The Waverley Route revisited!

[bigwordsmith]

This has been a very frustrating weekend. - no sooner had I started to congratulate myself on working out that I could use the up and down main to feed the branch, than I realised I had left no room to the side of the tracks for any scenery!

 

As you can see even Pepper had worked out that the board for the main lines was almost vertically over the far edge road of the carriage sidings!

 

 

So I had to laboriously cut off about an inch and a bit to the left of the main lines - through the board supports as well, which also caught some of the wiring so that had to be redone.

 

Then I suddenly realised that I had nowhere for any scenery to sit!

 

Flash of inspiration and out came my trusty polystyrene cutter which was used to part the Faller Arches from the polystyrene blocks I had made up for the shed layout back scene 

 

 

This duly led to much slicing bits of poly into 6" squares which were then attached to the baseboard using PVA to stick to the underside of the carriage sidings board and run over to the outer frame.

 

This pic shows what it all looks like from below when finished.

 

 

In fairness as my beloved was home from the in-laws ( still not a lot of progress although at least he's now in a decent room) we spent most of the weekend together, so I only got about an hour or two up in the loft

 

Next week's challenge, when I get the time, is fixing the scenery on the carriage sidings and back of the main line so it looks like its on a rising stone embankment. No doubt this will also involve ballast!

 

Once it's all completed,  I'll bolt it to the shed frame and mainline construction can follow in earnest.

 

Now I'm off to earn a living again!

 

 

[Mallard60022]

Blimey, for a moment there I thought Pepper was cocking a leg......but no thank goodness.

What make is that Poly cutter Smiffy? I think I might need one................... eventually.

P

Edited February 24, 2015 by Mallard60022

[LNER4479]

Oh Smiffy, at least you have a plan. 

here is my plan and track that has been laid so far...

Layout plan and track.docx

Good isn't it..............

Quackers.

Ha! Ha! Reminds me of that book: 'Everything men know about women*'.

(*A book full of blank pages. My boss used to have a well-thumbed copy on his desk...)

 

Great to see the layout build progressing!

[bigwordsmith]

Funny thing about Pepper is that even though she's a girl dog, she does cock her leg - apparently it's a sign of dominance.

 

Like, sitting on your lap, demanding to come up on the bed, and, strangest of all, watching fascinated by a steam engine passing, but growling at diesels!

 

Go figure!

[bigwordsmith]

No help from Pepper this weekend as everything is being fitted into odd moments and she was enjoying the delights of a 'walk' 

 

Yesterday I managed to get a couple of hours up the loft while my better half changed the colour of the bathroom. Today has been spent doing chores and cutting back trees over the drive for the imminent caravan access test,  so no further work.

 

I did take this one at the start of yesterday's works which shows how the arched stonework starts. Then a couple more once it had all been cut to shape. FYI they are Faller arches

 

 

Amazingly it took nearly three hours to get from that shot to this one...

 

.

 

I decided this morning to have a go at moving the board to its eventual destination while Pepper was having another 'walk' as I could see that even with all the scenery being made out of poly,  it would be come a lot weightier once ballast is added.

 

 

This is taken  from the other end - 

 

 

Interesting comparing it to the previous scene when it was just a shed layout:

 

 

 

Which then left the joyous task of wiring it up. Fortunately I've already done all that before moving it and have a bunch of spaghetti to hook up.

 

This shot shows the benefit of having boards with controls and wirings on a hinge so you can get easy access

 

!

 

Depending on work I may do some tidying up tomorrow - the loft is beginning to look like a bit of a tip!

 

 

[bigwordsmith]

Just in case everyone thought progress had come to a grinding halt, I've been quietly plodding away in the background and not posting - I will have some results shortly, but the effort has been focused on scenery and ballasting the main lines and carriage shed extension

 

Hopefully tonight it will have all dried out and be ready for testing as I have a day without my other half who has gone to her mother's to look after her. I suspect this will be a fairly regular event - sadly her father passed away three weeks ago after six weeks in hospital and we had his funeral last week. Mother-in-Law is finding it very hard to cope - they were married for 68 years, so the 'children' are giving her a lot of support.

 

I may well find that over the next couple of months I am wifeless on a Thursday evening so who knows how I'll fill my time!

 

Anyway to show what a railway looks like when it's being worked on, I took these two yesterday...

 

 

[sub39h]

Sorry to hear about your father in law. 

 

Glad to see progress with your layout. Shame to not see another photo of Pepper "helping" though! 

