Antipodes workbench

[Rhys]

Well, a year since my last update. must do better i suppose.

 

I have not covered my layout much on this thread, so I'll sum up the last 2 years in one post. Its a bit picture heavy but i have stripped them all down to ~150K so it should load reasonably quickly. I do wish more people would do things like this.

 

 

September 2011. Looking north from the Wellington end of Paekakariki. The loco depot is in the distance.This shot does show the construction methods used based on Barry Normans techniques.

 

 

Looking south showing the loco depot on the same day. The turntable area is the empty spot on the left hand side.

 

 

October 2011 and the station platform is added. This was just foamcore board. It was originally installed as a placeholder untill I could make a more permanent model. 18 months later it is the permanent model.

 

 

The DCC box installed in its spot in the control area. I have gone with mechnaical point operation mainly cos I'm a cheapsate. The choice of DCC system is very pesonal, and I picked this particular entry level system because it doesn't look like a fecking TV remote (oh and it's cheap and I already have a booster from an earlier set). I have added a UT-4 hand held throttle and control points at either end of the layout.

 

 

Roll forward to March 2012 and it was full steam ahead as I prepared the layout for the National Model railway convention in Wellington at easter. I added the layout fascina from 3mm MDF to cover the rough plywood. I decided to tidy up the sides of the layout, but not to rush any of the scenics.

 

 

The land forms were mocked up with card from packing boxes to determine how everything looked.

 

 

The card was then replaced with foamcore board, which was given a coat of green paint. The hills were added with expanded polystyrene.

This was pretty much the way it looked at the 2012 Convention, providing somewhere for fellow Nz120ers to run models and also a meeting point for modelers of other scales.

 

 

By August 2012 I had done some work on the loco depot. Placeholders for the water tank and the start of the loco fueling point.

 

 

Move forward to Feburary and I have had a bit of a clean up for some long forgotten reason. The turntable pit has been added as well as some placeholders for the railway buildings.

 

 

April 2013, and the hills have been added using a scenic mat over formers. I like this more than a static grass applicator, as I get a far more uniform covering while avoiding electric shocks. The fuel tanks are a work in progress.

 

 

Time for some ballasting. I added a bit of superellevation to the curves, as illustrated by Da 1410 on the left, while DA 1431 on the right provids the reference. Some friends have commented that this is far too much superelevation. My view is that using the 'correct' scaled amount just doesn't look right, and a bit of exaggeration has never hurt anyone. As its my layout, I win.

 

 

The hill at the south end of the layout recieves a coating of gorse. I have to add some trees, rockslides and animal tracks, and it will get an overspray of light brown to fade everything together.

 

So, thats where we are up to at the moment. I have started work on the fidddle yards at both ends of the layout. This will allow me to actualy run some trains and thus slow progress even further. I have also started thinking about adding placeholders for the town and railway settlement. This includes the railway houses for familys and the single mans compound closer to the loco depot.

I will addin the main streeet at a later date.