MarshLane

Oh, one other thing, I forgot to mention. The wagon rolling stock fleet grew by another two vehicles today. First up is this BR liveried Plate Wagon, complete with load. The wagon was acquired from a well known auction site at a very reasonable price, and will join the general freight set, which is starting to grow nicely now. It will be good once the layout baseboards are constructed next month, to be able to to actually shunt vehicles about! The other addition, is a Parkside Dundas 20-ton NE two-axle brake van plastic kit. Having never really built a kit before, and wanting to put a rake of 21-ton coal hoppers together, I decided I needed to take the plunge, so this is the first addition. The kit arrived today, and will be started once the shed building has been completed. Rich

Well I've managed to get almost a full afternoon working on the shed building today, for what feel like the first time in ages! I'm really pleased with how the trackwork has come out, and i've been playing around with the DAS clay, trying to sort the flooring out. Not there yet, although I think today's effort is the closest I've been yet. Just forgot to do some pictures to get people's thoughts! Ah well, next time! The wooden base for the shed has been created today. Regular readers will recall that out of the blue, I acquired an A2 Pacific recently, the chimney of which is a bit taller than a Class 40! The result is that it wouldn't go through the shed doors! So the answer, has been to raise the shed by 10mm throughout, which has been achieved using some 10mmx10mm wood dowling (or whatever its called!) to form a frame, the inside will be (has been) spray painted black, so it matches the brickwork directly above, the outer side will be covered in weathered Plastikard brick, which I think will look ok. The base can be seen here, just roughly put together before painting, during a trial fitting of the sides and back. I've also acquired some decent masking tape this afternoon, so one of the next tasks is to mask off the weathered internal sides to the shed, the bottom of which can then be painted black, and fixed to the inside of the walls. The core building can then be erected, and the whole project will move a major step forward. The frame was then put together with overlapping joints, secured using the wonderful 'No Nails' glue So not much progress in all, but plenty of work! The sides of the pit walls have also been heavily weathered this afternoon, so that should allow me to actually pull all the bits together to build the pits next week! Rich

Afternoon All, Just thought i'd pop in and see how Leeds City was progressing ... any updates John? Rich

Hi Jinty, Looks like a superb time with the trains! Hope your other half enjoyed the weekend and you had a good Anniversary. Happy Anniversary btw! Rich

Hi David, Looks superb! Really coming on now, and the stone setts work really well in my view. Eagerly following Rich

Just a quick update, as I'm suppose to be doing some work, but just haven't got the incentive today! The weathered track looks good (shame in some respects that it will get covered up!) and will avoid any bits of nickel silver poking through! Still trying to find a decent picture of brickwork floors or paviours, with which to deal with the shed floor, so that's being held up a little at the moment. Swapped to working on sorting the pits out, so things are progressing, but nothing worth taking any pictures of yet! I've got a few days away coming up, but once back i'm hoping that I should be able to get the building put together and the whole model moves a step closer to completion! Rich

Hi Andy, Just catching up with the thread - excuse the language and expression but that all looks bloody good mate! Amazing to think of the short time that its transformed from baseboards to the finished version. Are you taking it on tour? Anything booked? That Pannier just looks the business wandering in on the branch freight! Wish I could progress that quickly! Still Marsh Lane is pottering along slowly! Rich

Chris, this looks superb! Can't wait until mine arrives later this year! Still trying to work out if it should have a stablemate Thats good to hear. Appreciate its extra cost, but I think given that a lot of these models will spend their time shunting, that the stay alive option would be useful. Having said that, its not difficult to fit a capacitor, and presumably the body is easy to remove? Well done - keep up the good work! Rich

Thanks Don, Not sure what the management would have thought of MR practices being used on the Eastern, but if anyone askes ..... Lol! Rich

Thanks Jinty, That would be really helpful! Rich

Hi Lee, Well if your going to let conventional thinking into your mind and allow it to cloud your judgement! hehe! Yes they do, and yes they should. I c**ked it up made a critical miscalculation when having threaded all the chairs on, i then put the left rail on the right, and the right rail on the left while compiling Road 2! I put it down to a newbie idiot making a mistake. Unfortunately this miscalculation wasn't discovered until after i'd glued all the chairs down! Normally, i'd probably have prised everything off, and started again, but decided it was a first attempt, its within a shed, everything will get painted, it wouldn't really be noticeable and hopefully won't affect the locos running quality - i've tried a couple of wagons, and a Class 08 being pushed over it, and all run fine! I can confirm that the chairs do follow conventional thinking on Road 1 Rich

