Will Vale

Looks pretty good to me, although I'd be tempted to rotate the whole thing a few degrees to prevent the main axis of track being parallel to the board edges - this might cost you a siding, depending on how you do it, but it would probably look more natural?

I'm definitely intending to drybrush the sleepers, that should help but it needs a careful touch or they'll end up too busy. I need to look at some more prototype pictures before starting that step. I'd also wondered about doing the brake dust with powders, but I like the idea of ultra-dilute washes as suggested by Dave elsewhere, because I can use the same colour (Vallejo leather) as I've been using on underframes and keep it all together. Hornby ballast is pretty good - there are some nice cheap NZ products I looked at but they're much darker, whereas the Hornby shades are in the right palette. I think individually they're all very slightly odd - their tan is great, but light tan is greenish, and light grey is bluish. Mixing cancels this out a bit, and they're amenable to being pre-coloured with pigments (put ballast and a small quantity of pigment in a jar and shake). You can mix and set the pigmented ballast without it transferring to other grains much - i.e. the various colours stay separate. Quite useful for tweaking colours, although I didn't end up doing it here because I was able to get a decent result mixing straight out of the packet. Klear is a miracle product. If you really can't get it locally I can probably send you some from NZ - my supermarket has a case on the shelf still despite my predations.

Thanks chaps - hopefully it's useful to show some of the "oh no it's not going right" steps along the way. I'm not sure I'd recommend clay for hardstanding - I used it because I wanted the rails proud of the surface so I had to fill around the sleepers, but I realised later that I could have just trimmed the sleepers back to the web and built a neat card edge. It was really good hands-on-mess fun to do though, so it has that in its favour Jon, I should point out that using Klear for ballast was an idea I got from RMWeb in the first place - I know Andy has written about it, and Dave has tried it (but stopped now?) It's still fairly easy to get the original recipe here in NZ and a little goes a long way - I did my desert layout's ballast and scenery with Klear, plus various varnishing jobs, and now some ballast on Whitemarsh, and I've still not used more than 100ml - if that. So far I'm happy with the results - it's very fast, doesn't discolour, and adding a drop of dishwashing liquid seems to help the penetration a bit.

Thanks Dave! I've done a quick experiment with the brush on my test piece and it was a bit erratic, but from what you've said I suspect I just had too much paint in there. Will have another go when I get a bit further. The point heater book you linked to is very useful - yet more bits of wire and pipes and things are starting to make some kind of sense Cheers, Will

As I mentioned in the "how realistic" thread, I think this is looking magic - often the only giveaway that it's 2mm is the broad scope and easy flow of the plan, which would be more likely to be compromised in a larger scale! I also have a couple of questions if you've time: * How're you going to handle the ballast weathering washes mentioned above? Airbrush, or paintbrush, or something else? I'm hoping to get some tips for my layout since I've only done darker, dirtier ballast before, rather than clean main line stuff. * In your pictures from Water Orton, what's the hammerhead-shaped box tucked away in the concrete alcove? I'm sure I've seen something similar in pictures of Whitemoor but I don't have a clue what it is. Cheers and thanks! Will

I'd second the suggestion to use acrylics + brushes - I've not had much trouble with brush marks, and you can thin (most brands) and clean up with water. I found the newish Games Workshop foundation paints to be a bit of a revelation - they brush well and cover opaquely in one or two coats. For assembling kits and the like, a modeller I know from another forum who developed a superglue allergy uses PVA as a contact adhesive. From what I recall you apply thin smears to both parts, let dry, then apply another thin smear and bond. Apparently it's really tough and works well on resin kits and I think plastics? I can find out more if you're interested.

