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wombatofludham

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  1. wombatofludham
    ...well, not really, but it was time to do a test layout of the scenic modules to see if clearances needed to be tweaked prior to track laying starting in earnest, particularly as I had now finished 3d printing the platforms. 
     
    Ooh look, a train!  The 3d printed platforms aren't actually very straight but now I've weathered them with the airbrush, and having 3d printed combined bench and planters to help disguise some of the joints, I think it will work out once I've laid the track and got them into their final positions.  The plaster retaining walls also need to be glued into place hence the slight uneven façade.  They've also been gunked with the airbrush. It does show how the station is tucked away behind the townscape.  I've also given Courthouse Square a quick blow with the airbrush of crud.  The Wednesford in Bloom Taliban clearly need to have words with themselves over the floral displays around the town.
     

     
    The restricted canopy on the platform, and yes, I did forget to paint the one section.  The bay platform will terminate alongside the entrance to the Civic Centre, and will be used exclusively by the Wombourne Wanderer.  The bay will be a completely separate, electrically and operationally, terminus to terminus via scenic break operation which will double up as a programming and test track, allowing me to keep stock on the main line electrically isolated.  AC Electrics has also had a visit from the airbrush.
     

     
    Station Forecourt and Civic public entrance.  Not quite sure what has happened to the "Civic Board but it will butt up against the station forecourt.
     

     

     
    Courthouse Square has also had a visit from the airbrush which has toned down some of the 3d printed paving.  Still needs a bit of attention/filler I think.
     

     
    The 1960s created a lot of what might be called "a**e end of town" type developments, with no clear public realm or sense of place, usually well away from the Zones A and B rental districts of shopping areas, but which often had important uses in them.  The sort of places which often were forgotten or had unclear boundaries, I've tried to recreate such an area here with Shaw Taylor House on the right, the Central Wednesford nick, and Government Buildings on the left, housing the Labour Exchange/Jobcentre, and DSS/DWP.  The nondescript Government Buildings are a Vollmer pitched roof office/school/whatever, and a Vau-Pe East German office block.  Surprisingly they come together quite well.  I'm going to buy an EiiR tunic button for the end wall to mark out it is a Crown Estate building, next time you go past a Post Office or Government building, have a look for the Royal Cypher, it will usually be somewhere on the building. Shaw Taylor House is a cut and shut of two Kibri kits, a Postamt Badenweiler for the entrance and a "Hochaus" for the office, with a 3d printed roof channelling vibes of Mander House in Wolverhampton, and the old Walsall central nick in Green Lane, now gone.
     

     
    The pinch point.  Having printed the platform slightly wider than I originally planned I find the kinematic envelope on the branch bay is a little cosy.  I think when I start laying track I might be able to tweak the alignment a bit as the test track uses Settrack and I will be laying flexi, but two Mk1s get around OK, although I do need to run a 153 round to make absolutely sure it has C3 clearance as well as C1.

    it looks like a job seeker has barfed up on the path...
     
    The Government Buildings are not quite finished and the scene needs some tidying.
     

     
    I've rethought out the layout of the residential district.  I've moved the nine storey Euneda House to the other side of the tracks, leaving a medium-rise estate which despite comprising Kibri and Jouef HO kits actually works architecturally.  The row on the right is flats over shops although the shops face away from the residential area.  Crowne Court and Cylencyn Court face the Chav's boozer which has had the roof temporarily removed to allow fitting of opaque glazing film, saving me the faff of building an interior when I illuminate it.  The area around the estate battle cruiser will be grass mat, and some "lollipop" trees as landscape architects I worked with call 1960s tree planting.  I need to put some fat tattooed drinkers in the benches, minding their pushchairs.  I might even put a bloke in there as well.
     

     
    Putting Euneda House on the other side of the track, together with the multi-storey mugging centre, creates a virtual scenic break and has allowed me to include a footbridge across from Euneda House and the prefabs off Sprowte Lane into the shopping parade.  The buildings on the left are two Faller "Hotel Stadt-Prag" bases, whilst those on the right are the well known Kibri shops with flats from the late 60s.  The footbridge will lead to the dead end of Sprowte Lane, which at one time would have been a level crossing but which was taken out at modernisation.  Euneda House is the fate which awaits the prefabs on the right.

