The Night Before Hogswatch
It all started with a trip to the new toy shop in town. They’ve recently become a Hornby stockist so I wander in for a look sometimes. As the lady who runs it knows that I know a little about trains there are often a few questions.
“Rich, what do you know about Z gauge?”
“Erm ….its small and expensive, why”
“I’m after a tiny circle to run around the edge of a cake for the food fair window display”
We had a discussion and I left with a plan and a deadline. A long addiction to the late great Carl Arendt’s site has left me fairly well versed with abusing the minimum radius of 00 so a yard length of code 100 streamline was bent round to meet itself and about 4 inches removed from the inner rail. Soldering it together was enormous fun as I’m not over skilled in this area of modeling and the track was less than keen to cooperate but we got there in the end.
A hoop of plywood was cut and the track stuck down and wired to a cut down Hornby power clip under the board so that it could easily be connected to a controller. Ballasting next, nothing in stock and its Sunday. After a quick search through the kitchen cupboard our lass handed me a packet of Chia seed. It’s somewhat overscale but that’s not really an issue considering the radii.
So we had a working circle, a couple of old Triang wagon underframes were hacked about and fitted with coach bodies made of DC kits spare parts and general detritus from the bits box. With my old Hornby Caly tank up front it looked about right. I dropped it all in my rucksack to show off progress on the way into work. In this somewhat unfinished state it ended up in the shop window for a few weeks though using their own stock.
I picked it up last week, we’d discussed doing something seasonal next. I’d hoped to do some sort of scenery first time round but hadn’t really had time so now’s my chance.
A mockup was made first, I wasn’t entirely sure how much space I had to work in so I left a space at the back.
Construction has begun. Track is 00 and board size is approx 18” wide by 24” deep. The whole theme is going to be fairly whimsical so I am exagerating height.
If you havn’t guessed already Terry Pratchet’s “Discworld” stories have provided a great deal of the inspiration. Hogswatch is thier equivalent of Christmas.
Scenary wise I’m taking this as gospel http://tome.gn15.inf..._January_09.pdf
But I’m hoping to add a good deal of snow on top of it possibly like this http://www.009.cd2.c...how_to/snow.htm or possibly using plaster.
What do you think so far?
