SteelAndSoot

I am currently working on a loco as a fun little project. The engine is called Bealie and will be built on a pug chassis. This image shows a rough example of what she will look like and things may change as I continue building This is as far as I have gotten I shall be using a different pug as I currently have one coming in the mail, alongside everything else I will need to build the loco

finally got my village idea nailed down and I got my first building complete there will be three houses (in the same style as this shop) either a pub or a restaurant, a fire station and a church

Finished the castle for my layout. it is based upon bodiam castle and the brickwork is based on the wall that surrounds the Vatican city I am going to add more brown and black to the castle with some dirt and grass on it. it looks like a strange colour but bodiam is a very strange yellowish colour in real life. it won't be as yellow when I am finished plus once the whole corona virus quarantine is finished I will be able to grab more scenery to blend it in

I also wanted some way of having an aircraft flying overhead. However I don't want to confine one of my planes to a diorama, So I need to come up with a way of mounting an aircraft in flight (probably a clear plastic strut coming from the backboard. This strut could then hold any aircraft of my choosing Here are two I finisheda

Here are some quick sketches I threw together of how I intend it to look (missing a lot of vegetation) I also finished a tank to go on the layout I found a very interesting image online of a MK IV Male that had been undergoing repair when it was captured by the germans. And there is an image of a couple german soldiers messing about on this tank. The tank had its guns removed for whatever reason and I found it a very interesting way for it to be shown. My dad built this tank for me ages ago when I first started getting into models. the model had become bleached, broken and worn overtime and had lost its guns a long time ago. I decided it would be fitting for such a model to become the centerpiece on the layout with a group of people surrounding some sort of fire next to it whilst the repairs go on

I roughly laid out how I plan the layout to look. it is heavily inspired by many things. some of which being the final scenes of the movie 1917, SDJR7F88s WW1 trench layout, images I have found online and (for whatever reason) scenes from the movie A Bridge To Far most of this layout will be amongst thick bushes and trees

Heres the loco with all the weathering and parts added It is on a mini prototype of what the trench layout it going to look (testing mud effects and scenery) I wanted to have the ground to be chalky soil like this image shows

When I get the time later today I will take some better pictures (with my new rolling stock that I am rather proud of) I also intend to go back to this model and make the foliage and brickwork a bit more realistic

I just wanted to add an image of my cakebox challenge layout Narrow Gauge Newt found here its the most realistic railway diorama I have made (thats not saying much)

if I may ask what do you use for ballast and how do you achieve the mud effect you have gotten on Amiens 1918?

the crew in place

I decided to paint the crew for my WW1 trench loco

I also added another engine to my colliery collection it is by no means well painted however my colliery fleet is designed to be something fun to mess around with it has no received a gloss coat so it is no longer a boring matt colour

I made this for two reasons 1. cause I like fantasy 2. to test different weathering and strange techniques as can hopefully be seen, the dragon is curled around the pillar now this is very obviously heavily based on tolkiens works

A fantasy model I made

A random rail tractor I decided to work on the tractor portion is an oxford model and the chassis is a highly shortened 4 wheel wagon and here it is after some gloss

my only explanation for it being on the western front is that it was commandeered from an industrial railway

as with all my stuff, its not the best but I am happy with it

its not finished yet as I plan on adding some other stuff (weathering, coal and possibly a hose) but at the minute I will leave it at this point

at this point I wasn't quite happy with it as it seemed a bit boring and it didn't look right. so I cut a giant hole in the back of the cab, drilled some holes in the buffer beams and put the couplings on I then stuck a (unpainted) crew inside and this is as far as I have gotten. I know quite a few people would want more details no how it was made and my thought process, but honestly, I just sat down with a dremel and some sanding sticks and got stuck in and things just kinda happened

it was at this point I realised that the lack of planning was not going well. the loco was to tall so I took of a load of weight by chopping it in half with a dremmel (the cut removed enough material that I could just put it back together) however this made the cab roof to low and the crew couldn't fit. so I cut away some bits under the cab to lower the cab floor, this meant I had to remake the rear buffers. after a bit of fiddling I ended up with this