I finally put some ballast down! Not very much, since we were just off out, but enough to get a feel for it. I'm after the look of (what looks to me like) pale grey ballast as used at Whitemoor, still fairly fresh. At the moment it's much much too stark, especially since I washed the track with a fairly heavy concoction of burnt umber and black to add a bit of variation to the sleepers yesterday. The hope is that everything will tone in when some brake dust and other colouring is blended in. Hope - such a good word It does make some sense though, since everything that happens after (drybrushing highlights, possibly a wash for shadows, and powders or aerosol dusting) this will tend to unify and desaturate colours - i.e. it can't get more contrasty than it is now. The ballast is a 4:2:1 mix of Hornby fine light tan, tan, and light grey. The tones are close enough together that they don't look like salt and peppery, but the mix does relieve the monotony a bit. I've used the Hornby light tan on Tanis, albeit coloured with powders, and I fixed it with Klear which worked really well. I did the same thing this time without any powders, and had a bit of trouble with the Klear not penetrating instantly. It didn't ball up or anything like that, but the drops (from an eyedropper) were able to get a bit big before they wicked away. This meant some of the dry ballast was lifted and I had to very gingerly pat it back into place. It looks fine in the above picture, but you can see here that there are some divots between the sleepers that probably oughtn't be there. I might go back and touch in the worst of these with a bit more, or might rely on weathering reducing the contrast enough that it won't be so obvious. That said, is there anything which can be added to Klear to make it "wetter"? Would Klear and IPA be compatible? In other news I've finished (for now) the hardstanding area. I spent loads of time smoothing the clay and thought I'd got it to a baby's bottom-like finish, but it was not so It's relatively *smooth*, but the low light reveals some fairly massive low-frequency undulations. I grumbled and cursed a bit, left it all to dry for another day, and applied a skim of gesso mixed with a bit of raw umber to make it grey, and lightly thinned with water. This has plaster in it and can be used as a filler in very thin layers, but it does shrink. However, it evened out the surface a bit, and created some new divots on a much finer scale which look more like damaged concrete, so they can stay: It's not a completely fair comparison since the light isn't consistent, but the worst of the big pits have been filled in, and the added fine detail (shallow flat pits, some ridges) from the gesso helps to mask those that are left. I think this will weather up fairly well now, although I might need to do another pass of cleaning out around the chairs, at least on the rear (upper) road which won't be covered in oil and gunk. Next job is to add more troughs and pipes, and extend the ballast as they get done.

Some good tips there Rich, thanks, I wouldn't have thought of wet sanding but it seems to work! I used some old 80 grit paper to sort out some big lumps and then some much finer (600 grit?) wet-and-dry to level and smooth various bits. I've just clayed the rest of the area, to the right and in front of what's visible above, but that needs to dry yet. James, you're right, I had seen that article when I put the inspection pit in and I think it was in my subconscious when I was doing this. I went back and it's in the same place on the layout, with similar trackage to boot. I'm even thinking about getting one of those Peter Clark inspection platforms! You could be right about the walkway as well - I was going to fill quite deeply with ballast leaving ~1mm of edging visible, but I think I might be better off (and use less ballast) if I trim off the 3mm edges and cut some 2mm strip. Or maybe I could sand it down... hmm...

It's probably completely wrong, but the first thing I thought of when I saw the frame was Andy's mermaid conversion. The loco looks great by the way, I love the videos! I'm trying to persuade my dad to build a garden railway as there's no space on our 30' sloping section

The right hand end of Whitemarsh has a couple of little sidings. Just space for some TMD-esque stuff. I picked Ipswich Freightliner stabling/fuelling point as the inspiration for this - it's the right area of the country and a neat little depot in a tiny space. Not as tiny as the space on the model though! I also think it'll add some personality missing from Whitemoor, which is really clean and tidy and new-looking. There's a useful picture by Colin Brooks which gives a reasonable view into the fuelling point: http://colinpbrooks..../p56888483.html From what I can make out, there's hardstanding around the track at sleeper height with a half-hearted bund around that. I thought this'd make a nice change from inset track at rail height, so I've tried to replicate it. I didn't fancy cutting plastic to fit around the chairs, so I've had a go with DAS clay - this is relatively easy to shape and not very messy. The down side is that you can't level it like you can with plaster, it's much more organic. I think I've managed to get a reasonably flat finish (wet fingers help, as does an X-acto handle as a rolling pin) although I had some minor subsidence where there were small gaps in the cork layer. Luckily it's easy to blend in more clay. I have to pick around the chairs after letting it dry for a bit to clean them up - this has been done by the pit, which was started last night, but the rest is only just laid. Between the rails, I've been along with a cocktail stick, but left the "burr" of clay until dry, since I don't think I can get it off without marring the surface in some way. I suppose this is rather an unorthodox approach, but it seems to be working so far, and if it all goes horribly wrong I can just cover it up with rail-height inset track using the usual plaster or plastic or cardboard I've also done some more trunking and fitted lamp bases along the pathway - this is nearly ready for ballast. Sorry about the picture! The path is just sitting there while I make up my mind about it - it's supposed to connect the TMD with the far side of the track via an occupation crossing over the board join. The idea is to in-fill between the path edges with finer chippings as per the prototype, see for example this picture by Geoff Tibble: http://geoffsangliap.../p63401988.html I was going to make it from wood, but realised the scale timber I'd bought without really thinking about it was much too thick, so my plastic mock-up might become the real thing!