 

This may have been mentioned already but I missed it -  what is the size of your layout please? 

Edited April 14, 2015 by sub39h

[landscapes]

Just in case everyone thought progress had come to a grinding halt, I've been quietly plodding away in the background and not posting - I will have some results shortly, but the effort has been focused on scenery and ballasting the main lines and carriage shed extension

 

Hopefully tonight it will have all dried out and be ready for testing as I have a day without my other half who has gone to her mother's to look after her. I suspect this will be a fairly regular event - sadly her father passed away three weeks ago after six weeks in hospital and we had his funeral last week. Mother-in-Law is finding it very hard to cope - they were married for 68 years, so the 'children' are giving her a lot of support.

 

I may well find that over the next couple of months I am wifeless on a Thursday evening so who knows how I'll fill my time!

 

Anyway to show what a railway looks like when it's being worked on, I took these two yesterday...

 

Screen Shot 2015-04-13 at 10.11.31.png

 

Screen Shot 2015-04-13 at 10.12.06.png

 

 

Hi Peter

 

So sorry to hear of your sad loss, it must be so difficult when you loose your partner after 68 years of marriage together it puts everything into perspective.

 

The layout is coming on very well.

 

Best Regards

 

David

[bigwordsmith]

So - the sun is out which means the garden is calling, but here's a wee teaser of what's been happening on the carriage sidings baseboard

 

Hints of progress in the making ...

 

Edited April 17, 2015 by bigwordsmith

[bigwordsmith]

OF course the downside of ballasting is that it takes forever, and then it goes wrong when you drop the PVA onto it!

 

So the last couple of weeks don;t have a lot to show for them, the carriage sidings/ Main lines have now been located in their correct place next tot he engine shed, and the wiring has bee run so that they can now operate into the feeder road.

 

Along the way I decided to make good the ballast on the shed layout and ended up , totally by accident with these interesting grey splurges between the rails which look remarkably like ash t hat has dropped from fires then got wet!

 

 

This shot sorry for the quality, shows the whole thing in position - I need to sort out some decent lighting

 

 

 

 

[Mallard60022]

Oooohhhh, that's looking good. Wish my space was as 'open' as that.

Now then, that little Railcar! One worked the Yeovil Town Branch in about 1965; it was a WR one. Is that enough excuse for me to get one do you think?

P

[bigwordsmith]

Phil that's no railcar it's the front half of a DMU cleverly positioned to look like a railcar!

 

The camera may never lie, but that's no guarantee of the honesty of the photographer!

[islandbridgejct]

Could I make a suggestion about colour - or rather tone? Your ballast and walls look very dark, and you may not be allowing for the effect of the big yellow light on the colour of things. Black is never black, and indeed a road seldom looks more than about half way on the scale from black to white. Its tonal value will always be on the lighter end of the scale. LS Lowry's painting took off when he was advised to paint on a white background. As a modeller, you shouldn't go that far, but it will create a greater impression of space and openness if you lighten the colours.

 

Exhibit A is the shed at Connolly Station in Dublin with the main running lines in the foreground - admittedly a modern picture but illustrative of the fact that the grey ballast looks almost white, and even the dark grey diesel looks more light than dark:

 

http://www.thewandererphotos.com/RailtoursPreservedRailways/2015/RPSI-South-Munster-Railtour/i-qRZV3QV/A

 

Exhibit B shows that even on a dark rainy day, the ballast only looks about half as dark as black black, which itself only looks about half black when it's on the roof of a carriage, and still creates a mix of light and shade when it's on the side:

 

http://www.thewandererphotos.com/RailtoursPreservedRailways/2015/RPSI-South-Munster-Railtour/i-pKQrVc8/A

 

(Usual thanks to the Wanderer for his excellent photos.)

 

Anyway, the build is coming along nicely: you're making much better progress than I am, so I should just shut up and get on with my own work.

 

Alan

[60012 Commonwealth of Australia]

Just been catching up on this thread, making the most of a fair chunk of LOTE and Science!

Looking great, and I really envy the amount of space you have, not to mention rolling stock. My rolling stock is a loco, 3 freight wagons, 2 passenger coaches, a parcels van and a CL108 DMU. Luckily a Railroad A4 in the guise of Gadwall will soon appear, to be repainted and numbered into 60012 Commonwealth of Australia. 

 

Peter

[bigwordsmith]

Thanks Peter, and indeed for your many likes.

