The Great Bear

Email today from Hattons advising Glastonbury Abbey 1st batch arrived today and my pre-order on its way, second batch due early 2014.

Great set of signals, Mike. To get the one on the right with six arms to work must have been a challenge. Is the (blurred) signal in the foreground a backing signal - nice touch. All the best Jon

A bit more progress on the shelter building: Bit of a lucky shortcut that the colour of the stone texture is such that for the window surrounds, cornicing etc the colour of the card is pretty good match. The camera is a bit cruel in this close up, but in place on the layout with the canopy should be good enough, hopefully!

Interesting, for me doing post war layout and hankering after a modified Hall for a bit of variety. I'd presumed to date that when locos were named they were repainted green, maybe not? What about the restoration of cab-side windows? Looking at my layout I really needed one from the first batch, the second were released too late (ties layout to late 47) & none of suitable sheds for me - 6963, 6964 being most likely candidates named Jan and June 1947 respecitively. A wartime black loco, with no name would be something different, though...

That also basically fits with one of the golden rules of photographic composition, the "Rule of Thirds"

Second that, especially if you drop the odd one into a rake. Bit of weathering or painting in war time brown might futher hide their shortcomings if one's that bothered? Photo in The Big Four in Colour has a brown clerestory at head of a post war express, I think. (As a result, that's my plan/justification anyway.)

Here's the "fabrication" drawings: The stone texture has been taken from a photo found on the web of Aynho, not as crisp that close up but fingers crossed will look ok from a sensible viewing distance. If not I'll have to go up to Northamptonshire and take photos myself. The image is referenced in to the autocad drawing and scaled to suit. Details like the decorative stones at the corners i've done in Autocad and played with hatch colours with a concrete pattern hatch overlaid to the solid cover to give a bit of variation in texture. And construction in progress: Construction methods are the same as the Scalescenes kits, only difference being I've had to use an extra layer of card to get the wall thickness (400mm or so) of the protoype, hence 2mm card outer plus 2mm+1mm card for inner faces. One little hiccup was adjusting some walls based on a printout of the plan, only to find I hadn't plotted that to scale. Wondered why thigns were out, but subsequently fixed and one of the gaps in the card above has gone. So far, so (fairly) good. Jon

Interesting. Related question, so there were locos which were painted black then which had G (Crest) W; the Stars, Halls and based on above 47xx?

More drawing up of buildings, this time the shelter for the up platform. I may give building this a crack soon to allow me to get on with the up platform and earthworks and also practise for the more complex station building. The bit at the back of the shelter I cannot find any angles of not suprisingly - I've just assumed it's a space under cover where things could be dumped out of sight.

Doing some modelling of the station area is edging closer: with the help of information provided by Castle I've now got a CAD drawing of the former station building at Heyford, the one for Kidlington is basically the same. I am now finalising a similar drawing for the shelter on the up platform.

Excellent modelling; agree with the above do like the nights shots, especially the signal box

Don't tempt fate

Many thanks, thought the way I'd cut the chairs was too easy! It now makes sense with the pics in the other thread. (Thanks for the reminder about the chairs to use, I did remember to do that although from my initial results I'll admit that isn't obvious!) I will try another point to see if I can get the hang of it. Cheers Jon PS - anyone else reading, please look at Ben Alder's fine work to see how this should end up looking before casting judgement!

Inspired by Ben Alder's work on The Far North Line I have had a test at adding cosmetic chairs to Peco points as he details http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/75560-cosmetic-alterations-to-peco-code-75-points/ Wisely, as it turns out, I picked a point out of the scenic section to try this on. My initial impression of the result was not good, the camera is most unkind (and this was the best bit) The poor ballasting of this particular point doesn't help the overall effect nor does forgetting to hoover up excess strands of hanging basket liner. A new day and painting the chairs and re-painting the rails has helped a bit, from side on it doesn't look too bad now However end on it shows the problem I had in getting consistency in the location of the cut chairs. More care needed! I found it helped using a thicker superglue so the chairs didn't have a tendency to move too far when being finessed into place. As you can see, however I struggled because the chair would touch the bottom flange of the rail whilst top of it would be some distance from the web of the rail. More practise and experimentation needed on another out of the way point before committing to the time to do this to all 15 or so points on the layout. A lot of patience will be required; a good job to do listening to some tunes. Thanks for the interest Jon

A couple of shots of lastest idea around the station, horizon line dropped a bit. The road going to the backscene I think will end up looking not too bad. The supplied backscene had large run of terraced houses, would have looked ok but on reflection not so fitting for my layout locale, a village not that built up at the time of the layout. So I've edited the backscene in photoshop, a lot of cutting and pasting and use of the clone stamp tool. Needs a bit of finessing but the concept I'm happy with. I've also added the Stationmaster's house. In reality it was the other side of the shelter near the road but that doesn't fit. Seeing as I can get it in here I'd rather have bend reality rather than trying to have it on the backscene or low relief and it look strange from oblique angles. Bit of a way from the road, but why would he need road transport with the railway on his doorstep! This bit's getting there, I think. Jon

A benefit of the the first option would of course be less to do, less distraction from getting on with modelling the railway. The plan, kind of, being start on outside, work in from that. Also think the barn in the background detracts from the setting of the signal box?

