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Will Vale

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  1. Will Vale

    Track and ballast

    By Will Vale,

    Ballast by Will Vale, on Flickr
     
    This always feels like a make-or-break point for layout building. You've got to do it, but once you have going back is impossible, or at least wildly unpleasant. I have ballasted Z track before, as seen here on Igelfeld, but the ballast I used was pretty coarse. I was happy with it at the time, but given that the new layout has closer-to-scale rail profile, I felt it needed closer-to-scale ballast as well.
     

     
    Before getting into that, I laid the track with superglue directly onto the MDF trackbed. This was previously sealed with 50:50 PVA and water. Finally the whole lot was painted with Tamiya red-brown from a rattle can, getting things to the state shown here:
     

     
    I then touched in various sleepers with various blends of thinned dark grey and brown acrylics:
     

     
    and that was all the easy wins won. Time to go rooting around in the ballast supplies. I did some dry tests with a whole range of things from my scenery box, including Woodland Scenics fine, and sieved Hornby fine gravel which is what I used on Whitemarsh. I really like the colour of the latter, but they were all overscale:
     

     
    Counting lumps on prototype pictures, I think something like eight to ten grains between each pair of sleepers is required to be somewhat close to scale. In my tray of scenery bits I have some very fine gravel/rock dust from (I think) Jordan or one of the other European scenery manufacturers. I used this to make gravel walking routes on Whitemarsh. The size is good, but the colour is wrong - too uniform and too cool and dark. I ended up mixing in some fine silica sand from the art shop, which lightens things a bit and breaks up the uniformity:
     

     
    Not too bad, although rather messy.
     
    Yesterday I got the lineside cable trunking finished off and painted, so I couldn't put off the ballast any longer. Brushing it into place was a royal pain - it's light enough that it doesn't sit naturally, plus the track has a webbing between sleepers, so everything had to be very carefully positioned and tamped with a very fine brush and my fingers. Plus the invaluable "bit of folded postcard" for dishing it out in the first place. Doing a couple of feet of track was incredibly hard work, surprisingly so since ballasting is normally something I quite enjoy. A trapped nerve which is bothering my left bicep didn't make things any easier either!
     
    Thankfully, after the (literal!) pain of spreading the stuff, bonding it was easy-peasy. I misted everything with neat alcohol (IPA) from a pump spray bottle until it looked wet, then applied Klear to the edges with a pipette. It absorbed beautifully and, joy of joys, drew itself under the rails to set the ballast between the sleepers. At least provided it was damp enough on either side. This was a huge advantage since applying the Klear between the rails can leave glossy spots on the sleepers - this are hard to get rid of without a lot of painstaking painting.
     
    A few hours later it'd dried up quite nicely:
     

     
    It's still not the right colour, and in a couple of places it's a bit darker than this, so I'm not out of the woods yet. I think some very careful dry-brushing (or possibly a wash of MIG pigments?) should lighten the colour to the point where I can then apply brown washes to correct the hue. Watch this space...
  2. Will Vale
    I laid the fine-ish track last week and did some minimal wiring, and have run some trains successfully. The code 40-code 60 joints were reasonably trouble free, the most I had to do was tweak the end of a rail with pliers to smooth a bend. I'll try and take some pictures of those since there are some details I wouldn't mind getting an opinion on.
     
    I've been quietly wondering whether I'd get my modelling (as opposed to construction) mojo back, and it appears to have happened last night. Almost before I noticed I'd measured and drawn out the west portal of the Unterer Hirschsprung Tunnel, and building followed. It looks rough as a badger's bottom in the above picture, but I think with some primer and possibly a thin coat of gesso to mortar the stonework it'll turn out OK.
     
    Pleasingly, I found a dimensioned drawing of the tunnel after I'd worked it out from the photo' and I was right to within 1mm! Sadly, I can't re-use the pattern for the two outer portals on the layout because they're on the start of the return curves and it'll need the width eased by 1-2mm. I tried it with this one and the Doppelstockwagens just graze the sides, so hopefully it'll look pretty close.
     
    Construction was fairly simple - a sheet of 1mm styrene for the retaining wall, marked out and cut as a circle with tangets rather than the proper curve. The liner is 0.5mm styrene formed around a wooden spoon handle with boiling water, and the arch stones are 1.5mm slices of Evergreen 3mm x 0.75mm strip. I was going to use Tamiya putty for the carved rough stone, but couldn't find it, so I roughed up the surface and applied a very thin (about 0.5mm) layer of DAS clay over PVA, reasoning that the worst that'd happen would be that it'd all fall off!
     
    Luckily it didn't, so I had a go at carving the stonework with the blade of a small screwdriver. Quite pleasant work, although looking at it there are too many long lines in the pattern - it's difficult making random patterns as opposed to semi-regular ones. My approach was to break the space into larger polygonal areas and then subdivide them, but I think the polygonal edges have ended up being a bit too visible in the result.
     
    After brushing the dust off I painted a coat of dilute PVA over the clay to stabilise the surface. So far it's holding together, and it doesn't seem to want to chip away despite carving through to the styrene in a couple of places. I'm looking forward to painting it now!
     
    Here's a long shot of where the tunnel's going to end up. There'll be a huge slab of rock just behind the mouth which (I think) makes the slopes make more sense.
     

  3. Will Vale

    Larger than life?

    By Will Vale,

    I think this code 40 lark is going to be pretty good - pantograph and dodgy focus aside, I don't think the picture screams "this loco is 3 inches long"
     
    In terms of layout progress, I've spread a tub of lightweight filler over some of the elevations previously built up from scraps of foam card and styrofoam.
     
    I also made a code 40/code 60 join by soldering the thinner section on top of flattened fishplates on the code 60, which I'm sure I read somewhere years ago as a suggestion for code 75/code 100 transitions. A bit of work with a file and it all runs smoothly despite being on a curve. Next step is probably to start gluing the track down, then solder up some of the key rail joints. I'm considering something other than PVA this time, since I had some problems with PVA tarnishing the rail on Igelfeld.
     
    Working with yard lengths of very delicate rail gives me a lot more appreciation for the trials and tribulations of permanent way crews working with CWR! It's very tricky to make sure it's supported and not stressed all the way along the length while you're fiddling with one end of it.
  4. Will Vale

    0.5mm @ 1:220...

    By Will Vale,

    ...works out as 110mm life size. It's the difference in height between code 40 and code 60 rail.
     

     
    I blame thank James for starting me down this particular dark path. The further of the two parallel tracks in the picture is standard Märklin track using code 60 rail. The nearer is code 40 rail threaded into Märklin sleeper bases, with the tops of the chairs/spikes/clips dressed with a sanding stick afterwards. And it works! The rails are held in gauge, and the trains run along it without bumping.
     
    Given that I only have to do plain track on this layout, I think I should probably carry on, assemble some more lengths, and try laying some for real. It does look rather better - code 40 @ 1:220 is equivalent to code 100 @ 1:87, not finescale but rather finer than the code 60
  5. Will Vale
    I did a lot more planning and tweaking and deciding, and was finally able to get some MDF cut for the sides of the board, and the track bed.
     

