Anthony Ashley

Dear All. More foam work on the cliffs. Photos below. Next is to sculpt the foam and add plaster sections. After this I will be more into scree slopes with more vegetation so a lot quicker!! Regards, Anthony Ashley

Howard, Thanks for the good wishes. Simon, I agree with your assessment of backs. They seem to be suddenly injured and then slow to fix. I shall take your advice and diligently apply myself to the hourly exercise regime prescribed by the physio. I want to get on with the cliff face working back to Penmaenmawr, having created the foam base and moulded a lot of plaster pieces. Regards, Anthony Ashley

Simon, I checked with my son. The plate size for his Photon Mono printer is 202X128 ml. Thanks again for he help. Sorry I did not respond earlier but as explained above I have been out of commission for2 weeks. Regards, Anthony Ashley

Simon and Kris thanks for the questions. Simon I shall ask my son the size of his printing plate as I am not sure. Will gat back to you. For some reason the last file I sent the window bars were not attached to the building, not sue why. Kris I have had a mate print 0.3ml window bars so hope they will work. Last 2 week have been absolutely dreadful due to a bad back. I have been unable to sit at all and spent virtually the last 2 weeks lying down waiting for the back spasms to stop. After the second visit to a physiotherapist this morning and acupuncture the pain in my leg has at last vanished more or less. I would not have believed it before I experienced it. I think the back spasms are attributable to crawling around under the layout putting in micro electronic boards for the mimic panel, followed by setting up the wires for the lever frame switching 4 days later. I might need to do more back exercises in future! You never appreciate your health till you loose it. Regardless to say there has been no modelling over the last 2 weeks. Hopefully on the mend, with more back exercises and a return to the layout over the next few days. Regards, Anthony Ashley

Dear All, Latest version of the 3 D Bay window house. Regards, Anthony Ashley

Dear All, Have been working on the lever frame for the Conwy Goods Yard and am ready to connect the wires to the frame. Has anyone else done this and is there an easy way to do it. I spent an hour or two connecting the first wire and struggled as there is quite compressed area to work in. Any ideas. The wire has to be bent to a 90 degree angle and then slid through the lever. Also worked on the foam creating the cliff area. Photos are below. Foam will bulk out the cliff face to hopefully a reasonably accurate rendition of the real thing. Simon, I have sent you an updated version of the model. The dimensions were measured from Google Earth so should be reasonable accurate. I have yet to model the back section, which will be printed as a separate piece as I can ot fit it all onto the printing plate. The back section is about 25ml by 25ml and is shown in the photo below. Tunnel has been created as well. Further work to install the lever frame and then create more plaster pieces using the molds. Regards, Anthony Ashley

Simon, No problem I am happy to wait until you have time. Regards, Anthony Ashley

Simon, Have you received the #D building file. I sent it via other mean over the week end. Hopefully you are able to open and read it. Thanks for your help as this is my first foray into 3D design. I am happy with how it looks at the moment although I have to add a 25ml squared area at the back and design the bay windows, which will be the most difficult part, and then attach them to the building. I am doing lots of different train tasks at the moment so will get to it soon. Kris I agree that building the original design from Goggle street view measurements and then printing and finishing it will be great. I shall be using Scale scenes brick and other paper from them. Thanks for your comment. I spent all of the day before yesterday on line trying to purchase 20 15V 6A power supplies through Alibaba. It took a long time but I saved a lot of money in the end . I will need most of these to power the switch decoders. I have found that putting 4 on the same power supply needs a fair amount of watts. They are ordered now so will need to wait about 3 weeks for delivery. I can then power up all of the switches. I have finished applying the water based paint to the cliff area that has been finished. After one coat of paint it becomes very obvious where the no more gaps has not been properly covered. I then had to reapply the pipette applied plaster to cover these areas and repaint again. Photos are below of the finished area. Next is dirt (coffee grounds) and vegetation application on the horizontal surfaces. I am also working on the Conwy goods area mimic board and lever frame system to manually control the points in Conwy goods yard. Heaps tp do so hope to get motivated over the next week or so. All comments are gratefully appreciated. Thanks for your interest!! Regards, Anthony Ashley

Kris, Simon and John, Thanks for the comments. Plaster work is very slow but steady unfortunately. Hopefully the layout behaves in the future. I have finished the front of the 3 D model so have a couple of photos. It has taken me about 12 hours to get this far, including many moments of frustration!!!!! This is what I am trying to replicate. Regards, Anthony Ashley

