Revolution Mike B

Just used Suprestrip to remove the paint form a 158 although it's taken two attempts to get it off! Something to note for the VTEC Power Cars - they're completely different to the FGW ones. Not an issue if you're not bothered about them being prototypical of course.

There's clearly been a lot of thought put in to this project and it's definitely paying off!

Great weekend, great company, cracking show........and my train crashing skills reached a whole new level!! Here's a few photos from the weekend from the 'Operator's' side of the layout... ...and finally, I took one of my 'lets's be critical', zoomed in pictures which shows just how good Ian's modelling is.......and this is with Code 100 track!!

S!#& news about your cat Tim!! Those steps are amazing mate!

OK, a few people on one of the social media sites have been asking how I've made the platforms so to update an earlier post, here goes. The platform edges are run of the mill Peco ones of the stone or brick variant that have been glued together and covered with embossed brick plascticard. To make the surfaces, I've used 30thou plasticard sheet, cut to sit inside the edging and this sits on top of the little lugs kindly provided by Mr Peco. Next up, a thin strip of 20thou plasticard was added to the edging slabs to make them wider and scored to match, and then a larger 20thou piece of plasticard added to bring the whole surface level. I've also added supporting ribs underneath the main surface to stop it from bowing. In some places, I've added a very fine skim of cheap filler from the Range, which was sanded back and covered any glaringly obvious joins.....and then for the bit that took me forever.... ....the whole thing has probably had about 6 /7 coats of acrylic paint, in various shades of grey / brown, applied with a bush using a stippling action.....when I say 6/7 coats, this is because it never looked right so I just kept on over painting it, time and time again, but.......when it's sanded back using a sanding block, it creates a very random effect. The words 'Trial and Error' don't even come close and I'm sure that most people would be happy with a Metcalfe kit! So on to the slabs - these were done in a similar way but using various colours dry brushed over the top which picked up on the stippled effect. The gravel is Woodland Scenics fine grey and was stuck down with good old fashioned PVA. And finally, the drains and gully. The drain covers are from Wizard Models (I hope all these companies appreciate the free advertising ) and are ridiculously cheap! I cut the platform surface and chiseled it out to suit the size of the drain cover, and then superglued them in. The gully is just a strip of grey paint that's been deeply scored with a scalpel and then painted in the same way that the coping stone were. Hopefully, that'll help anybody that's trying to achieve a similar effect. As per one of my previous posts, the excellent DCC Concepts modern platfom lights are more O Gauge than 4mm (which is a great shame), so I'm in the middle of building my own which I've decided will be non working. Posts are brass tube, with a plastruct outer sleeve for the wider part, and Alan Butler of Modelu (please visit his stand if he's at any exhibitions you're attending) is going to make me some lamp heads when he's not rushed off his feet. I know I've said it before but I've really enjoyed learning many new skills and meeting new friends through building this layout, and non of it would've been possible without taking advice from other modellers.

....from the master of modelling bizarre things......I learnt from you James! There's another one of these but without the drains that'll sit in front of the station building and then I need to start adding the manhole covers etc to the car park. I figured there wouldn't be any drains up near the bridge due to the slope where gravity would take over and I've not seen any pictures of drains on roads near old style stone / brick bridges.

Cheers Scott

Apologies for the lack of updates but I've been a bit busy with work, the Wife, and watching trains at Castle Cary! Anyway, platform progress is moving on, if but a little slowly and after making up some patch repairs inspired by Tim's excellent Sevenoakes, I've added the safety line. It's a bit too wide but I can adjust it later along with toning it down and scuffing it up a bit. It's starting to look more like a station now! And finally, I had a moment of madness and decided to do this.... It's not 100% finished yet and I'm sure in reality, there's no way they'd have dug a trench so close to a drain....but who cares....I'll leave that to the rivet counters to point out .......err....

Gutted I can't get to the show this coming weekend - I'm helping Ian with Tidworth at Chatham and there's no way I'm ever going to miss an opportunity to crash trains all weekend! Have a good show.

I saw a 59 with some silver grey MRL JNAs yesterday Rob. Given that they're similar to the OHS, I'm going to get a few more for Oak Road now I've realised they shouldn't be hard to convert

Thanks James.....but I'd probably direct you to the nearest Specsavers!

There comes a time when, even for me, enough is enough, so after tarmac surface version 10.6, I've decided to press on. To be fair, it's probably the best effort so far and if you're looking at it from a distance, it looks quite convincing. If I could go back and start all over again, I'd use 1200 wet and dry but hey ho, it's been a steep learning curve and mine which at times has been almost vertical. The base layer for the greenery is probably a bit overkill given that it's had scatter and grass added, most of which won't be seen by the time I've covered it in shrubs, trees and bushes but I'd rather go down the belt and braces route whereby if something falls off, there's always another layer underneath before I get back to the brown paper It's been just over a year now to get to where I am and it's not even halfway through yet. With four months left until the first show, I really hope I can get it to the stage where it looks presentable enough not to let the show organisers down

It's funny you should say that Bill because the Sea Moss Trees are about as stable as a paper house in a force ten gale....it'll be interesting to see how long they last before they get broken.......I'll give it a week! The wire method gives a strong trunk etc, but the foliage is still prone to falling off, so I've started spraying everything with Woodland Scenics - Scenic Cement. I used to use PVA but it's made my bridge go glossy - most annoying after all the effort I put in to get it looking respectable!