     
    After more tests I went with keeping things simple and not having any elevation changes on the track. I think the deciding factor was listening to the Z locos struggle on a 2% gradient - the Märklin Doppelstockwagen driving trailers have power pickups which add quite a lot of drag, and the hard-working motors are amplified by the lightweight board. I'm a bit sad about this since the prototype is heavily graded, but it's supposed to be an exhibition layout and reliability is more important than authenticity! At least for my sanity
     
    Given that decision, it made sense to use the flat surface I'd built for the track datum, which meant cutting down the front for the valley. This was a bit nerve-wracking, since it involved partially un-making my nice square rigid board. It took revenge by stabbing me in the finger, naturally, but I prevailed in removing 50mm from the front rail, ends and interior bracing.
     
    I've since built up the valley floor again, with the roadway:
     

     
    which is starting to look about right. Re-covering the top has restored most of the strength, and the MDF profile boards should finish that job.
     

     
    The MDF for the road and trackbed hasn't been fixed down yet - I want to cut some more out out the track bed to reduce the weight first. When your basic materials are so light even a small piece of 3mm MDF makes a big difference.
     
    It seems like slow progress, but a lot of work has gone into this, most of it in my head, looking at pictures and watching videos to try and see what the terrain does in real life. The leading photo' of the bridge is to check that an angle from some pictures I saw on Panoramio works on the model. I probably should have an extra 10mm under the bridge to give some leeway, but I didn't want to reduce the longitudinal rail any further, so 50mm it is. I've already had to piece together a stream bed below the 50mm mark - you can just make out in the pictures where the pieces fit among the diagonal bracing.
     
    The Spitfire once again proved its worth as a maid of all work - the largest piece in there is 1900x500mm - not small!
     

     
    The last piece of good news is that an eBay parcel which was lost in the post arrived this morning after a month in transit :D
  6. Will Vale
    I went and dug a sheet and a bit of 10mm foam card out of the garage last night, so I could mark up and cut out the main bits of the Höllentalbahn board.
     

     
    I added 5cm in each direction to the width and height of the plan in the previous entry - I may regret this, but it seemed like it wouldn't make that much difference to getting it though doorways, and it relaxes some tight areas on the plan. That gives a board size of 1900x500mm, or 6'2" by a bit over 19".
     
    Cutting the thick board is interesting - to get good joints, you really need to get the cut perpendicular to the surface, which means you either need super-steady hands or some kind of specialist tool. The cutter I have has a small foot which keeps it at right angles to the surface. The problem is the blades are over-priced and don't seem to be as sharp as general purpose craft or modelling knives.
     
    To get around this I make a guide cut just through the paper surface with a new blade in a modelling knife, then set the foam knife to ~9mm depth and cut through the foam. Finally finish with the modelling knife again to go through the last bit of foam and the other paper layer.
     
    This seems to work pretty well and I only had wobbly edges on the really long cuts - a bit a shaving or sanding the bumps improves these.
     
    One thing which worried me was that the top surface and long rails have to be made out of two pieces of board - the largest size I can get easily is ~1500mm long. I butt-jointed them and used masking tape to hold the joint while the glue went off. I've placed one of the reinforcing ribs under the joint in the top to give it a bit more support.
     
    With all that done I glued and taped everything together, and let it harden under miscellaneous books:
     

     
    So far so good. And just to show that modelling is not incompatible with other uses of the kitchen table:
     

     
    (The small glass of port is strictly medicinal... )
     
    Diagonal bracing is waiting on some more foam - all the bits I had left over were a couple of inches short.
     
    I suspect I'll laminate a sheet of Styrofoam to the top as I did with Tanis, since the datum level for the track is rather higher than the lowest point on the scenery. That should make things much more rigid (maybe even obviate the need for diagonal bracing?) and also reinforce the joint in the top.
     
    Nice to have made a start, albeit a simple one!
  7. Will Vale
    I spent some time pasting together Google Maps images and watching cab rides to see better how the line behaves between Falkensteig and Hirschsprung. Then I laid out potential track plans in SCARM (which is brilliant) and tried to put the two together. It looks like I'll need to compress reality about 2:1 to fit the stretch I want in the space I can manage. For a "railway in the countryside" layout that doesn't seem too bad to me.
     

     
    I ended up truncating the fiddle yards to two roads each - I was thinking I could get three, but it felt like a tight squeeze and I wasn't confident in my ability to build them out into the back of the scenery. The joggle in the tunnel is probably a bit too extreme as well and would benefit from a gentle realignment, although it does make it easier to get the big foreground rock in.
     
    If you haven't seen the line this video might be helpful. It starts just before the bridge and Falkenstein tunnel, traverses the layout portion, and has a look at the rock pillars and the joggle around the upper tunnel. The tunnels have been edited out but you get the idea.
     
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sj-twTaMl6Y
    [Video from Youtube user "hagugo", who has enabled embedding.
    ] 
    Once I'd got that worked out I made a perspective snapshot and traced/sketched over it in Photoshop (no scanner, you see) to see what it might look like. I'm not great with a pencil, or indeed a tablet, but it's a useful exercise, sketches helped me solve a lot of structural scenery problems on Tanis.
     

     
    I need to do one from the other end - the track re-appears from the Unterer Hirschsprung-Tunnel for 400mm or so before disappearing into the Oberer Hirschsprung-Tunnel and thence returning to the fiddle yard. You can just see the second tunnel mouth in the sketch. There's quite a bit of rock work to fit into the corner and I'm not entirely convinced there's room for it all, hence the need for this planning
     
    The bridge in the foreground is just on the other (west) side of the Falkenstein-Tunnel in reality, but I really like it so I thought I'd move it. Otherwise the visible section would be more-or-less entirely the road and the railway on a gentle curve separated by what looks like a scree slope (but presumably is netted or otherwise made safe from rock falls). In the sketch I've shown the side valley going in the same direction as in real life, but it'd probably be easier to fold it away if the road turned west towards the corner of the layout.
     
    I had two wacky ideas while doing all this: One is to leave the return curves unsoldered, so it would be possible to convert the module to a straight through one and model Falkensteig on the left, and/or Bahnhof Hirschsprung on the right. The other is to have the return curves off the module altogether, and just plug them in or have them on fold-out flaps. I think that might be over-engineering or over-thinking things though, and it might be best to just build things as simply as possible so that I can finish it
     
    One other interesting question is whether to have a backscene, given that in reality the valley side would be higher than the layout. I wonder what it would look like if there was a lighting pelmet in the foreground, and the rockwork and greenery in the background just went up to the "top" behind that, so that you couldn't see the end from normal viewing angles?
  8. Will Vale
    So having solicited some opinions a little while ago (thanks to everyone who responded!) I seem to be about to ignore them... Unfortuntely, while I've been doing a little plastic-kit-making for Tanis (Do335A Pfeil) I'm still drawn to the Höllentalbahn. It seems like something to do that I could get to a good state for Railex at the start of October. I'd only want to model a bit of it as a tail-chaser, and the bit that appeals most is Hirschsprung and associated tunnels.
     

    [image by Joachim Haller via Wikipedia, reproduced under Creative Commons CC-BY-SA license.]
     