Jinty, Am i right in thinking you've stuck the sleepers to the template? Building them in situ this way, when and how do you deal with the electrical feeds into the track, and connectivity? Rich

Evening All, Bit more progress on things this evening. Andy thanks for your kind comments. Yes, I do feel some progress is now being made, although I'm lightyears behind your speed! With the second road being laid yesterday, tonight was spent adding the electrical connections to the trackwork, ready for when it goes on the layout (which is the next thing to be started on). I went with two connections on each road in the end, one at either end of the pit. Having done those, the whole shed board was masked over with newspaper ready for the track to be weathered. In some cases this is a non-job as once the shed floor is in the track isn't going to be seen, but i wanted to make sure there was no rogue bits of rail glistening away in photos! Final job this evening was therefore to spray the entire thing in rail match red rust ... it will also get a light dusting tomorrow of grime, but the inside part of the track, especially over the pits will be further weathered as the project progresses. My father has also had a go at weathering the exterior walls and, while its not turned out quite how we thought it would, its done a good thing of taking the brightness out of the red colour! Pictures tomorrow hopefully on that one. In the meantime, here's today's efforts.... Rich The masked off trackwork. Electrical connections. Normally these will go under the track, but as this won't be seen side soldering was easier! All covered and now drying....

Evening all, Well work has hampered progress the past few days, but a number of areas have moved forward this evening. Firstly the new packet of rail from C&L arrived - with correct 7mm bullhead included this time after i managed to order 4mm on the last occasion! So some progress has been made on the shed trackwork and base, details in a moment. You may recall earlier in the thread that there were a number of question, queries and comments about how the inner walls of the shed should be portrayed. Thanks to input from various members, along with studying the images that are online and in a number of books i've got here, it was decided that the walls should be whitewashed, with perhaps a thin layer of grime from years of steam locomotives within, while the bottom 4-5' of the wall would be black. The latter part does not cause any issues, and can be easily accomplished with some matt black spray paint that I already have, but getting a white wall that had the effect of being dirty, rather than 'covered' in dirty has proved challenging. Several test pieces later, and my father hit on the idea of using cotton wool to gently wipe a very watered down light grey acrylic paint over the whitewashed wall (white plastikard) then gently using a kitchen pan scrub to remove the excess paint and in some cases, remove most of the paint, leaving a wall that looked mainly white but with a light covering of grime. Personally, I think it worked quite well, so he undertook to do one of the inner side walls yesterday and see how it came out, see bottom wall below: The top wall obviously hasn't been touch, and both have only loosely been placed on the MDF side walls. Also, of course, the black bottom section has yet to be masked off and sprayed. However, we were both quite pleased with how it came out, so this afternoon, he undertook work on the other side wall as well - he's got the job for dealing with the two ends too!!! This evening, i've managed to push on a little bit with the trackwork as commented earlier. You will have seen the trackwork around the pit area on Road 2 of the shed, completed with Peco rail, well i decided to wait for the new C&L rail to arrive before tackling the trackwork on road 1. The Templot template was cut out closer to the track, with the pit area also being cut out this time, and things seem to becoming together a bit better. Only one rail done, but its straight, the rail clips are in the right way, and they are on the outer side of the track this time! Second rail will be done tomorrow, following which the electrical connections will be soldered on - i decided on the three, one at either end and one in the middle, to ensure a good conductivity - before the track is weathered. Elsewhere, thought to the brick base is progressing. John advised earlier in the thread that the brick floor would have been paviours, which are slightly bigger than normal bricks, so I have been trying to come up with a way of replicating these. Having acquired some DAS modelling clay from The Works (it was on sale at 50% off!) my first attempt wasn't too bad, although id managed to roll the clay too thin! I need to find a way of accurately representing the brick flooring for a shed, but part of the problem is the photos I have only show a small part, and its difficult to see how it would have worked across the shed floor - around rails for example. If anyone has any photos - please feel free to post them on here, all help is appreciated! I have however come across some superb moulds for creating cobbled 'setts' which Im aiming to acquire and try for the shed yard, away from the running lines, but where the entrance from the street would have been. We'll see what happens! Thats it for this update. Rich

Hi Jinty, Looking good mate! Station throat with that double junction and slip is going to look very effective! Watching intently! Rich

Hi John, Apologies, I asked you a question earlier, and just realised I never responded to your answer. That all makes sense now! Full of admiration, I thought points and the like would be hard enough with templates, computer aids and track gauges, but to draw it all out by hand and build without a template - wow! But well done for what you achieved, that really is superb. Thanks Rich

Looks interesting, with plenty of traffic, movement opportunity and realism. Good luck with it - not my area of modelling, but do enjoy anything pregrouping.

