Finishing the Fishy Business

In answer to what goes inside the Fine Fish loading shed, here's the answer.

I have put some concrete down inside. I image was taken using an iPhone and the tracks which look like they are entering the building miss it... not by much though and clearance is tight.

The outside strips of styrene were glued down without fuss but the centre strip between the tracks needed a bit of help for a heavy object or ammo box.

Underneath the wood is a brass square tube lying on the plastic.

With that job done, it was time to fit the building.

In the top image you can see an LED strip. This was wired up and stuck in place. It is a little less obvious now. I spent a fair bit of time on Thursday night fixing up inner end of the building. It was a little out of square. I needed to replace a bit of styrene angle and tidy up the brick work. Once done, I hit it with some white primer. I used too much and had to wipe some off which removed the exisiting paint. I figured is gives it a worn look and I'm not worried about it.

It's now being glued into place, being held down by a bit of wood and an ammo box.

Another job this week was to sort out a nasty gap between the bakery and the backscene.

I straightened the wall a bit and played with a Faller chimney which I had bought once as it might come in handy.

The chimney needed to attach to something like a boiler house or a furnace.

A bit of paint, a bit of glue and... Hey presto!

The gap is gone!

Jobs for the week. (Because a list can keep you focused.)

1. Ballast the bakery siding.

2. Add cobblestones to the other side of the wharf.

3. Put a fence up from the bakery to the next building.

4. Put up a fence or a hedge between bakery and the other unknown industry.

5. Plant a tree next to the bakery to disguise gap on the inner end of the extreme low relief building.

6. Think about the next building. Probably a warehouse.

7. Put down some static grass.

I think that I have a clear week, which means I could get through some stuff.

Until next time.

What goes in here?

The plan for plonking the fish building on the layout is simple. Glue it down, put the roof on and put down some Das clay for cobble stones.

The problem I have is what is going to happen inside the building? The interior would surely be concreted so I'll need to sort that out before I go much further.

The work over the last couple of days has been installing the brick work inside. This involved removing some locating plastic from the Wathers modular sections, ewhci took longer than I thought. The doors were given a coat of black paint on the inside as they let a bit of light through and a fair bit of time was given to trying to mark out the precise location of the building as clearance is way too tight. The joy of a micro layout with big stock.

I reckon I'll need to spend a bit of time on this situation this week. I might use some styrene.

Until next time.

A time to paint and a time to dry

The windows were glazed, blacked out and the building glued on this week. The above image is from an older post. there isn't any difference. The next step is to build a boiler house with a chimney to hide the bracket and the gap between the sides of the building and the backscene caused by a slightly dodgy measurement.

As the the brick wall for Fine Fish, that should be tomorrows job. The conditions when I have returned from work haven't been good for spray painting as I do most of it outside. Oh... and I got the date of the Castle Hill Exhibition wrong. It's the next Saturday. I might see if I can wire up a couple of LEDs for the awning of Fine Fish.

Until next time.

Fine Fish

To start off with, I would like to thank James McInerney and the Australian Model Railway Magazine crew for publishing my article in the August edition currently out now. Dad rang me at 11 am to let me know that he had seen it. I hadn't told him it was coming and I think he liked the surprise. You know what it's like, even as adults, we still want to impress our parents and surprise them.

The next article is on the way.

... and that brings me back to this evening's efforts. The last update had a building for the fishing boat wharf. Here is the nearly finished item.

It's in place and I've run a few wagons through it and around it. The last part is important. The building only just fits. one millimetre either way and it will block the clearance for my VLX and MLV vans. Gluing the building to the layout will need to be done before the roof goes on as, despite my best efforts, the rear wall creeps in a bit at the bottom. However, that's a job for another day.

Since last time, the building was sprayed with white primer. The internet was searched for appropriate colours and white seemed to dominate fish co-ops with blue coming a close second. The platform was sprayed Floquil concrete. I'm beginning to run out of these paints which is a pity as they are great to use. The blue doors were sprayed with grep primer and then a Humbrol blue. This didn't seem to work out so well for me. I was given dubious advice by someone that I could spray a Tamiya paint from a can over the top of this. This resulted in much stripping of paint. Once clean the doors were painted with the Tamiya paint once more. They top of the awning was given a coat of Floquil Weathered Black.

The sign on the wall was created in Word. I got the name from and old Hornby wagon which I had as a kid - I always found the name amusing. The fish was free clip art downloaded from the internet and recoloured in Word. The right font was found by trial and error and matched to the colour of the fish. It was then printed on copy paper and glued to the wall with a glue stick. Then some details were added. The pallet was from a pack from Model Scene, the yellow trays are from Harburn Hobbies in Edinburgh (Well worth a visit if you are ever in Scotland.) and the the wheelie bin is from a pack of bins from Preiser. Poking about the place are pelicans from Kerroby Hobbies. I'm not sure that one would really stick its head into a black wheelie bin and search the rubbish but it seemed like a fun thing to do. I still have a pallet jack and a wooden hand trolley to add.

The next job will be to add some lights to the outside under the awning. I have some 3mm LEDs for that job. I also want to line the inside with bricks as you can see the inside of the building from the right hand side of the layout and it doesn't look good.

For the rest of this week, I want to keep up my 15 minutes a day. The other layout that I am working on is running well and the large building, which was in the background in the last post, has been put into position at the club. This means I have fewer distractions model wise but I have other commitments throughout the week and Saturday's 15 minute budget will be blown out by the Castle Hill Exhibition.

Here is my simple plan for the rest of the week:

Tuesday: Cut out glazing for the Bakery.

Wednesday: Black out the Bakery windows as they will show the back scene through them. Hopefully, cut out bricks for Fine Fish and paint them white.

