Jaakko

Thank you gentlemen for your comments and all the Likes. Here are my sheep after the reddle colour washes: http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8376/8521218497_355e0a9a69.jpg I am sorry but there is only a link to my picture situating on Flickr. It is strange that I cannot load pictures onto my comments. Pressing the image button on the comment editor makes the whole computer screen transparent grey but causes no other reaction whatsoever.

Thanks for sharing the reddling link Worsdell forever! It seems that my sheep need still another colour wash.

Five dogs for

“Well, a nice sheep flock but the most important thing is missing: ME!” That is what my Shetland sheep dog Helga seems to be thinking… If you model Welsh landscape you definitely need sheep, a lot of sheep indeed. I recently purchased some 4 mm scale sheep from Dart Castings to populate my Welsh field. First I painted the sheep spraying them all over matt white. Normally I use grey car spray primer as an undercoat but this time the white undercoat is a better starting point for the following colour washes. Very diluted coats of white and cream enamel washes give the pale blotchy nature of the sheep fur. The face details are painted with a black felt-tip pen. The final light brown wash then gives shadows and textures that I like. By the way, the fly fishing stuff in the picture above is my son’s hobby. He uses my model railway static grass fibers in fly-tying. This is supposed to be a border collie according to Dart Castings (coming from the set MLV19 Shepherd with crook & Border collie). In my mind this blunt head profile is more appropriate for a Saint Bernard than for a delicate collie! I suppose that a dog sculpting project is on the way in the near future…

Ooops, you lift the bar on my blogs. What am I going to do in the next time?

So far I have not made any weathering for the grass. Heki makes a lot of different grass mat products but Heki wild grass is one of my favourite grasses to use. Moreover, Heki

You are absolutely right Paul (Halfwit)! I also realised that the grass is a little bit too long when I took the last picture. The long grass fibres tend to lift up the caravan trailers above the ground surface

Caravan camping sites were one of the characteristic features of Cambrian Coast. Again Geoff Plumb’s excellent photo archive homepage gives several nice examples (e.g. http://plumbloco.smugmug.com/Trains/CambrianCoastLines/16750125_TBdHnX#!i=1496685980&k=V3bv9ww&lb=1&s=A ).The following little cameo is not based on any real location but I hope that it gives a feeling of a happy summer holidays in Wales. The camping site is first covered with a mixture of Polyfilla, abrasive blast sand, PVA glue and Woodland Scenics earth undercoat colour the same way that I did in my country lane blog earlier. Then I sprayed the camping site all over using suitable light earth colour (in this case Humbrol Pale Stone, number 121). I try to avoid a uniform thick spray paint layer, rather I prefer light transparent paint layers here and there over the Woodland Scenics earth undercoat colour. Moreover, I use constant low-angle spraying direction over the rough surface in order to get a shadow effect, emphasising the spotted nature of the soil. This image shows how the shadow effect highlights the texture of road. My personal preference for a basic ground covering is Heki’s grass mat. Irregular grass patches can be easily teased out to cover a sandy area and the edge of the grass mat can be blended in quite nicely with the rest of the surface. The grass patches are glued with a small amount of PVA glue. The grassy strip in the middle of the road is a ready-made static grass mat strip, this time Noch’s product. Finally, the caravans are welcome to populate this new Cambrian Cost holiday resort. Obviously the camping site needs a little bit more detailing and perhaps caravan trailers benefit of the light weathering but I hope that this last picture gives an idea what I look for.

Thanks for your kind comments chaps! It is nice to know that some of you are reading my blog. I made the road on a general feeling basis and that is why it perhaps is too wide, about six centimeters (equals about fifteen scale feet in 4mm scale). In the country side roads would typically be twelve feet wide (equals about five centimeters). In remote areas

Thanks for your nice words Will J. I suppose, however, that a sunny summer day is quite a rare weather condition in Wales. How much more convincing a layout featuring a dull rainy day would be?

