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.