Lez, Thanks for the encouragement. The plaster process is quite slow. I have been slowly filling in the gaps. I had a train evening with club members the other night but had recently electrified the 4 points as part of the loops at the bottom of the layout. I had not snipped off the wires going through the tie bars on the points, so when I attempted to run a train it derailed. I tried cutting it back but did not trim it low enough the night was plagued with derailments which I have not had before. I did not find the offending piece of wire until the following day!. Very frustrating but I have learnt a valuable lesson to properly test the track immediately before running trains in front of anyone. I have also down loaded Fusion 360, which is a free 3D modelling app for drawing and creating models for 3D printing. I have got to the stage of creating a 2 story house with outlined windows and door frames. I am going to attempt a house with bay windows. I need about 60 of them for the layout. Once I have finished the design I can print it using a Resin 3D printer. Photos of more plaster work are below. I shall keep going with the plaster work and work on the Fusion 360 bay window building. Once I have done a reasonable area of plaster I shall need to fill in the gaps with pipette and plaster. Regards, Anthony Ashley

Dear Howard, Nice to hear from you and thanks for the comment. Since the last post I have electrified the 4 points on the passing loops between Penmaenmawr and Bangor. I have added the ply boards under the cliffs leading back to Penmaenmawr and I have also added foam to provide the base for the cliffs between the rail viaduct and the second avalanche shelter. Lastly I have been busy continuing the plaster work from the viaducts back to Penmaenmawr along the cliff area. Photos are below: Foam added to provide the base for the cliffs. The oddly shaped foam is to recreate the contours on the cliff side. These pieces will be covered in plaster rocks Although it looks weird I have tried to recreate the rock formations existing on the mountain. Some of the foam has been covered with plaster rocks, but I still need to drip plaster from a pipette into the gaps similar to the rock face on the right of this picture. The cliff area from the rail viaduct to the back of the pictured avalanche shelter is all stone work so more resin stone work will be added here. More foam formers have been added behind the rock face. I shall continue to work my way around the layout doing the cliff face at this level. I will need to cast some larger plaster rocks to create the deep gullies that exist on this cliff. Regards, Anthony Ashley

Richard and Simon, Thanks for adding to the discussion. I agree that it seems very odd that they took out so much fill to create the road but left the two rock areas and went through then. I have shown both below rather than just the one. Simon I did not understand the Welsh derivative of the name, being an ignorant Australian and not well versed in Welsh language. It makes a lot of sense in how you explained it as the headland does look a bit like an axe head. Thanks for the great photo. The blue sky and cloud sis very similar to my hand painted back scene which a number of people have said is unrealistic. The photo is proof of blue skys at least on some days! I have added more plaster to fill in the gaps. Photo is below as well. I made email contact with the shop owner for the puzzle of the loco leaving Conwy ,but after initial contact he has not been responsive. Regards, Anthony Ashley

Lez, I agree that what can look great to the naked eye may look really average under the scrutiny of the close up!! I have had some help from Ross in lending a perspective on the tunnel area in terms of sculpting the foam and adding the most relevant pieces of plaster rocks. He has a very good eye for detail. Photos of yesterdays work are below. Side of the tunnel furthest away from Penmaenmawr. Other side. Cliff face. The top of the slope has a lot of vegetation and no rock visible. This is the section being built. Next is to fill in the gaps with small plaster pieces, Paint the yellow sections brown and paint the rocks with water based paint. Then vegetation. Regards, Anthony Ashley

Lez, thanks for the encouragement. It seems like my break from modelling was very long, but I did a lot of work in that period. I finished the last tunnel portal so photo is below. I think it is slightly better than the first so I hope to keep improving. Close up photos are never ver flattering. Regards, Anthony Ashley

Dear All, Thanks for the responses. A little more work on the tunnels and cliffs below. White paint added as the mortar for the tunnel mouths. Stone colour added. The tunnel has been lines with paper and scale scenes stucco. Surrounding stones added. Other end with final stones to be added. Will finish off the last tunnel mouth and then start carving the foam cliffs. Regard, Anthony Ashley

Dear All, Thanks for the responses above. I have been working on the tunnels and plaster rocks to line the cliff sides. It is alittle hot in the shed at the moment but battling on. Photos are below. Plaster rock production line!! Rocks out of the moulds. Side of the second tunnel furthest away from Penmaenmawr. I used a dremel to cut the tunnel mouth.I Tunnel mouth not cut on the other side of the rocky outcrop. l need to cut the second tunnel mouth, continue creating the plaster rocks and to install those rocks onto the cliffs. The overhang needs to be filled in with more foam. Regards, Anthony Ashley

Dear All A long gap fot train modelling with my apponment to do an inquiry which took 3 months. Now finished and back to regular progress on hte layout. I hav added some tunnesl ot the roads , but just very first stage whith foam blocks glued in place. I need ot compare the pictur of the area to see if I need to add a ittle more foam to bulk out the groungd area further. Once I have got sufficient land mass I need to sculpt the foam and add plaster gullies and cliffs. A few pictures below: First tunnel area with land mass. Perhaps one mor layer of foam at the top. Second tunnel. I shall bilk out under the overhang on hte broen section and then add a side rock area I need to add more ashphalt to the road before adding more foam to the second tunnel. I then need to add more foam bown hte mountain and sculpted the tunnells. Once thsi is done i shall add more rocks and dust to the area. Regards, Anthony AshleyI

