as the last coat was bone dry whilst the earlier coats were still soft underneath.

 

Apparently the secret is  a thin layer then wait till dry, then another layer. Perhaps the same case applies here, although as you said, it's all fixable. (unlike My Charger. which needed to be sanded back to base again )

 

As a whole, the layout is looking very good and you must be very pleased.

 

Cheers Ted

[gordon s]

Might be worth having a chat with Jeff of Kirkby Luneside as his large fell construction was similar to your own and from memory, he used a lot of plaster and may have experienced similar issues.

 

Funnily enough your curve into the tunnel reminded me of his layout.  Both of you have achieved some pretty good looking, large natural features.

[runs as required]

A 'clever dick' comment, based on total ignorance of the WA climate, is that further cracking may happen due to high diurnal (ie rapid) changes in temperature on a continuing basis over the years..

To guard against this, it might be good practice to accept certain cracks and plan further applications of the plaster with 'fault lines' running through which you disguise under vegetation.

 

dh