    A work in progress which I'll come back to after I've laid track.
     
    St Flo's Corner.  Wentec now sits on a 3d printed forecourt on top of the retaining wall to the old engine shed.


     
    I've given the Bank of Bitch a slight weathering with the airbrush, difficult to see in this shot.
     

     
    The Co-op now has signs.  I'll 3d print a supermarket interior for the ground floor before illumination.  The Chief Planner for Wednesford has a VC10 sized wasp up his knickers about shop facia signs insisting they be applied lettering and 3d.
     

     
    The station forecourt has also had a visit from the airbrush, the asphalt looks a little less new.
     

     
    The Library with the Council Chamber and shops on the right, with a glimpse of the station between the two buildings.
     

     
    The Staffs Police badge outside Shaw Taylor house, with another glimpse of the station behind.
     
    So onwards to the track next, then Wombourne, before finishing off the remaining details.  Then, working out how to light up the layout.  I may still be some time...
     
     
     
     

  2. wombatofludham
    First post on the new blog recording the progress on the shed layout.

    Funny to relate, I first started planning the "shed layout" just after Bachmann announced their revamped Class 158, and expected to have it all done in time for it's arrival in the shops.  Amazingly, Bachmann beat me to it when they released the 158 back in December.

    I purchased the shed off eBay from a company in Bassets Pole near Sutton Coldfield, who delivered and erected it free of charge as I was within their 150 mile radius.  It is of tongue and groove construction throughout, including roof and floor, although I did have to beef up the roof when two days after erection a typical Fairbourne summer typhoon took the felt off.  The replacement Coraline corrugated roof has withstood 100mph winds which are not unknown in this part of Wales and has kept the interior dry ever since.  I didn't insulate the interior, Fairbourne is fairly mild, I don't feel the cold and even though the shed is of really good, strong construction, it is in an exposed location and weathering gaps inevitably occur which would allow wind driven rain to penetrate any insulation which would then slowly rot the shed from the inside.  Dry, foam based insulation would have further reduced the width of the interior, so I decided just to have a good 9mm Marine Ply inner wall screwed to the shed frames.  In effect, I've given the shed a cavity wall, and to be honest I've been in there in January and February and it's felt comfortable.  The electricity supply was simple, the previous owners of my bungalow had installed an electric feed that had a split circuit, with part of the circuit board fed via an RCB, whilst the indoor circuit was off a non-RCB feed although still equipped with miniature circuit breakers, so the electrician just tapped into a spare feed from the RCB fed circuit with an armoured cable.

    "Wednesford", as it has become, has been a journey of compromise and adaptation.  The space available for the shed constrained me to a nominal 12ft by 8ft shed (I say nominal as it is "nearest metric equivalent") and by the time the interior was lined out with 9mm Marine Ply, I ended up with an internal space roughly 11ft 6in by 7ft 8in, not the most generous of spaces.  Nevertheless, with some planning, I could make it work.

    Having gone through a number of plans, I decided on a simple, roundy-roundy with a bay to fiddle yard shuttle.  I wanted to have as generous a curve as possible but with such a narrow area I decided the only way I could do this was to build a fictional station, on a fictional loop somewhere in the Dudley-Tipton-Coseley triangle (a sort of "Evo Triangle" where "Evo" doesn't necessarily mean "Evolved"...) served by a selection of trains normally routed via the Stour Valley route from Birmingham to Wolverhampton.  The station was to have been rationalised in the 1960s after electrification and as I was planning a raised section over the sharp curve at one end of the station, the idea emerged that the tunnel was too narrow to allow two tracks with full OHLE and as it couldn't be altered to allow the clearances for twin track electrification, BR decided to single the line through the tunnel and rebuilt the station with a single bi-directional through platform and a terminating bay.  There is precedence for this, singling of the line north of Stoke was considered when the Harecastle tunnels were found to be too small for OHLE clearances, although in the end they opened up the tunnels and built a diversion round another, and on the Glasgow Blue Train network a problem tunnel was singled to give sufficient height for the knitting.  So, given a lot of traffic would be sticking to the direct route via Tipton, I thought a single track would be justified, and it has a lot of benefits as it simplifies access to the fiddle yards and allows a single track "drawbridge" to span the door opening, avoiding the risk of electrical problems and derailments.  I could also build the station as a semi-island which would allow the track to be pushed out to the back wall allowing for a slightly more generous curve at the one end.