I take the point about "no higher" being incorrect - it was just a rhetorical device, sorry. I think the general thrust of what I was trying to say is "that looks at least twice as big as it really is", meaning it must have required proportionally finer and more fiddly work to achieve, demonstrating more skill on the part of the creator. Of course I didn't mean "that looks like a poor combination of scale and gauge" I really hope Dave took the OP's compliment and my follow-up as what they were intended to be - compliments. If not I'm very sorry for any offence caused. Cheers, Will

Cheers chaps, I did some more last night involving mitered corners - very easy with a flush cutter Thanks for the suggestions on the pipes, I'll see what I've got lying around. The insulation is good because it's self coloured and bendy, but it does feel a bit over-scale. It is mostly solid plastic - you can see some of it in the pile of bits - I'm only using the H pieces where I want to leave the lid off, or at the ends. As you say, the solid stuff is much cheaper!

At long last I've found the ballast I wanted and have started preparing the track surrounds - sorting out levels, etc. I've also started doing the around-track detailing - orange pipes and cable troughs are this year's GWR branchline if you like modern image stuff, but they look so good The orange pipe is leftover from my layout wire, with the conductors (mostly) stripped out and the end opened out slightly with a knife-point. It seems to be the right size, I think the Peco sleeper spacing makes it look too wide, but ballasting will hide some of this anyway. This pipe is carrying the entire wiring run across to the far side of the track since the trough ends on this side. The trough parts started off as a big pile of Evergreen strip, 1/8th" square. Most of it is closed and uses the cheaper square section, the open parts use H section beams. These are only half-depth, but they're a much better option than the Evergreen U-section, which is far too shallow. I suspect that when properly painted, buried in ballast, with some cables and things added, it's not going to be too noticeable. For the end piece I've cut the web of the H back a bit so the opening will appear to be full-size. Cutting up the pieces into 14mm lengths (should be 13mm but I scaled at 1:72 by mistake ) made for pleasant busy-work in front of the TV. It's laid with the ubiquitous PVA, along a ruled line which I haven't been too careful to follow. I thought I was going to fit lids to each piece afterwards, but the H sits a bit lower anyway, so I decided not to bother. Paint is a splash of one of the Games Workshop foundation paints (Dheneb Stone - presumably they were unable to trademark Deneb...) which is a nice concrete colour - it needs touching up, weathering and detailing with cables and things still. I'm not yet sure how much of this to do before ballasting, and how much to do after, but at least ballasting is getting closer now! Thanks to Merfyn and Jim S-W for dimensions and other tips for the troughs! The other thing I did recently was ballast a couple of inches of track to check colours. This is Hornby's fine light tan, which is sort of greenish-grey to my eyes. I coloured a portion of it with MIG beach sand to warm the colour up and provide some variety, and fixed it with clear. The final ballast is likely to be a mix of light tan and tan, possibly with some light grey added as well. The Whitemoor ballast was a pale grey when new, as far as I can make out, but I think in the model it should be a bit warmer and less consistent. The test piece is in-situ on the layout - although I did a test card first. It's fixed with Klear, which makes the job a lot quicker and easier, and is kind to the colours as you can see from the unfixed ballast lying around on the baseboard. I'm not sure about the sleeper colour yet - the base coat is Tamiya Red-Brown, I'm not sure whether to weather (haha ) it before ballasting, or after - it needs to end up a lot greyer than it is at the moment. If I do change the recipe, it doesn't matter too much since this is the end of a siding which needs to be trimmed back to clear the earth bank and Norwood Road Bridge wing wall. Hopefully there'll be some more progress next week since I expect to have a little downtime between contracts.

There's no higher compliment than that! Lovely stuff Dave.

Great to see you getting on with this one again - I take it you decided not to sell? On the cosmetic fishplates, I'd be tempted to leave them off the inside altogether - less accurate, but it's not going to cause you any problems that way, and it won't look too horribly wrong, surely? On the 08, they're just short enough that you need the frog and switch rails to be live - but only just. I had a spot of bother with mine when one of my soldered bonds fell off - so the frog was live, but the switch rail wasn't. You could always retrofit feeds to the frogs if you haven't got them already - going in behind the vee is fairly discreet.

Here you go then: This image is a really good motivator for two important things: find my SLR charger, and get some bl**dy ballast down!