    The motivation for this goes back to being a really big fan of Jacq Damen en co's Steilstrecke/Dreimuhletalbahn (some pics on a forum here). I've thought for a while it would make a good Z project, and I like the idea of being a bit more "prototype modeller" about it. I've laid some track out on the table to have a think about this already, and given that Micky removed our dubious wardrobe doors recently I now have four hollow-core doors which are about the right size. They're really too heavy to be good baseboards, but they're great for visualising the space:
     

     
    I have to say that Märklin Z is a great executive toy. It really does seem to fulfil the commercial goals they had for it originally: In the advertising, serious-looking chaps would see the trains as status purchases, be pleased that they were proper scale models, and occasionally get them out for a play on their frighteningly-clean designer furniture. Of all the scales I'm interested in this is the one where I'm happiest just to run things around, although I lack both designer furniture and the regulation beard. Oh well.
     
    The layout idea would be to do 1800x450mm or thereabouts representing the area around the Hirschsprung tunnels, with a plate girder bridge from slightly further west moved into scene. This is just a single line of scenic track, so I don't have to ballast any Z turnouts, and needs to rise between 20 and 40mm left to right along the front.
     

     
    At the back there are two fiddle yards, the left one at datum level, the right one set further to the front of the layout, also level but raised to whatever the height difference ends up being. An inclined link would complete the loop allowing for continuous running.
     
    Other options would be to have level track (which seems to be missing the point slightly) and a conventional double-ended fiddle yard, but that doesn't allow for very long trains - the staggered fiddle yards can have slightly longer roads.
     
    The front edge of the layout would be the stream and B31 road, with a little bit of foreground terrain in places. I'd like to capture the joggle between the cliffs, visible in the image above, at the right corner of the layout. I'm assuming that the visible track will bow in in a sinuous fashion to make space for the valley, and I'm a little concerned about available depth. Squeezing the fiddle yard to two roads in each direction would resolve this at the expense of some train variety. Maybe cassettes would be a good idea?
     

     
     
    Having added this nasty bit of Photoshoppery, I wonder if the features on the right hand end shouldn't move further to the right, so that part of the return curve would be visible. It would give a nice view through the gap, but would make it difficult to extend the layout in that direction in the future. (And that is the logical direction to extend, since Hirschsprung station is just to the east.)
     
    I can't see any really good reasons not to go ahead and build this - it lets me try some dramatic scenery, lets my Z gauge come out of the drawer a bit more often, and it uses almost exclusively things that I already have. Assuming I can resist (I can't) collecting more prototypical train formations for the various periods the line could be operated. Current thoughts are Epoch III (1950s DB), Epoch V (turn of the century DBAG) and maybe a bit of Epoch IV as well if my dad'll lend m
  9. Will Vale
    I really didn't mean to vanish for several months - it just sort of happened. I had a big burst of activity to get Whitemarsh ready for the challenge and then the show at the end of November, then a short break from modelling. Unfortunately this ran into Christmas, which ran into a new work contract, which was happening at the same time as writing a conference paper and a hobby game project. Yikes.
     
    Anyway, the culmination of all this madness was a two week trip to the 'States involving a lot of work and alcohol. I'm now back, and starting to think I should make or do something train-ey before I forget which way they go. This was catalysed slightly by receiving an exhibition invite for Whitemarsh and/or Tanis in August.
     
    So... what to do now? The three main options I'm mulling over are:
     
    1) Do more work on Whitemarsh, finish the depot area (foreground) and maybe install a backscene. Weather up more stock as well.
     

     
     
    2) Build a new module for Tanis:
     

     
     
    This would probably be 2xA3 off to the left of what you can see here, with the terrain elevation lowering slowly to track level and incorporating the edge of a camp/airstrip so I can land weird things like a Dornier Pfeil.
     
    3) Build a Z gauge layout based on the Hirschsprung section of the near Freiburg. This would be a single track electrified branch with no points in the visible area, fiddle yard behind, and small trains in big scenery.
     
    This video shows the section I have in mind:
     
    I've bought reference material and made a few stock purchases towards option 3 so I can run some legitimate trains and I'm quite tempted to do it, but I suspect I'd really enjoy working on Tanis some more as well.
     
    I'm tempted not to take Whitemarsh to the show in August and instead work on that for next year's Railex in November, since it's hard work to operate and the August show is in Masterton - there's less chance I'll get any support from Micky out there since it's not a bus ride from home.
     
    In the longer term I want to do something with On30 in British Columbia, and do some more work on my 1:35 modern construction stock which is still sitting in a box looking sorry for itself, but those are a bit ambitious for now. Particularly the On30 since I'm having real trouble coming up with small track plans that I'd be happy with.
     
    Or I could put my head under the sand for a few more months I'd be interested to hear what people think - and thanks for listening if you made it this far into the ramble...
  10. Will Vale

    Railex 2010

    By Will Vale,

    We had a good show at the weekend, although operating Whitemarsh meant I didn't have much time to do anything else - quite a shock after showing roundy-roundy layouts the last couple of years.
     

     
    First of all, let me offer thanks to my dad for operating Igelfeld and Tanis, and Micky for bringing us lunch on both days, and giving me a quick break from Whitemarsh to eat it. Also thanks to Kev and Rich for making trips to the coffee room on my behalf! 
     
    I was pretty panicky the week before the show, especially since I couldn't start the fiddle yard until Wednesday night owing to lack of supplies. As usual, I painted the fascias (primer + 2 coats) late at night on the Thursday so they aren't all that neat close up. They look nice in the pictures here though - the semi-gloss black definitely adds a professional touch, although it's a shame you can see the white primer on the feet-come-gusset plates under the layout.
     
    The scenics came together quite well on the Friday morning and afternoon - lots of bushes, some more grass, and various bits of fairing in around things like the bridge. Some of it will have to come out again and get reworked, especially where the bridge joins the retaining wall. I tried to get things up to a similar level of finish all over, leaving off anything which didn't look ready, such as the Ipswich offices and the pretty much the entire fuelling point. This did make the right-hand end of the layout rather bare-looking, but keeping locos on one or other of the sidings on the concrete pad helped.
     
    I'm really glad I bought the Turners truck too It filled a space where the office should be quite nicely, and added a bit of colour and verticality to an otherwise plain spot. It was also a magnet for sticky fingers which acted as a sacrificial anode to protect the rest of the layout - even my fragile depot sign survived intact.
     
    Operation was simple - with a short rake of MKAs (instanter couplings) and a rake of MOAs (Sprat and Winkle) I was able to bring a train in to the yard with 60014, uncouple and head to the fuelling point or the headshunt while the 08871 took the rake into the yard proper (rear road of fiddle yard). This was then reversed, and mixed up with various light engine movements, or 37510 taking the MKAs to and from the yard by itself. The pilot is only needed for the MOAs to avoid buffer lock on the slip, but that didn't quite work out in practice and I needed to help it a bit despite inserting an OCA at the front of the rake.
     

     
    There weren't too many problems - electrically things were solid - no soldering iron required - but the drive pin dropped out of the tie bar on the slip putting it out of action for the last hour on Saturday. I worked around it since fixing it would have meant turning the layout over - the downside of using the supplied tables. After the show closed it was a matter of five minutes to re-insert the pin, hook the Tortoise wire back over the other end, and reprogram the decoder's address for that motor - it turned out to have lost the address, so it was really a two-fold problem. On Sunday the motors were bulletproof and I stopped checking the routes visually since they were behaving so well. So thumbs up for hands-off uncoupling and turnout motors.
     