Sir Douglas, Thanks for posting the site. Any additional information is always very valuable. Looking closely at the photos of the diorama is very exciting and rewarding. I appreciate the contribution made by those reading the posts and this is really very helpful. Thanks again. I find it interesting that the length of the whole model is about 1.5 meters, whereas the viaducts in my model alone are nearly 2 metres in length. With the smaller scale comes more detail!! Regards, Anthony Ashley

Dear All, While progress appears to be slow it has been steady. I have cleaned all of the main line track a nd have tried to finalise the electrification of the Penmaenmawr switch point decoders. I managed to run a diesel with 10 coaches from the southern Panmaenmawr around the bottom of the layout up to the switch area for the transition to the hidden track. I need to permanently electrify all of the decoders in that area and then I can run the rake all the way around to Conwy. I did have some trouble with the Penmaenmawr decoders. There are 4 of them connected to one 16V 3.36A DC power pack. Individually they are all operational off the power source. I can connect the fist 2 and they operate, but when I connect the third they flash and do not operate. The third one will operate as the only decoder off the power pack. I am not sure what is the issue, as I have checked all of the polarities on the power and track connections and they are all the same for each decoders. Any ideas from any one? Regards, Anthony Ashley

Dear All, Some work on the road way leading onto the Road viaduct and the scree area is painted. Photos below. I had to widen the road area as the viaduct was placed a short distance from the back cliff and the original road was cut back for the original intended placement. i used a drop saw to cut the two unpainted pieces showing in htei photo. The top slice was challenging as it is only about 10 mls wide. I shall add a 18 ml ply wall once the road base has been sanded back. Cliff face has been repainted again awaiting scree and plaster gullies Back to the road base with some plasticard cut to create a boundary for the road base plaster pour (coloured the plaster with black pigment for a asphalt effect). The plasticard is used also to rest against as I slide a levelling stick over the plaster pour. The paper was to cover some holes in the wall. When the paper got wet it was a real nuisance during the pour, flopping down onto my road base. First pour of the pigment coloured plaster. I rubbed very lightly with a finger when it was still a little damp to get rid of air bubbles. Need to see the effect once sanded tomorrow to see if the air bubbles reappear. If so another shallow coat of plaster Need to slightly raise the height of the road against the viaduct road with some more plaster. Next section ready to be poured with another 50mls of plaster. I have continued the plasticard around the hill for some distance. need to do a few more pours of plaster once each one has dried. Hope the slope will not interfere with the pours tooo much. I decided to some of the road as I need to create a short tunnel above the bottom road just before the first avalanche shelter. Regards, Anthony Ashley

Dear All, Have been doing some work over the last 3 weeks so less progress on the layout. I have at least managed to complete drilling the 40 holes to take the piano wire to move the points in the Bangor area. I should have drilled these before completing the wiring but the job is now done. I shall now move around to the Penmaenmawr side of the layout and complete more paper mache, paint, attach plaster rocks and moulds to create ravines as required in many areas. and put a layer of concrete scree in the gaps. The scenery should be quicker so I hope to make faster progress, although work will continue as well. I shall be able to work for all of the weekend on the layout. Regards, Anthony Ashley

Simon, Thank you for sharing your knowledge of the site above. I went to have a look and it is very promising with some great photos. I have signed up for the site and waiting for ack by the administrators. Thank you again for letting us now of such a rich resource on the area. I have finally finished wiring and testing power from the train controller to the main lines and all is good. I still need to wire about half the orange section in the Bangor platform area, but it should be a simple job. I realised after I had finished I had not drilled the holes for the piano wire to go through the base board for auto switch control. Am drilling those holes now. No photos as wiring is not very photogenic!! Regards, Anthony Ashley

Dear All, Painted the paper mache brown but have then recoated with more paper mache. Photos are below with the plasticard providing a slippery underside to facilitate the removal of the avalanche shelter. More layers of paper to finish the paper mache. Paint again and then move onto screeing the slopes. Regards, Anthony Ashley

Dear All, Some work on the paper mache and a small problem hopefully solved. Photos are below. Penmaenmawr side of the mountain View of the avalanche shelter Problem is the gap between the slope and the avalanche shelter, which should mesh together. allowing the shelter to be removed by sliding out, and provide track access. I shall add a small section of thin plasticard and paper mache over the top of it up the slope. This will still allow the avalanche shelter to slide out under the plasticard strip which shall be appropriately sceniced. Around the mountain side I have since painted the paper mache brown to reinforce water proofing/ Will add some more layers of paper mache and then paint again. Once the painting is completed I shall add scree and cliffs and vegetation. Regards, Anthony Ashley

Dear All, Avalanche shelter has been painted and dirt added on top of the roof. Photos below. I have commenced securing the wire to create the cliff. This required an extra support behind the shelter. Next is paper mache up to the edge of Penmaenmawr. I shall add some and much vegetation to the top of the avalanche shelter and more shading on the stone work later but for now it will do. Regards, Anthony Ashley