Using Sea Moss for the trees is quite expensive when you need around 400 of the them, so I've had a go at making some trees out of florist wire as per the Ceynix Trees method (florist wire, florist tape, postiche) and here's the very first one... It's not the best effort but I'm pleased it looks like a tree (unlike my second attempt that went straight in the bin!) and because it's not Sea Moss, it's a different shape and adds more depth.... Despite watching a number of conventional wire tree making videos, it's not quite as easy as I thought, and I must thank Jacqui of Ceynix Trees for her help and advice in how to create 'real' looking trees in terms of type and shape. I'm not sure I'll have enough trees made for the first show! Anyway, here's the new tree in place and it's funny how just one tree can make the whole scene look different, but then again, anyone that's cut a large tree down in their garden will understand exactly what I mean.

As everyone knows, I'm a great believer in customer service and product quality. Earlier in the week, I ordered a Bachmann Snack Van from 2K Technologies via flea bay and this morning it turned up slightly worse for wear. 2K has just sent me another one free of charge even though it was no fault of their own and therefor have effectively lost their profit on the sale. I offered to return the damaged one but it wasn't worth their while trying to reclaim the cost from Royal Mail - what a sad state of affairs that is! Fair play to David for replacing it - fantastic customer service but how can it be right that this company has to foot the bill for someone else's incompetence?

I'm almost as far as I can go with the tunnel board now because a) I need the back scene, and b) I'm running out of spray glue! Ignore the road, it's not finished. This needs a lot more trees........ ....so until I've got some more spray glue, it's back to the station boards to get the platforms and terrain finished. It's such a shame I've not weathered the Vomiter ....... the red plastic roof sticks out like a sore thumb.... Right, I'd best crack on.....5 months to go!!!

I know this sounds daft but a Railroad loco should be perfectly fine on code 100 track down to second radius curves as they're based on the old Lima tooling. The rail profile is so high that the flanges should clear the chairs by a country mile!

For anyone that's looking for inspiration (and I know it's not just James behind Loftus Road), have a look through James' Flickr account. If that doesn't want to make you want to up your game......nothing will!

This is amazing Cav! It's hard enough in OO, let alone 2mm!

The fence is now well under way and the view from the front looks a lot better than it does at the back (I'm not worried because it will be covered in bushes).... ....and here's a rare view from the top (I had to spin the board) to see just how far the greenery has grown! Tomorrow, I will mostly be.......making trees!!!

Well the wife's operation went better than expected so I've being juggling the modelling with being a care assistant.....which at least allows me to carry on working on Oak Road. The trees and bushes are certainly time consuming because there's just so many of them! I reckon there's still a good two weeks' worth of work on this bit alone and I'm going through scatter material like nobody's business Because I didn't make the bushes first, I'm going to need to turn the board on it's side so that I can get to the bits I've missed. This could be interesting to say the least as everything I've spent ages sticking on could fall off! I'm going to get a bit stuck shortly though because I need to order up a back scene and until it arrives, I can't add the trees to the side and back. The blue catch pits look pretty good too (considering they're card!), although I've put them too close together - not an issue because they're easy to dig up and relocate....with a bit of water Watch this space..........

The trees are just sea moss covered in a mixture of WS / Green Sceen / Gaugemaster / Ceynix Trees scatter material The platform sides are the standard Peco ones covered in plasticard

Well this is probably going to be the last update for a while as the Mrs is off to have an operation tomorrow and she'll need looking after for a bit. The undergrowth and greenery seems to be sprouting up everywhere..... I'm sure many of you will be scratching your head now thinking 'why on earth was he making such a big deal out of the rock cutting when he's covering it up?'. Well in my mind, I wanted it to look real, therefore if the rock cutting looked right, it would definitely look right when the trees and bushes started sprouting up out of it! There's still a long way to go - I'm only a 1/4 of the way through it and I've not even added the trees yet (just the cutting that is, not the rest of the board) and it's certainly not going to be a quick job! Anyway, I'll leave you with that HST again.....

Well I can safely say, I'll be sticking to what I know in future and the only scenic mediums I'll be using will be Green Scene, WS and Ceynix Trees. The combination of these products gives the most realistic looking scenery full stop! I'm not going to name the other products that I've used but needless to say, they're not a patch on the ones I've just mentioned. There's a bit of a mention for Gaugemaster in here too as some of their products have integrated with some success. All I can say is thank god for my air brush and the ability to remove unwanted rubbish with a scraper and a Dyson!!!!!

I'm not sure if it can be seen in this picture but the tree furthest left has some rather large, bright green lumps on it. All is not lost though because I'll get the air brush out and tone it down a bit (hopefully!) It's quite interesting that the trees looked quite dull, until I added the darker one in the foreground and now they all look a lot brighter - it's funny that subtle changes can make all the difference to how things look. I've even found myself looking at tree formations ( I know - very sad!) on the way to and from my office so that I can get a realistic effect! This board is actually starting to look like a model railway now and not a load of plywood. It's a shame the same can't be said about the others.