Monday, October 29, 2007

Fill-er up!

Hi,

The garage has been remodelled and the three main station boards have been swung round to face into the garage to allow the other side of the rails to be painted (now half done) and to allow the construction of the car park area. Following the move further work was done to the rockface alongside the platform, the ground at the far left and the roadway section between the car park and level crossing was installed. Further filler was added to the ground to smooth out rough parts and create a prototypical look. In fact I've used so much filler that another large tub was purchased - it's great stuff!


The Ffridd Isaf board has been dismantled for now, after the 3rd and (final?) attempt at the slate tipping area was completed and looks far more realistic now. An overall view is below...

Pine trees were constructed using the woodland scenics tree kit - one of the below was purchased as a ready-made tree - can you guess which one [answer at bottom of page]

Three WHR heritage wagons/vans have been constructed from parkside kits...


Colin

PS the ready-made tree is on the far right.

Monday, October 15, 2007

to sum up a Summer...


Hi all,


Nights are drawing in, the weather is worsening and all this means that modelling in the garage can't be done in natural light. Thus it will soon be time for my winter break from layout work and my time will instead be spent with the soldering iron in hand... This weekend I am getting ready for a clear out, tidy and rearrangement of the garage. The L ends of the layout will come off to ease access and the central station boards will be swapped around so they face into the garage. Thus when the winter is over the next steps of finishing the station area, adding the plywood fascias at the front and painting the other side of the track can be easily achieved.


I've come a long way since work restarted in early Spring. Back then I didn't even have all the boards made, only had a few trestles and an outline plan. Now almost all the woodworking is done and the scenic base is really coming on too. Below shows the garage tonight...


There will need to be a bit of remodelling of the hillsides, especially near the Ffridd Isaf stream, but I've now run out of modroc, so that will have to wait. For now Ffridd Isaf looks like this...


After the successful purchase of some extra track cheap off ebay, I made up 8 lengths for the traversers and 8 spurs for the far sides...




The roadway up to Ffridd Isaf is now in, and the low level ground has been completed by placing modroc over blobs of filler. Newspaper was too tall, so this is the best I could think of. It's cheap, light and seems to work fine.

The rockfaces will come later and most of the necessary faces have been cast already and sit in a box...

and this was what was back in April: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhq0-9hgP8By002KEl6vodGcuwC4J2c3ivoJP02TIDuFSpebQCoV7-zFYOoUIuiGBCJuZoFdnNEP7Qu9jTNjlOlTBPoYkYqq-TXaega3zHE_qBieeZeM-xPqpjSBDpmpG6P2PNy5w/s1600-h/127_0009.jpg
So expect big things for Spring/Summer 2008
Colin