Thanks Ian, interested to hear that view No, no access required - I haven't cleaned the ones in the house for 5 years so suppose the shed shouldn't get special treatment

Mind you the Victorians didn't flinch at putting their line next to a church just up the line at Hampton Gay Don't think I'll model that though 1) Think a church next to the line is erring toward cliche and 2) Not good omens, rail related and otherwise with that site

I've been doing more experimenting with the backscene. To date I've been a "that will do" modeller, but given this is going to be fixed and a pain to change I'm being a bit more cautious. As shown in photos before, I didn't like the flat area at the top of the cutting near the signalbox, didn't think when I placed the backscene board, not big enough to do anything with and from some angles looked weird to me. So I've unscrewed the backscene board and tried two alternatives: 1) Move the board closer so the backscene is where the railway fence will be to make this interface easier (and consistent). This does leave a large area of "wasted" baseboard behind: so then tried 2) Move the backscene into the corner and put something at the top of the cutting: Did originally think about putting a whole farm there but thought that was unlikely railway line being so close to the farm itself? So perhaps just a barn - in the middle of nowhere. No such thing in this location at the real location, but I'm going to depart in other areas so what the heck. I played around with the height of the cutting, reducing it until the barn looked ok in relation to the horizon to me. I'm not convinced about this yet, but does seem a shame to waste this bit of real estate. Your views welcome, as always. More on the backscene in a while... Cheers Jon

I'm not very adept at Photoshop but think the result of some playing in Photoshop is a bit less modern?

I've been doing some more experimenting witht the backscene on the lines of the above post, having checked if the supplier objected. This experimentation also gives me an excuse to post gratutitous images of real hunk (Again think need to take off body and re-fix it, looking at this, my doing in fitting the decoder.) Possibly I've overdone reducting the colour saturation and the haze effect, but I think it looks promising. Compared with the photos of the Star, the background being more subtle I think puts more focus on what's infront (?) and it better matches the colour of the cheaper option for the grass to the cutting slopes. A side effect is the power line is a lot less prominent - though with a bit of care I should be able to remove it in Photoshop anyway. Any further comments welcome. Cheers Jon

Thanks, both. The overhead line is a lot more obvious than I'd like. It was suggested elsewhere that there might have been such things in the 1940s but doesn't feel right. Also the houses if one looks close enough you can see satellite dishes. Trees can hide some things, but the cables for the power line are pretty clear. Also I think that the details in the backscene are all a bit too big, maybe by a quarter or so. Also the backscene is very clear the details perhaps detract from what's in front; the colours are bright and clear; reducing saturation and reducing it's clarity I think might help the overall effect. Question is, how? I have access to an A0 colour plotter and have a DSLR and Photoshop & Lightroom. I'm wondering whether I could take picture of what I have then edit and re-print. What I'm not sure about is whether doing this to a purchased product is kosher even if it's for my own use? Any thoughts welcome... Jon

Thanks Thought, entirely by chance I hasten to add, that being a Stafford Road loco it would suit me. As my layout wil be post war means I have to find a different name for it as I doubt if painted in '42 it would have got repainted before nationalisation?

FWIW - here's my Knight of the Grand Cross. Not sure if if I've got a good 'un or not (and too late I guess if the latter). In my uneducated opinion, it looks good, although the daylight behind the buffer beam looks a bit odd to me, haven't a clue whether this is right and possibly it's sitting a bit high at the front or the former issues gives that illusion? Cheers Jon

Still experimenting with the backscene: here it is dropped by a few cm. An improvement I The bit by the station, some "bushes" will help things I think. Now, this is the bit that really doesn't work with the backscene. There is space betweent the track and the backcene here, the flat bit at the top of the slope. Original idea was to put a farmhouse or somethig there but there isn't enough room but the flat bit doesn't work when looked at from any elevated viewpoint. Ideas to fix this are either I get rid of the cutting here so just have a field leading into the photo (but this then varies from my prototype and getting colour of grass to match backscene) or I bring the board closer to the tack and keep the cutting. I am inclined to do the latter. The "stuff" has been cleared enough to get some trains running All bits seems to there with my Star but sits a little high at the front (only now noticed, hopefully can be coaxed down?) The backplate detail is exquisite, the phantom crew help one see that Thanks for looking and any thoughts welcome Jon