Fastdax

The other distraction on my time is the fact that the middle 5 panels of my 9-panel 12in:1ft fence blew down last week :-( So I'm also playing with concrete and fence-posts.

Fencing Been working full-time lately (which is nice) but little progress on the layout. In the few minutes here and there, I've been building Midland diagonal fences from Poppy's Woodtech. A much-butchered template is glued to a bit of chipboard and a long run of fencing can be made, one 9' panel at a time. As each panel is made, it's popped out of the template and moved along 9' to be glued to a fresh batch of 12 diagonal palings held on grubby double-sided tape in the jig: The fences will separate the under-arch business area from the goods yard and also stop the little people from falling off the high-level platform onto the cobbles below.

More Station Lights The station building has two wall-mounted lamps to match the tall lamps (the mirror makes it look like 4 wall lamps ), and warm white LEDs in each of its four rooms: It looks all warm and homely now.

Thanks 37114!

Thank you very much Mr Chapman!

Pluggable Lamp-posts Second quick post as we're limited to 10MB of pictures per post. Here's the station area with the lamp-posts in place. Two illuminate the steps of the footbridge, one illuminates the station forecourt and one is further down platform No. 2. I still need to add one on platform 1 to the left of the signal box. Since they are nominally 12V, but I'm running them on 9V, I added only a bit of extra resistance (33 Ohm 5W resistors) to dim them to gas-like levels: In reality they are not as brilliant as the photo seems to show.

Pluggable Lamp-posts The station area moves on, with some Midland-style fencing separating the forecourt from the platform and from the "works" area next to the signal box. I added some station gas lamps, which started life as a DCC Concepts Super Value Pack Midland Gas Lamps: https://shop.keypublishing.com/product/View/productCode/GLMR6 These are 4mm scale but work out to be about 13' 6" in 7mm scale when using the tallest plinths supplied, which still looks OK to me: Standard Joe (5' 10") is standing under the lamp. The lamps would be terribly vulnerable to damage if permanently planted, so I made them removable. Not just removable but pluggable for ease of use. The socket in the platform is a 3.5mm audio jack socket and comes from a short audio extender cable. This picture shows the original long cable, the cut-off socket ends and the matching 3.5mm jack plugs sourced separately as they are slimmer and easier to use than the ones embedded in plastic: With the sockets dug out of the plastic shroud, this is what we are left with. the sockets are 6mm wide and the plugs have a 5mm flange and a 3.5mm body: The jack plug was carefully soldered to the single-strand copper wire in the gas lamps. The plinth was opened out with a 3.5mm drill to take the plug, which could then be superglued in place (after testing that the grain-of-wheat bulb still works!): The sockets were let into the platform surface (6mm drill) and wired up underneath. I left the sockets a bit recessed so that the brass plug at the base of each lamp sits below platform level. I'll add a tiny bit of greenery to hide the shiny brass: The finished result is in the "Standard Joe" picture above. I've converted all 6 tall lamps in the pack to plug'n'play. That's five in the platforms and one spare.

I think if I do try this, I'll design and print up some 3D windows like I used in my office building:

Thanks John. I use the LCut windows in my warehouse and they would be ideal if they did fit the Scalescenes cutouts. Well done for persevering with scratchbuilding them. They now do look the part.

Looking good John. I may have missed this but why didn't you use the supplied windows?

Thanks Joner. I should have either thought about it more or titivated it less.

Tree The tree is about finished for now. Some bushes round the base and and some ivy decorates the trunk: I took advantage of some sunshine to grab an outdoors shot: In its location: Unfortunately you can't see much of it behind the station building unless you peek carefully between the buildings: I did enjoy very much making it though!

Tree The tree got a slathering of Duncan's Patent Bark Mix (an unholy mix of sawdust, glue, water, Polyfilla powder), stippled on to give some more texture: Then some spray coats of black and white and some washes of grey and brown. I made concrete retaining slabs from mount board and filled in the gaps between the roots with loo-roll/glue mix: A bit more highlighting on the bark, a few dabs of lichen and some base earth colour: ... followed by moss (Woodland Scenics Fine Turf over PVA glue dabs) and some static grass. Brown hairy string fibres for creepers: Now this lot needs to dry for a day or so.

