Jimmy styles

so its taken quite a long time and i have gone very cross eyed and at times thought about throwing these out the window however finally finished my army of soldiers for the layout. i am actually quite happy with how they have turned out and think they will look really good.

so the next project for my layout was to attempt a light weight lighting rig. i started by deciding how to attach the lighting rig to the layout, i decided to attach it to the legs of the layout. i opted to use simple and cheap shelving. i had to cut up one bracket that was mounted to the legs, this was the upright just clips on. then for the lighting rig i used high intensity LED strip lights. i went for warm white to give a nice colour. then it was time to test. this was taken with the garage light on (as you can see i still need to paint to the rig.) whereas this was taken in complete darkness. then i went a little mad taking picture's. what do you guys think??

so my next challenge was to add a working light to the front of the crane, i decided that this would be achieved with a micro LED. however my issue was how to power this LED the easy way would be to run wires down the crane legs and attach to the base board or even the rails that the crane sits on. however this would mean that the cane would have to remain in place, and as this is to hopfully be a exhibition layout i wanted the crane to be removable and possible to place in different positions. so i opted for a small coin cell battery and a switch, all this could be easily housed inside the crane. i opted for a pressure switch so that all i have to do is put the roof on and the light comes on. seems simple. oh how wrong i could be........... it all went really well until i came to put the roof on. the lightweight plastic was not heavy enough to hold the sprung switch down. the way i fixed this was to add a considerable amount of lead to the inside of the roof. luckily you cant see the lead and it all seems to work really well.

so todays update, first up was to add some ground point levers to the points, these are a etched part which was a little fiddly to put together but was worth the effort. i decided that a good busy war time harbour would need quite a few soldiers, crates and oil cans. i purchased a large amount of resin soldiers all in different poses which should look good once painted. i have already painted about ten of them but as you can see from the below picture i have a few more to paint. i also decided that i wanted to make my own crates and oil cans instead of buying them. luckily my father has a 3d printer, so a quick design on the computer resulted in a nice selection of crates and oil drums. the below picture shows all these primed and ready to be painted. and finally i couldnt resist doing this picture. your layout needs you!!!

Thank you, I am really happy with the effect however it did takes ages and at times I was thinking "what am I doing" but I think it's turned out really effective.

so i had a bit of a building day today. to start off with i decided i wanted to get all the colours down the cobbles and weather around the tracks. this then led onto deciding to paint the buffer stops that i had scratch built. next up was to paint and weather the small yard crane. finally was my fav bit of my days modelling, i had started my large travelling crane and i was determined to get it finished however i did not quite get there, i still have to glaze the crane and add the light on the front. however it has been fully painted and weathered. please comment and let me know what you think.

so i managed to find a couple of full days to work on the layout without any interuptions. my first challenge was to paint the granite sets on the layout. this took a lot longer than i first anticipated. i'm quite happy with the result of this, i think it may still need some more grime and muck espically between the rails. however whilst doing this the postman delivered the backscene and i just couldnt resist fitting it. the main backscene is a photographic heavy overcast sky by ID Scenes. i then used townscenes industrial rooftops cut oyt and stuck on to give a bit of depth. what do you think?

so today i decided to crack on with a bit more of my layout but with my wife at work, my son at school, i was left at home with my two year old daughter who hinders my progress as she likes nothing more than to sit with me helping. any way first up i thought i would do some work on my travelling crane and yard crane, i actually got quite a lot of these built, and then couldn't resist puting it on the layout to see how it looked. i was really pleased. next up i decided to to give the entire layout a base coat of grey to see how it may look. i couldnt resist this photo showing the transition even though this is after just one coat of paint it looks so much better and makes such a difference

Thank you Karl, it's taken a long time but I'm really pleased with how it's turning out

this layout is really coming on, i'm pleased you are happy with the buildings as they look great. keep up the great work

ok so not much happened for a little while on my layout i was busy with christmas and building a commission building. however to get myself moving i moved the layout to my dinning room so that i could finish the granite sets out of clay. this did speed up the process for two reasons, firstly the central heated speeded up the dying time for the clay and secondly my wife constantly moaned that the layout was in the dining room!! i have now finished all the clay work so next up is a massive amount of painting. however here are some photos, what do you think??