Thursday: Glue the Bakery onto the layout. Glue the bricks to the inside of Fine Fish.

Friday: Grab a beer after work, grab a burger from our local cafe and go to the club to work on the building there.

Until next time.

Modular Buildings

Here's the fish co-op ready to be painted. I have added an awning from the Walthers Cornerstone Modular Kits. They were in the roof packs but the awning angles were with the windows. The awning roof is flat. They were meant to be sloping but they stick out over the wagons. Past experience has taught me that they need to be more than one floor up or your vans won't fit underneath but this is a single storey building as the operator needs to reach over it to access some points - a slight design flaw. The bottom part of the angle is meant to be the top which attaches to the roofing. The part that sticks out at right angles from the building has another bracket underneath it. Cut that off and turn it upside down and you have a bracket that will stick out of the wall to hold the roof flat.

However, the roof sheets are designed to fit in between the columns, the columns that I have replaced with a near enough plastic strip. They have a couple of cut away bits to accomodate the brick columns. The bit that stuck out between the columns had to be removed before they were attached to the building. I originally planned on using six angles to support the roof but after a bit of fiddling around, I realised I would need the ten planned by Walthers.

The wall behind is part of a large station building for the club on the coast. I'm still building it lads. It is made from DPM modular bits. The wall columns come with the walls, something that Walthers could learn from. The Walthers kits fit together really well but component and convenience wise the DPM kits are better, although more expensive. The building in the background came from a couple of kits with a few extra components purchased.

I've just given the fish co-op a coat of primmer so the next post will hopefully have it painted.

Until next time.

Things that slow down progress.

My fifteen minutes a day working on Billabong Marina has taken a right hammering over the last six months. The layout is over twelve months old and it's not yet finished. I have had a few distractions.

I'd like to say that the main one is work. Generally from the end of April to the end of June, I'm pretty busy with work stuff. Yet to be fair, I was a lot busier last year. That was when I introduced the 15 minute modelling workout. Perhaps I haven't been busy enough to feel the need to schedule in some hobby time.

I'm also working on a large building for the club that I attend in the coast. This thing is bigger than I thought it would be. It's being constructed from DPM modular bits and a Peco overall roof. Progress is slow on this too.

My workspace needs cleaning. There are tools and bits and bobs everywhere. Sadly, I am not a tidy worker. I have challenged myself this month to keep my desk tidy everyday at work. The group that I work with reckon that it can't be done. The train room is a bit messy too. I have spent many valuable 15 minutes or more tidying that up. Tonight was a couple of hours work while I moved a shelf and put things away. It's looking better now.

I've also had a couple of breaks. One was to Kangaroo Island and return via Victor Harbor (spelt correctly). Here's a picture.

However, the main distraction is the main layout. It goes around the room two and a half times and then comes back again. From memory, I've posted a video on this before. There is still a lot of construction to finish but I thought that I would stop. I can run an operating night or two with what I have.

But what's been happening down at the Marina?

I put up a backscene behind the bakery and stuck a continuation of the photo on the main backscene.

I'm thinking that a well placed chimney will be able to hide the bracket.

They other time consuming project is the fish co-op.

It's made out of brick. Most of these building that I have seen around are either timber or corrugated iron. I was thinking of a wooden building but I came across a couple of packs of Walthers Cornerstone Modular bits. I love these kits. They are easy to work with. My main station building on the last layout is to be constructed from these kits and the sections have been put away ready for the new layout.

The problem with these kits is that you needed four separate kits for one building. The parts that everybody runs out of are the wall columns and caps. I once rang every hobby shop in Australia trying to find some for a small exhibition layout and ended up having to order from Canada. I have some for this job but not enough for a couple of other projects. There just were never enough parts in the pack for a decent building. It was probably the downfall and the kits are no longer made.

I figured that I could substitute some Evergreen strip for the columns and caps. Part 360 which is .060 x .312" or 1.5 x 7.9mm, I found to be the best substitute.

Five sections cover most of two MRC or TRC vans but it is a tight fit. The width is narrower than it should be and I had to trim the lip off the platforms. If it is positioned correctly then a VLX makes it safely past the building but it is a tight fit.

I reckon this will be the next project to focus on for a while as there is a bit to do before it is finished.

Until next time.

Almost finished something.

Two things I have thought about today. 1. I have to get better at before and after photos. 2. BluTac and rubber gloves don't mix.

Here is the after photo of the ute at the oil depot.

I wanted to to have a truck loading at the oil depot so I cut it in two to fit. I put a couple of full drums in the back. The two closest to the backscene are half height to cater for the wheel arches. I originally cut it in two but while writing this post I thought that I could do it just a little better. The tray was removed and filled with drums. It looked okay but before all the glue tried I went back to the layout and removed the tray from the backscene. I then cut the rear of the cab off and stuck it to the tray and then stuck it all back onto the backscene once more. The ute was a Micro Metals model which I bought from the Model Railroad Craftsman in Blacktown.

Before I painted this bloke below, he was wearing all grey, just like the bloke above. I put on my rubber gloves and thought that BluTac would be great to hold him up. BluTac is great and it doesn't stick to fingers but it does to rubber gloves. It was nothing dramatic just a little awkward and almost comical. 

This chap is now placed on the layout next to his chopped up ute discussing his load, or football with the other bloke. I was thinking while I was painting his long sleeve shirt blue that maybe in Australia he would be wearing short sleeves. In the sixties or seventies, maybe just a singlet or no shirt at all. Fortunately the oil depot promotes sun safe clothing so a long sleeve King-Gee shirt it is.

I reckon I might have finished the oil depot now. The dairy might be done too. The next step is to put down some static grass.

Until next time.