outcastjack

McDonald's coffee stirrers put to good use.

The front few inches of the layout have developed signs of life. In the middle distance you can see that telegraph poles have started to go in. I have been wondering what to do about the road edge where it runs alongside the stream, fortunately at Scaleforum I found a kit for exactly the type of fence I have been visualising. It is pricy but looks dead easy to put together. Whilst there I also saw a chap using plastic wig hair and scatter for foliage on trees, I really liked his effects so had a go myself, the first attemt isnt great, but probably is my best tree to date.

Being careless with a static grass applicator I think I managed to send the voltage through two sides of a track and damage something in the controller. The symptom is for the controller to now output full voltage regardless of the knob position. I changed the potentiometer the knob attaches to but it has had no impact on the symptoms. Any thoughts? More importantly is there anyone who repairs DC controllers?

Great work, thank you for posting. The reference list is especially useful! This is a prototype i really want to model at some point (once I have finally developed the skill needed to make a chassis that runs well). The chimney and dome are excellent! You mentioned you learned a good deal about turning, have you made loco fittings like these before? Failing that how much practice did it take to get right?

I got a new (to me) Bachmann 8750 for about £15 in a very lucky eBay find. The livery is too late being the post 1942 so it will be re liveried, probably with a shirt button. It may also be renumbered depending on dates but I haven't researched the engine in question yet so no idea if it is time appropriate. It is seen here with a down mixed goods. Other than that the focus has been to continue adding greenery with a lot of grass and more hedging.

Good to see another cereal packet builder. Keep it up

I love This, it is so atmospheric. Please keep the pictures coming!

That is phenomenal. With some added bits (churns, barrow etc) and a scenic background I don't think I could tell which is the real one.

Annoyingly as the paper mache dried the scenic tray bowed meaning it no longer mated nicely with the track bead board. Que a whole load of extra card and paper mache to fix... All of the other scenic trays have now had their edges reinforced with laminations of thin wood to avoid any repeats. I am starting to be able to see how the landscape will look!

I decided to go with the plan I drew above and for once actually cracked on with it...

The roads have been receiving attention, they are profiled from plaster of Paris the edges into the verge are given a dark brown paint whilst the road surface itself becomes a beigey brown colour which I think looks OK for a dry gravel road What a difference some static grass makes!

A doodled version of the image above showing what I am currently thinking.

This is looking really good. I am intrigued to see how the removable scenery will work. Keep it going!

I am slowly sorting all of the links but in the mean time, your chance to influence a randomer's modelling! I am planning the station yard and can't decide where things should go. There are a few fixed points: -Another platform will go opposite the existing one. -The siding to the top of the picture (i.e. behind the running lines) is getting a run around loop and the goods shed is going there. -The signal box will go roughly where the very small tan signal box is at the moment (just to the right of the middle of the picture). -The main station building is going where the white gap in the platform at the end of the bay is. Given that a lane continues parallel to the rail line roughly 12 inches from the sidings and everything in that 12 inch wide strip extending from the trees at the right up to the fore ground. *edit* the lane does actually slowly pull away from the rail line so there is about 18 inches of space by the time it gets to the fore ground. a) where would you put a cattle dock? b) " Coal staithes? c) " Entrance to the station yard from the lane? d) " Coal merchant's office and weigh bridge?

So the ballasting and etc is continuing to drag on so to keep things interesting this is what I have planned for the village. the village green is outside the church, the road from the valley continues northwards out of the scene. The main street leads away from the church up to the castle at the bottom of the drawing

I finally have a platform! One more to go, and then the building shaped hole will be filled by a station building based on Briscombe Station.

Personally I have had more sucess with 2x1 and some 1/2x1,1/2 than with ply formers for a base board. Have you thought of making the full base including sea from 2x1 and then just raising the track-bed from it? Possibly not the best but certainly the quickest and cheapest.

I have so much love for this layout. The faithfulness to the real station has meant some excellent little touches.

Thank you I really appreciate that! Today I managed to find time to make some pine trees using the techniques described in this video. For those who haven't come across it "Boulder Creek Railroad" has some brilliant tutorials. Half a dozen. Unfortunately I ran out of hair spray so only two have been planted. this area will become a mixed woodland with some birch and oak also. I also made the first building for the station: a scalescenes coal sellers office.

I cycled through Staythorpe this morning on the way down to Newark. The layout looks great so far and I can't believe I have only just noticed it, I am going to enjoy watching it progress.

I stuck the bridge in and started landscaping around it. At the risk of drowning the thread in photos of minimal progress: The up milk train pulled by 3205 with the headlamp in the wrong place and a little more scenery around.

Done!

after discovering that plaster of paris is more fiddly than expected and priming with a beige I achieved: Now to paint and sit in place...

The landscape from the end of the station yard to the top of the hill where the bulk of the village starts had been built rigidly to the base board which at the time seemed like a good idea, subsequently however the difficulty of access has meant that the rest of the layout will be constructed on removable scenic trays. However, I don’t really fancy ripping up what I have already laid so as much of the detail for this section will be constructed offsite and then dropped into place. My first attempt at this fully offsite construction is the road bridge over the stream. I started by taking a plaster cast of the land where the bridge will go using artroc, I will actually use this shell as the land surface and have built up the land around so it will fit back in flush. The bridge is using a similar structure to the rail bridge with sides from foam board and other bits from highly expensive card (cornflakes packet…). Unlike the railway bridge which covered in printed brick paper this will be made from rough cut stone so I will be coating the structure in a thin layer of plaster of paris into which the stones will be carved.

With this being my first real layout (previous being an overgrown train set and an abortive attempt at a portable one) I am learning a huge amount as I go along. This week's progress is a prefect example of that, I wanted some simple wire fencing for the railway boundary. I started by trying to thread matchsticks onto some fine wire by hand but the result resembled a superglued spiders web with my hands playing the part of the fly. I figured a jig to hold it all still while it dried would be good. So I began on attempt two: I decided on fence post spacing of 15' and drilled holes in an offcut of MDF with a spacing of 60mm for the jig and enough holes for 1.2m of fencing to made at a time, all of the posts were drilled to take the wire before being hammered into the holes holding it all solid while the wires were threaded through and the glue dried. The fence was then spray painted on the jig and mounted into the layout and secured with hot glue.