Marty, re the number of views - yes that is me - I go in & view it every 20 secs just to boost it up so you think we are all looking at it.

  Otherwise no views & therefore you won't post. Method in my madness.

No, really, coming on well.

Should have known. Sigh. Alright Mate, just for you :roll:

Retaining Walls… excavations required :shock:

I've got the bridge building crew working hard on the bridge retaining walls at the moment.

I was going to put the first one in like this…



But it just didn't look right and I couldn't find any prototype photos showing the retaining wall at less than 90 deg to the bridge.

So… the excavator was called in, after all if the Rector can do it

A deep breath and…


Didn't take too long…


… and there was a hole :shock:


A mix of ground goop made up from polyfiller, Oxide stain for plaster/concrete and a dash of water


… brush it on and the new retaining wall was in place.;-)


Now for the other side, minor excavations made the curved bank straight and a piece of plasticard dropped in to use as a template.




Trim to suit…


Test fit…


Looks OK to me… The main walls haven't been glued to the roadbed yet.


Cut out some of the other bits:
another bit of  plain 1mm plasticard for strengthening,
the slaters embossed brick plasticard wall, (spotted the deliberate mistake?)
another bit of 1mm plasticard scribed to represent the foundation blocks and
the slaters embossed large bricks as the front pillar…


Glue all the bits together…



Capping and edging to be added yet…



and then…. realise that the embossed brickwork is meant to be on the other side :thudsigh

Not a complete disaster, I'll just add brickwork to the other side tonight. My excuse was it was late ;-)

Can't wait to get it glued together and painted.

Onwards…

Marty  know that feelling,going great guns then ooops :thud
but it is looking good.
:cool:

Thanks Owen, Ooops are a fairly regular occurance I must admit.

That looks really good Marty :pathead. You know what they say, LESS SPEED  :pedalMORE HASTE, or something like that :hmm.

Phill

Trouble is Phil, if I go any slower I don't feel like I'm making any progress at all

Marty  & don't think that you own  Ooops - it is like freeware -available to anyone who makes an Ooops - I have done a few in my modelling  years.

Coming on well.

Marty, that is super work and I'm really impressed, the more so as it's in "N". Am even more knocked out by the ground cover particularly to the left of the bridge in picture 8 and I wonder if you could tell me which make of scatter, grasses etc you've used as this is just what I require for my Quarry diorama.

Ken

Thanks Ken,

I bought a couple of shakers of the Woodland Scenics fine turf, one is burnt grass and the other a mixed grass I think. I use these as the base colours.

The mixed grass is used as the base in the field in the foreground and the burnt grass on the embankment.
From following MikeC and Novices demos I find that the key is not to have a field just the base colour.
I mix the two base colours a little bit, patches here and there, and blend them a bit where the two colours join at the edge of the field, much like real life would.

I use a couple of the Heki darker green scatters which get patched around too, edges of walls, where the fence is going to be, water courses.
Heki also do a really good foliage which I use as the basis for shrubs and tree canopies.
Heki - at the bottom of the page.
The base woodland scenics scatters go over the heki foliage as leaves (I'm using a combination of diluted PVA glue sprayed on or a artists spray glue) and then are highlighted with an alternate colour and/or ground pastels in yellows, mauve, greens, browns.

Grasses are a combination:

1. MikeC's sisal twine untwisted, soaked in an appropriate acrylic paint color and then cut and poked into a dob of neat pva, some times not painted to represent dry grasses.
2. "furry" dishwashing cloths that you can buy in the supermarket cleaning isle, also soaked in an appropriate acrylic paint color and then cut and poked onto a dob of neat pva.

EDIT - forgot to say that once the paint is dry the fibres all stick together and need teasing out with a toothbrush.

Occasional dobs of green,brown, grey, acrylic paint washes to suit and dry brushes of lighter neat colors to highlight.

Using a photo of the area you are trying to reproduce as reference is a big help.

It's a bit painstaking but I'm really happy with the results and there is heaps more to go…

Experiment and have fun.

  Marty this looks really good, and I think the end result will more than justify the effort.

 Also I like the colour of the lighting in your photos. It seems sunny without being too yellow.

 Really enjoying seeing the progress.

 mike

What a great bloke you are Marty to give me such a comprehensive reply; I'm really grateful as it's exactly the info I need being new to this "N" gauge lark!:oops:  I feel I can now approach this aspect of my quarry with a lot more confidence plus it will also give me the impetus for the whole layout (the baseboard supporting cupboards of which I stared assembling today).

Ken.

Marty,
You give me renewed hope for my HO scale. If you can do that!!!! I can do it in HO!

Wayne

More Bridge building…

(Just so you don't think I'm slacking off)

Thanks MikeC, Ken and Wayne for your comments.

MikeC,

An interesting mix of lighting in the room, direct 150 spot, direct overhead fluoro tube and reflected daylight through a nearby window.
The spot, of course, being dominant and I've used the "tungsten" light setting on the Canon Powershot A610 which, I agree, gives a better sunlight shot than the "overhead fluoro" setting.
I'm still playing with the camera settings, maybe one day I might get something right

Ken, glad to help.

Wayne, I've no doubt your layout will be awesome if your scratchbuilding is anything to go by. Looking forward to you getting started.

The bridge building crew are working steadily, if slowly, and progress pics below.

Base coat of grey with black wash, pictured in comparison with my original cardboard mockup.


..and a couple of gratuitous photos of the front part of bridge paint and weathering complete (EDIT: apart from the obvious white bits which get a coat of paint later on) and glued into place.






More soon…

Comments and suggestions welcome as always.

cheers

Hi Marty

As a newcomer to the forum it is taking me a while to get round and read all the members threads, but I have really enjoyed reading and also watching your thread and layout grow to a very very high standard.

The best for me is that your drawing at the start is so close to the nearly finished layout.

cheers Alan, nearly finished :exclam:exclam:question… goodness, I hope so… then I can get back to working on my layout :roll: …. nah, still a ways to go yet on the diorama but it's all good learning and lots of fun.

keeps me out from under T's feet too

Sorry Marty

 

I meant to say diorama not layout, looking forward to seeing the layout or have you a thread on it already.

No problems Alan,

The layout thread, hidden at the bottom of the members layouts section because of the dedication to the diorama, is here

http://yourmodelrailway.net/view_topic.php?id=362&forum_id=21

cheers

Looking good Marty, looking very good!

Looks good to me. I like the bridge very much, the paint job of the blue engineering bricks looks good too.