    On the loco front, 60014, 66722, 08871 and 37510 did sterling service. Great slow running, no stalls or stutters from continuity (I cleaned the track and applied a tiny smear of graphite) but the board join was a bit lumpy and occasionally the 08 would stall against it with wheels turning - I need to address this. I did have to reset the 66 (thank goodness for Howes sound decoders) to defaults on the Saturday when it got confused and did odd things like have the headlights come on at both ends!
     
    The Powercab also worked well - the layout rarely drew more than half an amp, and it was great to operate with one hand. I programmed all the routes I thought I'd need as macros so it was quick to set up for moves, but the somewhat arbitrary numbering occasionally confused me (and Micky). I think next time I'll number the lines and sidings from front to back at the left and right of the board, and set up the macros such that 13 means "route from track one at the left to track three at the right" - assuming there are enough macro slots.
     
    We were in a block of smaller layouts, and I didn't get time to take many pictures so they're mostly of our neighbours. I like these more anyway - the NZ club scene seems to prefer large freelance layouts which don't really do it for me. There are a couple of others I should really have got pictures of and didn't, but time was pressing. Rich and Kev did good business with Bad Horn across the aisle, and didn't make good on the promise of thrown peanuts, for which I'm suitably grateful
     

     
    I had some nice comments on the layout, and was surprised at how many people mentioned the autoballasters! I didn't know there was much interest in UK modern image here, but I guess it's more popular than I thought. I also got a chance to explain the "hairy cigar" grass to a few people who asked about it, so hopefully that'll start to get used a bit more.
     
    Kids were generally OK, but a bit less parentally-restrained than the other locations Railex cycles between, with a bit more reaching and touching. No real problems though, and no damage. I did have one middle-aged father explain at length to his son about how all the feed wires and point motors worked, his finger stabbing out waaay too far into "layout airspace". I didn't feel very guilty at all when I explained that the point motors and orange pipes were actually cosmetic details and all the real wires were underneath
     
    So... lots of jobs to do on the layout, or new layouts to build, but no pressure for a while since I didn't get any invites. I leave you with an "RMWeb special" picture of my dad's new stock on Whitemarsh:
     

  11. Will Vale
    Had a fun time today applying powder and paint to 60014's roof:
     

     
     
    Had a less fun time trying to make good after botching truncating the printed nameplate so it doesn't stick out from behind the etched ones. I did both sides the same way (enamel thinners, cotton bud) but the first one I was too rough and removed some of the base paint. I had a go at matching the base paint colour but it wasn't too hot, so I decided to try and make it look patch painted. I think the real loco may have been patch painted or at least very neatly cleaned in this area so it's not a crazy idea. My acrylic patch is not good though - it's too cool, and too thick I might strip it off and have a go with a tin of Humbrol I found which looked like a close colour.
     

     
     
    Obviously it's a bit rubbish and I'm kind of gutted, but the other side is pretty good. I need to pay a bit more attention to the soot on the cantrail, tidy up the bogie frames and buffer beams, silver the window frames, and I think it's otherwise there. The nameplates are stuck on with tape at the moment awaiting a final decision on the patch paint.
  12. Will Vale
    I've been looking forward to this for ages - the little yellow blobs have been sitting on one board or another for quite some time awaiting my largesse. Today they got it:
     

     
     
    Having got the left end of the layout to the right kind of state at the weekend, involving lots of sensible risk-addressing (doing the most sucky and/or risky things first) I thought this would make a suitable treat I stripped some fine wire and pushed/pulled the conductors out of it so that the insulation would fit over the tiger-tail peg I'd left on the lubricators. Feeling adventurous, I used a single strand of pre-tinned conductor as the hose clip, twisted around with tweezers and secured with superglue.
     
    Installing the lubricators was pretty easy - the Klear-fixed ballast isn't hard to shift if you need to and I made a couple of divots, added two drops of superglue and held them in place for 10 seconds. After that had gone off I brushed the loose ballast back around them to bed them in and set it with more (thin) superglue. Then the fun bit - detail painting! I'd already painted the bodies with GW Iyanden Darksun and Sunburst Yellow. Then they got a wash of Devlan Mud, most of which I wiped off since the ones at Whitemoor are pretty clean. I drybrushed some false highlights with a bit of off-white, and touched in the nipple and nuts (oo-er ) with Tamiya Flat Aluminium.
     
    I tried to keep the weathering pretty restrained - the examples at Whitemoor don't seem to get as foul as the one at Water Orton which Pete Harvey and Eldavo were kind enough to provide some close-up pics of - it was quite unpleasant, with white goop everywhere. I contented myself with some more Devlan Mud along the rail side, Flat Aluminium for the grease blades and pump gubbins, and then drybrushed the latter with Vallejo Brown Leather, which is my "track dirt" colour, to blend it in. The only remaining job was to paint in the sleeper numbers and arrows following a handy Geoff Tibble prototype picture (click Full Size to see them). Thankfully these are only on one of the lubricators at the entrance to the yard, as far as I can tell. These were done with thinned GW Skull White and a size 000 brush, then drybrushed over with more of the brown leather to tone them down. They aren't super-neat, but the white paint is more hardwearing than the white gel pen I have, so it seemed like a better bet here.
     

     
     
    Quite a quick project, at least in terms of work hours rather than elapsed time, but very satisfying
  13. Will Vale
    I've been messing about with a new (to me) product - MIG enamel washes. This is also the first time I've used enamels of any kind (except pigments, I suppose) since I was a nipper. The aim was to get some streaks on 60014's flanks and ends.
     

     

     
     
    I took some pictures to have a look in close-up before the second set of washes harden, so I thought I might as well post them and get some feedback I based what I was doing on a series of prototype pictures of the loco at Peak Forest around 2006, when it was still pretty clean, before the beasties got torn and whatever unpleasant thing happened that sprayed oil down one side!
     
    The washes are some kind of pre-mixed enamel, probably with a flow agent added although they have some surface tension still. I've seen them in shops before but hadn't tried them - they were recommended to me by RMWebber Invercloy who was getting very nice results - many thanks for the tip! The reason I took the plunge is that I thought my usual acrylics would dry far too fast to get a good result on the large loco bodysides - it's already touch and go using acrylic washes with wagons. I didn't want to go totally pro and try gouache since I'd rather not have to apply a varnish coat afterwards if I can avoid it
     
    So what are they like? In short I'm really pleased - they're fun to use and have (coming from acrylics) what seems like limitless working time. The colours, as is usual for MIG, are excellent - I used mostly "neutral" and then went back the next day to get "dark". 60014 had an overall coat of neutral (a warm grey) on the sides and ends, worked off with a 10mm square brush before the recommended time, so as to leave fine streaks. Tonight it's had the bigger hero streaks added using dark (dark brown) and neutral as appropriate. This time I left it to dry longer and then worked over the streaks with a mixture of flat, round and varnish brushes. The roof had quite a heavy wash to define the panels which was polished off with a rag.
     