    For me, scenery and setting are more important than being able to bumble about dragging a wagon around a fan of sidings.  I neither get nor enjoy shunting.  For me the joy of railways is the "continual passing scene" of a variety of trains moving through the urban, or rural landscape.  So, such an operationally simplistic layout is fine for me.  With the track pushed back to the rear of the baseboards, the opportunity to present the layout differently was taken.  Most layouts push the track to the front and plan the scenery around it.  With "Wednesford" you will glimpse the trains through the buildings, as if you were in a high rise looking down on the town.  What was a necessity had become an opportunity.  I also decided that the bay platform should be a separate electrical circuit completely independent of the main through line.  I also decided that instead of having it run into a two road fiddle siding of it's own, one of the sidings should be a mini diorama of it's own.  Thus was born the idea of the bay being used by a bubble car shuttle to a temporary wooden platform that had been erected by BR to replace a station which was too big, and needed a crossing keeper to man a level crossing, at the end of a branch that was due for closure but never quite made it.  Shades of Sheringham in Norfolk!.  The plan is the platform will be located in a narrow strip at the front of the fiddle yard with a low backscene behind it, allowing access to the main fiddle yard but giving a convincing narrow shelf modelling the kind of run down, barely maintained, heavily vandalised and rationalised scene typical of the 1967-2005 period I want to cover, and is the kind of thing most enthusiasts hate with a passion.  Which makes it all the more attractive to me, my mission in life is to trigger those enthusiasts who think only tea urns painted green are worth any effort and expenditure so if I don't succeed in raising their blood pressure a few points I will have failed.  Dereliction, diesels and decay should set off a few.

    That's the intro to the layout. I'll be posting more as construction progresses, I've laid out the "townscape" on the bare boards to give me an idea of what I need to do and will be making a trip up to the Bettws y Coed Museum shop to buy some track tomorrow to begin track laying.  Buildings are a mix of kit, ready to plant and 3d prints and I'll be describing the scenic work as I go along identifying some of the more obscure kits and buildings I've used, and some are really obscure!

    One final point.  "Wednesford" of course is a combination of "Wednesbury" and "Hednesford", and sounded suitably Black Country.  I then found out it was the fictional Midlands town in a book called "My Brother Jonathan" by Francis Brett Young, which was made into a film in 1948.  Great minds think alike.

     



  3. wombatofludham
    As it has been another nice day here on the Welsh coast and the grass mat had arrived I decided to finish off the landscaping of the Civic Centre and also complete the New Courthouse Square.  The Civic Plaza needed an airbrush wash of gunk to tone down the "Portland" concrete and the grass mat needed rolling out for the lawns.  I think the Director of Parks and Recreation is aiming for an award at the Chelsea Flower show, or has gone a bit Radio Rental and blown the next five year's budget on floral displays.

    The frontage of the Civic Centre as it will look from New Courthouse Square.  The two storey ex-Vollmer station will house lock up shops on the ground floor with a Councillor's reception, with steps up to official offices for the senior councillors.  The Council chamber is on a mezzanine at the rear, fronting onto the Member's terrace.  Main council offices on the left, with the main public entrance, reception and paying in offices at the rear.
     
    The Peace Garden and War Memorial on Civic Plaza, now that the final landscaping is in place.

    Floral displays courtesy of various sellers on the Bay of Tat.  Why waste time trying to make your own when others are selling them for not a lot?  Gives me time to concentrate on creating a believable setting, and things like airbrush weathering which doesn't show up too well in this shot, but has toned down the pinky-beige simulated Portland concrete.
     

     
    Overall vista from the visitor's car park.  Overall I'm quite pleased with the result, I just need to decide what to do about lighting as the boards are designed to be removable for track access, which precludes the usual rat's nest underboard lighting electric supply.  However, some more serial TatBay surfing has thrown up a potential solution...