The road surface, intended to represent a macadam country lane, is first covered with a liberate mixture of Polyfilla, abrasive blast sand (grain size 0.1 – 0.7 mm), PVA glue and Woodland Scenics earth undercoat colour using a stiff old brush. I then sprayed the road surface with numerous different shades of grey enamel paints. Finally I scattered a little turf and static grass along the road shoulder and the footings of the dry stone walls in order to give a blended look. I am not totally happy with my current version of the country lane. I think that too many of the modelled roads have a too dark and too rough texture. Unfortunately this is the case with my model road too. I suppose that dry-brushing of white and light grey shades is needed to achieve a more convincing road surface colour in the future.

This generic dry stone wall scenery section is not based on any real location but I hope that it gives a feeling of the landscape in Wales. However, it is a part of my current layout project, namely I am building a model based on Afon Wen (http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/59813-afon-wen/).

I have been using Hornby’s Skaledale ready-made dry stone wall products recently: More details, please check my RMWeb blog: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/1277/entry-11191-dry-stone-wall/ It is – 5 degree of Celsius (equals about 23 F or 268 K if you prefer Kelvins, Physicsman!) in my back yard. Nice winter weather here in Finland at the moment.

I have been using Hornby’s Skaledale ready-made dry stone wall products recently. The wall units are glued down by using a hot melt glue gun. The small gaps between the units as well as the gaps underneath the wall are filled with ready-made drywall filler. I like to work with the dry wall filler because it is an easy medium to carve afterwards if needed in order to hide the joints between the individual stone wall units. If the scenery contours are relatively smooth, the straight wall units can be blended quite nicely into the small curves of the land. However, the main limitation of the ready to plant products is the rigidity of the wall geometry. The steep slope of hills and undulating scenery contours are difficult to follow. The price is another issue if you need (scale) miles of walls. For example, the Skaledale granite wall pack no. 3 makes a 410 mm long section of a wall and it costs about £7. So, one meter of the Skaledale wall costs about £ 17. In the case of the Harburn Hobbies product, one meter of a stone wall costs over £20. I am modeling the Cambrian Cost Line and the colour of the dry stone walls in that part of Wales looks very pale. Geoff Plumb’s excellent photo archive homepage gives several nice examples of that (e.g. http://plumbloco.smugmug.com/Trains/CambrianCoastLines/16750125_TBdHnX#!i=1265237364&k=FtJJK3k&lb=1&s=A) Hence, the Skaledale walls should be painted. This is my trusted warhorse, more than 25 years old Badger Model 350 single action airbrush and still going strong! By current standard, it is crude for any proper airbrushing but is very suitable for this kind of rough scenery work. I am habituated to use Humbrol enamel paints, so a suitable mixture of light grey, earth brown and cream enamels is order of the day. After airbrushing, the diluted Indian ink washes and some dry brushing weathering will follow. The basic ground covering is the next thing to do. In this case the ready-made Heki’s fiber grass mat is glued down in the front of and behind the walls. By the way, a hanging basket liner is quite an unknown raw material in Finland. Finally topping up a little turf and static grass along the footings of the walls neatly fills the remaining gaps and gives a blended look. Presto! The ready to plant dry stone wall products have their limitations. The stone by stone Das clay modeling produces very accurate and pleasantly undulating dry stone walls. I am not a fine scale modeler and I just follow a “good enough” modeling principle. In that case, the Skaledale dry stone walls fit the bill.

Clearly, the layout building is an irreversible process as the entropy of your model universe is increasing. You should ask Maxwell’s demon to open and close the door of your bunker in order to decrease the entropy of your isolated system Otherwise keep hoovering…

Hi Robert, Are you aware of this book: Sam Posey: "Playing with Trains - a Passion Beyond Scale" (Random House, 2004, USA) Jaakko

Just wonder if the length of head shut is sufficient (“under the shunter shed” in the post # 570)? EDIT: Oops! You were faster than me. I did not notice you latest track plan (the post #574)… Sorry!