Thank you neil not really had time for to much, busy at work and preparing for Christmas. Also busy building a massive building for someone ha ha

so i have been working hard at my granite sets but very quickly getting fed up. here are some pictures as to where i am up to with it. my attention was drawn to a couple of gaps and what could i fill them with the first gap is seen below i decided that the best way to fill this gap was with a wall with barbed wire along the top, i think this works and ties in the WWII theme the next was to tackle the entrance to the harbour, i decided a wall and a gate, i have started on a watchmans hut which can be seen in the photo. i will build a full military checkpoint here with barrier. again i think that the barbed wire works well.

the photos dont do this layout justice, it already looks awesome. im looking forward to the track being wired so we can test!!

so the last two days i have been working on the granite sets as i have a very large area to cover (the entire layout) i have chosen to use das air dry clay. i then hand scribe each block. i got really bored of hand scribing these and had to think of a way to make it quicker, i decided first that i needed a small rolling pin. i had a rummage in the garage and found a old broom handle, perfect i cut a section of the end. then how could i make the scribing quicker, so we made a stamp where one end can be used for the large areas and the other end used for the smaller areas. so then i continued until i run out of das clay. i still have a large area to cover but once weathered and painted should look really good.

so i decided that i need three buffer stops on the harbour. again to the internet as i wanted something that looked right, a bit of research showed that the buffer stops on harbours were a bit different to those used on mainline lines. they appeared more bodged together. i found these photos. so i firstly tried to change a peco plastic one, that did not go well. so next up i thought that using old rail may work, but how could i bend this?? amazingly this worked well and i didnt even set light to the house. i continued and this was the result, i'm quite happy with it and just have two more to do. just need to weather them now.

As the weather today decided not to ran, i thought that it would be a good idea to move the layout into the garden before i made a start on the granite sets to see how it looked in natural light. as i have been building in a dark garage with nothing but poor lighting it was nice to see the layout so far in natural daylight. here are some pictures, what do you guys think???

so for my next building i decided i wanted something large and striking for the backdrop for the entire harbour, i did a lot of research on the internet (what did we do before the internet.) i found a style of building i wanted and set about drawing up the plans. it was only when i started to stick the plastikard together that i discovered just how big this building was going to be, i named it the monster warehouse. not being worried about the size of this project i set about cutting the doors and windows and building the loading towers. the RSJ loading rig is a copy of a real one and i think looks quite effective. i couldnt resist keep putting the monster on the layout to see how it looked. it just appeared to keep getting bigger the hardest part of the build was the roof and getting the angles to look correct. i continued with painting and weathering. but i had to think of a name for the warehouse. thats when my father came up with POOLE BRO's as POOLE is my late mothers maiden name. i just love to add personal touches to my models. so i continued to add details. i really wanted some rusty chain blocks hanging but in my research i found that if the doors where shut then the chain blocks would have been removed in order to protect them from the elements. also in my research i found that the loading floors below the very top all hand hinged platforms to ease loading that would only be lowered if again the doors where open. i kinda wished that i had modeled at least one door open but being low reilef i just didnt have the depth. well here is the finished building. and finally in its new home. so how do you think the monster turned out??

so my thoughts have been on how to do the flooring around the harbour as i want all the rails set in the ground. i thought about cobble stones but after some research it appeared that most busy harbours seemed to use granite blocks. so how was i going to achieve this. my first reaction was to use the will plastikard sheets of granite blocks but decided that this would look good but would appear very uniform and not so much like hand laid blocks and would also cost a small fortune. so my attention was drawn to air dry clay. i purchased a block of das air dry clay and attached a bit of rail to a piece of wood to be my test. i set about applying the air dry clay and hand scribed the granite sets. so after this had dried i set about seeing how i could paint the sets. i couldn't then resist placing a few bits on to see what it would look like. i'm quite happy with this although it does need some grime around the rails and in the middle. what do you guys think, if you have any criticism please tell me now before i move onto the actual layout.

