Colonel

Hot sunny weather is not exactly conducive to model making. When it is nice outside, you want to be there to enjoy it, but when it is over 32c, as it has been here of late, then lurking indoors sometimes seems the best option - except that, despite our best efforts, it's been pretty hot there too. Anyway, not being one for sitting still for long, have found that doing bits of scenic work, which involves little and often, helps pass the times and means I'm still getting stuff done. So, have been working on the area in front of the new industrial buildings. As you can see, it is mostly a small triangle of wasteland, a place of nettles, dog roses, brambles, weeds and so on. There's nothing too complicated about creating this sort of thing - all the ideas come from Gordon Gravett's books. Step one was to prepare a sub base of card & foam board, which was then covered in a mixed of filler, pva glue and brown paint. Once this was dry/set, I then covered it with a mixture of Woodlands Scenics coarse and fine scatter, which adds a nice subtle texture. The static grass machine comes out next, adding a couple of layers of mixed fibres [colour and length] on top of the scatter. The latter needs to be fairly well soaked in glue for the first layer, but once it has set I use cheap hair spray for the second lot of fibres. Once dry, on top of this I dab small amounts of pva, upon which I sprinkle fine, dark green scatter, which is the first step in creating weeds Woodlands foliage is then used for the larger plants. You tease out a small amount, which you can then fix in place with pva, before adding more fine scatter to this to create the leaves. For flowers [eg brambles and dog roses] I add white and pink granules to the fine scatter, about five to one in favour of the latter, which seems to give the right effect. After that I added some nettles, made in the same way as before, by wiping thicker fibres in pva and then straight into fine, dark green scatter. Once dry, they are easy to plant in the deeper foliage, fixed with more pva. As you can see, I've also ballasted the track in this area and made some sleepers from thick card to create the road crossing into the garage area. Hopefully, the weather is going to cool down soon, so I can get back to more substantial modelling.

Nice!

In the early days of P4, rewheeled Lima diesels, with lots of added weight were known to be excellent haulers.

Elegant work as ever. I suspect the Society of Why Don't My Models Work Without Fettling has a considerable number of members, of whom I am also a member. If I could be bothered, am sure a suitably rude sounding acronym could be formulated.

Sound very much like Aveling and Porter locos. Essentially traction engines on rails. The Brill Tramway had one as did Garretts of Leiston, plus numerous chalk and cement works.

I suppose that, being made first and foremost as toys, they made them sturdy. Current models are works of art, with complex mechanisms and remarkable haulage capacity.

Any news of this fantastic layout? See its been nearly a year since the last post.

Thanks Eoin. Love the chassis set up!

Sounds like it is running better than mine ever did - three coaches was its limit and not a patch on the Hornby Dublo Pacific my friend had. Things have certainly moved on since then, but I wonder how salvageable some of the current finescale ft will be in 60 years time - especially if they are actually used in a regular basis.

7mm scale GMs - tell us more, please!

I've been working on the two industrial buildings this week. Nothing special about them really, except perhaps that, with all the talk about 3D printing, these are very much old school, being foam board shells, covered with Howard Scenics embossed brick. Roofs are both card, with water-colour paper cut into strips for the slates. Plain brickwork is water-colour pencil "brass rubbing' style over the embossing, with acrylics doing the job everywhere else. The next job is to bed both buildings into ground cover. As you can see, the back scene has been enhanced in my usual style, with acrylics to represent trees and hedgerows, along with a road curving round behind the building. I will be adding a crossing for this road, into the yard, serving either a car repair shop or a small independent bus garage. The other two pictures show my George England [ex Wantage] well tank, pushing a loaded wagon of coal off scene to the gas/engineering works.

Thanks Rob. As I've said before - clever stuff!

Methinks some of our brethren are speaking in tongues and are making my thumbs itch. Alchemy and acronymphomania! As ever, there is so much to learn about new and seriously clever stuff.

Fascinating. Do you have to CAD all those supports in, or are they part of the printing software and process?

Quite a saga - rare to get such a range of faults in pretty much all the working parts, especially when they all came from different manufacturers. More than entitled to feel a bit vexed!

Wibble - and beam me up Scotty. We need that J26 back...

If this type of thing develops, it could, with the addition of virtual head sets, be almost the equivalent of a time machine.

Presumably these are home layouts? As an exhibiter, I've long used 6mm ply for lightness. Top and frames, though 12mm for ends, to take baseboard joiners. Keeping baseboard size below 4' x 2' also helps with weight. 6mm birch ply is lovely stuff, but a lot of it came from Russia, so less easy to get hold of now, for obvious reasons.

An internet search showed a variety of resin castings kits from about £40 upwards in the UK. They tend to include things like rubber gloves, paper cups, lolly sticks and so on for mixing. Fine for a first attempt, but cheaper just to buy the material. One thing to note is that the silica mould may only last a few months once opened. After that, it doesn't set. The two part resin lasts longer.

We had Gauge 3 at the Chatham Show last year - all 20+ metres of it. You could build an N gauge branch terminus in the same space a bogie coach occupies. Lovely stuff.

East Lynn is one of the all time greats. Looks wonderful and a delight to operate, something I was twice privileged to do. Railex is a fine show anyway, but the S scale contingent idea the cake.

Add Gordon Gravett and Barry Norman to the list, David.

A fine looking beast and absolutely iceberg like in what lurks beneath the sutace!

Presumably if, say sides and ends were printed, as per my castings, then being more 2d than 3d, would be quicker to CAD?

Further to this morning's post, here are some photos of the basics of resin casting. First the 'stuff': below is what you need to make the mould - a tin of 'goo' and the setting agent/catalyst. One part of the latter to 20 parts of the former. Mix and wait 24 hours for it to set. The other stuff is the resin - two parts mixed equally, which take well under an hour to set, so you can cast multiple copies in an afternoon. Above is the master for one side of an ex WL&WR six wheel coach which was converted to carry turf during the Emergency [aka WW2]. Made from plasticard sheet & strip, it was quite a few hours work, but worth it in terms of then being able to make multiple copies. When finished, it was mounted in a low walled box [more plasticard] to take the moulding material. Here's said mould, ready to take the resin and below is one cast side. Another side, two ends and a floor, assembled with cyan, and you have the coach body, which then had an Alphagraphix etched brass chassis attached as shown with the completed models below. Have done all sorts of other models, mainly wagons, for both broad and narrow gauge, as per more masters below. If you are not ready for 3D printing yet, would say resin casting is definitely worth a try.