Great stuff John. I had considered scaling up this diorama set myself. I'll be following with interest.

I don't wish to hijack Giles' thread, but I think they came from Thingiverse here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4444380 and scaled down a lot. If you want more details, let's take it over to the 3D Printing forum.

How about a pallet of cast-iron pipe fittings? I found some free STL files which give a good range of threaded and flanged pipes and fittings, ready for 3D printing: I used them on my layout in an overhead cable gantry: But I'm sure a pallet of fresh castings (or even rusty ones for recycling or repair) would look good.

Tree Still working on the station forecourt area, I fancied putting a large oak tree right in the back right-hand corner of the layout. It's probably the only chance to have a tree on OQ as the rest is pretty well industrial. There will be just enough room between the tree and the station building's front door to squeeze a vehicle if I want to hide the transition from forecourt to backscene a bit more in the future. To start (apart from watching loads of YouTube videos) I came across these plastic tree armatures on eBay. They are sold as tree/coral wedding/centrepiece general-purpose thingummies but they are cheap (less than a pound each), flexible and reasonably realistic: I grouped six together, around a 10mm wooden dowel. The basic shape is a quarter circle in plan view, to fit into the corner. Some green florist's wire bound the whole lot together and formed roots. The trunk was then covered in hot glue. The hot glue sticks were sold as 'woodworking white glue sticks', a task for which they are spectacularly useless, so I had a big bundle of sticks sitting in the garage. They are fine for sticking the mess of plastic, wire and wood together though. As a side benefit, when the white plastic (it's not really glue at all) has cooled and set, it can be sculpted by the hot nozzle of the glue gun to give a first-pass bark texture: The Chewbacca mug is a necessary part of this process. You can see the wooden dowel inserted into an oak base and the roots, with the loops yet to be snipped open. I had a tub of dried roots from digging up unwanted bushes from the garden. These give delicate and realistic branches: The branches were attached with more hot glue and smoothed into the plastic armatures. A blast of black primer and white primer brought the whole lot together: The tree is planted in a 10mm hole in the baseboard and will be removable. Still some way to go on this, but it's getting there.

Superb stuff, Giles!

Thanks Les. If I recall, the windows had a base layer of 0.03" x 0.08" (0.75mm x 2.0mm) with sections of 0.04" (1.0mm) square added on top.

Hi Amanda, I think that plan looks very good and you've clearly thought about what you want to run. Just a suggestion: if you take the line that runs though the Goods Shed right up to the end of the board at a right-angle, you have the option of adding another fiddle board on the left-hand end in the future. You could disguise the exit with a gate (as on my layout below) or with a removable wall and buffer stop. Following with interest!

Thanks Jay!

Thanks Steve and Mudmagnet. The corrugated asbestos is plasticard painted with light coats of grey, black and white rattle-can primer to give a speckled appearance. The moss in the valleys is dried and sifted garden soil sprinkled over PVA glue, then any 'moss' on the tops of the corrugations was rubbed off once the glue was dry, leaving it mostly in the valleys. A few dark green and dark grey washes highlight the crannies.

Thanks Mark!

Station Extension With the big overall canopy in place, and the footbridge in place on the platforms, the station building was a bit hidden behind other stuff. I decided to build an extension to the main station building, to allow it to show a bit more. Maybe it's the Ladies' Waiting Room, maybe it's a parcel office - who knows? I'd run out of the nice round-top York Model Making sash windows, so I took the approach that the extension was done a bit 'on the cheap' with normal sash windows, ceramic ridge tiles instead of shaped slate, and cheaper gutters. Construction followed the usual method of foamboard box, covered in Slaters brick plasticard: Sash windows are built up out of plastic strip on CD case material. Failed attempt on the left and successful Mark II on the right: The finished extension in place: Here's a general shot of the station area:

Thanks for the kind words Giles!