     
    New Courthouse Square, before the glue had set.  The paving is 3d printed, as is the bus shelter and "Law Courts" planter-sign. I painted the paving and the base ply with Gesso, which gives a good dark black finish.  It then had an overspray with the airbrush.  Part of me thinks it should be given another overspray with some lighter grey as asphalt is rarely completely black unless freshly laid, but I do like the Gesso finish.  Again, Parks and Rec have gone riot with the floral displays.
     
    The new Central Library with Pat Butcher's earring inspired Circular Arguments sculpture now placed within a proper landscape setting.  You can just make out the colourful interior of the library, a 3d print I designed to allow me to illuminate the building at some point.  The gluey mess next to the bus stop will be cleaned up at some point!
     
    Courthouse Square overall view.  The Central Police Station, Shaw Taylor House, will be on the left mounted on a separate board,  Building the scenery on removable modules has helped enormously with the decoration and construction, and will enable me to do the track-laying next week unencumbered by having to reach over buildings.  

    The court house is a Vollmer "New Ulm" station and the Library began life as a Chinese kit from Alibaba until I ended up making a pig's ear of it and it ended up more as a kit-3d print hybrid semi scratchbuild. 
  4. wombatofludham
    The "church in a corner" is almost as much of a model railway trope as the bus on the bridge.  Of course, I decided to follow suit...

    The Parish Church of St Florian was always going to be a mini Coventry Cathedral in that it would be a burnt out ruined ancient chapel alongside a modern replacement.  I chose the name St Florian - an Austrian born saint who is the patron saint of firemen - to add a bit of irony in that the original chapel dedicated to St Florian was destroyed by a firestorm started by a mad Austrian born failed watercolourist.  It's a small site, built on a recycled corner bookshelf that was just the right size, and provides an oasis of green in the largely rebuilt lower town.  The idea is that when the replacement of the church was undertaken the old remains were kept and integrated into the development, and a simple landscaping scheme put in as the original churchyard had been badly churned during the bombing and a number of mature trees were lost

    the modern church is of course the venerable (in both senses of the word!) Faller 1960s modern church, but modified with a proper British style roof of Wills slate plasticard to replace the rather tacky original style pantile roof with cross-shaped "Godlights", whilst the ruin is an Anyscale resin ruined Scottish stone chapel, which I gave a nice Midlands red sandstone finish with scorching and soot stains around the windows and doors.  the carved stone planters and nameboard are 3d prints, along with the large black parish noticeboard.  The hedge is a Javis hedge in a bag, and the statue of the real Saint Florian above the modern church door is a Preiser limited edition model of a genuine Austrian statue.

    The two right angle sides will bound two other scenic boards, the police station and Government buildings will be opposite the front of the church complex, and the side will be bounded by a mixed use development of flats and shops, together with a multi-storey car park.  One advantage of the scenic being on individual boards is it allows access for cleaning, but also allows me to work on individual sections in comfort.
     

     
    The front which will face a road access behind the Government buildings and the rear of Shaw Taylor House, the central police station.  So the House of God will face the House of Plod...
     

     
    The side that will face the shopping precinct and housing estate.


     
    The curved face which will front the railway, together with the war damaged ruins of the 12th Century chapel.  The board was a conveniently sized redundant corner shelf unit!
     

     
    The old Faller kit looks far less odd with a traditional British slate roof.
  5. wombatofludham
    In a previous life, I worked for Centro in the Midlands for ten years and one of the things I got to deal with was a public art programme of involving artists to try and work on the presentation of new infrastructure projects.  This wasn't anything new, London Transport had done it for years in the 1930s when a pride in providing public services was more important than the post 1970s mantra of Get Everything Cheap and treat your customers as criminals, and quite a few transit agencies in the US had percent for art programmes, but developing something for the Midlands was a challenge.  As a town planner, I was aware that despite what one heir to Brenda's place on the throne would have us think, quite a bit of 1960s architecture had artworks integrated into them.  unfortunately, so well integrated many just don't notice them, but for example, quite a few of the Birmingham shops and offices of the 1960s have relief murals and decoration on their facades.  You just need to look upwards instead of window shopping.  Some have rightly been listed, some unfortunately have been lost in the rush to demonise the 60s architectural heritage - in fact, if anyone knows where the huge glass-fibre Bull that once hung on the Bull Ring has vanished to, I'm sure the police or City Council would like to know as no-one seems to know where it is.  Quite how you lose a massive glass fibre bull weighing several tons, is anyone's guess. 