    Lots of interesting techniques seem possible - you can spread out the wash into a smooth toning coat with a rag or cotton bud by buffing it. You can edit and push it around with various brushes dipped in enamel thinner, and if you get the brush moisture right it's possible to pick up and put down colour in the same brush stroke based on how much pressure you apply (more to erase, less to apply). I had best results with relatively stiff brushes - the Taklon-bristled square brush was really good, and you can turn it edge-on to define streaks a bit more.
     
    I realise this is probably old news to people who use enamels a lot, but I was pretty excited by the extra workability. I tried not to go overboard, but I think a few of the triangular streaks need dialling back still, I'll see how that goes. After that it needs to dry and I'll work on the mucky roof. I also need to bring some track colour up the lower bodysides (probably with powders) and work on details.
  14. Will Vale
    I went back to the MOA for another hour or so and hopefully fixed some things. It's getting closer to the prototype pictures.
     

     
    It makes a bit of a change compared to yesterday, I think:
     
    The wheels have been touched up and the backs painted. I also applied some powders to the bogies to correct the colours, add detail, and dull them down a little. It's odd, they still look glossy here, whereas they look very matt in real life - possibly the location of the layout at the moment means there's a bit too much light coming from the side.
     
    More interestingly, I've added more track dirt to the air tank - they seem to get dirtier on the ends - and to some horizontal surfaces in that area. I also added a few photo-based "hero" spots and streaks in a lighter colour on the body and the bogies, in the hope that this will make things crisper and get closer to the generally rain-streaked and mud-spotted appearance of the real thing. They're an interesting study - at least one batch seems to be pretty clean with just dust and load marks on near-pristine maroon paint, whereas another has a darker grimy look more like other types of EWS ballast wagon.
     
    Final changes were to touch the "safety" areas back in with neat white paint, add more defined rust marks to the lip, and paint the buffers. This last is more difficult than it needs be since Bachmann appear to have made them the wrong way around - the "piston" part of the shank should be at the wagon end, not behind the head
     
    So it's hopefully a bit better, though still rather done-on-the-cheap. I'm happy enough that I've gone on to the next two using roughly the same approach.
     
     
  15. Will Vale
    I finished off the other two MOAs last night, and went back to give them all interiors - better to finish things straight off giving the impending deadline.
     

     
    The splotches and marks are photo-based for these two, at least on the 'A' sides. I also added some graffiti to one - it's a simplified version of a tag which was on every other panel of one MOA I saw, but I ran out of steam after two The other new one has a yellow X in the corner, again from a picture. I realised too late that I've got one the wrong way around, so when they're marshalled in a rake not all the A sides are visible. I can fix this quickly by duplicating the X and turning that wagon around. I skipped a step on these and didn't do the final drybrush on the body - I forgot - and comparing the pictures I think that would be worth spending 10 minutes on later.
     
    The wheels looked OK last night, but the acrylics rub off easily and there are already shiny patches visible. I suspect the right thing to do is strip (by looking at it!) the existing paint, then prime them properly and paint with Humbrol. Probably after the show, when I get to replacing the knuckles with screw links and doing something about the buffers. It's also possible that an artists acrylic might do a good job of these - they form a thicker paint film and are pretty resilient.
     
    In other news, 60014 has a slightly dodgy silver door and maroon wiper plate (thanks GrimleyGrid!) and I've gingerly applied some MIG wash to the sides - so far so good. Watch this space!
     
    Edit: found a picture of the MOAs just after I'd bought them at the beginning of August. Things have moved on a bit since then, it's quite gratifying!
     
     

     
     
  16. Will Vale

    60014: Underframe

    By Will Vale,

    I made a start on the underframe today. The more I look at detail pictures, the more I marvel at Hornby's tooling - there's really nothing missing.
     

     
    The first step, as seen above, was to paint the entire underframe with Tamiya Nato Black, which is a useful not-quite black and has a very flat finish which should help the powders stick. It also means that because my finish is based on an out of the bottle colour, it's easy to paint out mistakes.
     
    Then I went looking for pictures - I found some shots of 60014 in 2006 looking generally tidy, with nice shiny beastie stickers and what appears to be a recently replaced or renewed piece of underframe equipment - one of the whatever-they-ares that look like generators is a much lighter grey than in later images. So my aim is something like this picture by Rob Reedman (for colour reference only since it seems to have been badly downsampled?)
     
    With the black out of the way, I spent a couple of hours this afternoon touching in details - please forgive me if I get the names wrong or don't even attempt them! The main bits were the cylindrical items by the outer wheel bearings and what look like lift/lashing hooks (but probably aren't) on the bogies. On the "generator", I added a warning sticker, and a dot of red for the plug, and in the tanks area some handwheels, and what look like green electrical cutout switches. I was hoping to refer to Brian Daniel's reference gallery, but most of the images won't load for me at the moment, hopefully they'll be back soon
     
     

     
     
    I've also lightly drybrushed the bogie frames and various corners with Vallejo Brown Leather, which is the same colour I used on my wagon underframes - I'm hoping this will provide some kind of visual continuity despite the 60 underframes looking more grey/black than brown. It all looks a bit stark and messy at the moment, but I think a gentle application of powders will bring things together. The big missing thing at the moment is that the bogie frames appear to collect quite a lot of matt brown stuff (brake dust?) on 60's, I'm thinking powders will represent this well.
     
    Here's the other side:
     

     
     
    One question in particular I could really do with some help with - what colour is the fine pipework on the bogies when it's new? It catches the light in pictures, particularly where the pipes curve up and disappear behind the top of the frames, but I can't pin down whether it should be shiny metal, or a flat light colour (white?).
  17. Will Vale
    I haven't posted anything that wasn't Whitemarsh for a while, but I had a play around with some stock yesterday, fitted Sprat + Winkle couplings to the outer ends of my 3-MOA rake, and then set about applying some weathering.
     

     
    Fitting the couplings took a couple of attempts to figure out a good solution, but it turned out to be pretty easy. The coupling bar is a wide "staple" shape fitted into 0.4mm holes drilled up into the buffer shanks from below. The coupling itself hangs from a small staple glued into similar holes drilled up into the headstock where the coupler pocket was. It's nice and thick there so there's plenty of room. Fitting them this way up (with the staple points going into the surface) makes bending the staple harder - if it's not dead square you can get a ever-so-slightly stiff action. This can occasionally stop the couplers from returning to horizontal from the delayed position - there isn't much travel in that situation, so they're more likely to stick. I had to redo them once, and rubbed off most of the blackening in the process.
     
    I also adjusted the position of one of the uncouplers and added another so I don't have to uncouple on the headshunt and then push the wagons back into the loop. The magnets are 3mm diameter by 6mm deep Neodymium ones - I think the same that John Teal was using for Kadees? They work really well for the S&Ws, with one magnet per uncoupling site being plenty, so you only have to drill a hole between the sleepers, push the magnet in, and ballast over it.
     
    This afternoon I thought I'd see if I could get some weathering on, and if it was possible to do this quickly. Rather than working from a specific photo I looked at several, mainly from Martyn Read's collection, then went downstairs and worked on it without referring back so I wouldn't get bogged down. I'd be interested to see what people think of the results in comparison to e.g. the MKAs which were each based on a specific photo, at least to start with, and had a lot more time spent on them. The MOA above took about an hour and a half to get to this stage.
     
