Mick Bonwick

In that case, you can use your imagination to decide what might go here: You see, I've been distracted already. I'm supposed to be doing trees today.

If I hadn't wasted spent the last hour looking at sheds on the Internet I could have produced something like that.

Are you suggesting that there is a link between art and shed?

If this was powered by a Land Rover engine it would have fitted both categories. Shame, really. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fastest_Shed

A most splendiferous idea. Let there be sheds! We need rules, though. What is a shed?

Splendid idea. That's one I'll follow, for sure. I'll need to conecntrate on sheds that will take a Land Rover, though.

Ah, yes! Of gorse.

I need to do some weeding. For clarity, this is outside the workshop.

I thought that I had the camera settings sorted for focus stacking. Need to check again! I also need to remove the Dullcote from the Anglia's windows. It's not meant to represent one that's occupied!

Additional seafoam-based shrubs and saplings added to the diorama today. Using different shaped pieces of seoam and various scatter materials a good variety of tree forms can be made. Other work includes the distressing of the too-uniform grassy bits and some more longish grass randomly placed.

No, Tony, I didn't. How did you know to ask that question? I did get some overgrown hedging cut back a bit, though. Beech hedge leaves are a devil to get right in 4mm scale.

That's a nice tractor. Where did you get that from?

I didn't know that Germany played cricket.

It's pronounced the same way as your beach example in Dorset and is derived from the old name Cheese Hill.

My recommendation would be to use a pigment (as mentioned by @Hal Nail) rather than a paint. My normal method is to use Abteilung 502 Dark Mud - ABTP033 - applied with a small brush and worked in gently to achieve the saturation you seek. There's an example here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/laughinglobster/27551972272/in/dateposted/

Start at page one and work your way forwards.

Further detailing work this afternoon has involved the area along the exterior base of the concrete fence. I have used pieces of Polak Scenics Purex (fine textured dyed foam) and short pieces of the previously created 'ivy'. These have been placed on torn up pieces of PVA-based recycled static grass mats.

It grows up anything, anywhere! It produces small 'roots' which seem to secrete a very sticky substance that is very difficult to remove. I've even had to remove it from panes of glass in the past. I've just been round the garden and taken some photographs to illustrate;

That's comforting! Not dissimilar to what I was contemplating. Honest!

I went to the workshop this afternoon to get on with some more rail painting. I thought I'd just have a try at creating some ivy before I started. Pieces of rubberised horsehair have been cluttering up a corner of the modelling desk for some time, so I extricated a couple of long strands and covered them with PVA. I then sprinkled on some Green Stuff World Micro Leaves and left the lot to dry. An hour or so later and I was able to stick the results to the concrete fence panels to see how it looked. I have also played with some more seafoam. When we had a dog I had to go for walks every morning and subsequently had time to study how hedges worked. Many hedgerow trees have multiple stems, so I thought I'd try and replicate this at least once within the walls of my scene. All I've done so far is to stick several small stems together, but I'll trim up the result a bit before tackling the foliage stage.

Teenagers.

Look at the state of that abandoned lorry and then explain to me why the windscreens are still intact. Extraordinary!

I am about to start work on grass and weeds at the base of a fence and have a plan of action. There is evidence here that you have previously done the same (!) so I thought I'd ask if you could tell how you did it and what you used. I won't copy you, honest.

I was last in the area 1995 and the illustration in the Worthy Down Camp article shows me that it has changed almost completely since then. What is still there, though, is the dormitory block where I lived for 2 years from 1964 (red brick H block at the bottom centre). The railway line's route can be seen in that picture, running diagonally across the bottom right hand corner, with a slightly more open space where the station was. I never ventured inside the signal box and never climbed over the abandoned platforms looking for souvenirs. Honest, sir!

I'm so pleased that you mention Worthy Down Halt. I don't have any photographs to show, but I do have a tale to tell. At age 16 I lived in a dormitory just 100' from the railway embankment just south of the road bridge into Worthy Down from Springvale. The fact that there was a railwy there was not apparent until I was woken up one night by the sound of a slow moving steam locomotive. Try as I might I could not see anything through the trees or over the fence, and nobody else was interested enough to help my enquiring mind. About a year later I was participating in a night march that went out of Worthy Down and then onto the railway track northwards to Sutton Scotney. That was when I discovered that railway sleepers are not set the right distance apart for consistently comfortable marching paces. At age 35 I was back at Worthy Down and used to go running along the old trackbed, although it was no longer possible to reach Sutton Scotney. It was possible, however, to go southwards to Springvale and almost to the old junction with the Basingstoke to Winchester line. It was at around this time that I learned that the train I had heard all those years ago was one of many involved with the lifting of the track from the line. Your posting of this railway account has prompted me to dig out all my DN&S books and indulge once again in memories of times gone by and missed opportunities. Thank you.