    So, Wednesford, being a progressive, modern and civically proud town, was going to get a Public Art programme.  Problem was, finding suitably scale objets d'arte for the plastic citizenry.  

    The answer?  Cheap ear-rings from the Bay of Tat.  Seriously.  Chinese cheap costume jewellery,  Some of it is spectacularly grotesque but occasionally some gems do come up.  I doubt many model enthusiasts, when eBay window shopping, think to search for cheap tomfoolery from the Orient, but if you are thinking of installing a modern art installation, give it a go - after all, if the domestic authorities notice, they may be fooled into thinking you are looking for something for them, rather than a faux sculpture.  Win-win.
     

     
    The sculpture which will sit outside the courthouse and Civic Centre Council Chamber.  "Circular Arguments" was designed by renowned ear-ring artist "Pat Butcher".  In reality a pair of stainless steel ear-rings, 99p from China, in a 3d printed planter box with some clumping material.
     

     
    Another  "Pat Butcher" design, the Peace memorial for the civic centre peace garden.  Again a cheap "Dove of Peace" large ear-ring (I'm sure any woman wearing these would have ear-lobes the length of her neck after a few hours they are so large) with 3d printed base and commemorative plaque. Still waiting the delivery of grass mat for the lawn.
     

     
    Shop facia panels.  The abstract 1960s design was spot on and size wise they were almost a match for the windows on the Hornby Skaledale shop.  Again some cheap 99p metal ear-studs sourced from the Bay of Tat.

    I've also used a Staffordshire Police badge on a 3d printed plinth for the entrance to Shaw Taylor House, and a Royal Coat of Arms badge on the new Court House.  Both were pretty much the right size to go on or in front of the buildings..

    So, there you are.  Not the most obvious source of detailing, but cheap cuff-links, ear-rings and brooches could give your models a touch of cosmopolitan urban modern art without breaking the bank.  Just don't tell your mates down the battle cruiser* why you are searching for tomfoolery* on eBay, they might get the wrong idea.


    *(Battle Cruiser - boozer, tomfoolery - jewellery.  But you already knew that, right?)
     
  6. wombatofludham
    When I planned "Wednesford" two things dictated the presentation of the layout: a desire to try and get decent curve radii, and some means of trying to reduce the amount of "dead space" taken up by the backstage fiddle yard.  The former led to me pushing the track to the back of the layout and working on an island station platform, and the latter, partly connected to the plan of a single bi-directional main through platform and a single bay, resulting in a plan to place scenery on one of the fiddle yard sidings.  One advantage of the railway being up against the shed wall is that you will view the station behind the adjacent town scenery, which is perhaps to my mind more realistic but I spotted a potential problem: I was planning to use DCC, in a shed, and as we DCC users know, you have to have absolutely spotless railheads and wheels to avoid stalling. With buildings and scenery in front of the track, and with cosmetic OHLE planned, I could see getting the track rubber onto the rail head might be an issue.  So, having laid out the rough town plan I had additional boards cut to specific lengths onto which the buildings would be affixed, so that I could temporarily remove them to gain access to the track more easily without knocking or damaging the buildings.  One happy side effect of this decision is it allows me to take a board and allocated scenic off the layout to work on in the house, plus in the future, if I decide to reconfigure the layout, I can easily slot in a new scenic module if I so wish.

    So, having more or less completed the "Old Town" raised section which conceals an unavoidably tight curve near the shed door, I moved onto the "Civic Centre" scenic module.  A sheet of 9mm marine ply left over from the main baseboard works was cut to size, just long enough to accommodate Wednesford Borough Council's new Civic Centre, built on the site of the old goods shed destroyed in the Blitz and never rebuilt (in our fictional back story, the Borough Council and the BRB entered into a joint venture to redevelop the old railway lands, the bombed out "Low" or "New" town area around the ruins of St Florian's Chapel, which had been compulsorily purchased by the Corporation, and the site of the old engine shed which became the site for the new Technical College).  The post-war Town Plan saw the area adjacent the new lower station entrance being allocated mainly to a mix of civic and Government uses, including a new Civic Centre, Library, Courts complex, Police headquarters and Government offices.  The Civic centre would comprise a new public entrance off Station Approach, with a multi-storey office block alongside the railway, and a new Council Chamber, with shops and administrative offices forming a third side to a U shaped building.  In the centre there would be a raised square housing the town War Memorial and in front, a "Peace Garden" to commemorate the civilian deaths in the town during the Blitz.
     
