Here's One I Started Earlier

There are alway little tutorials and articles about making trees.

Here is mine. And... here is a tree that I started earlier.

I got some wire from somewhere ages ago. It's thin and I thought that it would be good for a tree. I cut about 40 cm of the wire and folded it in half. Next I twisted the wire to form branches. Then I put it in a box for two years while I rebuilt the layout that it was being made for. After a couple of years I found it again and thought that it would be a good tree for my swagman to sit under while he boils his billy and shoves a jumbuck in his tucker back. It's going to stand about 15 cm tall. It's not really that big but it might look out of place where it is going.

The wire was very flexible so I reinforced it with a bit of solder. When it cools down a bit, the tree will receive a couple of coats of watered down no more gaps.

Until next time.

Two more jobs done.

Today I finished my little shelter.

There is even a little man sitting on a seat inside it. He may never be seen by anyone but I'll know he is there.

I also put some bits of timber down for passengers to walk across the tracks to get to the ferry.

I chopped up some match sticks and glued them down. Then painted them with a wash of weathered grey.

Not bad for 15 minutes.

Until next time.

A Little Shelter

On a previous layout I had a Wills station halt with a waiting room. The waiting room was a corrugated iron shed. Perfect for the waiting shed on the Billabong Marina platform.

To be honest, I have used bits of the station and on later layouts and try as I might, I couldn't find the little shelter.

Today, I was in luck. I found a wall! Not just any wall but a side wall. It wasn't much but it was a good template. Enough to use it to build another one.

Here it is:

It is wide enough to hold a Peco station seat for my little plastic people. If I place it here you can't look in but it will form a barrier so that people don't fall off the platform into the billabong.

A bit of grey primer and some rust streaks and it will be ready for passengers.

That's all for now.

Slow Progress

I seem to have fallen into the trap of slow progress.

I finally got the bollards glued on. Here they are:

I recently updated my phone and the Blogger App no longer works. This is a bit of a disappointment as I've been using the phone app to check the lists that I make and then chose the next task to do.

Check out the post titled 'Time for a Beer' for the last list. Now it looks like this:

2. Detail the Fish and Chip Shop
5. Make a shelter for the platform. I may already have something.
6. Paint oars for the rowboats. (This is from way back and I still haven't done it.)
7. Paint my swagman.
8. Build a campfire for the swagman. Hopefully this will be lit.
9. Install a coolabah tree. (I might need to make this first.)
13. Install timber walkway between tracks near station for ferry passengers.
14. Glue down marina jetties.
15. Add water.
16. Add a couple of small cranes.

I'll see how many of these that I can knock off this week.

Until then.

Never mind the bollards!

My apologies to the punk rock band who's saying I have ripped off.

I've carried on with the bollards. I've about ten to twenty to go. They are sitting on the main layout.

Something else which has needed some attention has been the concrete edging of the docks. I gave it a dry brushing of white. The next day it looked silver. I gave it a second dry brush coat.

Hopefully, I should have the bollards in by the end of the weekend.

Until then.

All Quiet on the Waterfront

Mates are great. Especially the ones who come up to you and say, "I haven't seen any updates on your blog." They are the type of mate who keep us accountable.

What has been happening?

To be honest I've had a few distractions on other activities. I've loyal to my fifteen minute philosophy, just not loyal to the little layout.

However, I have been making some piles... or bollards. I'm not sure what they're called. Last year I painted three lengths of balsa dowel with weathered black. I cut them to size and filed around the top for that chamfered look. This meant that bare balsa was now exposed. When I tried to paint it white, it didn't work. My solution was to put a peg on them where the white shouldn't be and spray them with some white primer. I had to give them a couple of coats.

Here they are drying.

While that was going on, I looked deep into the waters.

The water was so disgusting, not even the boats wanted to go in.

I gave the water a good scrub but it didn't get rid of all of the dirt. I have a small (really small) amount of this paint left so I gave it another light coat with an dish sponge. I cut the sponge up so that I could fit it into the sample pot of paint. It is pretty old and the colour or range no longer available. A little bit of work and it now looks like this:

There's a bit of a colour cast which gives the image a yellow tinge.

After the piles or bollards have dried the needed to be painted grey again and fixed up. I trimmed a few for my ferry pontoon and glued them in place.

I'm still painting the other 40 piles/bollards for the rest of the wharves.

Until next time.