    It looked like this originally:
     

     
    And the B side, which got a bit dirtier than I wanted it to.
     

     
    It still needs details (buffers, grabs, etc.) painting but see what you think. Looking at it now, the body is better than I thought, although rather blotchy from the acrylics, but the bogies need to be more brown, less grey, and have less contrast. Oh, and those wheel rims are nasty - must fix.
     
    For reference - not that I'm suggesting anyone should follow this slapdash recipe, but it helps me to find the colours I used - this was a couple of washes of GW Graveyard Earth, wiped off with sponges and a wide brush, and more added to the flat brackets and other horizontal edges near the steps. I painted some spots on with a small brush, and drybrushed the yellow lip with the same colour and Calthan Brown (rusty-ish) using a large brush. I added a final drybrush over the whole body with Graveyard Earth to finish.
     
    The underside was drybrushed with Vallejo Leather, using more paint on the brush than is usual, and this was brought up onto the lower sides. The bogies are a mix of this colour and a dark grey from the GW range, slopped on and wiped off the axle boxes. I washed them with the ever-useful Devlan Mud and touched in the springs with some MIG Old Rust, then drybrushed with the Leather again (if I remember it right). The wheels had a coat of the brown/grey mix with some MIG Dark Mud, a la Pelle Soeborg's US stuff.
  18. Will Vale
    Not much happening for the last three weeks since we've been away, but the jet-lag had receded sufficient by Sunday that it was possible to do some modelling without falling asleep.
     

     
     
    These are the abutments and central pillar for my attenuated Norwood Road bridge. It's been kind of a pain, since the only reference pics I found are about 400 pixels wide, but I've been able to find a few details captured in other pictures taken by heroic folk leaning over the bridge to spot some choice loco or other. As far as I can tell, the structure is made from blue engineering brick, so I started off with the Scalescenes dark blue brick sheet - it's not really the right colour, too pristine, but I thought it'd probably easier to weather that than re-colour their dark brown brick.
     
    The abutments and pillar have 1mm mount board carcasses build to slip neatly over the existing foamcard abutments seen in this earlier entry. Following tips from Ben A and John Teal (and after a false start using thin card and Pritt-stick) I printed the Scalescenes sheet onto an A4 sticky label. This was fun, easy to wrap around the carcasses, and seems to have stuck really well. I had to take one sheet off after I realised I had the height wrong, and it didn't really want to go  As a result I'm fairly confident they'll stay put in the longer term. All the edges are tucked under so they'll be prevented from peeling loose when the carcasses are stuck to the foamcard structures.
     

     
     
    The central pillar was a bit more complicated and needed a curved shape. I formed some 0.5mm styrene sheet around a wooden spoon with hot water to get a partial curve, and attached it with some very potent double-sided adhesive film. This is like a big sheet of double-sided tape which you can cut to size - I got it on recommendation from the local art shop, seems pretty good so far. Naturally I got the wrapper slightly mis-aligned, but when I tried to reposition it the mount board started to delaminate instead, so I gave up and trimmed it to fit. Any remaining bad bits will be hidden by the bridge girder and deck, I think.
     
    I also made the mistake of setting the "step" height a bit low, so the brick paper is cut ~3mm taller than the styrene, and is reinforced with a slip of 0.25mm styrene inserted from the inside - fiddly stuff. The rounded capstone (or whatever it is) I carved from balsa wood, then sealed with thin superglue and sanded smooth. Very satisfying job, that was.It sort of sits just inside the brick paper wrapper, with a bit of gesso needed to fill in the joint at the back. Could be neater, but the shape looks about right.
     

     
    Here's a picture of the bits in place temporarily (before I'd painted the capstone). I recoloured the papers quite thoroughly with MIG "Dark Mud" and "Industrial City Dirt", plus washes of dark brown paint, pale grey for blooms, and coloured pencils to add some variation in hue. It looks a might redder in the pictures than I think it is in real life, but hopefully you get the idea. It still needs a coat of varnish to seal it, since it's prone to rubbing.
     

     
    The graffiti on the left side (visible in the header image) is a truncated version of the squared "OK" seen on the prototype - I don't have enough depth in the bridge for all of it. The graffiti on the right is my little tribute to a famous piece of local graffiti which was more-or-less a shrine to Ian Curtis and remained in Wellington for nearly thirty years before the council saw fit to paint it out last year. It has since been restored and the council are apparently going to leave it alone I don't like graffiti generally - too much like cats peeing in corners - but I think this graffito is slightly different and deserves a bit of respect.
     
    All in all it was an interesting learning exercise - I haven't done any card buildings since failing to build some Superquick houses as a teenager. I like the Scalescenes sheets, but I'm not sure if I'm a convert yet. It's fun and quick to put things together, but it's also easy to stuff things up, and there's no facility to cut back/fill/sand for shape, or strip paint and start again, which you do have with plastic and metal. We'll see how the depot end of the layout (which is a work-in-progress in styrene) comes out so I can compare and contrast.
  19. Will Vale
    I've been working on the assumption that I'd be able to use static grass with my electric tea-strainer and get through the scenery on Whitemarsh quite quickly. So I did some tests and ended up doing something almost completely different with the same materials.
     

     
     
    Possibly because this is 4mm scale using 6mm Noch grass fibres, the electric tea-strainer didn't do too well - see the right-hand patch here:
     

     
     
    I needed to use neat PVA to get the fibres to stick, and they weren't all that static or standy-uppy. When I used it a couple of years ago with 2mm Woodland Scenics fibres it was much better. So I was a bit disappointed and worried that I didn't have a back-up plan. Then I remembered this awesome video from Rick Reimer I'd seen a couple of weeks ago on another forum:
     

     
     
    I have a can of Super 77, so I sprayed a test patch and had a go. It's the left-hand one in the image above. Much more standy-uppy, but less coverage, more like tussocks and weeds than tall grass. But for Whitemoor/Whitemarsh this might be OK, there isn't really lush grass. It's easy (especially with the small scale short grass) to end up crushing the bits you've just stuck down, and you also need some sprinkly stuff to scatter over any remaining glue. It looks really good in profile, it's just that you can see the bald patches from above.
     
    I had another go which went even better (ignore the bright green tussock which is from a Mininatur sheet)
     

     
     
    What I didn't think it'd work for is the drain banks, which need to be ultra-lush, so I thought I'd try combining this at the top, with use of grass mats (Noch again) at the bottom, torn up into little bits as seen in a CM article on Vinkeveen, one of my all time favourite layouts. This is what you can see below, and in the header image. I started with a layer of PVA glue and some fine sieved crushed earth, gravel, and some Woodland Scenics ground foam. Then spray glue and hairy cigars at the top, and a jigsaw of the Noch grass mats at the bottom.
     

     
     
    It's not perfect - I think cutting the mats with scissors would make it look less tussocky, and you can see rather too much where the different materials start and finish, but I think it's going in the right direction. I'm now doing a larger patch of grass at the rear-right of the layout in the same way to see how that comes out. I'm going to try using PVA for the mats on that one as well - here they're stuck with the same Super 77 which doesn't really give enough working time.
  20. Will Vale
    Just a quick entry since an experiment came out well and I wanted to share the results.
     