    Close up of the entrance, a Vollmer railway station, slightly modified with a partial repaint, and with interior, largely 3d printed.  I will be adding internal lighting on final installation, although I need to think about how to do it in order to allow ease of removal.
     
    Wider view showing the 3d printed planter with the name of the Civic Centre on the right.  I'll probably replace the clock with a suitable coat of arms when I can find something on tatBay.
     
    Overall layout.  The bare wood will be an area of grass-mat lawn with a large dove of peace sculpture in the middle, with flower beds, and there will be a pavement alongside the entrance building on the right, with visitor parking in front.  The 3d printed steps and wheelchair ramp leads up to where the war memorial will be located, in front of the main office block. The building on the left is the split level Council Chamber, with the "Members Terrace" modelled from the platform area of the original Vollmer station building.  The typical 1960s concrete bollards are a cheap eBay purchase.  The main Council offices are of course a Kibri 1970s kit repainted to match the two Vollmer stations.
     
    The member's terrace and floral displays.  Four of the Council members having a chin-wag during a smoko break.
     
    The section still needs some additional paving work, the War Memorial and Peace Garden, and possibly the visitor parking bays marking out on the left, but I have to say I'm quite pleased with how it has all turned out.

    For the "fiddle yard" I've decided to have the track from the bay platform terminate in a single track, heavily rationalised "temporary" wooden station.  The back story is this was once a branch which linked Wednesford with Wombourne on the GWR Wombourne branch, a short lived by-pass line linking Stourbridge with the Shrewsbury to Wolverhampton line, which lasted just 40 years from 1925 to 1965 and which lost it's passenger service after just seven years in 1932. Those of you who know the Black Country will know that west of Dudley the GWR pretty much had a monopoly, so I decided that the "Wednesford" loop and branch over towards Gornal and on to Wombourne was a competitive strike by Euston to try and tap into the Earl of Dudley's extensive rail worked iron, coal and brick industries.  So, when Wombourne lost it's GWR station in 1932, the LMS branch to Wednesford became the only passenger service to the village, which clung on mainly because it served Gornal.  Slated for closure in 1965, pending a decision, BRB built a temporary wooden platform on the site of the closed goods yard to serve Wombourne, allowing the closure of a level crossing and signal box, and the sale of the station house and buildings.  Any similarity with Sheringham in Norfolk is purely intentional.  However, owing to a mistake in the closure proceedings and associated legal wrangles, the line was still chuntering away when WMPTE signed an agreement to underwrite local rail services and so ended up in a legal limbo.  The problem was the station was technically in Staffordshire, but the majority of users of the hourly bubble-car shuttle were from the West Midlands county, so the "temporary" wooden platform and dismal unstaffed shelter soldiered on for forty years whilst SCC refused to pay anything to upgrade it and WMPTE/Centro refused to pay for something over the border.

    That's the back story.  It'll be an electrically separate single line running as a shuttle from the bay platform to the platform stood in a weed infested gravel goods yard with a backscene behind, a sort of minimal bookshelf working diorama of the kind of heavily rationalised, "crumbling edge of quality" stations that most enthusiasts hate, but I find actually quite atmospheric.  I've planned it as an electrically separately fed line to allow it to double up as a test and programming line without the need to remove any stock in the main fiddle yard.  The idea is the bubble cars will leave Wednesford bay, pass behind the scenic break, before emerging from behind a second break to run past the dismal, weed endowed goods yard--parking into the platform on a regular shuttle.  Which leads me to the other project I've been doing this week, Wombourne "platform"
     
    The platform is a rather nice laser cut MDF platform kit from "Torri Laser" just up the road in Pigtown - sorry Mochdre, Conwy.  Mine arrived without instructions, I'm not sure if that was an oversight or if they are meant to be an intelligence test but I managed to get something together and work out the main structural components, with only a few details not applied as being un-necessary for my needs.  The kit comes with a more "steam era" wooden shelter and platform but I wanted something more modern, and the shelter came from an eBay seller in Northumberland, and is again laser cut MDF, which fits perfectly onto the platform.  The post and rail fence is genuine metal wire supplied with the platform kit.
     