 

It's been a few years coming and TBH I doubt if it will ever be truly finished, because as I now enter my 60s I am mindful also that one day the whole thing will need to be removed, so I't's being built in a semi-modular form to allow for relatively easy dismantling.

 

Have you caught up with Gwyther's layout - he's over in Melbourne I think?

[bigwordsmith]

@ Alan 

 

Very useful insight, thanks indeed. 

 

The ballast isn't black, but a sort of multitude of greys - the camera and lighting conspire to make things much darker in film than in reality. I also mix up each batch of ballast slightly differently so the colours are deliberately varied across the board.

 

The other point is that this is a working steam shed - these were filthy grubby soot-covered and generally not very nice places to be, and we simply don't have anything of that ilk to use as a comparator today. Even the busiest preservation steam shed have standard f cleanliness that would be the envy of your average 1960s railwayman.

 

I was born to parents living in a house backing onto the goods yard at Joppa, and my mother could never hang her washing out because within minutes it would be covered in soot and smuts from the locos. IF you visit that part of Edinburgh today you'll see fine stone houses, but my father has a picture of me aged about 5 sitting in front of our house in Brunstane Road Joppa in 1960, and the stones are just covered in an ingrained layer of coal dust. - that's a good 100 yards away from the line which at that point is in  a cutting.

 

When you see the layout in the flesh it really is a lot more realistic - I was going to use a good name to describe it, but someone beat me to it - 50 shades of grey!

 

ATB

 

Peter

[bigwordsmith]

@ Peter -- just read your sign off - you must be one of the youngest members here - I hope everyone is making you feel welcome and don't be overawed by boring old rivet counters - we all started out some where around your age!

[60012 Commonwealth of Australia]

@ Peter -- just read your sign off - you must be one of the youngest members here - I hope everyone is making you feel welcome and don't be overawed by boring old rivet counters - we all started out some where around your age!

Nah its fine!

I wouldnt be surprised at that - whenever I go into a model train show it seems as though there is an unwritten rule that people under the age of 40 are not allowed in!

In regards to your previous posts, no I haven't seen Gwythers layout yet, what is it called?

 

Regards,

 

Peter

[islandbridgejct]

@ Alan 

 

Very useful insight, thanks indeed. 

 

The ballast isn't black, but a sort of multitude of greys - the camera and lighting conspire to make things much darker in film than in reality. I also mix up each batch of ballast slightly differently so the colours are deliberately varied across the board.

 

The other point is that this is a working steam shed - these were filthy grubby soot-covered and generally not very nice places to be, and we simply don't have anything of that ilk to use as a comparator today. Even the busiest preservation steam shed have standard f cleanliness that would be the envy of your average 1960s railwayman.

 

I was born to parents living in a house backing onto the goods yard at Joppa, and my mother could never hang her washing out because within minutes it would be covered in soot and smuts from the locos. IF you visit that part of Edinburgh today you'll see fine stone houses, but my father has a picture of me aged about 5 sitting in front of our house in Brunstane Road Joppa in 1960, and the stones are just covered in an ingrained layer of coal dust. - that's a good 100 yards away from the line which at that point is in  a cutting.

 

When you see the layout in the flesh it really is a lot more realistic - I was going to use a good name to describe it, but someone beat me to it - 50 shades of grey!

 

ATB

 

Peter

 

Hi Peter,

 

You certainly have the advantage over me in that - I was born in 1967 and steam was gone in Dublin by 1963 so I only ever saw RPSI specials. When I travelled behind this train -

 

- I spent the rest of the day picking coal dust out of my hair.

 

I do remember how black the major buildings in Dublin were in the 1970s, mainly due to burning coal for heating, so I do take your point, and also your point about the lighting. My only real comment is that black doesn't look black, even when it's painted black in the rain on a dull day, and that every grey is less grey than it looks.

 

(And I'll take it that 'Robert''s agree tick was agreeing that I should go and do some modelling. Now I should go and do some work.)

 

Alan

[bigwordsmith]

Hi Alan,

 

With a Scottish Father and Irish Mother I have pure Celtic blood in my veins, and have lived on both sides of the Irish Sea, so I can confirm that Dublin was always a very much cleaner city than 'Auld Reekie'. In addition to the steam engines the whole area around Edinburgh was riddled with coal fields, so we also had masses of coal dust in the air. On top of that, heavy industry was rife in the area together with coal fired power stations, so there were lots of smoky chimneys adding to the general murk - hence the city's nickname.

