Fixin' Typos

I put the photo from yesterday on Facebook and was told the correct spelling of McFishface was not quite right. Today I fixed it. I also added a couple of menu boards. I made these in Publisher, saved it as a jpeg, inserted it as an image and scaled it to the right size.

Now job two for the week is complete.

The next task will be add some greenery.

Until tomorrow.

What would you call a fish and chip shop?

That's what I was thinking this morning as I drove to work. I thought that I could ask colleagues for suggestions. I knew someone would suggest this so I didn't bother.

I'm not sorry at all.

That is task number two taken care of.

Until next time.

Picture It

I'm not sure if yesterday's title is more appropriate for today's post.

Today I added the back scene. It is a panorama photo which I had resized to be 145 cm (5 cm too long which I found out today - I thought that I had made it shorter). I chunked it into four images which were 40 cm long and 23 cm tall. This will fit onto an A3 sheet. I printed them off on a photocopier, trimmed and glued using a UHU glue stick.

The image is a bit pixelated and I think that the background is a bit closer than may be it should be. However, if you've ever stood on Henry Parry Drive at Gosford, you know how close Rumbalara Reserve is to the town there. I reckon that it passes the one metre rule as well.

Here are the pictures.

Job one for the week done.

Until next time.

In the background.

My hope for an easy week filled with lots of 15 minutes failed dismally this week. I'll ramble on about the stuff that I have learned later. However, a couple of 14 hour days and urgent changes to reports made the work week longer than I thought.

Monday's time was spent painting benches for the fish shop brown. That was job number one from the previous post.

Tuesday's 15 minutes was spent painting the fish and chip kiosk blue. 

I bet you all wish that you had such awesome painting skills huh? Job two done? I don't think so. It wasn't the colour that I had envisaged but I had run out of my Floquil light blue and I can't buy that again. Humbrol was the next choice.

That was pretty much it for the week. Thank goodness for a quiet weekend. Here's the blue that I was thinking of for the kiosk. By the way, the fence was glued in place with Mod Podge on Saturday morning.

After a trip to the hobbyshop here are the blues that I finished with.

The two tins on the left were new on Saturday morning. The left tin went straight into the airbrush as it was really thin. The middle tin, which was to be my base colour, was gluggy as gluggy can be and required a 1:1 paint to thinner mix. The tin on the right had already been thinned. Here is the result.

Job two done.

I turned my attention to the back scene. I tried a couple of painting studies again but they didn't look that good. Another alternative is to use photos. It was a good afternoon on Saturday so I hopped in the car with the camera and headed to the nearby national park picnic area and created a panorama photo. A quick tutorial in Youtube and I was able to produce part of that back scene.

It is printed on plain copy paper. I have darkened the image a little bit and I am working on making the image to be printed in sections onto A3 paper as I have access to an A3 printer. I could get it printed to size but the cost may be a bit prohibitive. What you can't see as it is covered by the fence is the boat on the water. I reckoned that water in the foreground was the best way to put distance between me and the hill that I was photographing.

Other things to consider may be to try and create some depth between fences and the back scene. I have moved the dairy fence a bit and poked a tree behind it. I carved up an old Athern container to put behind the fence. I also thought of stacking a pile of oil drums between the oil depot fence and the back scene. eBay and an Australian seller provided me with lots of Kibri oil drums really quickly. Recently I have developed the belief that kits should be painted to loose the plastic sheen. In this case the sheen will be covered by the painted plastic fence. I was thinking about a third layer of drums but I think that two layers are not WHS approved. They are just a stack of empty drums waiting to be filled and then shipped off by rail. The fence was modified but has not been glued in place yet.

Just poking out from the left of the frame is a tree which I made - sort of. Years ago I bought a set of Hornby tree kits from as toy store on the coast. They were cheap as the shop was getting rid of its model railway stock. I still have most of the trees. A couple I put together, one I broke trying to bend it and the rest I left. They are very two dimensional. Perfect for what I want here. There should be another, smaller tree going in on the other side of the dairy. A bit of Mod Podge, Woodlands Scenic under brush foam and some store brand hairspray and the job is done.

Plans for this week?

1. Print and glue the back scene.
2. Make a sign and menus for the fish and chip kiosk.
3. Add some greenery around the marina.
4. Pain the oars for the row boats.
5. Put the windows in the boats I put together last weekend. This will be an achievement but not a noticeable one.
6. Start modifying the oil depot building.

Here are some other pictures of the layout so far.

Until next time (which will hopefully be tomorrow).

Messing About in Boats

Many thanks to Ratty from Wind in the Willows for today's title.

Work and paperwork that goes with it has got the better of me this week and restricted the daily update.

However, there was still some 15 minutes a day of model work going on. 

Finally some black card was placed behind the windows of the dairy. The tanks for the milk were painted white (this took a couple of coats over a couple of days) and the tanks for the fuel depot were painted silver.

Friday to Sunday saw some time messing about in boats. I dug out the boxes of boats from the harbour kit and did some painting. Here's the result.