    You'll notice that the half of the platform on the right has holes.  Somehow I missed this when laying out the parts, it should have been joined by a similar piece I put on the back but should have been on the front left, to allow some additional detailing to be added.  Never mind.
     
    At the moment I've left it "au naturel" but will probably weather it down once I start installation post track laying.
     
    The complete length, which I estimate should just about accommodate a two car 57ft underframe DMU or a Sprinter with the cab door on the ramp.  To me it really captures the look of minimum service, minimum expenditure branch stations of the rationalisation era.  The parts all go together well, once you've worked out what goes where and being real wood has a wonderful feel.  Also, being made here in Wales was an added bonus for me.  With a Dapol 122 burbling in the platform waiting departure, surrounded by copious drifts of fireweed and scrubby undergrowth, I cant wait to get it installed and hopefully trigger some of those who think all model railways should be chocolate box fantasies of a mythical golden era.
  7. wombatofludham
    Short video showing progress on the "Old Town".  I spent a sunny day outside yesterday (in the garden, well away from anyone else) sticking down InTheGreenwood laser cut MDF cobblestoned plates which I had airbrushed, plus the 3d printed "asphalt" road I designed which is in front of the station.  A little bit of landscaping and a rearranged "townscape" trying to hide as best as possible some of the inevitable joins in the cobblestone plates.  It was as much an experiment to try out the new video camera, and also gave me a chance to show the lighting effects.  Eventually I will add street lighting and a few interior lighting which will complement the dawn to dusk lighting effects.  Also still to do, some 3d printed shop signs, and signs for the pub and hotel, and the addition of bollards, which to save time I bought for a few quid of TatBay.

    I'll probably do some more video footage as we progress, preferably without my ugly countenance although I might front the odd one.  I hate the sound of my voice and when I have to edit my bi-monthly magazine recording for the local Talking Newspaper for the Blind it's like torture, so I probably will avoid presenting, so you've all dodged that bullet...
  8. wombatofludham
    Whilst "doing my bit" and staying home (actually, "social isolating" is nothing new to me being a mildly sociopathic misanthrope who frankly would happily relocate to the top of Cader Idris so long as I could still get mail delivered.  My idea of bliss would be a desert island with high speed broadband, online delivery and no neighbours...) I've been giving the Aldi 3d printer a workout ready for some serious layout building.

     

     
    The second low relief factory to go on the retaining wall behind the station.  This one is a lower, flat roof construction.
     

     
    The amazing self levitating factory now has signage.  Electric blue.  
     

     
    3d printed road surface.  I want to cover the historic part of town with MDF laser-cut cobblestone sheet which is on it's way from tatBay, and as that is just over 2mm deep, I decided to 3d print some road plates to the same depth.  I did rather over-cook the kerbstone gap, the top of the kerb is at the same height as the asphalt pavement but it looks like a tramway groove in these pictures.  Nevertheless, I think it works OK and hides the foundation gaps nicely.  I've also changed the road layout again and decided to use my 3d printed Abacus enclosed bus shelter on the upper level rather than the longer cantilever one shown earlier, which is now going in a second, low level bus layby in front of the New Civic Square.


    Apart from the groove, I think I might just give the road plates a light dusting of gunk with the airbrush.
     


    The "Citibank" has now been painted and rebranded the "AST Bank".  "AST" is the Welsh word for "bitch"...
     

     
    The infill section for the Civic Centre incorporating an access ramp.  This will house the town War Memorial.  The Kibri office block will be repainted to match the two other buildings and the bare board at the front will be paved, probably with 3d printed paving of some sort.
     

     
    Street level close up of the road plates, the good citizens of Wednesford are obeying their masters and socially isolating.
     

     
    Abacus bus shelter, 3d printed.  No glass left intact.
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