I finished painting the last two limpets (the ones with the finer springs) today. First, here's another Dutch one: based on this picture of 390317 by Andy Jupe: http://gingespotting.../p32727072.html I really liked the detail of the TOPS panel covering an entire bodyside panel, and done recently enough that the black paint and axleboxes were relatively clean. Unfortunately I assumed that because I could paint out the dashed outline successfully, I could also join up the dots neatly. Not so! As you can see it's a bit freehand looking, I think the best fix is probably to paint out the white box entirely and leave the printed numbers and recoded M as-is. That should let the machine-printed horizontal number be the strongest feature again, and hide the fact that the M is hand painted. I also have a single example in Loadhaul colours which is supposed to be following the picture in Nigel Burkin's book, but got a bit busier than I wanted it to. I found fading the black difficult to do without getting blotches or tide marks visible - possibly because acrylics don't give much working time. I also found that one the printed panels came apart almost instantly the acrylic thinner hit it, hence the spot of patch painting on the right hand side. It's odd, the others were perfectly robust, but this one came off on both sides of the wagon. To hide the blotchy wash I made the spots and runs a bit stronger than the picture. I also had trouble with paint being knocked off the ribs leaving very strong black vertical lines - I've partly touched these in, but it looks like I might have to go back and redo this area now that I can see the pictures - far too much contrast. The other side is similar, plus a bit of patch painting to cover up a bad job of a graffito from a picture of a another Loadhaul wagon. I made it too big, and blotched the lines, so it had to go. The replacement was a lot easier I haven't recoded this one as an MKA since the prototype was still coded ZKA when the picture was taken (2004 IIRC) which is in-period for Whitemarsh. That's about it for limpets at the moment, I do have a couple more but I think I need to see something else for a while having done five without much of a break! They do make a nice rake though, they're surprisingly massy and satisfying for four-wheelers. Next might be a Loadhaul shark, which I want to run with these to relieve the "odd one out" effect of the single orange and black limpet.

That trick for the aerials is pure genius. I keep fretting that I'm going to break mine, now I know what to do when that happens Looking forward to part 2!

I'm still too chicken to do a loco I have another couple of things to do first: 1) Try fading with enamels - I just bought a handful of Humbrol tinlets. I've been using acrylic washes but the short working time and the ease of cutting through the fade later has made me look for something better. (Cheers Rich for the tip!) 2) Experiment with the (low end) airbrush I got for my birthday :D

Cheers Rich, they're certainly interesting - especially on the Gloucester one there's almost nothing to the underframe, ideal for the lazy modeller Hopefully these two'll help ring the changes when mixed into a rake of vanilla Bachmann PNAs.

Looks good to me - I really like the hard/soft edges on the grot. Look forward to seeing this in the flesh at some point!

I finally got hold of a Bachmann SSA locally, which I've wanted for ages in order to try Nigel Burkin's underframe conversion from the Modern Wagons book. I followed the book's recipe fairly closely, although I cleaned up the original SSA buffer mouldings (which had a fair bit of flash) and used brake details recovered from the PNA's underframe. Not strictly correct, and I suspect there should be more stuff under there but I can't figure it out from the pictures in the book. To fit the chassis to the body without shortening it, I had to trim off the uprights flush at the end of each wagon, I'm intending to make some replacements from thin plastic strip to try and give the right impression. More interestingly, I found myself looking at the left over ex-TTA chassis, and the Hornby PCA 3-pack which was my first wagon purchase when I got back into UK outline. The PCAs are attractive but completely wrong for Whitemarsh, and I've been wondering for a while about using the (very crisply moulded) Gloucester suspension components to add some more variety to the PNAs. When I realised that the wheelsets from the SSA had brake disc detail, it was impossible to resist. The body isn't strictly correct but I don't really mind about that - 5mm too short isn't something I'm going to worry about. I cut up the PCA chassis roughly with clippers, and carefully detached all four suspension units with a fine razor saw. The TTA (PNA) chassis had all the detail below the solebars removed, and I drilled out the pinpoint cups on the suspension parts so they would fit the Bachmann SSA wheelsets (keep drilling carefully until there's around 0.5mm between the moulding and the wheel's face). These were then glued to the cleaned up TTA chassis solebars, trapping the wheelsets in place at the same time. I got it as square as I could - so not desperately square - but I think it'll look OK under some paint. Additional details are the brake calipers, hand wheels, and some other parts recovered from the PCA and SSA underframes, fitted according to photos as best as I could make out. The prototype doesn't have much detail. It's very rough and ready but runs quite nicely, to my surprise. I'm looking forward to getting some paint on these (and fitting the coupling chains) in the near future, but ought to do the MKA underframes first really. [Edit: Had the prototype suspension type wrong - Gloucester not BSC - that'll teach me to try and use big words!]

Very nice indeed with all the details and dangly bits fitted. Especially in the second shot there's a great sense of mass - looks bigger than OO to be honest.

Using the low side as the front has additional benefits for photography, something I'm sure you'll take advantage of. I like the idea of looking up the slope past the houses to the railway, but it's a shame that all the lovely wagons will be at the back now!

Those three or four minutes were very well spent - lovely pictures. especially the middle one. You can almost see the dust in the air.