Gook the Goblin

This looks really good. Nicely done Keith. I like the photos.

Snowed last night on the plank. Good job the doors were hung and the windows glazed! Nigel

These look great.

Excellent start. I am envious that you have so much space for your layout. I am looking forward to watching progress. Nigel

Thank you Mr Tea and Keith for the encouragement. The state of play is as below. I took the advice of Mr Tea and last night lightened a few dark areas with light grey sparingly applied (I took the excess paint off first so a sort of dry brush effect) by sponge and smeared by finger! Some brown staining from brake dust was added (seen on a prototype picture) and i am more happy this morning. I need to paint the rails again and throw some weathering powders around next. Doors are done, not glazed or fixed yet. Nigel

Never enjoy the painting phase I find myself in now. I read a post elsewhere on RM Web about using a sponge to build up patches of off-white emulsion to get the appearance of concrete. It looked good but may not work scaled down to N scale. I am struggling and I am not sure about the colour of the concrete to the shed apron. I am tempted to start again. Nigel

Is that centre to centre or between the rails? Maybe the width is to suit a island platform width?

It is a big building Jeremy, it is looking impressive. Are you using card or plasticard?

Surely one Allegra is more than enough for anyone?

Yes, no problem, I could do that. I used DAS for the quarry rock face and a lot of other places on my other layout Cefn Ddu and carved it while wet, it came out pretty well although painting and shading helped a lot. I have used it as ground cover - a cheap way of lifting levels to top of sleeper level. I have never had any problems, though have resisted buying the slightly cheaper Hobbycraft versions. I will put together a little demo, and I would also recommend David's book "Making rural buildings for model railways" as well.

Thank you Tom. I had a good chat with him too at a show, I already had one of his books but I did not realise until afterwards. We discussed the merits of his technique over the one I had kind of made up myself. A very helpful guy who has created some wonderful dioramas and models. DAS clay is great stuff for a number of uses, that is until it turns into a solid brick! However, I have found out if it is not too far gone it can be re-constituted. All the clay on "the plank" has been reconstituted - left in a margarine tub with water for a few days, broken down, turned into a slurry, regularly mixed whilst open to air until workable again and wrapped up in clingfilm.

The Allegra and BEX coach sets are now on the Traintrax site to order - rather than pre-order. Must resist, must resist, ....!

Progress update. The concrete apron is now "cast" with the two infills between the rails completed and glued in. Technically they easily meet the "back to back" gauge even though nothing will ever pass through those doors! In real life the slot for the flanges would only need to be around 0.5mm wide at this scale so I am way over scale but I am not going to loose any sleep over that. I am quite pleased with the extra effort and the concrete is slightly distressed too to show some wear and tear purely by happy chance. The embossed stone plasticard is still held up, so I gave up and deleted that from my order. A new strip of foamboard was cut for the retaining wall remembering to create a slight batter. The DAS modelling clay was placed on wet PVA. I tried David Wrights method this time placing the clay by hand rather than my previous method of rolling out a sheet and icing. The subtle undulations are very pleasing and more realistic so I will use this method in future. The tedious carving the stonework out on the dried clay was done a bit at a time over three evenings. I did have a reference photo of a Swiss retaining wall but quickly defaulted to random coursed stone as my "one trick". Despite a layer of PVA on the rear side of the foamboard the wall still became a distorted banana shape from the shrinkage of the clay and the wall needed propping while the glue set to stick it down to the board. For the photo the doors have just been propped in position and they will only be stuck once painted and glazed. The next step is spray painting which will give me a nice base colour for the concrete.

Thanks Tom. I am happier tonight with this having glued the end bits in. It sits a bit proud so will be abused on a sanding block tomorrow once fully set. Nigel

