sjrixon

Most of my modelling stuff is stored in beer boxes.. They are a perfect size to be sat on the shelves you can see in that picture. I also appear to have quite a lot of them!

Love the idea of banker, very cool.. And nice cereal box work, that makes more sense now. Quite complicated, but then it needs to be.

My new office is on order, should be here in a week or so.. Plan is to build in May, so not a long wait and it's a kit so shouldn't take too long! The layout was build in 3 sections, not to be portable, but so I could move it should I need to. When I tried to split the section from the yard to the main station all the paint, glue, ballast meant I had to get a knife and a razor saw to split the gap again! I'm lucky to have a large garage.. And also a 6x4 board with the kids round and round layout. So all the buildings from that went into a box and my layouts went on top. That's my 009 layout on the outside!

I managed to get a base coat down on the whole area, with a little colour differentiation. It doesn't look too bad in the quick snap, but it does need some further detailing. Then some good news! I've had to take everything off the layout and pack it all away.. Where my layout is located is also my home office. I decided at the end of last year that it needed replacing, the building is starting to show it's age and isn't the best place to be working nearly every day of the week.. Means I need to wait a few weeks now to get back on with the layout. But should give me a really nice place to work from!

Very true! I unscrewed the bottom and the coal popped out..

Looks nice, but looks like a tough build!

You all bored of this yet? I've got one side done, also buried the Staithe in the clay. I suddenly realised that I had to get the goods shed finished that's been sat half done for ages. The doors and guttering all needed painting up, brickwork needed pointing and a little weathering. One buried goods shed! I've tried to add a little more texture to the rest, it's looking pretty nice. Just need to get some paint down and see what it looks like with some colour on.

My Oxford radial runs fine, as Mike said, do some searching on here, I'm sure I read the same about the Hornby version.. Layout is looking smart, I do like the P class.. (I really don't need more locos, look away now )

The pillar, the usual suspects would be, a chimney or a tree. What about some sort of farm structure around it? It's difficult to imagine until you start mocking it up. It's at this stage I get the old cereal boxes out and start to see how things would hang together. I've this round the corner from me.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilder%27s_Folly You could build a random tower that drops over it. (edited to add the folly link)

How about this..

The picture makes them more shinny than they are in reality. I ended up getting the tripod out and having a long exposure just to get that picture. I think I may need to get the tripod up on the baseboard, pointing down to get a top down view. Thanks for the feedback though. I think I need to get the rest done with the clay and then work away with the paint, it's going to take some time to get the mix and texture quite right. I tried some dry brushing on the ash section in the grey, actually worked quite well, but you really can't see that in the picture at all.

Making more progress.. I tried a quick coat of paint last night, just to get an idea. The article from Chris said to do the cobbles in black and then dry brush them on. I have to say looking at it now, I think the back is too dark, the dry brushing nicely picks up the tops, but I doesn't quite look right.. See what you think.. It was really tough to get enough light onto it to see what it really looks like.

Good to see some updates, looking very smart.. Really like the mug, I need a good railway mug for my tea and coffee...

Digital edition hasn't landed yet, but this is rapidly become one of my favourite reads.

Ok.. So this is a slow old process... When Chris said 'OK, just a little better than swimming in the freezing sea in January' he wasn't kidding. I put a small amount of PVA down and spread with a brush and small amount of water. Flatten out a small-ish lump of clay and start spreading it around up to the rails. Having slightly damp fingers helps to push the clay about. Then I take a small lump to break off very small bits, using these very small bits I push into the gaps between the rails.. I've found it really hard to keep off the rail sides and chairs. Best I can do is get as little on as possible, then run a wet stiff brush along the rails and chairs, this removes most big lumps, I then run a pointy stick along to remove the rest. When I then stamp it down with a big brush it's not too bad, I'm getting better at this as I go, as is normal with these things. Blending the edges down to nothing of each section helps when you add the next one. Even if it's then dry it's easy to blend back in. I've also used a lot of clay.. So just placed an order for a 1KG bar of the stuff. While it's tough around the tracks, I really like the effect you can do with, I can see me using this again for other jobs, just less around rails!! I want to get some paint on part of this sooner rather than later, see how it looks. Then I can paint the rail sides back and then some dry brushing of the chairs, see if the look it going to work.

My new Collett has been run in nicely now, quite happy with it. However, the paint is really shinny and the coal in the tender is bothering me. It's a huge, large lump that sticks up and is very sparkly. I'm not quite ready to take a cutting disk to £100 loco, but I'm thinking I might need to actually cut it out and replace with real coal. Normally I just PVA over the top and dress them up, but this one is such an odd shape it might take more work.

Very smart. It just looks so huge I love the detail around the back, just look right.

Hi Richard.. You've been added to my follow list I've had a quick scroll through the last few pages and I'm very impressed! This is a very smart layout and in the right era and colour I'll be catching up on all your videos shortly. Cheers, Scott.

Just tripped over this thread.. Also very interested to see if slaters can start producing some kits again.. I'd take a few toplights.

Nice.. Better than looking out the window.

I've been playing over the weekend.. My first play with clay and cobbles went quite well! I flattened it down and rolled it out with a beer bottle, then attacking it with a pen that I'd removed the ink from. I then started to raise the rest of the yard up with the cork. You can also see here I'd filled in the middle of the track with some cobbles, not sure I like it. That I think will come out and replace with something else. Cork is then all down and completed. I've then started adding in the clay around the tracks for the ash effect. I'm finding this quite hard as it takes some time to see how it's going to look and imagine the final effect. I've tried to blend it onto my cobbles. I may need to re-do the cobbles a little bit as now I've raised the area up, the cobbles are a little low.

Being very arty there Les.. Who's is the fence in the last picture? That's 7 strands of wire I can count, that's a lot of work!

Yes! That one is the right colour. Very, very nice..

Part one completed!! I used my standard build practise of newspaper scrunched up underneath the bandage roll stuff. It's pretty quick and easy to work with, not overly messy and cheap! I bough about 5 rolls for under a tenner! I've also been toying with the yard around the shed. It's sat without any progress for all this time because I just couldn't decide how to do it. I knew I wanted that yard like effect, fairly flat with ash, but it's not something I've done before. I then came across a couple blog articles from Chris Nevard, linked from his recent layout in a box article. Clay Cobbles http://nevardmedia.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/quick-cobbles.html Ash Ballast http://nevardmedia.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/creating-effect-of-ash-ballast.html I've therefore started playing with some DAS clay, something I've not used on a layout before, but I have to say it's quite smart! I do now need to raise the base layer of the yard around the track, so I'll lay out some cork around it. If i'd planned this the whole area would have been one giant lump of cork, instead I now need to patch in around it! I'll then work cobbles over the track to join the two areas, cobbles in front of the shed and then ash everywhere else.

Need amazing button for that autocoach, like just isn't enough. Wrong colour though.