Will Vale

Sorry it's not working well, it is a bit of a tricky business and I imagine the Woodland Scenics ballast, which is both very fine and very light, makes it harder I bought some but chickened out of actually using it... I use a cheapo plant mister for scenery, the trick is to stand well back (maybe two or three feet) so any big drops fall short of the layout. It can also help to fire the mist upward in an arc, letting it drift downwards onto the layout. I usually put lots of newspaper on the dining table, put the layout in the middle, and have at it. Generally it's possible to contain the overspray and I haven't been in trouble with the household goddess as a result I also found this video helpful the first time I had a go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2Q_Litqy5M

Thanks for the info about the Exactoscale track - I'd assumed this was all done by hand since it looks so nice

Love the first picture through the window, it looks very real. It's funny, I keep thinking "this 25 looks great" and then you go and make a next bit which I hadn't even realised was missing - viz. buffer beam details, numbers, interior, etc.

That's a really interesting project and a great result. I must admit I was surprised at how full and round the dot matrix dots are in the final picture, they look like miniature bulbs!

That looks really good, much tidier than my efforts! I think this is somewhere the commercial flex-track really loses out, and finescale track makes things easier, because it doesn't have the connecting strips between the sleepers. On the Peco track, these prevent the ballast and Klear from flowing properly under the rail and make it easy to create voids.

Always a great moment when something moves under its own power, nice one!

The white balance in that pic doesn't actually look too far wrong, I corrected it off the number plate and it didn't make much difference, although that's fairly bright so it may have been clipped. You could always put a grey card at the edge of the picture so you can correct WB on the computer then crop it out afterwards. More importantly, does your camera have a saturation option? It's sometimes disguised as "colour: vivid" or some such. If so, turn it down

Powders sound like a good idea. I don't think it'll be a problem to do it second, if you squash a few bits of grass in the process that just adds to the variety The static grass works really well here, I like the way the strands lean over into the track. Looks proper tussocky.

Looks like a good start, the mixture of grass tones and earth showing through is great! You could perhaps improve it by making the centre strip narrower, or the ruts wider - unless it's a really new track I think the vehicles would have wandered around more. I also think the colours look quite saturated, but that might just be the pic. I'm not sure what you could add in the way of fluff and details - maybe some weeds and a few stones crushed into the earthy bits? e.g. http://www.photorevisions.com/images/Photo_R/KL%20church2%20dirt%20road%20lr%20P6091192.jpg

Not mine, but I was impressed by the Rosebay Willowherb here, maybe you could ask cactustrain? It looks like the same structure would work for buddleia provided you could make the flower heads droop a bit. http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php/gallery/image/20743-hunslet-in-the-shubbery/

I think the colours are fantastic, especially in that last picture. What does it look like in evening sunlight? Possibly you could add a couple of small hero plants or other details in the foreground, although that might be distracting from the stock. Not sure...

Simply stunning, probably the best sound videos I've heard. The first and last could be the real thing with a bit of traffic and wind noise edited in. Now I really have to make one of those boxes! Will

Just found this, and I'm really glad I did - it looks excellent. I really like the detailed bogies, and the dexion-like shelving, it all looks very purposeful.

Looking good. Is the big grey box a heater, or is it one of those cranked drives that they have on high speed points?

Looks good, as do the clamp locks and weathered ballast. Amazing that you can make out the spear points on the fence too!

Looks great so far, and it seems to have hidden the vertical edges (card or paper overlay?) which were visible in your first shot, so all to the good I reckon. Concrete texture looks smart as well. Will

Cheers chaps It's already a bit silly in 4mm, so doing it in 2mm would qualify as heroic! That said, I did idly think about how to approach it in 2mm, and in fact it would be a better solution for the grease blades in 4mm too - closer to scale: You could apply a small quantity of e.g. Milliput to the inside of the rail, filling the space between the railhead and the web. That would be flush with the inside of the railhead, and trimmed off neatly at each end. Paint would unify the railhead and the putty so it looked like the grease blade, and you wouldn't have to worry about tolerances and running issues (I had to do some light filing once I'd got it all fitted). For the other bits, 2.5mm - 3mm plastic rod (or an oil barrel cut down?) would do for the drum, lightly bevelled with sand paper. You could use the tiger tail for the big grease pipe, and monofilament for the small ones. It's a bit of a daft detail, but the lubricator at Water Orton has the blades on the opposite side of the track to the drum, so the pipes are more interesting and would be more visible.

More scrap etch and superglued fingers have resulted in the following progress: The grease blades are pieces 4x1mm (ish) scrap brass glued to the inside of the rail below the railhead, with some finer scraps folded into L shapes and slotted in under the rail to make the brackets that hold them in place. I had to make a tool (well, a piece of plastic filed to a wedge) to hold them in place against the bottom of the rail while applying glue, then carefully withdraw it before it too got glued in place. The pump and (I think) switch block is folded from yet more scrap etch with 1mm square styrene strip fitted over length and then trimmed down. I drilled shallow 0.5mm holes in the undersides and inserted lengths of what I think might be "tiger tail" - it's a plastic coated wire from the local bead shop. The wire is maybe a bit too whippy, but it will hold a bend (sort of) and hasn't come undone yet. I'm not sure how I'm going to fix it to the grease blades since there's no real contact surface to work with, so I might end up wedging it under the rail and just trimming it short there. I have another lubricator pump block fitted but it's on the opposite rail so I probably won't bother with the grease blades, or at least not the brackets! They were fiddly to fold up with fingers + pliers, then I pinged a couple off and had to make more. Still, it's starting to look like the picture, and wagons roll through happily so hopefully I won't be filing or prying it all off again... I did try and file the row of little notches into the tops of the blades but gave up - it would have been overscale anyway There's a fair bit of glue and detached paint residue to clean up, but given the kind of gunky awfulness that builds up around the grease blades maybe it should stay

You're not alone - I write PS3 code for a living but circuit diagrams make my brain hurt.

Been looking forward to this after you mentioned it was on the cards. I'm really tempted after seeing Martin's 59 in Model Rail, the stanchions and piping alone make a huge difference.

I'd be concerned at finding a different component supplier if the number next to the dollar sign is the cost of those gates!

With the PVA, is there a chance that one of the earlier layers didn't cure completely? I did some water with gloss medium (so a similar acrylic) on a very short time scale, and I don't think the milkiness ever quite went in a few places. I think they were where an earlier layer was a bit thick and got recoated too soon. Will

Very dedicated stuff to get the different diameters and profiles along the pipes, should look awesome when fitted. How did you hold them together to do the soldering?

Possibly she's poor overlooked Claudia Raines: http://www.hudsontelcom.com/uploads/ClaudiaRaines.txt

I thought he was talking about puffer bottles? Maybe I read something else. I must admit I've only used mine on Igelfeld, which means relatively short 2-3mm fibres since it's Z-gauge. I'll have to give it a try with something longer. The area under the trees was done without the flyswat so the fibres would lay down like pine twigs and needles, but the bit of grass between the buildings was applied with static and stood up nicely.