yes you are right that would look cool may have to do some research

so i decided to take a break from painting figures and decided to work on some more factories. i found a company on the internet that produce low relief resin building's. i liked the look of these and thought that it would be great to modify and kit bash. i quickly ordered two and to my amazement they turned up a couple of days later. they are made by skytrex and the detail and quality is really really good. first off i set about cutting a hole in it for the loading door as i wanted to add a loading door and platform. i then made another wall out of plastic card so that i could attach this building to the little building i was in the process of building, but i wanted it to look as though it was one large building. next up was building the doors and final weathering. and this is how it looks on the layout. the next mission is to fit lights under the canopy's and above the door on the end building. i'm pleased with this and matches the large warehouse / factory already built.

i found them on ebay, they are made by a company called valiant. very good and very detailed.

this looks amazing, i have only just come across your thread and i must say top notch.

so i decided that no war themed layout would be complete without some military personnel, i spent quite a while looking around and found that all the ones i could find where either in battle or standing to attention, then i came across these figures which are for military wargamers and just perfect, nearly every figure is either in a different pose or can be adapted. this was perfect. i have four of these so plenty of figures to paint to make this busy military harbour look busy. i decided to start with just a few as i think if i did them all at ounce i'd get bored. the last man on the row (excuse the poor photo) has been adapted and i built using a LED a working hurricane lamp. i ran the wires along his arm and down his back to his foot, these wires unless looking for them are almost completly hidden.

so i have been a little busy over the last few days making a bit of a modelling effort. firstly i decided that i had to finish the scenic break factory. this involved fitting the roof, guttering and drain pipes. i have also installed interior walls in the workshop and lightning. at some point in the future this will receive a detailed workshop. here it is on the layout, notice that the rails under the arch are set in cobblestone, this will be the same throughout the entire layout. next up was a decision on what to place at the end of the long siding which runs along the front of the fiddle yard. originally i was thinking about just a wall with a buffer stop in front but this was boring. then i thought instead of a wall i could make it look like the rear wall of a large factory with a buffer stop in front. i decided that this was equally boring. then while trying to sleep i kept thinking about the layout (sad i know), however the idea of a low relief factory frontage with closed doors as if the rails run straight into a wagon workshop. the idea was set. i designed this building to match the row of low relief buildings that will line the backscene. it is not finished but in my opinion is looking good already. my next issue was one that i have been putting off...... i needed to install a way of controlling the points and attack the wiring. it was now time that i could run trains while building. all my points are electrofrog points so the polarity needed to be switched with the points. i decided against electric point motors for two reasons firstly cost and secondly i want to exhibit this layout and if a point motor goes down at a show thats a big problem. i had to go old school. i opted for small swtiches that will change the polarity mechanically and be attached to the point by way of piano wire. my father happened to have some aircraft spec aluminum laying around so that is what we used to make the mounting bracket. the piano wire is joined in the middle by a connecting block so that there is loads of room for adjustment. this method has worked so so well so far. however to test this full i had to actually do the bit i have been really dreading, wiring up the full layout. i know that DCC just needs to wires but i seem to have somewhat more. basically to insure that i have trouble free running every section of track has a power feed. cutting all of these to length and connecting them took a long time. now if i was to do this again i would connect a section and test it then move on to the next section. however as i started the postman delivered a new loco (LMS 10000 from rails of sheffield) i know that this is not a WWII loco but i have wanted it for a very long time. because this was delivered i wanted to get all the wiring done so i could run my new Loco. i completed all the wiring then and only then thought "i hope this is all correct." to my surprise it is perfect and the Loco's run so so well. if you look closely at the photo you can see the piano wires that run the points. from the top you can see that it is slowly taking shape and its hard to believe there is that much wiring for such a small layout. and finally here is a picture of my new Loco. this wont be used on this layout at shows but i'm sure will run a lot at home. so what do you think so far??