I haven't finished all the details and if you zoom in you can see the blue tac holding people in place. In the marina area there is still a heap of things to do:
1. Paint the benches brown.
2. Paint the kiosk blue. I was thinking two or three shades. Maybe some fish if I get excited.
3. Stick a sign on the kiosk.
4. Put a menu board on the kiosk.
5. Deck out the interior of the kiosk.
6. Install lights in the kiosk.
7. Pain the oars for the row boats.
8. Install lights on the marina (and the platform).
9. Add some greenery around the marina.

I was going to build a boat shed (roughly underneath where the blue rail tanker is in the top photo) but I think that would crowd out the space too much.

I'm about to start week seven of the 15 minute a day challenge and I reckon this list will give me some ideas for my fifteen minutes.

I reckon that this week I should try and run a train or two on it as well.

Until next time.

Sign Writing

What you can't see is the glazing added to the windows from Peco points packaging. As soon as I find the black cardboard, I'll place that behind. I still want to try to paint the backscene so the building will be blue-tacked on until that is done. However, today's effort is the sign. It was made using Publisher and printed on photo paper and sprayed with a matte varnish.

I bought a couple of structures of eBay which I hope will be a good cheap solution to the awning. 

I was also thinking of what I could do in my spare siding at the rear of the layout. It has the potential to store a few wagons underneath the higher levels of the main layout. If the layout is moved then it might need something to stop the wagons from falling off. I reckon that I might be able to do something with a Dapol engine shed.

I should be able to get 15 minutes tomorrow. Thursday and Friday will be a different kettle of fish. Saturday and Sunday should see some time caught up.

Until next time.

Sometimes Progress Moves Quickly, Other Times, She Snoozes.

It was mentioned to me that the post hasn't been updated since Monday. I've had to be a bit liberal this week with my fifteen minutes. Tuesday was spent in a hobby shop buying paint and styrene. The paint is for the diary doors and the styrene is for the fish co-op which is on the same side of the harbour as the dairy.

Wednesday was spent with another coat of paint on the windows and I started the doors.

Thursday was much the same. But i had to deal with some over painting issues. I used the same tin of paint that I use for my bricks to paint over the wrong paint and noticed that the paint from the tin was darker. The reason was that when I painted the dairy ages ago, I purposely left some white paint in the airbrush to tone down the bricks. Check out the difference below.

I painted a few patches on to see if I could blend them in a bit. I decided to repaint he whole brick work again. The top floor and left section was Wednesday night. I finished it on Thursday. Below it is in place on Friday.

Saturday was a busy day and this morning I am tackling bits that you probably won't see. It's those little bits under the top of the window frame.

There was a bit of retouching and retouching to do. I know a bad workman blames his tools. I normally blame the lack of skills and knowledge for myself but in this case my top quality paint brush sadly no longer cuts the mustard. It has served me well. It's now as shabby as an old toothbrush. Next time instead of buying one, I'll buy two or three. In the meantime, the paint work on the dairy is done. I need to put up a sign for the Sapphire Coast Dairy Co-op and start work on the tin roofed awning. And paint the fence. And paint the tanks... and the back scene maybe...

Until next time.

More Painting

Another coat of paint on the windows of the dairy was applied today. I have change my mind with the doors and I will paint them brown. A job for tomorrow.

Yesterday I had a trail of painting the back scene. I believe that artists call this a study. I found the idea on Chris Lyon's YouTube channel CNLVN. I didn't have the right yellow but I had a crack at using yellow ochre instead. I used a bit of grey cardboard as a canvas. I might try some lighter art paper next time. An other thought is taking some photos and stitching them together in Photoshop and printing them of on paper. I'll need to look at my photo collection or go for a drive and take some new ones. 

Today's work was boring so here are a couple from yesterday.

Down at the Dairy

I spent a bit of time today with the Walthers Interstate Fuel and Oil kit open. I think by the end of the kit I will have used it in at least three different industry sites. Two of these will be on Billabong Marina. The fuel depot is an obvious location  and I will be using the ends of a couple of tanks and a wall of the depot building here. I have already used the two standing tanks on other layouts and will recycle them on the main layout. The last venue is the dairy. While looking at dairies I found that they have large tanks to store milk. At least I think that is what they are for. A good example of this is at Casino in NSW. I have been past that dairy a couple of times and it can be seen easily on Google Earth's street view.

While I could have built a couple more tanks for the dairy, the extreme low relief means that they won't fit. The solution was to cut the parts in half and put them together. Here they are with the fences propped up. 

A bit of off white paint and they will look the part. It wasn't too difficult, just time consuming. I am beginning to think that similar treatment with silver fuel tanks, but not as tall, might be a good idea to give some height to the fuel depot.

Tomorrow night I will carry on with some more window painting.

Until then.

Desk Work

At what stage do you call it quits on a project and start again?

The operator's station has had a couple of coats of paint. Don't zoom in too much. The paint work is hideous. However it may have to do for now. I have some thin ply that I can use for another attempt later.

Apart from a couple of busy days that have knocked out my fifteen minute schedule, I have been painting the dairy bit by bit. I've a couple more coats of paint on the windows. 

I reckon that I have a two or three more coats to go. I have picked up a couple to fences recently. The may provide a bit of depth in a narrow space.

Tomorrow will see another coat of paint on the windows and doors and may be a sign on the top.