 

This shot, which benefits from better lighting, shows the multitude of hues that go to make up the blend - this of course is before we get to adding in bits of weed, piles of ash and coal that all made up a typical working depot.

 

 

Interestingly it was taken before I'd weathered the engine shed, and shows an ex-box loco, both of which I think look a bit false because they don't reflect the tired, grimy and generally run down nature of the 1950's railway. DOn't forget rationing only ended in 195455 and the country was still broke from the war, so spending money on keeping railway sheds clean was way down the list of priorities. 

 

Several good books I have talk about life in the 1950s/'60s and mention how engines stopped being cleaned in the 950s because of a shortage of labour - people did;t want to do the dirty stuff.

 

On the main lines, which I've not yet got round to photographing much,  as I've only done the two on the viaduct, the mix is much more subtle - pale grey to the outer edges, and along the cess, with a dark streak along the middle of the four foot way where oil, ash and carriage waste would have fallen.

 

Although ballasting is one of the grottiest jobs on the railway , in a perverse way I enjoy it because there really isn't much you can do wrong, and if you do you can get over it with powdered poster paint!

 

ATB

 

Peter

Edited May 13, 2015 by bigwordsmith

[LNER4479]

(And I'll take it that 'Robert''s agree tick was agreeing that I should go and do some modelling. Now I should go and do some work.)

 

My 'agree' tick was really saying good to raise the point. It is a subject dear to my heart at this very moment, as I am tackling exactly this over at Grantham at the moment.

 

Part of the problem is the viewpoint of the model compared to that of the prototype. Many prototype pictures do indeed convey the impression of a dark ground cover, as you're seeing it from a compressed viewpoint. But when you do get an occasional aerial view, then it can look a lot lighter. There are a couple of views taken from the top of the Grantham coaling plant (one pre-war, one post-war) and, although black and white, it is clear that the area between the roads is quite light in colour. It looks darker in the 'four foot' (which has a logic to it, as that is where the oily deposits etc would more naturally fall).

 

So which do you go for when trying to create a realistic looking scene for your average 'helicopter viewpoint' model observer?

 

There's also the issue for me (as alluded to above) that depot cleanliness was better in the 1930's than it was in the 1950's / 1960's!

 

Your picture in #245 above Peter is certainly a more convincing representation.

[bigwordsmith]

Thanks Robert

 

I have to be honest I don't envy you with Grantham - you have an enormous task ahead of you ballasting that layout and trying to preserve the differences that occurred due to the arrival of different coloured areas. You also have very few colour references to follow - one of the benefits of modelling 1960s is the wealth of colour illustrations from the great and good of the Kodak era, which catalogue, often by accident, just how run down and grimy the system was.

 

Originally I tried to achieve uniformity, by mixing up a huge load of ballast, but actually moving the layout through a couple of new locations served me well, because it lost around 30% of its ballast with each transfer, necessitating new ballasting.

 

Of course each batch is subtly different from the last, unless you take the clinical chemistry approach, but overall I think the result is much better for it. The other variable is what happens when you start adding in the PVA mix, as you can see form the pic at entry #235

 

Once I've got my leg back into full function, I'll climb the wooden hill to Waverley and set up some better shots with the weathered shed and a couple of less pristine locos.

[bigwordsmith]

Nah its fine!

I wouldnt be surprised at that - whenever I go into a model train show it seems as though there is an unwritten rule that people under the age of 40 are not allowed in!

In regards to your previous posts, no I haven't seen Gwythers layout yet, what is it called?

 

Regards,

 

Peter

 

Hi Peter

 

I've just tracked down gwither's thread as promised - here's the link - http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/6296-penhayle-bay/

 

Say hello  to him for me!

 

ATB

 

Peter

[bigwordsmith]

So quick up date on the knee - saw the Knee specialist yesterday and it transpires that I have a torn medial meniscus - Booked in for a repair next Friday, so hopefully I'll be able to move around without crutches a few days later.

 

Might have a go at climbing the wooden hill later on and giving the new iPhone's camera a try!

[Mallard60022]

That's your playing career for the Seagulls over then Smithy. However, more time for ballasting and all that stuff and then coach building, point rodding, weathering stuff, Yard Lamps, Grotty Huts and a bench for the holidaying Finching Sisters.

That green Button machine looks quite good too.

What fun.

(P.S. get that knee strapped and braced etc; see a Sporty Physio, they are superb at that sort of thing mate and sometimes are female and ............  )