     
     
    I wasn't sure how to do the road markings - certainly I was pretty sure I couldn't brush-paint them. Given that the road surface is styrene and has a decent coat of primer I thought masking might be a good option - with acrylics I can always clean them off if it goes badly wrong. I laid the stripes out freehand with Tamiya tape, using existing rows of tape, the pavement edge, etc. as guides. Then stippled over 3 or 4 times with GW Skull White (a fairly thick acrylic white) as though using a stencil.
     

     
     
    There are a couple of rough edges between the cycle path give way stripes, but I think I can cure those with a tooth pick. There's also a nice element of relief from the thick paint. It remains to be seen how hard-wearing they are here at the edge of the layout, but I'm happy so far.
     
    It's interesting, it's often easier for me to paint something subtractively (take away space with the masking tape, or make graffiti strokes thinner by painting the base colour alongside) than it is to paint it additively. Does anyone else find that?
  21. Will Vale
    The deadline is looking very very loomy at the moment. I hope that the (accidentally?) revised date sticks, since I have a week off before that, but I'm making progress nonetheless.
     

     
    I finally got the bridge installed - well mostly, I haven't stuck the girder down yet since I want to paint the pavement first, and I'm a bit worried about damage too since it's the first bit not protected by the profile boards. This involved lots of layers - there are balsa blocks atop the abutments to raise the interior of the deck by about 5mm, to make room for this freelance indication of some cross beams and things:
     
     

     
    The idea is mainly to have something a bit more interesting if I want to take photographs through the bridge arch - I don't have any shots of the underneath of the real bridge to work on so this is based on guesswork and pictures of other plate girder bridges in the UK. The under-deck is 2mm styrene sheet, laid level across the balsa blocks, with a balsa former above that and a sheet of 3mm foamboard cut oversize to bow up between the profile boards and make the curve of the roadway. Plus: I managed to make the cycle path and the road out of one piece so I'd get smooth transitions. Minus: In retrospect the curvature of the road should be more continuous rather than flattening out at each end.
     
    On top of this is a layer of 0.5mm styrene to make the road surface and cycle path, with 1mm styrene for the footpath. This was also fixed with PVA, scuffing up the underside first and applying a very thin coat to both parts in the manner of a contact adhesive. I went around the edges afterwards with 5 minute epoxy as a filler and for security. I then realised that I'd done it in the wrong order since the footpath was above the cycle path, so sanded a ramp from more 1mm sheet to make the transition. Three applications of putty and sandpaper later, it's had a light coat of grey primer for texture and as a starting point for the tarmac finish.
     
    Oh yes: The girder itself was painted Tamiya IJN green with a brush, but something went wrong and it dried glossy rather than flat after the first coat - not sure why, possibly I didn't wait long enough between coats - I tend to forget that Tamiya "acrylics" are actually something else and need to be treated carefully. I ended up stripping the paint (IPA and a toothbrush) and spraying it with a Tamiya rattle can of the same colour. This had a sheen too (it was an AS paint not a TS paint) but not too bad. I worked some powder into the girder and painted/masked various patches where graffiti had been following Google Street View. Finally I drybrushed it fairly vigorously with GW Orkhide Shade, which did a good job of controlling the powders and moving them out of the shadows a bit. Since the real thing appears to be in reasonable nick despite the weak bridge warning, I've only added a couple of rust spots. I'll probably revisit it later on though.
     
    So this board is about ready for some brown goop, as is the other in fact since it doesn't really have any elevation - I just need to trim the profile boards down on that one.
  22. Will Vale

    Site office

    By Will Vale,

    I made a start on this on holiday, making the walls and adding all the framing, but didn't get as far as the windows. Remedied that this afternoon, via some experiments.
     

     
    The windows here have a smaller section on the left which (probably?) slides or opens, certainly it's in a frame which sits proud of the main pane of glass. I had a go at making glazing bars with strips of sticky label, but gave up since I didn't get them to adhere well enough. More interestingly, I tried masking off the rear and middle of the pane and spraying the glazing (clear 0.5mm PVC sheet) with Games Workshop white primer. This worked really well - the bars were well-defined and fairly robust, plus I didn't get any bleed under the label I used for masking.
     
    I eventually decided there wasn't enough relief though, and went for the tedious pieces-of-microstrip approach. The aim is to fit pieces of PVC behind the large windows against the inside of the wall and cut a small piece to fit flush in the separate small windows. Provided I don't have too much overlap on the inside I don't think this'll be too obviously wrong when looking through the windows.
     

     
    With that done I went ahead and put the walls + floor together, using some helpful Lego bricks as a jig. These are very accurately made and make good formers for square corners - being ABS they aren't affected (much) by solvents intended solely for polystyrene - stay away from Plastic Weld though! This is the sort of thing that real modellers use engineers squares or machined metal blocks for, but I'm not a real modeller and don't have these kinds of things - one day, perhaps
     
    In case you don't recognise the building (it isn't from Whitemoor) perhaps this will give you a clue, although you'll have to imagine the LH container is a Portakabin:
     

     
    It was somewhat of a pain to draw up since it almost always has locos in front of it (clue #2) so I make no assertions as to its accuracy! In particular, the window in the rear wall is (probably) a fiction.
  23. Will Vale
    James Hilton suggested a while ago that I'd not really be able to avoid scratchbuilding the bridge if I wanted it to look like Whitemoor - and he's right. Given that I'd done the abutments I thought I'd have a go at the girder.
     

     
    The above picture is just a quick test - I need to remove some material from the deck so it can sit further back, and there's a fair bit of cleaning up to do as well. Unfortunately I didn't take many work-in-progress pictures this time, although here's one of attaching the framing (should be riveted) to the bottom row of panels:
     

     
     
    The basic shape is cut from 1mm styrene sheet. The real bridge has what appears to be a 'stepped' plate girder with two different kinds of gusset on the upper section. It also has a slight curve, although I chickened out and used three straight lines rather than a complete curve - I think this is fair enough since that's what I thought was going on the first few times I looked at the picture I cut the blank along the dividing line and put it back together with a 2mm step, fitted a 3mm strip to this for the horizontal web, then added *lots* of gussets from 0.5mm Evergreen sheet and strip. So far so good.
     
    I also found some pictures of similar bridges, and the road side of Norwood Road bridge, which suggested that each panel has rivetted strips around the inside. I didn't think I was up to doing rivets (how?) but the strips were a possibility. Lots and lots of 0.75x0.25mm strip later, it was possible to clean up and fit the top and bottom webs, cut from sheet styrene for a change.
     

     
     
    The back (road) side is similar but simpler:
     

     
     
    It's a bit messy still - the framing was all measured in-place, and some of the gussets are a bit shallow - this cruel close-up shows some gaps which need filling:
     

     
     
    But on the whole I think the captures the look pretty well - I'm very happy with the results I was worried that reducing the length would make the proportions look off, but I tweaked the height a bit as well and I think it sits OK with the span and the abutments. Civil engineers may of course beg to differ!
     
    Piece count so far: 60 for the basic bridge, plus another 108 for the framing around the panels!
  24. Will Vale

    Let there be light!

    By Will Vale,

    Whitemoor has an awful lot of quite distinctive modern lamps - any picture shows them quite well. I need at least three, probably more.
     

