Progress (or otherwise) on Jeff's new layout

Excellent, Jeff.

I like the bit around the Church as well.    :thumbs

Thanks Max.

:cheers

Today I decided to make the scenery for "The Arches" area at one end of the layout a little more permanent. I have long had the Wills arches sitting Blu-tacked to the high level track bed, acting as place-holders for something to come. However, I do like the Wills arches so have decided that to make them more permanent and better suited to the location, I worked out that the ground level needed to be raised. This was done yesterday with some expanded polystyrene. 

This morning, with the glue having dried overnight, I painted it with the usual 'Hurricane' grey acrylic paint. That was also allowed to dry before printing out some Scalescenes road textures and a little brickwork (I'll explain later!).

The photos show the progress from this morning's effort, firstly with the paint still wet, then with the road surfaces added, although there are several joints to disguise on both the road and the arches.












One little trick I tried (successfully!) was to use a solvent based contact cement to glue the Wills arches to the MDF high level track bed, with a small amount of the glue also added to the bases of the arches, knowing this would attack the polystyrene beneath; this was to get the arches to bed into the ground. This was a risky strategy, because if the glue had been too aggressive I would have had to redo the ground level foam again, or perhaps needed some filler.

I will be adding some weeds and dirt along the edges as part of the finishing work. There will later be a backscene along the edge of the layout, starting where the right hand arch brickwork ends.

Now for that brickwork I printed earlier; the left hand edge of the left-most arch lines up roughly with the tunnel mouth for the low level tracks on the other side of the high level track bed. to cover the gap under the track bed, I needed a brick wall. Because it is mostly hidden and in darkness, it didn't need to be a full relief moulding, so I was happy to use some printed brick walling (actually viaduct / bridge supports from Scalescenes).

I do wish to allow photography through the arches to look along the low level underground lines, but where these arches are corresponds to the underground lines tunnel, so the filled arches are the go here. Those to the left of this scene (to be done later) will be open arches or girders.


While I was busy scenicking, I decided to add one small extra touch to the church area by adding a garden bed to the end of the church farthest away from the car park. This was simply cut from one of the Model Scene grass mats - one called 'blueberries'.

And a small amount of further progress: gutters added to disguise the joins on the brick arches, extra strips of distressed bitumen added to the road surface, and a brick wall added at one end. The road surface is too glossy at the moment but a spray of matt varnish or similar will fix that.

Not sure the road is 'too glossy' Jeff, just reminds me of what it looks like after it's just been raining.

Really like the van parked in front of the doors where the road markings say "No Parking".

Very prototypical  :thumbs


Ed

Thanks Ed. What else is a 'No Parking' sign for, if not to park over?? 

    


Continuing with the private owner industrial theme, I have now fitted a TCS M1 decoder into Dodo, and given her a test run hauling the new Hornby Golden Arrow Pullman Guard cars.

I strung a short video together showing Dodo on her own, then in tandem with the Huntley & Palmers version.

The jerkiness in the video is due to the combination of the limited frame rate using a mobile phone to take the footage, and the compression from using YouTube. The locos themselves run very smoothly and sweetly. Note that Dodo had not even been run-in at the time of the video.

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A small improvement to the terraced houses on Hill Street in the village: I painted most of the doors different colours, rather than all of them being in the default blue Hornby chose. I also painted the back doors, but not necessarily in the same colours as the front doors. I should repanel a couple of doors to make them a little different too.

I may yet paint one of the house fronts in a different colour (all are the same brick colour at present), and all require floors and walls or curtains to stop the see-through effect from front to back.

The middle house needs to be raised by one more thickness of cardboard!



​

The arches look good to me. 

cheers

Marty

Regarding the terrace housing, all the same brickwork is probably prototypical as i imagine them being all built at the same time, if you want to differ them then maybe white wash or rendering of sorts.

For the backs I would be tempted to have a mixed bag of extensions, to add variety.


overall good work though.

[user=1297]new04db[/user] wrote:

Regarding the terrace housing, all the same brickwork is probably prototypical as i imagine them being all built at the same time, if you want to differ them then maybe white wash or rendering of sorts.

For the backs I would be tempted to have a mixed bag of extensions, to add variety.


overall good work though.

 Thanks.

