BRera80s

And! On further inspection of the photograph I've noticed a couple of white dog hairs in the foreground. Of course these will be removed with tweezers although I do intend to have a few dogs represented in model form. There will be a farmer and a couple of Collies herding sheep but I'm also wanting to represent my favourite breed, the English Springer Spaniel. Although the layout is set in high summer I may just use a bit of artistic licence and put a shooting party in there somewhere.

With Southgill being a rural Cumbrian based I knew that stone wall were going to have to be extensively constructed. I've seen some very realistic walls created using broken up pieces of plaster which are assembled much the same as building an actual wall. The main issue for me was making the blocks of plaster small enough not to look too over scale but large enough to handle with a pair of tweezers. Once the building of some walls started I soon came to the realisation that it was going to take many weeks to construct the 30ft or so of walls which would be required for the project. In a day I could at best build about 2ft and by the end of seven or eight hours of fiddling about with tiny blocks of plaster and PVA I was starting to get sick of it. I had to find a quicker method of construction yet still retain as much detail and also the ability to contour the walls to the shaped landscape. I decided to make a mound using latex rubber. I constructed a section of wall about 15cm long and then left it for a couple of days to fully dry. Then I began to paint on layers of latex rubber. It took a couple of days to build up enough layers (about 20) and then I tentatively peeled it off. The mould looked good and I prepared some fine casting plaster to quite a thick consistency, filled the mould and then waited twenty minutes or so. The test casting was a success! For finer detail when using moulds and plaster I find a thin mixture of plaster and water is far more accurate. It flows into the nooks and crannies more freely and there is less chance of air pockets forming. That was fine if my walling just needed to be placed on a flat section of the layout (of which there aren't really any), but not if I wanted my walls to follow the lie of the land. The solution was to alter the ration of plaster to water in the mix and this thicker batch although more prone to air pockets it allowed me to turn the mould upside down without the plaster running out. I could then press it into the landscaping and within a few minutes the plaster had set. I used a layer of cling film on top of the landscaping on the layout to prevent the plaster sticking to it so that I could easily remove the mould and then paint it before glueing it in place. This photo of a section of walling is almost finished but still requires some dry brushing, refining the vegetation and the inclusion of a few sheep I think this should make a nice little cameo.

Thanks but it's 4mm scale. The block of the barn are a tad overscale but they are made up of plaster broken up and glued in place.

Here is the first image I've posted of my new layout in progress. It is inspired by the scenery of both the Settle to Carlisle and the West Coast Mainline. The layout will eventually be 20ft long and be transportable for exhibitions, this being my first attempt at an exhibition layout. This 3ftx2ft section is not far from completion and the next major task is to build the OLE.

Many thanks I've had another look at your pictures of the building adverts and I'll have a go at it myself. Peter

Fantastic modelling! I can't quite believe the level of detail for a 2mm scale project. I'm interested in how you created the 'painted' adverts on the bricks using crafty paper. Is this waterslide transfer paper? I ask because I am face with the same conundrum for some of my own buildings and your's look very realistic. Peter