     
     
    I was thinking initially about using this N-scale Viessmann lamp since they should only about 50mm tall in 4mm, but I wanted to try and build one first since the shape looked relatively straightforward, and the Viessmann lamp doesn't have the wider section (cable cabinet?) at the base of the post. I bought some 3.2mm square brass tube (since the inside dimension was small enough for a 1.8mm "lighthouse" LED) and a couple of lengths of telescoping round tube (I think 1.6 and 2.4mm) from the model shop on my way home this afternoon. The reason for doing this now, when I should be weathering track etc., is that I'm going to be in Germany for a couple of days in the near future, so I wanted to know whether or not I need the Viessmann lamps before I get there - they're cheaper there!
     
    Anyway, back to the home-made lamp - it's all brass, soldered with a 20-watt iron and electronics solder. I've never built anything like this before - I used superglue for my one etched relay box - so you can probably imagine I'm pleased as punch at how it turned out
     
    The shade is U section cut from the square tube by filing away two edges and peeling out the resulting strip with pliers. I then filed down the web to the base of the U at both ends, one straight, and one diagonal, so I could fold them up to make a sort of trough. I didn't get the diagonal end matched up very well, but I filled both ends with solder and filed them down flat. I've had a go at adding some of the bevels from the prototype, although I think I need a vice to get the long slope of the sides since I can't hold it steady enough with fingers! The sharper slope at the back was easier and is worth doing since that seems to be quite a strong feature on the real thing:
     

     
     
    Once cleaned up, the lighthouse LED was a push fit into the channel (only in one direction though) so mounting the shade was pretty easy. Since the post is quite visible at the back of the shade, I fixed the LED so it was nearly flush with the top of the post. One leg is trimmed very short and has a length of fine wire (Howes decoder wire) soldered to it. I don't have any really fine heat-shrink, so I've tried to keep the insulation neat, and theres a strip of masking tape to ensure the end of the wire can't touch the shade. The insulated wire runs down the post in what I assume is the usual way, with the post itself being the other conductor.
     

     
     
    The LED isn't exactly discrete, but it's not too visible below the shade. It would likely be possible to do something better with a surface mount LED, but they look difficult to solder! I'm also thinking that some kind of diffuser (clear plastic tube/sprue sanded matt?) would make it look a bit cleaner.
     
    For the base of the pole, there's a shorter length of the larger tube with a taper filed into the top - it just slides over the inner. I haven't cut anything to length yet, but I suspect I'll trim the outer tube exactly to size, and leave the inner tube long for planting.
     
    Construction time was a bit over an hour, plus half an hour for a false start on the shade - I tried using small snips rather than filing to cut the webs and ended up with mangled awfulness! I also learned a useful lesson about LEDs - you need a limiting resistor even on if you're using 2 AA batteries So I burnt out my first LED and had to desolder it and mount a new one. Ah well It looks quite nice lit up though, and probably cost about a pound to make. Now I just have to make two more, which should be interesting since the shade dimensions for this one are eyeballed rather than planned properly - I wasn't expecting to get something I could use, to be honest.
     
    Proof it works
     

  25. Will Vale
    Whitemoor is handy in that it's a fen prototype with a bridge as a view block. The new incarnation of the yard is even better in this respect since significant earthworks have been done to build a cycle path on the west side of the bridge which runs parallel to the yard throat.
     

     
    I tried to rough in the embankment with Styrofoam initially, but it wasn't a good fit - the real thing is very artificial in form (it's not just an earth bank) and I took it out and used straight-cut 10mm foam board instead. This works much better and makes it possible to have the sharp corners and discontinuous slopes of the real thing. I have a piece of 3mm board cut out for the path surface, which is just thin enough to form the short transition curves without kinking, and also the road surface. I've cut it a couple of mm wider than the bridge deck so it bows up in the middle as per Norwood Road, though this all needs bracing up still.
     
    With the framework in place I had a look at the retaining wall. I thought initially it was some kind of concrete product like Criblock but after going through the pictures again (several times) and finding some more construction pictures it's actually a lot more interesting than that. The wall in question is the one on the left here: http://fenlandfotos..../p25785286.html. It's actually got a fair bit bushier since then!
     
    It turns out (from shadows on Google Maps) that the cycle path is on its own embankment, rather than the ground sloping up here. Obvious really, but I didn't spot it at first. I assume it was built as part of the work to screen the yard from the surrounding housing when it was re-opened. This embankment is very steep, and following the sequence of Geoff Tibble's photo's here (http://fenlandfotos....855009_121.html) it appears to be some kind of wooden former, with gabion-like bags or boxes of earth/gravel/something wired to the sides to allow plants to grow. Perhaps because it's too steep for an earth bank?
     
    This picture by Alexander Shaw shows the detail quite well, especially in full size: http://rail-image.fo.../p14398225.html
     
    So how to build it? I started off by cutting some mount board to shape for the two sections, and then making a pile of miniature bricks from styrofoam offcuts. These were PVAd to the mount board, and they looked sort of decent but unsurprisingly rather higgledy piggledy. I wanted to capture some of this, since there's variation evident in the original, but perhaps not as much as I did
     

     
     
    I went ahead to the second part of my plan anyway, and used a heat gun to round off the bricks and turn them into bags. Not so good... As I probably should have expected, any glue which bled up between bricks didn't melt as quickly as the Styrofoam and left ridges and other naff bits.

     
    I thought about things a bit and decided that a no-glue approach would be better, and would save me having to cut out all those bricks (that I'd already cut out) to boot. I cut new wall sections from 5mm black foam card, and peeled/sliced away the top layer of paper a la Emmanuel Nouaillier. Rather than embossing the sacks, I carved their shapes about 1-2mm deep using a mixture of ruled lines and freehand to try and capture something halfway between order and anarchy. So far so good:
     

     
     
    Applying the heat gun again to round off the edges and corners, I was pretty happy so of course pressed on and forgot to take any step-by-step pictures, sorry!
     
    And here's where the sewing comes in: I painted the whole thing with a mix of raw umber and gesso, and then dug out a fine needle and some nylon monofilament for the wiring. A couple of tries on isolated corners suggested that representing all the wiring (two or three wires supporting each sack) would be crazy, and leave the sacks with ragged edges from the needle holes. I ended up compromising and stitching one wire across 2-4 sacks at a time, staggering the stitches so the needle holes weren't aligned. It should be possible to cover them up in earth and greenery later, or just not worry about them (For the sewing-inclined, it ended up as a sort of messy parallel backstitch.)
     
    And here's the result, which I'm quite pleased with - it's not exactly like the prototype, but it's a lot more like it than an earth bank (too steep) or a brick or block wall (not green enough). I'm looking forward to planting it but I should get the rest of the major earthworks out of the way first.
     

     
     
    And on the layout - which looks a bit odd, I think it might be slightly misaligned and mangled by perspective, since the courses do line up properly really!
     

     
     
    The best thing about all this was that since I was working on the living room floor, my daughter decided to join in and used various offcuts and masking tape to build me some "background mountains" (her words) to put on the layout She's not always convinced that Papa's modelling isn't a waste of time, so it's a treat when she joins in and it passed a rainy day quite well. Next step is to get her soldering up some brass engines for me
     

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