N / OO9 Two scales one gauge

I haven’t swapped the scenes / scales for a while but with the Welsh 00-9 theme largely complete it was time I thought more about the East Midlands. 

So here, placed approximately where they may end up, are some new pieces along with some old and some shown before but not yet placed. 

1:76 sheep have been replaced with 1:148 cows (and a calf) among other exchanges. 

Two images above should have appeared in a separate post.  And then I lost the keyboard on the phone so have had to revert to the desktop to post this.  

Having removed the cottage scene on its mini-baseboard I took the opportunity to grab some differently-angled shots of the recent detailing.  Those two images are included above …..

The next step has been to start building a brick wall. 

This is constructed from a Scale Model
Scenery kit which looks ok. I found it very fiddly at such a small size; better results could have been achieved by someone with N-gauge fingers not tree-stumps!  

When I cut the shaped raft for the cottage scene I cut a duplicate to carry the urban street scene here. So the wall sections are glued onto the upright face of cut foam-board. 

For card-to-foam adhesion I find UHU works best. Card glue will do it but not as firmly; superglue attacks the foam. 

More houses are needed and being sourced. This should turn into a street scene with a playground beside the railway. 

Sure enough, after a visit to our friends in Camborne, a few more resin buildings have arrived at Boghouses. 

The additional buildings which will form part of the Boghouses street scene have been weathered, had curtains fitted and placed to gauge the effect. 

The later pair of terraced houses has drawn-back curtains and pelmets rather than plain drawn or none at all. Fiddly doesn’t do justice to cutting and fitting those at this scale. 

The bus is a Plymouth Corporation one but there are very few suitable N-scale buses available. It looks credibly generic for an East Midlands independent operator and may well lose its fleet name and crest. 

I am not yet sure whether the final version will retain the alley-way gaps currently between the buildings.  

Looks god, Rick. Curtains for 4mm are hard enough, but in 2mm…

Those resin houses look very good Rick - who makes them ?

Petermac said

Those resin houses look very good Rick - who makes them ?

From “Post #292,076”, 19th April 2025, 3:27 pm

All part of the Graham Farish range, Peter, with the usual Rick embellishments of curtains and weathering.  

Weathering AND curtains !  Can you get inside them ?  I thought they'd have a moulded back wall……………..

So what’s been going on recently?   

Not so much. I have suffered an attack of gout in my fingers - a first as it’s always been in the feet before now. 

But today I started on the N-gauge street scene with footpaths going in. A bus shelter has been fitted between the industrial unit and the houses. 

Slow progress but it’s progress. And it’s fiddly. 

Petermac said

Weathering AND curtains !  Can you get inside them ?  I thought they'd have a moulded back wall……………..

From “Post #292,114”, 26th April 2025, 4:49 pm

You can get inside almost all resin mouldings. 

These low-relief ones are open at the back though that can be covered with card if so desired. The full 3-D models are accessible from beneath; fitting curtains to those is harder due to the more restricted access. 

Any can be illuminated according to skill, budget and preference. The Woodland Scenics “plug & play” lighting is a good but relatively expensive option. Wiring in single nanoLEDs (bought pre-wired!) can provide a cheaper and more realistic option as the lighting is less intense. 

In either case bleed is an issue through resin but a low-voltage supply will give both a realistic incandescent “glow” and reduce the bleed often to nothing. To create the effect of lighting on in some rooms but not others I have in the past inserted balsa dividers to separate floors / rooms. 

How much individual control you have over your lighting is up to you. I have only used “on-off” settings up to now. The buildings on this layout will not be lit because (a) it wouldn’t show up with the room lighting on and (b) the swap-out nature of the scenes would require delicate plug-in arrangements which I am not keen on attempting. 

Sorry to hear about the gout Rick, I've a touch of arthritis in mine and know how difficult it can make things. 

Yeah, amongst other things, my sciatica has come back. Someone posted on facebook I think; old age comes at a very inconvenient time of live. How true that is.

peterm said

Yeah, amongst other things, my sciatica has come back. Someone posted on facebook I think; old age comes at a very inconvenient time of live. How true that is.

From “Post #292,144”, 5th May 2025, 6:37 am

ain't that the truth