Another layout idea. (And an update.)

 I've had a bit of a break over the last couple of weeks. I managed to pick up that nasty cold that has been going about and I managed to get away for a few days. To top it off, I did a little bit of trainspotting on the Skitube. 

There wasn't a huge variety of trains. There are four sets of trains. Set 1 is three cars long and spends most of the day running between Perisher and Blue Cow. Set 2 is four cars long and travels between Bullocks Flat and Perisher. Sets 3 and 4 are two cars long. They spend most of the time coupled together between Bullocks Flat and Perisher. However, at some stage throughout the day a supply train is run. I'm not sure of the whole ins and outs. At around 1:30 the train from Blue Cow runs down the hill to Bullocks Flat. At the same time one of the two car units pushes up a bogie open wagon loaded with supplies for the Blue Cow Terminal.

I've seen this over the years that I have been heading down to the snow. While I've seen the wagon go up and the wagon at Blue Cow in the morning, I have never seen the wagon go down the mountain. I have caught the train which runs from Blue Cow to Bullocks Flat on nasty days that aren't much fun to ski - such as last Friday. To be honest, the wagon from Blue Cow could be on the rear of this train. I have never looked.

I have often thought that this would make a nice micro-layout. The station at Bullocks Flat is simple it is one track which splits into two tracks either side of an island platform. It also gets snow. A simple auto reversing module would make it work without too much hassle. However, the stock would need to be scratch built or 3D printed. This is out of my capabilities at the moment.

Having said all that, two sets of points - one for the station and one for the staging yard - and you could use a similar idea for the end of a suburban line. I think East Hills was something like this before the line was extended to Holsworthy and Glenfield. A bit of quick research also showed that Beverly Hills was once called Dumbleton.

I reckon that a twelve foot long shelf would be good, although a bit bigger than micro. 1/3 of this would be platform (a four car single deck set or a double deck S set is about 90 cm long.), 1/3 could be a run through to the final 1/3 of staging yard. If the boards were less than 30 cm deep it could be cut from a single 1200 x 900 mm sheet of ply. If you cut out the middle section then the layout could be 30 cm x 240 cm.

Enough daydreaming and back to the current layout.

I carried on with the cobblestone sets and started on the warehouse. The next lot of cobblestones need to go inside the curved track. I reckon that I'll get to that on Sunday. 

The crane was put in place to get an idea of how things would look from a viewing angle. The crane needs replacing as it has visited the floor too many times.The warehouse was put in place. It's the front of the Cutting Scissors factory by DPM. The rest of it makes up the dairy. It seemed like a good solution. I did try some DPM modular sections and looked for another idea from other available kits but this is the cheapest option. It was given a coat of primer.

It was then given a nice shade of brown. Unfortunately it blends in with the background. To counteract this, I painted the windows and doors cream.

I don't think that this helped. To solve the problem I went to to my local hobby shop to buy some lighter paint. The Humbrol paint was really gluggy. I don't know if it's just me but I seem to find inconsistency with this brand. I spent a bit of time thinning it down. I have applied a lighter shade over a dark base, which isn't ideal but it will make the building stand out more.

A couple more coats will see it done. The concrete bits will be light grey and the windows and doors will be a mid grey.

The aim of the warehouse is to provide another spot for a wagon. As it will be parked out the front and on the circuit, it can provide an extra challenge for the operator.

The next lot of tasks are much the same.
1. Put up fences. (They need to be painted and put on the layout.)
2. Create the sign for the bakery.
3. More cobblestone sets.
4. Keep painting the warehouse.

Until next time.

Setting Things in Stone

This week has been a lot of this and that. Today's effort was putting some more Das modelling clay down into cobblestones. Although from what I hear, cobblestones are round whereas square or rectangular stones are setts.

I've had the Das open for 14 months. So long as you keep it wrapped in an airtight condition it still seems to work. I did find that dipping a finger in some water helped a little though. I have the section between the tracks in front of Fine Fish and to the left of the building still to go. After that, I have between the curved track and up to the backscene and the warehouse to go. The curved track will be more challenging than the straight track as the wheels will need more space for clearance. Once done, I can paint the cobblestones.

Earlier in the week I carried on with some ballast. Now all of the track is ballasted.

Once the ballasting was completed a bit of static turf was put down. Part of this was easy but some sections close to the backscene were difficult to put the grass down. A lot landed on rooftops. Instead of shaking it out of the static grass applicator, I had to sprinkle it on by hand and then wave the applicator over the top as close as I could. Behind the Fine Fish, in a spot where no one will actually see it, the applicator wouldn't fit at all. However the end result is not too bad.

The fishery building, as you can see is narrow. The idea is to give an impression of what should be there. On this micro layout there isn't enough room for a complete building so compromises had to be made. The main aim for the layout is for operation and on the two sidings I want to load four refrigerated vans.

For the coming week I've a couple of jobs.

1. Put up a couple more fences.

2. Create a sign for the bakery. I'm thinking about a billboard style on the roof.

3. More cobblestone setts.

4. Start on the warehouse.

Until next time.

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.