I was thinking along the same lines - either render or whitewash (maybe a pale pinkwash?) for one house. There's always one owner who wants to be different!

I also thought of the back extensions but they are much harder to do anything with. The Hornby resin is quite tough (I know, I tried to modify a different item with much effort and swearing but little success). The only easy way I can see to modify them would be to add something over the existing extensions, perhaps even a full-width extension.

I know that where I lived in Crawley as a child, there were rows and rows of identical houses but many were personalised, with different renders and colours, different front doors, entries, porches or lean-tos. We had front gardens but the terraced houses on the layout are right on the street front, so no room to do that.

I have been constructing four non-working Ratio ground signals for the crossovers. They aren't entirely accurate for London Transport, but they will do for now. There is a little more tidying up of paint to do on the signal faces.

Also, in a quite unrelated operation, I used some T-Cut on cotton buds to remove the printed Dodo nameplates on the pale green Peckett, in preparation for the eventual arrival of etched plates from Narrow Planet models. All of the Pecketts will be getting changes of identity using fictional names and numbers, but accurate Peckett works plates - just not necessarily correct for the names and numbers!

Back to my industrial loco kick, the Hornby Sentinel diesel has had a rough repaint in a darker blue, with a second coat still to go on, and red buffer beams and coupling rods and cranks replacing pale blue and yellow stripes. Once I am happy with the blue, some black and white (LNER) lining will be added to blend in with the steam locos. I removed the printed logos and intend putting etched plates with a number 10 from Narrow Planet, again to blend in with the steamers. The bright yellow buffer faces were also painted black.

I am in two minds about the step recess areas; should they remain blue or should I paint them black?

The loco initially ran perfectly well when I got it, on DC and on DCC but it very soon developed dead spots in its motor. Very annoying, particularly as I have pretty well invalidated the warranty by rewiring it to fit the TCS M1 decoder. Anyway, I ordered a replacement motor from Peter's Spares, together with a heap of detailing parts for other projects. That arrived today, so I quickly tested the new motor then soldered the wires to it and fitted it all back together. The new motor runs very sweetly, so lets hope it keeps doing that.

​

I decided to decorate a Bulleid locomotive to join the Golden Arrow Pullmans I bought from Rails of Sheffield. A bit of digging revealed that BoB 34083, 605 Squadron had at some time in its earlier career had the mountings for the large arrows along the sides. The photo I have shows it in malachite green with yellow stripes, but in BR days, whereas mine is in BR green but with early crest and tender in original high-sided condition. It may well be that 34083 lost the mounts later on, but that was close enough for me.

The decorations came from Precision Labels, but I chose to mount the front headboard on a piece of 20 thou plastic card, and also mounted the flags on a bit of brass wire soldered to a strip of scrap brass wrapped around a screwdriver to create a pocket to slip over the lamp iron on the loco. At the time of this photo (actually a merge of two photos to get better depth), I had not painted the brass wire or pocket, and the vee angle of the two wire flag poles was too acute an angle. This will all be fixed soon.

Toby - a Sad Farewell

My constant supervisor and occasional helper, Toby, had to be put to sleep last night (Good Friday). He always had to poke his nose into what I was doing on the layout or when modelling. He suffered several episodes in recent times, each getting worse. He was not in pain at all other times and was still a happy boy, but when he had another severe episode last night, we took him to the vets'  and had to take the hard decision.

He started off as a semi-feral kitten, and after a difficult period settled down to be a very faithful and loving companion. He was only a little over 8 years old at the end, but he did have a good life.

We buried him this morning under one of his favourite resting spots in the back garden.












He will be missed.     

Oh dear.. I..
My condolences..

Sorry for your loss Jeff, I have been through the same things a few times but with dogs, so I know what it's like!

Phil

Thanks for your thoughts, Brendan/Zelda and Phil. :)

Hi Jeff,

We're very sorry to hear of your sad loss and Misty (little Miss tabby) and Magic particularly send their love to your dear friend Toby.



Kindest thoughts,

Bill

Thank you kindly, Bill, Misty and Magic.

As with most pets, they are part of the family and do get missed at this point in their lives - a fact of life but still hard to get over.
We have 3 cats that adopted us & I am, like my son, is not looking forward to those dark days.

I feel for you Jeff and the wife.