Thanks John, Yes, my view entirely. Originally i'd just sprayed the black to see what the coverage was like - but i need some better masking tape before doing the main walls. Also I should say that the bottom black wasn't masked off at all when practicing the top bit tonight. Once i can get the weathered whitewashed to come through better, then I think that will be done first, mask off and spray the black base of it. But, thanks for confirming it was overdone - i'm trying to find a way of getting it, shall we say minimal! Im actually wondering if paint is the right thing ... charcoal power very lightly dry brushed is something that has occurred to me might be an alternative way? Rich

Hi John, Thanks for your kind comments! Feel free to hijack away with such gems ... always a pleasure to read them! Had an hour, before I needed to finish off some business work (it always gets in the damm way!) but managed to get the track off the Templot template and glued onto the shed base. Really pleased with how its worked around the pit area. Apologies if this is a somewhat large image, due to being portrait! Also had a play around with some Acrylic black and white paint, mixed into a very dark grey then watered down. Brushed over the plastikard (which had previously had an inch thick area spray painted matt black to represent the four foot bottom base) then dabbed and wiped all over with some cotton wool to create an uneven smoke, dirt and grim effect on a whitewashed wall. Not perfect yet, but not bad. Think it needs to be more watered down to be honest, perhaps a slightly lighter grey as well? Personally, I think it looks better in reality than it does in the pictures lol! But its a bit too heavily covered for what I wanted. Another test piece necessary... Rich

I'll echo the comments to all from the guys above. That trackwork is superb! Well done. I'm about to see if i can get the track glued down to the depot base, and maybe, just maybe, even try on a spare piece of MDF making my first moves with DAS clay this evening. My idea, if I can get it so I'm happy with it, is to use DAS clay to replicate the brick floor, which will cover up the sleeper issues etc. Also, now have some acrylic black water based paint, so i'll see if i can come up with something that I'm happy with for 'dirtying' the whitewash internal walls. Wish me luck! It feels like the shed building has stuttered a little in the past few days, but its doing all the necessary bits away from the shed its, that will make the shed work, that is taking the time! Also, I know i've said this before, but thanks to everyone whose supporting this thread, through viewing, comments, suggesting etc.. Its amazing how much it spurs you on to carry on and do things, and how much support you feel you have when a problem or query occurs. Much appreciated guys, i tip my hat (well i would if I wore one!) to all of you - your modelling is inspirational and sets the bar very high for us newcomers to try and get anywhere close! I've spent time reading Steve Fay's Cardiff Canton thread the past couple days. Wow if I can get anywhere close to that - even half way as good - i'll be happy! Cheers for now. Rich

Andy, Ah that's a good point ... I forgot about the folding fiddle yard. I suppose the other option would be to attach it to the short backscene? Presumably that lifts out to allow the fiddle yard to fold? Rich

Hi John Thanks for the reply. I take your point, but you've intrigued me now ... If your gluing sleepers and crossing timbers to the baseboard and not gluing the rail to chairs ... How are you building point work and track from a template? As I discovered not gluing the rail to the chairs can give movement, so are you building on top of the template then being very careful in moving the trackwork to the baseboard, or is there another way that I can't think of? I'm assuming your working from a template? Rich

Hi Simon/Don, Thanks for the feedback. Didn't think about leaving the template in place, although somehow that feels like not tidying up afterwards! I think one of the learning points was I used carpet double sided tape to stick the sleepers to the template, which is probably too sticky! Shall try pritstick next! Martyn: thanks for the tip. One of my upcoming tasks was to look at Flickr to see how they went on - you've saved me a job! Rich

Hi Andy, Just catching up. Wow the speed of you progress is unreal. Have you found a way of pausing time while your modelling??? Love how it's all coming along and I'm in the agree camp for the stationmasters house, fits far better. One comment, and this isn't a Criticism in anyway, but from the station looking down the branch, the exit/entrance hole in the back scene is very visible. I wonder if I talk tree placed on the gardens side up against the back scene would help to disguise it? Really enjoying watching your progress tho Andy Rich

This is perhaps a silly question, but when I made the track last night, I glued the chairs to the sleepers, but didn't glue the track to the chairs .... Should I have done? Just come to remove the template and realised that the sleepers will move if I don't! But wanted to check before going and glue it!! Rich