A voice in my head is saying "are you mad"! The concession in the previous post about using card or plasticard between the rails has been grating at me. With the prospect of at least another week before the damned embossed stone plasticard I ordered for the retaining wall being dispatched. I have time on my hands. I am resisting the obvious option of carving some stonework in modelling clay. I have done this in 4mm scale and it looked pretty decent. Carving stonework in 1:150 scale and for a length of around 200mm does not appeal much, we shall see. Back to the madness. The modelling clay to the concrete apron "cast" on Sunday has dried out and it looks quite good with some subtle undulations reminiscent of some poorly laid concrete. A dead flat plasticard or card infill between the rails might stand out like a sore thumb (possibly caused by scribing stonework in DAS). I have started building two open topped 25 x 7*mm plasticard boxes motivated by finding some unopened 1mm microstrip in the materials box (bought for building a 4mm scale farm gate I recall). The idea is to fill these little boxes with a shallow layer of modelling clay, the microstrip representing the steel angle forming the edge shutter. Progress was started at lunchtime - I gave myself the night off on Monday night to battle uploading two photos to the RhB forum - before I could come to my senses, swiftly cutting out the base in 0.5mm plasticard and gluing the long edges. Actually the bases had to be trimmed to 6.5mm wide to clear the plastic chairs, fortunately discovering this before gluing the microstrip.

Yesterday's progress saw the modelling clay placed onto some wet PVA to form the concrete shed apron. The clay was quite wet still as I had reconstituted it from some almost gone off clay earlier in the week. So more of a plastering technique was used than the preferred icing method. A surface wet pallet knife helped. Hopefully the clay will provide more of a texture than if I used card or plasticard. I chickened out from the section in between the tracks. It could have worked but I think for this I will use plasticard strips. The apron meets the walls and the doors were test fitted and a little fettling was needed for the right hand road. The clay will take a couple of days to dry out, hopefully it won't shrink much.

Thank you so much Mr Envelope. I am enjoying this, its good to be actively building something again. Nigel

Shed concrete apron sub base has been built up to top of sleeper level with card and modelling clay in preparation for the finishing layer. This will hopefully be a 1.5mm layer of modelling clay and will hopefully meet the bottom of the hanging walls. No problem if it does not as some drifting snow will be able to disguise any gap. A selection of rocks have been glued down to the bank.

More progress last night with the shed parapet copings glued into position. The lower sub-base for the concrete shed apron has been cut and glued and finally track has been laid! The gap at the back of the polystyrene bank has been filled with a modelling clay slurry and will be sealed with PVA. No sign of the embossed stone plasticard I ordered a week ago. I think some out of stock items are holding up the dispatch. However, a copy of "metre gauge railways of south and East Switzerland" by John Marshall - recommended on another thread on here - did arrive from ebay. This looks to be a good purchase with some wonderful plans and elevations of some of the large structures. It cost £6.50 new when published in 1974, my ebay copy cost double. Must remember to mention that books increase in value when the authorities moan about the number of railway books I have!

Thanks Ron, watched it last night.

Getting my hopes up that I may actually get to use my unused Eurotunnel ticket from last year and see some sun in 2021! We had a shorter road trip planned last year which got cancelled due to Covid, we had a hotel booked in Boppard. The plan was to avoid international air travel this year and simply extend the road trip further South. Thanks Martyn and Jon. Return trips will be the order of the day this time as we will have the car with us. Brohl looks interesting and on route, I may need to cherry pick though to maintain family harmony. Thanks for the Singen and Sargans tip and the opportunity to tick off Liechtenstein with the latter. I agree Chur or Thusis to St Moritz allows a taste of the RhB through the Albula. Interlaken was my original non Rhb target as lots going on there, but it seemed a bit off route. Maybe not now with the Italian route. Lots of ideas there for future trips, especially the FART (not heard of before) but it is in my new book - more of that in my next post. Nigel

Look forward to watching progress, will you post in this thread or start a new one?

Still a nice looking station building with lots of character.

Intriguing. The road trip needs to tick a number of family boxes. So this leg starts off with a Rhein cruise near Boppard / Koblenz and ends with a beach somewhere on the Med coast. It will need to be broken somewhere for sure into 2 days - maybe 3 to include Switzerland. Mulhouse or Lake Constance could make good stopovers, the former more suitable for a South of France destination, the latter the Italian coast via Milan. A full trip on the BEX would be top of my list, sadly a return trip from Chur at around 9 hours and with a early start would be hell with teenage children! Maybe something to do when they have disappeared off to college. A short return trip from Thusis to Samedan or even St Moritz - possibly broken for an hour in Filisur - may be more possible to swing and a nice little taster. This could be incorporated into a leg from say lake Constance to say Lake Como and with a promise of a visit to Milan en route to the coast somewhere. Doing the Bernina in winter with the snow sounds excellent. Thank you Martyn for the fresh inspiration.

Thanks Paul for the link, it will save searching later.